Matt Eaton - Blank

Mel couldn’t take her eyes off the painting. “You ever heard the legend of Rover Thomas?”

Seamus remained intently focused on her hand. “No, can’t say that I have.”

“But you’d remember that in 1974 the city of Darwin was wiped out by a massive cyclone, yeah?”

He nodded. “I was just a kid.”

“The rains that year sent water flooding inland,” she continued. “An old Aboriginal woman died in that flood. It’s said after she died her spirit came to Rover in dreams and gave him the sacred songs of her country. Those songs are a map of the landscape.

“Rover wasn’t from her clan. She was Warmun, he was Kakatja, from Gija country in the East Kimberley. The woman’s songs – the events and places they describe – aren’t from Gija country. Apparently the dreams made old Rover sick. But after many months of visits from the woman’s spirit Rover was able to sing an entire corroboree.

“They call it the Gurirr Gurirr. It was the sacred ceremony of the Warmun people. Rover didn’t know their country, but in that corroboree he could describe it all. At first the Warmun elders didn’t want to know about it, ’cos Rover wasn’t one of them. But eventually they had to acknowledge that the songs were genuine.

“Years afterwards, Rover started painting that landscape. He said he wanted to illustrate the nightmare of the Rainbow Serpent’s fury when that cyclone hit – the mysticism of the forces at work. Someone once described the paintings of Rover Thomas as the bones of that northern country. But the songs – that corroboree – were given to him by the spirit of an old woman for everyone to hear.”

Seamus stared at the fake Rover. The brush of the man himself may not have touched the canvas yet it remained a brilliant rendering of the real deal, drawing upon the same colours, tones and patterns Rover imbued in his work. On the other hand, its meaning remained unspoken to him. It was a map he couldn’t follow, as indecipherable as any of the hundreds of Indigenous languages once heard across the continent.

“That legend – if you care to believe it – is a modern miracle,” she declared. “It’s out in plain sight, yet it’s one of those things people never talk about.”

“Like UFOs or crop circles you mean?”

“Exactly. It’s so far removed from everyday experience that people just paper over it like it’s not real – just those crazy blackfellas, yeah?”

“Surprising how good the world became at ignoring anomalies,” he agreed.

She smiled sardonically. “Much easier to ridicule what we don’t understand.”

It was dusk when Luckman arrived back home. The chopper had barely touched down before Bell launched back into the air, seeking to minimise the impact on the campfires nearby. It was an odd bivouac, a disparate posse of survivors interspersed with two squads of soldiers under Luckman’s command. Some of the soldiers had claimed the house next door, which was now incorporated into their compound. Other properties were deemed too far away to easily secure. The boys had been out on patrol when he arrived with Mel. They had since returned for dinner. He was happy to play host to the Army both because it helped keep the perimeter secure and because it gave him an operational excuse to base himself at home.

Each day the troops combed the surrounding area trying to round up any Blanks they could, searching houses for food and removing anything dangerous. It was a bit like toddler-proofing a house. The Blanks ate and drank anything they could find. Some of them had set fire to themselves, others had died after eating rat poison or bleach. Government policy was to bring all Blanks into custody unless they were dangerous. Trouble was, scared and trigger-happy soldiers had shot more than a few of them when misunderstandings got out of hand. Increasingly the Blanks had come to regard them as the enemy.

The Army still had working vehicles and fuel to run them, and the soldiers used these locally during the day. But driving was too much of a risk at night time. Covering any distance of more than a few kilometres in darkness was now done exclusively by air. The situation reminded him of Tarin Kowt in Afghanistan, except the terrain was more familiar and the “enemy” was unarmed.

From around the main campfire, several people greeted Luckman warmly. Squad leader Sergeant Kev Naughton caught his eye. Luckman sighed. He was mostly reliable, but not exactly the smartest of units. And on the subject of the Blanks, their views were poles apart.

“What’s up Sergeant?”

“We noticed something new today, sir. They seem to be getting together and forming packs.”

Naughton talked about the Blanks like vermin. He was one of the growing clique in favour of a Final Solution.

“Well,” said Luckman patiently, “I suppose that’s not so surprising. Humans are social animals.”

“They’re learning real quick. And there are loads of properties out here that still aren’t secure. What happens when they work out how to use guns, sir?”

It was a good question. If they were forming groups, their learning would quicken dramatically. “Look, it’s not exactly Oruzgan Province out here. You know the drill. Approach them calmly and carefully. You’ll be right.”

“We’ve made a baked bean casserole if you’re interested,” Naughton suggested.

Luckman knew it was a peace offering and that he really should accept, but he needed to see her. “I just want to clean up and collapse. But thanks. Next time, eh?”

He had hoped she might come out to meet him. He found her fast asleep, buried deep under the covers in the guest room. It was a strange time to be sleeping; probably a sign of trauma. It had to be the first time in a while she’d felt safe. He wandered wearily through the dining room and onto the front deck for his nightly yoga ritual. Mortality had, of late, weighed heavily upon his aching bones. The yoga, even just a few minutes of it, revitalised him. Afterwards, he showered, threw on shorts and a T-shirt and returned to the solitude of his front deck. The hypnotic thrum of crickets and cicadas vibrated through the cool evening air. He lit a mosquito coil then curled up cross-legged on a cane chaise lounge to meditate. Listening to the sound of his own breathing through the thrum of the evening, the memories of all that had transpired cascaded like a film on fast forward. He let go and sank deeper into thoughtlessness.

Meditation had come to him as an extension of Shodokan Aikido, the martial art in which he had become a black belt. His meditation teacher had given him his mantra, stipulating he never reveal it to anyone else lest its power dissipate. The mantra had changed his life. With it he learned to tap a source of power beyond himself, a deep well of understanding and forgiveness. It had held back the darkness inside him when it might otherwise have been overwhelming. It delivered him from the illusion of material existence – a very useful tool when that existence left much to be desired.

His meditation teacher once said, “intention is destination”. She believed it was possible to actually influence physical events through focused thought. While that was an art he had yet to master he had long been aware of his own strange and miraculous gift for being in the right place at the right time.

In his early 20s, he once bumped into his cousin Gemma in Europe. They were both backpacking on the opposite end of the world at the same time but in typical youthful self-absorption had never bothered to compare notes or arrange to meet up anywhere.

When Luckman arrived in Munich, he didn’t even know Gemma would be in Germany let alone the same place in the same city. They found each other in the stairwell of a five-storey backpacker hostel, a place big enough that even there they might easily have missed one another.