Bloke, page 14
I spent the morning in mindless dawdle, examining the strange runic gifts of the shore, lonely, aching to be included in the dance. Just a small part, in lower case behind the dogs, to search, to gather. I was a saltwater man but didn’t know the rules. Not the old rules. Oh, I could fish and sail boats, but only in defiance of the sea, that’s how I’d been taught – to wrench a catch, defy the sea and weather. Not like this sea dance, where the harvest was the least part of the meal.
But my stomach still asked the question. Sea celery and beach rocket to flavour the shellfish, or the steamed bed of warrigal greens and a flume of banksia smoke? What would Soloman have used? I reached a hand to my eyes and discovered the moisture, the tears. I examined my fingers in disbelief. But then felt my chest heaving and my breath ragged with uneven gulps. Soloman, my brother, you will never walk the beach again.
Munt rested the bicycle against the pole of a cattle shelter. Just three walls of third-hand gal and bush poles. Light peeped through the iron in warm pencils, illuminating insects and dust, the huff of powdered chaff.
An old horse sheltering in the shade regarded Munt with mild interest and casually cast a glance at the three dingoes. He declined to move but shifted one hoof, swaying his rump aside to make more room. He lowered his great head to sniff the dingoes, and the lead dog touched noses with him. Munt mumbled something and the horse blinked, one slow, calm lowering of his long girlish lashes. A domestic accommodation. As Munt rubbed the forelock the horse dabbed his lip on the inside of the old man’s elbow.
It was obvious that I was not considered a threat or of much importance. The horse recognised the boss.
I’d been with Munt for three weeks and he’d never spoken a word of English so I was unsure if he’d ever addressed me directly. He seemed to speak only to the bush, the country, its animals, the river, the air. But I didn’t feel excluded. In a strange way I felt included, a piece of Munt’s jigsaw. Or his basketry, the way he seemed to draw the grass fibres into a design, an old design he’d woven before. This latest camp would be chosen for its part in that design.
One tree grew beside the shelter. An ancient casuarina that must have preceded the building by a century or so. Munt sang a song as he stoked one of his little economical fires. I listened and thought I recognised a word, thought that the song was including me.
The old man fed casuarina cones into the fire and there was that word again, spoken in the frail old man voice, buloke. He was singing my name. Or the tree. If I registered in his cultural hierarchy I couldn’t tell, but he was singing buloke, buloke.
The horse swivelled his eyes to the corner of the shed and soon a man appeared from that direction. He was almost as old as Munt, and the two greeted each other in subdued language. The stranger gave Munt a bag of tea and provisions, the horse a runty apple, the dingoes some biscuits, and me a look.
They rolled cigarettes and sat by the fire, feeding crumbled twigs and leaves onto the coals to give the smoke a eucalypt pungence. The stranger had brought a real tin billy, so Munt’s wattlebark dish stayed in his kit. All three of us savoured tea and cigarettes. The dogs curled in hierarchy around Munt like papal guards.
I glanced at my watch. Twenty minutes had passed without a word spoken. They noticed my reference to the watch and their contempt for the instrument was breathed through their noses. Two cigarettes, three cups of tea, ten twigs whittled, both old men doodling in the dust, the horse rocking on its hooves, lost in a dream of cigarette smoke, eucalypt haze and the tang of bush tea. The drone of bees hovering around the tiny casuarina flowers was a chorus to a golden whistler, earnest in its jubilant song.
‘Ya mum, ya know,’ the stranger began abruptly, ‘she a cousin a mine, ya know.’
My reply was an indecisive noise in the throat. An acceptable response, apparently.
‘Good girl but a bit wild, ya know. Shame of bush life, ya know. Them young girls alla same. Young fella too.
‘When you was born they took ya. Dunno why. They was just doin that stuff them days. She went to church, I think. Said give back baby, but didn’ do no good. She sent a card every birthday too, ngah?’
The voice indicated a question had been asked. Did I get those cards? I made that noise in my throat.
‘No, that’d be right. Anyway, she died in … What year now, Munt, what year that poor Elsie die?’
Elsie.
‘Must have been …’ The old man muttered to himself, counting. ‘Alec’s boy got his foot in the crusher in … what year? Anyway, it was after that, an’ then Bucko crashed his car in – oh, anyway, after that too, but yes, that’s it, the year the big man said we could have the sand, that was the year, she died then. Seventies. That Gippsland horse won the Cup. Anyway, she’s up the hill there, Goongerah, in the cemetery there, little cross we put for her.’
We sat in silence. Elsie. Elsie. Died when the Gippsland horse won the Cup.
‘You got family there, ya know. Goongerah. Bulokes everywhere up that country. Munt’ll take you. Only cuppla days. You see that ol’ Cookup Thomas, she tell you. Cookup, Munt, what’s her name? Yeah, that right, Gladys.’
Munt hadn’t said a word.
Two days later we passed an iron gate with rusty old scrolls on top. No name, no sign, but obviously the cemetery. Munt kept going. I watched him until he sat down at the edge of the forest, still a mile out of town. His perfect camp.
I walked into the cemetery. Someone had slashed in between the rows a week or so back. Sheaves of hay tossed by the slasher still in untidy windrows, stalks of kangaroo grass too close to the grave slabs to cut masked most of the headstones. I wandered about. Palmer, Mullet, Henderson, Carillo, Brunt, Angus, McPherson, Solomon, Carter, Jackson. Many graves clustered in family plots, some with Fowlers preserving bottles full of flowers so dead and desiccated you couldn’t tell what they’d been.
And then a wooden cross on a mound where pieces of broken crockery had been pressed into the edge of the concrete border. Pressed into the wet cement by someone who knew when she died, had loved her, someone whose fortune stretched to broken dinner plates. Arnold (nee Buloke) 1947–1976.
I don’t cry. Try not to. It hurts. To know what to cry about. It’s better to pretend you don’t know what’s worth crying for. That’s what I’d always done. And because of it they never broke me. Never saw me cry, never heard me plead. But they knew my mother was alive and never told me.
I knelt by the river and washed my face. I drank but it wasn’t enough. I took off my shirt and washed my neck and armpits. I stank. A nasty, frightened smell. It still wasn’t enough. I took off my trousers and shoes and lay in the river, on the cold smooth stones.
When I got back to the camp the wattlebark billy was beside the fire, two round stones nestled in the coals, and currant bush tongs lay beside the billy. A paper bag of tea was waiting. Obviously I was staying. Munt had gone.
Goongerah was one of those high, river-valley mill towns locked in isolation by the forest and poverty. Pungent smoke from the kilns dawdled lazily about the town in an acrid plume. Currawong calls rang from the valley ridges like the cries of bandits whooping their intent to sack and pillage. But they hadn’t yet. Not much to pillage.
I asked at the store for Mrs Gladys Thomas.
‘Gladys?’ the woman said, disappointed not to be selling pies and Cokes. ‘Gladys … You don’t mean old Cookup, do you? I think she’s a Buloke or Thomas, or whatever they call themselves.’ She didn’t seem to approve of blackfellas or the ridiculous names they chose. ‘Oh, yes, it’d be her, I suppose. In the lane behind the mill. Middle house, I think.’
But there were six houses behind the mill. Which was the middle? I looked at the row of tiny buildings clad with flitches of blackened mill timber. No fences, some without glass in the windows, some barely habitable. So I chose the middlish one with washing on the line and smoke coming from the chimney.
A young woman came to the door. Beautiful. ‘You’re the fella they’re after,’ she said.
‘Are they?’
‘That’s what Uncle Coordinate said. Anyway, Aunty’s not home but she said you could have the bed in the shed and some lunch. She said you’d be here for lunch.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t thank me, I’m just cutting out me board.’
She was a bit abrupt for a young woman, a young Koorie woman. I saw the baby’s clothes drying. Four-year-old’s or thereabouts. The woman was stunning. Quite dark and a beautiful figure. It was hard to look away, but I knew I had to. The rules of refuge.
‘I’ll stick my kick in the shed, then.’
‘And I’ll make a cuppa.’
‘Thanks.’
There was something about her skin. She was darker than tanned and dark blue veins scrawled at the top of her breasts. I dragged my eyes away. You couldn’t help thinking of your lips tracing those veins to the nipples. Well, I couldn’t anyway. How can you ignore beauty, pretend you haven’t noticed?
When I came back into the kitchen she was folding the baby’s T-shirts.
‘Tea’s there.’
‘Thanks.’
The child was trying to force plastic shapes into cut-outs in a plastic globe. The woman bent down and rotated the child’s hand, to make a shape fit. Those breasts … were gorgeous. She withdrew the child’s hand and moved it forward again, showing how the shapes would fit.
‘This is Lilly,’ she began, but that look passed across her face, the look of a woman who realises a man has been staring at her breasts.
I felt my face heat and I mucked around with the cup of tea, pretending to look for sugar I didn’t take.
‘You looking for the sugar?’
‘No, no, I don’t take sugar.’ Her gaze was steady, as if waiting for a child to admit a lie. Giving it the chance to come clean.
She went about domestic tasks, cleaning up, preparing lunch, and managed it all without bending down, unless she had her back to me. But that looked all right too.
‘So what’s your name?’
‘Retha.’
‘Mine’s Jim.’
‘I know, you’re my cousin.’ A statement made with bromide inflection.
After lunch she took the child out in the stroller and I lay down on an old Zephyr car seat on the verandah, the child’s drying clothes shading me. And Retha’s bra and pants. Unless Aunty Cookup was a size 12.
I woke much later. Two hours, I guessed, to the sounds of heavy feet stomping through the house. Aunty Cookup wasn’t a size 12.
She pushed open the screen door and looked at me. A big woman with a large, very dark face.
‘Sorry, Aunt,’ I said, ‘I went out like a light.’
‘What’s wrong with that? You’re that Bloke fella, eh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Got your things in the shed?’
‘Yes.’
‘Need anything?’
‘No, Retha made me lunch and …’
‘Goodo then.’
‘Your granddaughter is a smart little kid.’
‘She’s not me granddaughter, she’s me niece.’ It was the kind of assumption a white man would make and she’d been waiting for something of the kind to rebuff me. Even so, she couldn’t keep a little smirk from her lips, pleased that the child had been noticed.
‘Uncle Binny said you might be able to help me find some family.’
‘You’re lookin at her. I’m ya mum’s cousin. She never stopped lookin for ya, ya know.’ It was an accusation.
‘They told me she was dead.’
‘They would. Christians are like that. She was always hoping for a card or something. Every cuppla years she’d get on the train an’ go up to the orphanage and ask about you. They told her you were in England. At school. Gubba.’
I was unsure if the ‘gubba’ was directed at me or the school.
‘One time she stayed with Aunty Marilyn in Melbourne. Whole week poor woman tramped about. No one to help her. An’ then finally Aunty’s boy got her into some big office where all the papers are. Freedom of Information or some bloody thing. But then ya mum got crook. That was it. But she never stopped lookin for ya. Did you look for her?’
‘They said she was dead.’
‘You always believe gubs?’
‘I … I …’
‘Oh, I know about you bein inside those years, the boys always knew about you, but you didn’t seem to know about them.’
‘I …’
‘Yeah, yeah, they told you you was white. And you believed ’em. And now you’re here.’ It was another accusation. ‘You’re not a fuckin vegetarian as well, are ya?’
‘No.’
‘Good, coz Fog got a roo last night an’ the butcher cut it up for us. He’s ya family too.’
She went about opening and slamming cupboard doors, and pushing groceries and crockery around the bench. I don’t think she liked me.
I went out to the shed and sat on the bunk, wondering if I could survive animosity pent up for three decades. Twenty-two decades.
I heard her heavy footsteps approaching on the gravel path. The door slammed open. ‘Here,’ she said throwing a battered album on the bed. ‘There’s pictures of her in there. Ya mum. All your mob.’ She slammed the door again. Hinges must have to be replaced here pretty frequently.
I stared at the old album covered in pretend crocodile skin. The first photos were little square ones, sepia, out of an old box camera, then there were glossier oblong ones, then some school photos, newspaper cuttings and then the larger, modern prints, some cut down to fit the little corner tabs. All meticulously captioned in an awkward primary-school print. Someone hadn’t spent much time at school. Or vice versa.
There were Scotts, Arnolds, Palmers, Bulokes and Jacksons, and one of a man’s back disappearing from the edge of the photograph, a bloke pushing a bike with a dog … dogs by his side. Munt. Unmistakeable that straight back, the refusal to consider the lens.
I went back to the start and looked at the Bulokes, Palmers and Arnolds. Some of the kids looked like me. Cousins of mine. Or sisters and brothers.
‘So, what about the heroin then?’
I’d earned a few Brownie points by reading a story to the kid while Retha plonked food into her mouth with a Mickey Mouse spoon. A deliberate, thoughtful sort of kid who wasn’t sure if the bunyip from Berkley’s Creek was a scary or nice monster.
‘They reckon they was after you for heroin.’ Aunty Cookup was blunt, some might say aggressive. Retha concentrated on feeding the child.
‘I was bringing a boat back from Indonesia. The other bloke on it was a bit suss. The police came on board, took a parcel. Never said a thing. My licence wasn’t up to skipping an open-ocean vessel but they looked at it and never said a word.’
‘So why they been makin such a fuss bout you?’
‘I don’t know. It got complicated because of the disease in the abalone. They reckon it came with that fishmeal.’
‘Fishmeal?’
‘They use it in the aquaculture. Prohibited import or something.’
‘On your boat?’
‘It’s not my boat and I never went below. Had no idea what she was carrying.’
‘So that’s what they chasin you for? Fish food?’ Aunt persisted.
‘Or the heroin. There’ll be others involved. I’m just the bunny.’
‘So you’re not involved?’
‘I told you, I just got paid to bring the boat over.’
‘That’s all?’
‘I was already working for them, I thought it was just part of their business.’
‘Then what?’ Aunt Forensic, they should call her.
‘Then they stuck me in gaol. The bloke who owns the boat is as bent as a paperclip. He’ll be in on it for sure.’
‘And did you tell the cops what really happened?’ Retha asked, her eyes steady, expressionless. She should have been a judge.
‘People are trying to kill me to stop me telling that story.’
‘Or scare you.’
‘Well, it worked.’
‘So you said nothing?’
‘No. Since I got out I’ve been up and down every hill in Gippsland, slept in every old shed this side of Bairnsdale.’
‘And now you’re in another one,’ Aunty Cookup said. ‘Anything wrong with sheds?’
‘Look, I’m no hero. I don’t even know what they really want. But the people who import the drugs would kill for it and kill to make sure I didn’t blow the deal they’ve made with the cops.’
‘What deal?’ Retha asked.
‘Well, I’m just guessing that’s what’s going on. I told you, I was stopped by police on the water.’
‘Wouldn’t the papers want to know your side of the story?’
‘We thought of that, but there’s that disease now and because I’m a diver they won’t believe me.’
‘And you’ve been in before.’
‘That’s the most important thing they can use to rubbish my story.’
‘Sad isn’t it, but there’s a Law Council, you know, and a Human Rights Commission,’ Aunt added as she passed around the plates.
‘I’m concentrating on staying alive.’
‘I thought you said they’d lost interest.’
‘I’m guessing, there’s not much news in Briagolong.’
‘Or Goongerah, but our Legal Aid mob might help you.’
I pushed mashed potato on my fork, avoiding her steady gaze.
‘You’re a Koorie, aren’t you? You could get Legal Aid to help.’ Aunty Cookup wasn’t going to miss a chance to put me in my place.
‘My girlfriend’s looking into it.’
‘So you’ve left it to her?’ Retha accused.
I put my fork down. ‘Look, sounds like you’re a bloody lawyer yourself.’
‘Not quite.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’m still studying.’
‘Gunna be a legal beagle,’ Aunty Cookup said.
‘I don’t know what’s going on. Nugget and Soloman set me up to go bush and that’s what I’m doing. If you don’t want me here, just say. It wasn’t my idea. I can catch up with Uncle Munt.’
