Act of Grace by Anna Krien

Author:Anna Krien [Krien, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Inc.

Sorry Rocks

So much for being in the middle of nowhere, Robbie thought as she stood to watch the flashing blue-and-red lights speed down the strip of bitumen towards them.

‘They’re coming,’ Viv yelled to the boys staggered on the eastern slope of the massive rock, heads down, ears filled with the roar of blowtorches. The wail of the sirens saw sections of the desert light up: fancy canvas domes, tarpaulin mansions and tiny taco tents glowed. The headlamps of backpackers in their swags collided like lasers in the night. Someone had called it in, a mysterious spatter of orange sparks spilling down the side of Uluru.

Lifting his thumb from a blowtorch, Charlie pulled up his goggles. He was drenched in sweat.

‘It’s cool, Charlie,’ Jay called. Charlie nodded slowly and pulled down his goggles. Digging out a lighter from his shorts, he relit the torch, his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth in concentration, bringing flame to metal.

*

Charlie was a big guy, shy. Seventeen years old. Past initiation age, but the elders hadn’t put him through ritual yet. He hung with the younger teenagers in the community: Jay, Reg, Rose, Viv and Jez. The kids Charlie’s age were too fast – driving, having sex. Some already doing time. ‘He was an alcohol baby, Charlie was,’ Eileen told Robbie. ‘You can hear them in the early morning: when the community is still and quiet, they start up bleating like sick lambs.’ Charlie sometimes worked in the art room where Robbie was assisting Eileen, who managed the remote community’s art program. ‘He’s a beautiful painter,’ Eileen said, ‘but only if you intervene in time.’

When Robbie first saw Charlie make art, she was mesmerised. He played with the paint like the younger kids played with fire and spinifex in the evenings, pulling the long grass from the dirt and lighting it, fearlessly winding it around their fingers like a cat’s cradle, hands swifter than the flame. Charlie seemed to knit the hues onto the canvas just like that. Often, he’d be painting so briskly that he’d grab a second brush to use in his other hand. As though each colour were a note, he’d create a melody – from the bottom of the canvas a landscape would rise out of shadows he had already laid down. Then, after a time, Charlie would fling aside the brushes and use his fingers to push the paint around.

At this point, Eileen would get ready to slide between him and the canvas. ‘That’s enough now, Charlie,’ she’d say in a singsong voice, and he would look at her, bewildered, as if emerging from a trance. Then he’d nod, letting her take the painting away.

Robbie had been left in charge one day when Charlie was painting, and she’d been so absorbed watching him – his large clumsy body hardened to a single focus, the painting forming like photographic paper in a chemical bath – that she forgot to step in. At first, she didn’t notice his fingers start to push the paint more fiercely, only that the sky seemed to churn.

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