Free Journey to the Stone Country by Alex Miller

untangling herself from the blanket.
    ‘You made good time,’ the man said from the doorway. He stood watching Susan climb out of the Pajero, as if he intended asking her a question, but he said nothing and turned and went back inside the house. An orange Ford 500 drove by along the road, the bass thumping, young people waving and yelling from the windows. Trace reached her white hardhat out the cabin of the truck and held it aloft, as if it were a trophy from the wilderness.
    Bo lit his smoke.
    Trace jumped down from the truck and went inside the house. Arner eased himself out from behind the wheel and followed her, stepping deliberately across the kikuyu patch.
    Bo watched him. ‘You gonna take your gear in?’
    Arner took hold of the verandah post, paused, then hauled himself up the two steps onto the boards. He stood breathing. ‘I’ll get it later.’ His voice was husky and low, as if he confided some shy knowledge of himself that he was unwilling to speak of openly to others. He stepped across the verandah and pulled open the flywire door. He ducked his head and went into the house.
    Bo turned to Susan as she came around the back of the Pajero. ‘We should take in them maps for Dougald to have a look at?’
    ‘I’ll get them.’
    He waited for her, Annabelle standing beside him. The two women followed him up the steps and into the house.
    The tall man was sitting at a darkstained pine table on the far side of the room by the kitchen area, his elbows on the wood, his arms resting along the tabletop. He was gazing solemnly at the palms of his hands, which were large and pale and soft looking, with lines like ingrained coal stains traversing the pallor. The skin of his face was puffy and grey, the flesh hanging in slack folds from the square block of his skull.
    The tabletop was covered with newspapers and magazines, sauce bottles and a teapot, a plastic packet of sugar, breakfast cereal and dirtied bowls and plates, cutlery lying about. Arner was sitting in a big old green club lounge, his back to the table. He was pointing the remote and thumbing through the channels on a teevee against the wall. Trophies on the teevee, the sound off. A dozen more trophies spread around the room on tables and shelves. Hung on the wall between the windows, an arrangement of plaques and photographs. Trace with a pool cue in one hand and a trophy in the other at the centre of each photo, a wide grin on her face. Smiling young people gathered around her holding up beer glasses.
    Susan went over and sat opposite the man at the table. She laid the rolled mine maps and her report in front of him. ‘How are you, Dougald?’
    ‘Yeah, pretty good Sue.’
    She looked up. ‘This is Annabelle Küen. She’s been helping us. Annabelle, meet Dougald Gnapun.’
    He didn’t get up or offer his hand but turned and nodded to her.
    Bo said, ‘William Beck’s youngest daughter.’
    Dougald Gnapun paused then and gave her a searching look. ‘So you come back up this way?’ he said. He turned back to Susan without waiting for a response from Annabelle. ‘You get it done?’
    ‘There’s a section the other side of the Isaac left to do. It’ll take us a couple of days. We’ll go back and finish it off after I’ve been out to Charters Towers. I can’t leave that job any longer. And I’ve got to spend a few days catching up in the office.’
    Dougald said evenly, ‘Les Marra was here.’
    Susan waited, ‘ And ?’ She looked at Annabelle. ‘Mr bloody trouble.’
    Dougald examined his open palms. ‘Yeah,’ he said, delivering his information in a flat tone, ‘Him and Steve was at a meeting in Brisbane.’
    ‘What’s going on, Dougald? Just tell me the bad news,’ Susan said.
    He looked at her and shrugged, his manner apologetic. ‘They’ve signed the agreement with the government and that company. They’re going ahead with a dam on Ranna Creek.’
    ‘And I suppose he expects me to drop everything and survey Ranna?’
    Dougald