Pop was staring at him. ‘Carn then.’ He grabbed his box of chalk from the bench and stormed out, down the drive, the road. We followed. It was the usual Saturday afternoon, a distant mower, Gary loading steel onto the back of his truck, Val (her colour almost completely grown out) pulling a few weeds, hoping for a miracle. Pop almost ran and we jogged to keep up. Val went in, said to Peter (I guess), Doug and Ern and Clem are goin’ somewhere, and Peter replied (I guess), Watch the tomatoes, don’t let them catch. A few moments later he was calling after us. ‘Wait on!’

Pop wobbled, tripped, but kept on. Over the mound, in through the primary school gates. When we arrived he was already working, drawing roads, tracks, ranges. Ern said, ‘What’s he doing?’

‘You wanted a map.’

He didn’t get it. Why not just show him? And how could he remember a map as detailed as Doug claimed it was?

The lot: the telegraph station, the Todd, Waterhouse Range, Owen Springs and even Imanda, Talpanama, Tjikara. He’d memorised it all. The path we’d take, the turnoffs (323 more yards, sharp left, beside a gidgee tree), rocky outcrops, the Finke, Idracowra, Mborawatna and finally, Horseshoe Bend.

Peter appeared, exhausted, and said, ‘What is it?’

‘The map,’ Pop said. ‘You wanna see? Here it is? Don’t believe me, look!’

He kept going: the names of stations, wells, springs, creeks (dry from September to March), and even the cross to mark the spot: Lasseter’s Reef.

He faced us, but really just Ern and Peter, because they were the ones who needed converting. ‘This one here,’ he said, indicating Horseshoe Bend. ‘That’s what learnt me.’

We waited.

‘This kid, fourteen years old, lived with his dad, here.’ He moved north, over hundreds of kilometres. ‘Hermannsburg Mission. The dad was the pastor. And for thirty years he said, Listen fellas, Jesus is here, in the desert, and he wants to help yers. Of course, he was bloody nuts, wasn’t he? But that wasn’t the point.’

Ern faced what might have been his second revelation.

‘The dad gets sick and the kid and a few of the blacks have to harness some horses and drive him all the way to Horseshoe Bend. This dad’s fading fast (heart failure) but the boy’s determined he’ll survive, so they go on and on, through the heat, broken wheels, dead horses. The boy refuses to admit his dad’s gonna die.’

Peter was silent, fixed.

‘Because the kid knew if his dad died it’d all be over. They’d have to move, start a new life, and all the people who relied on the pastor (cos he’d got the blacks working, makin’ money from cattle) would be finished.’