Chapter 4

Charlie

It didn't take a rocket scientist to see these two had just got married, they were 'bout close as two people could get. He'', the two of 'em had arms around each others waists and kept bumpin' butts as we walked down the street. Here, these two kids were draggin' me around on a lark, havin' a hell of a time. An' in the meantime, they were gonna fix me up. At least I hoped they'd fix me up. The way things been goin', I weren't too sure what might happen.

I just shook my head. Who knows what'll come of all this, but it can't be any worsen' getting' thrown out of Australia with no job an' hardly any money. Hell, I didn't even know if'n I could get to my money in the bank in Amarillo. Not that there were much in it anyhow.

They were still holdin' hands while we walked another block to the Mall. An' it looked like there were enough signs for restaurants. I didn't figger I'd die of hunger anytime soon. Gordy asked if Italian was OK, an' I nodded. I was beginnin' to get a bit hungry, and them chops at breakfast had sure been good. Maybe lunch would be just as good. 'Sides, I never was one to look down my nose at a meal.

Gordy

We went to Al Fresco's in the Todd Mall. Charlie sat across from me, and Weena sat to my right. The lunch menu looked OK. Weena ordered a salad, Charlie ordered pasta with hot sausages, and I got an "individual pizza."

"This may be a good place for coffee," Weena said to Charlie and I could see him cheer up. He nodded towards the waitress taking our order and said "Yeah, a good cup of coffee would be nice."

The food arrived and talk ceased while we ate; it would have been fine, but Weena stole a slice of my pizza. I guess that's married life. After we'd eaten, I looked at Weena and then at Charlie and said: "Before we order dessert, I'd like to talk about what we do next — and I want to clear it with Charlie. 'Cause it's his life. I'm hoping we can pick up the info from DKA and then go back to the hotel. There might be something from Reynolds. And I ought to phone my folks and tell them that I'm still alive; and Weena ought to call her dad. But, I've also been thinking about what Charlie said about getting those cattle to grass. Charlie, there ain't no grass to speak of in the south of the Territory. There's only a few inches of rain in a good year. But if those longhorns can survive on the kind of tough forage there is, they'll be OK."

"Well. We'll see. They can eat most anythin' ... Jes' takes 'em longer to work through it in their system. An' they got pretty thick tongues. Some thorny stuff's OK. Jes' hafta see. These sausages are real good. Think I c'n get me a couple more without the noodles?"

"Why not?" I ordered him a pair. The waitress looked like Charlie was a Martian or something. Tall, skinny guy with a digestion of stainless steel.

"What's this Oohlaroo place we're goin' tomorrow?"

"U-l-u-r-u," spelled out Weena.

"It's a gigantic rock southwest of here. It was called 'Ayer's Rock' until 1985, when the government gave it back to the natives. No one is quite sure what it is, but my geology prof a decade ago believed that it was about 600 million years old and the remains of sedimentary deposits. There are a few other rocks around, too. Called 'Kata Tjuta.' Uluru is sacred to most of the tribes. It's a quarter of a mile high and six miles around. There are caves and paintings in it."

In the creation period, Tatji, the small Red Lizard, who lived on the flats, came to Uluru. He threw his kali, a curved throwing stick, and it became embedded in the surface. He used his hands to scoop it out in his efforts to retrieve his kali, leaving a series of bowl-shaped holes.

Unable to recover his kali, he died in the cave. His tools and body are the boulders on the floor of the cave.

The Bell-Bird brothers, were stalking an emu. The animal ran north towards Uluru. Two blue-tongued lizard men, Mita and Lungkata, killed it, and butchered it with a stone axe. Pieces of meat lie around as broken pieces of sandstone.

When the Bell-Bird brothers got there, the lizards handed them a small strip of emu, saying there was no more. So the Bell-Bird brothers set fire to the lizard's shelter. The men tried to escape by climbing the rock face, but fell and were burned to death. The gray lichen on Uluru is the smoke from the fire and the lizard men are two half-buried boulders.

"He knows lots of those stories," said Weena. Charlie was savoring his last Italian sausage.

"Ayup," he said, when he'd swallowed it "Ain't much different from the stories the Comanche tell back in Texas." The waitress brought the bill, I handed her my plastic, and signed the slip.

That taken care of, I turned to my companions. "It's just after two. Let's see what the DKA has for us." And we walked back there.

Charlie

It was as hot as Laredo in the dead of summer when we got out of the Mall. We didn't waste no time getting' to that DKA place. When we got there, that nice-lookin' lady warn't there, but one of the others had a coupla sheets o' paper. "May I see your ID, please?" she said. "We're supposed to write down who requests records."

"Sure," said Gordy, an' he hauled out that plastic card he'd shown before. She took it and wrote stuff in a book and handed the sheets an' card back to Gordy.

"If you need anything more, just come back."

"Sure. And thanks very much. You sheilas have been really helpful."

I looked at Weena. "Sheilas?"

"Women."

I must be learnin' a furrin' language. Most of the time they spoke English here, but sometimes they used the craziest words. 'Sheilas, ' why would anyone call a woman a sheila? I shook my head and follered the others out the door. We walked back to the hotel, the kids holdin' hands an' Gordy holdin' on to the papers and the maps in his off hand. It woulda been a nice day, but it were getting' a mite hot. When we got to the hotel, the desk feller called out "Mr. Grant! There's a message for you!" So I changed direction and headed his way. When I reached the desk, he handed me a piece of paper sayin' that Reynolds called an' I should call him. An' a number. I showed the number on the paper to the feller and asked where I could call back from. He jes' pointed to a phone at the end of the counter and said to "Dial 9, wait for another tone, then dial that number." So I did.

"Alice Springs Police Station, how may I direct your call?"

"Hello. I'm Charlie Grant. I got a message to call Reynolds."

"Yes, sir. One moment please."