Dirt Music

Part 4 is from Georgie’s perspective as her life without Lu falls into the semblance of normalcy. Georgie is cooking risotto in a bikini when Jim takes a call from a distant cousin. Georgie thought he had no family and he doesn’t explain. Their rekindled affection is evident in their mannerisms as they go about their lives.

Georgie gets an email from her sister Jude but doesn’t act on it. She swims out to where Jim’s sons Josh and Brad are paddling around the lagoon in their dingy, and fishes with them. It is then that she realizes the depression she’s been under for the last six months and resolves to do better.

She throws out her back and the boys take care of her until they lose interest. Jim drops her off at Rachel’s, who helps with her back but asks why she’s stayed with Jim, who has a violent past. Rachel shares a fond memory of Lu singing to Bird in a parking lot, and how much she liked Lu as a person, a surprise given his family’s legacy as the town’s cursed, impoverished musicians.

Rachel explains that Shover McDougall recently put up a national flag in response to Beaver’s Vietnamese wife. She further explains that the town has run off all other minorities: “What an irony, huh? Without Asia this town’d close down inside a week” she says in response (230). Rachel hints at a past between the Fox family and the Buckridge family but does not elaborate.

Georgie tries to befriend Rachel, who tells her Beaver’s backstory. Beaver was a criminal biker turned state’s witness. A lot of people are after him, and people in town know his precarious position. Rachel says she saw a bus of Japanese tourists bullied by the town’s kids, but Beaver didn't intervene because he was afraid he’d be given up to the biker mob he betrayed. “Anyway, I doubt the good old days are as far in the past as you might imagine,” Rachel says (233).

Georgie goes to Beaver’s to learn that Lois has left him as a result of the incident. She then heads to Perth, where Judith is in a discreet hospital. She’s been ignoring Jude’s emails for weeks as the family’s inheritance drama plays out from afar. At the hospital, Jude says she tried to die by suicide with pills, and her stomach was pumped clean.

Georgie finds her father at the marina and he gives her the deed to her mother’s boat, which she promptly sells. She offers the money to Jude, who does not accept it.

On the way back from visiting her sister with Brad and Josh, she comes across a nine-year-old girl named Charlotte running down the road. Behind her is a rolled-over car. Georgie takes charge, stopping a motorist and instructing her to take the kids home and get an ambulance. She stays with the woman, whose arm is mostly gone. As a nurse, she knows it’s bad. The woman is Avid McDougall, and her husband is the killer of Lu’s dog. Avid says Georgie was wrong to be with Lu, and that the country is being “taken over” by Asian people. She spouts hatred as she slowly dies, and Georgie holds her hand and waits for the ambulance.

Georgie is back home when she learns Avid survived, and her arm might survive, too. Georgie asks Jim about his father, but he deflects and suggests they go north for their summer holiday, to Broome, where his cousins are pearl divers.

She goes to Beaver’s to ask about Jim’s past, but Beaver is in too much pain from losing Lois to care. At home, she waits until Jim leaves and then goes through his office. In a locked drawer she finds Lu’s letter from Broome, which she had crumpled and thrown away months prior.

Part 5 is from Lu’s perspective as his journey finally closes in on his coveted destination, the island Georgie described as a magical sensation of timeless home.

Lu is staying in a boarding home in Broome when he asks a pilot for a charter to Coronation Gulf. The charter pilot asks his name, and Lu tells the pilot his name is Buckridge. He hitchhikes to another airport, charters a plane to the Gulf, and pays in cash. The pilot, a man named Chugger, takes him out on a one-way and leaves Lu on the tarmac alone with his gear.

On the long walk to the gulf, Lu encounters a man with Asian features but an aboriginal accent named Menzies and his young companion Axle, a Black teenager. Menzies offers their backstory, a life defined by racism from the Australian governments and white settlers. The men ask him to tune their guitar, and Lu plays and sings for them, then tunes the guitar to an easy G for Axle to strum once he’s gone.

Lu awakens to Menzies explaining that Axle has a boat he’ll give him as thanks for the music. This will get him to the island in Coronation Gulf. Axle returns, gets furious when he sees Lu with a map, and throws this and all of his maps in the fire. Menzies explains that white men with maps are never a good thing.

Lu leaves them behind and finds the boat Axle promised hidden on the coast. He paddles to the largest of the islands. On the island, he finds signs of human use and is disappointed. He spends the night, steals rods, reels, and tackle from a cache, then pushes on until he finds the red island from Georgie’s memories.

Part 6 covers Georgie’s life in White Point long after Lu’s sudden departure. Georgie takes a walk to think about the letter she found in Jim’s desk and sees Yogi Behr, the ambulance driver, sitting in his car. Yogi explains that all members of the Fox family are bad luck: Lu’s mother died in an accident, his father so unlucky everyone shunned him, and the lethal rollover. He says the community did her a favor by running off Lu, saving her from bad luck. That night, she asks Jim about luck, but he says he doesn’t believe in it.

Georgie goes to Lu’s farmhouse, breaks a window, and goes inside. She is immediately overwhelmed by the smell of food rotting from the fridge. She cleans the house and the shed and considers staying in the farmhouse.

Georgie has been stuck in her indecision for months, A random burst of action finally spurs her to do something with herself, and she moves some of her things to Lu’s farmhouse, stocks the fridge, and begins to make the farmhouse into a home.

By March, Jude will not see her and her father has disavowed her for selling the boat. Jim is civil but distant, and her other sisters will not speak to her. Again, she finds herself isolated but feels she is taking action in her life by going to Lu’s house every day.

She burns the children’s things, Darkie and Sal’s clothing, and Lu’s belongings, and she rearranges the house to suit her needs.

Georgie finds a tape recording of the Fox family singing, after which Bird asks Lu to explain the sad song. Georgie puts the tape away and looks in the tin box hidden in the rocks. She does not understand the scraps of paper that all say SORRY.

She orders fuel from Beaver to be delivered to the farm and soon decides she’ll move into the farm in stages, abandoning the empty life with Jim for the emptiness of Lu’s farm.

This chapter is from Jim’s perspective as he sits in his truck in front of Lu’s farmhouse with a truck full of fuel. He wants to torch the house but doesn’t. He feels this proves he has changed, though his rage is still all-encompassing.

This chapter shifts back to Georgie’s perspective. Georgie dreams of Lu digging up memories as rich as smells. She is overcome with emotion when he puts a wad of dirt in her ear that hums like music.

Georgie’s routine solidifies. She does housework in the morning at Jim’s, then goes to Lu’s to read, cook, and lounge. She then returns to Jim’s by the time the boys get home from school.

One day, Jim calls for her to take the boys to the pub because they’ve hit a massive payday on the sea. The town celebrates, and Jim comes home late to announce he’s enrolled the boys in boarding school and will take Georgie to Broome. He admits he knows where Lu is. She says she won’t go, but he says it isn’t about her at all and that he needs to make amends for something he did.

After Jim goes to bed, she dreams of Mrs. Jubail, the cancer patient whose death took away Georgie’s sense of purpose as a nurse.

Georgie goes to Beaver’s to ask if Jim could have really changed. Beaver says he doesn’t know. Later, Rachel is worried about Georgie’s decision to go with Jim to Broome, but George says she feels good about it now, having resigned herself to the trip.