White Ute Dreaming by Scot Gardner Page A

the front beside Don’s box. He sat on one foot and stretched the other leg in front of him. He rested the end of a long wooden didjeridu on his toes and sat for almost a minute with his eyes closed and the other end to his lips. From my front row seat I could see the dots and lines—red, black, yellow: the colours of the earth—that came together to make the picture of a snake with its head resting on a bit of a lump on the wood near the fella’s big toe. When he played my skin crawled. That low rumble was the saddest, mostawesome sound I had ever heard. My eyes started watering and they wouldn’t stop. Don’s coffin started to sink like magic into the pedestal as the bloke played. I guess it was all done with hydraulics and that but with that awesome music it turned into an eerie thing, watching his body and his box disappear. Mum and a few others near me started sobbing out loud. He was gone.

Chapter Ten

    M UM DROPPED ME AT THE STATION THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON . I got on the two fifty-five to Spencer Street. I wasn’t sad but I tried not to get too excited in front of Mum. Can’t help myself, I love trains. Her brother had just died. Had to cut her a bit of slack, you know. She gave me twenty bucks and kissed me on the cheek. See ya.
    There weren’t many people on the train. A few pensioners and a bloke in a blue singlet with more tattoos than bare skin. He had tattoos on his bald head. Mate, that’d have to hurt. My seat was next to his. I sat down half on the armrest instead of the seat.
    The bloke looked up, smiled and said g’day. ‘Don’t worry, mate. I don’t bite hard.’
    I hadn’t brought anything to read. Should have grabbed a couple of mags from Uncle Don’s shed—I didn’t think he’d be needing them. The tattoo bloke was looking out the window as we rumbled through the outskirts of Shep into the farmland, so I read his arm. He had a cobweb over his elbow and a snake wrapped around his wrist with every scale drawn in. ‘Jill’ and ‘Amy’ and ‘Kim Hun’ weretattooed side by side on his shoulder and I wondered how his girlfriends would feel about that. I was trying to read the upside-down word tattooed in fancy old writing on the back of his hand when I noticed he was watching me.
    â€˜Nice tattoos,’ I said, and my voice squeaked.
    â€˜Yeah, thanks mate,’ he said, and turned his fist toward me so I could read it properly. ‘Peace.’ He showed me the other knuckle, which I thought would say ‘War’ but said ‘Love’.
    â€˜You can’t go wrong telling someone that you like their tattoos,’ he said, and smiled. His teeth looked like they were his own and they were clean and shiny. He had a star tattooed in the middle of his brow like an Indian woman and another one on each cheek.
    â€˜Have you got a favourite?’ I asked.
    â€˜Yeah, but I don’t get to see it much,’ he said, and lifted up his singlet to show me his back. It was a massive eagle with every feather drawn in.
    â€˜Whoah. That’s stunning.’
    â€˜Thanks mate,’ he said, and pulled his singlet back down. There was an older couple across the aisle and the bloke was trying not to look. The old woman was smiling.
    â€˜Have you got any that you wished you’d never had done?’
    â€˜Oh no. Every one has been a big decision, I tell you. Here’s my first one . . .’ he said, and turned so I could see his other shoulder. It said: ‘R.I.P. Robyn.’
    â€˜Who was Robyn?’
    â€˜A girl in high school. Mate, I loved her.’
    â€˜How did she die?’
    â€˜She didn’t,’ he said, and I thought I’d asked too much. ‘Some blokes get tattoos before they’re old enough, you know, some backyard job with a needle and some pen ink.They’ll live to regret it, some of them. My dad was like that. He didn’t tell me not to get