Just Like Alice: a short story

The old Aboriginal man stirred. The scavenging dogs woke him. That and the cold. He had slept in the dry creek bed that twisted though town; in the belly of the snake.

The sand was cold and his blanket not good enough to stop it. He pulled the rag tight about his chest. He coughed and shivered. Up and down the Todd people coughed. One farted and growled at the cold and someone laughed.

The woman from Yuendumu lay in a swag. Near the ashes of the fire the man had made her. She was curled under the canvas and the man caught her crying. She had come by bus and utility. Walked some of it. Dragged her fat belly all the way to hospital but she was alone now.

Two skinny dogs hunted through the camp. One black, one rusty brown. They pawed and sniffed at bags and paper and empty sardine tins. The black one sniffed the man’s hessian sack. He pulled it away and slapped the dog’s snout. The dog yelped and jumped back in a cloud of dust. The other dog found something good wrapped in newspaper and the two of them ran off to fight.

The old man sat up, too cold to sleep any more. The sun lite the town but the man was in the riverbank’s shadow. He groggily got to his feet and went into the sun. He sat back down and opened his sack. His stomach growled. He had given the last of his bread to the Yuendumu woman.

Instead of eating he felt around inside the sack and found the wood and the broken glass. The hard brown elbow was flat, but it was not yet the boomerang the man wanted. He had cut the branch of mulga and had carried it with him til it was dry enough to work. He had split it and shaped it with glass. It had taken him a day and many pieces of glass to get the shape right. Now he worked on the edges, shaping them so it would fly and return. It was too small and light for hunting but that was OK. When he was happy with the shape he rubbed sand over the worst ridges.

Later heat came with the sun and the old man was thirsty. He pushed the boomerang into his belt and went up the grassy slope to town. He went to the water tap on the medium strip but the council had taken the handle. He found a leaking tap behind the hardware store. He washed the dust from his hands and cupped the water to his mouth. It tasted good in his dry throat. He had enough then walked towards the Aurora.

A white woman stood outside the hotel’s automatic doors. She wore long khaki pants, a white blouse and big dark glasses. She clutched a leather purse to her stomach as the old man approached.

She smiled. Said ‘good morning’. Sounded American to him.

He stopped and said ‘good morning’ back to her. Then he took the boomerang and held it out to her. ‘Twenty dollars’.

The woman leaned forward and examined the boomerang but she did not take it.

‘Did you make it?’

He nodded. ‘Mulga.’

She nodded back at him. ‘It’s lovely’.

The motel doors opened and a man emerged pulling a suitcase. Then he disappeared inside and returned with a second suitcase. The woman asked her husband about the boomerang. He looked at the crude thing and reminded his wife about the boomerangs in Sydney. Smooth and varnished and glowing like opal; brilliant kangaroos and emus dancing across the polished surface.

A taxi pulled up and the husband watched the driver load the cases. Quickly, the woman pushed a twenty into the old man’s fist. He held the boomerang towards her again.

‘No thankyou’ she said. He was still holding it out as the taxi pulled away.

The man pushed the money into his shirt. It was nearly lunchtime and he was hungrier than ever now. He walked up to McDonalds and ate a burger and fries.

Then he went back to the hardware store. He stood outside thinking about sandpaper and paint.

But in the end he went across to the hotel. He would get wine, he decided. Perhaps the Yuendumu one would share it with him.