by Kim Scott
Fanny said, ‘They’re our people. We’ll look after ’em.’ She was thinking, I hope, of all her grandchildren, and beyond. Us and ours.
‘Look, the two of them seem so pale sometimes.’
The girl’s head came up, as if challenged, but Chatalong took up the words. ‘I’m like a ghost,’ he said.
Then whose ghost might he be? There were so many wandering about here.
Sandy One welcomed the boy. It was true, you could see it, the likes of himself, they would always be here. He said it to Daniel, and didn’t bother to curse the other sonin-law. Sandy One had these moments when he wanted to sing, but he had no song left; just plans, and faith. He might have prayed, but worried that there was only himself. And her, this land, their children.
He thought of the clubs that didn’t want him, and would not take his son. The Australian Natives Association, the Oddfellows ... Against all that and theirs, he had his own, admittedly frail, exultation of which he wanted to bray and boast.
He had passion aplenty, but not the words for it. Now his words left him faster than he had ever acquired them. There was the trouble with his tongue, at the tip. It was wooden and dead, the skin turning black and flaking all the time. He sighed, quickly rose up on his toes and down again, adjusting himself.
Sandy One took Chatalong with him when he carted water to Daniel’s yard, and carried between the stations, and between the port and Gebalup. The boy heard things, snippets, bits of this and that, and the old man tried to explain and fit it all into a pattern for him.
Occasionally they had cause to follow a trail Fanny had led him along years and years before. Inevitably, it merged with that of others, from soak to soak, becoming a road.
Kathleen and Fanny walked along the beach and rocks. Fanny gathered very little food from the bush. There was the sea; shellfish, fish from the rocks. Salmon came each year, herring...
Sandy One returned with the boy asleep on the dray. Fanny was relieved just to see him again. The two children, for the ones she had lost; kept losing. She would smile even as she checked their breathing.
Sandy One, Two, the chatty little boy with them; they went into Gebalup. The townspeople looked at them. They saw a small, tanned man with a long and sandy-grey beard. Sometimes he wore kangaroo skin shoes, or worse, stood in his bare feet.
The older boy—Sandy Two?—in contrast, dressed as well as any teamster or horseman could. The fact was, he dressed presumptously. A good-looking boy—for a native, of course—he was very thin, and taller than his father. The little boy—Jack—was obviously indulged. It was uncomfortable to see them, it was confusing.
You could say that the old man was the blackest of all of them. It must be the influence of that woman.
Generally, when someone spoke to Sandy One, to give him instructions, say, he would raise his chin and glare at you. He would put his hands on his hips and stare. And the two boys, as likely as not, would do the same.
Still, old Sandy One, he was an original. He was old, harmless enough for the good people, in their prospective prosperity, to forgive. An enigma. An eccentric. A tough old nut. A pioneer, of sorts.
There were posters in the street and it was written up in the newspaper. Wirlup Haven was to hold a week of festivities over Christmas and New Year. Euchre Evenings, the Grand Carnival Ball, the Evening Concert and Dance; Sandy Two understood by now that such things might not be for him, and didn’t entertain the idea of being involved. Not interested. He did, however, have hopes of entering the rifle match, but Constable Hall said he couldn’t be allowed a firearm.
‘You need a license—and if you already got one,’ Constable Hall said, quickly, ‘I’ll revoke it.’
Sandy Two thought he might enter the bicycle race, but there were problems with that, too. The race left from Gebalup, see, and Constable Hall had warned Sandy Two away from there. Sandy Two couldn’t even drive a team into the town now. He asked his father for help, but his father said no. After all, he only had the Dones’ animals and wagon, and they wouldn’t...
The teamsters kept a close watch on one another in the weeks leading up to the games. They didn’t want to see any of their rivals in special training, and any horse that had been out of harness and not working was disallowed an entry.
Despite their intentions to keep their horses rested, the carts and wagons and drays rolled out to Mount Barren at a frisky pace. The drivers excited their passengers, who laughed and sang; the telegraph operators, the jetty workers, the mariners, the storekeeper, the family from the pub, the workers from the mine. And none of them liked being passed by the pastoralists in their sulkies and two-in-hands, although everyone waved, friendly enough.
Wagons and drays rolled along, slewing here and there in the sand. The children and some of the adults leapt off and walked when the track began to rise. They went only a little way up, to where there was a small, grassy plain among trees. It was—oh, it was just like an English Parkland, people said. Again. Fanny looked around at the dry grass, the tight and tangled growth beneath the trees. It had not been burnt for years.
There were people everywhere, and with all the newly scented cloth and colours it was like flowers about to spread their seed. They were scattered, too, by wind and sun into small clumps, and gathered around blankets spread with food. Those who could not find shade sat beneath umbrellas, or tarpaulins spread between wagons.
Fanny, Sandy Two, Jack Chatalong and Kathleen Coolman kept together. They were among the other teamsters and their women, among farm labourers and shepherds. It was a group comprised mostly of surviving Nyoongars, and Wongis forced here from other areas to work on stations.
Sandy One returned, already grinning with the grog, and took Chatalong and Kathleen firmly by the hand. The three of them walked over to where Chatalong’s Sunday school teacher sat on a blanket by the Mustles’ sulky. Children were playing around her.
The two children ran with the others. One or two parents grabbed their children by the hand and walked them away. They who were thought so pale, must have suddenly appeared so dark.
Jack’s view was divided into segments by the spokes of a wagon wheel.
There were races between children with their legs in sacks, between couples with their legs tied; there were runners balancing eggs on spoons, or hindered by unlikely combinations of cigar and umbrella. Children and women danced around a tall pole.
Kathleen played with Will and other small children. Daniel had brought his son, but left Harriette and the girls at home.
Someone beside Fanny muttered, ‘She too black for him? Frightened she might catch something from us, eh?’
Fanny smiled, shook her head.
The men went in a foot race, but the cheering seemed somehow thin, and you could hear Fanny’s voice, particularly, singing with that of her grandchildren as Sandy Two threw his grin and arched chest across the line. They saw him raise a finger at Kevin Mustle. Breathless faces gathered around Sandy, and Daniel slapped him hard on the back.
A voice came past them, soft in the wind.
‘He shouldn’t be racing with the others.’
It died, or continued on to elsewhere or some other time. There was just too much laughter, the men so red-faced and loud, and people distracting one another all the time.
Old man Mustle was on his feet, and his voice reached as far as to where Sandy had gone, to where Chatalong sat. The old man was swinging his arms about.
‘Treacle-buns, the treacle-buns,’ the voices called.
Bread buns, dipped in treacle, hung from a line strung up between two trees. People were gathered parallel to the line of buns. One of the Done sons nudged young Sandy in the ribs, saying go on have a go, and then had him by the elbow and what could he do but grin, and go along? Jack went to go too, but someone pushed him back. ‘Not yet, little fella, wait till you’re a bit older.’
‘Look at ’em, the darkies.’ A woman’s voice this time, rising, blooming above those others which rose and fell and fade
d everywhere about them.
The young men’s hands were tied behind their backs, and each had a sticky, treacle-coated bun dangling just before his head.
‘Go.’
And the people in the crowd were all laughing, up on their feet, the women craning to see, the small children being lifted, all wanting to see this sight. Telling themselves of the simple obvious greed of these natives! Shouting their delight at seeing dark heads jabbing, bobbing and twisting. And all lips, all tongues were so alive and so pink, albeit engaged in such different ways. And there, there, everywhere; everybody showing their teeth.
Everyone laughing.
Faces smeared with treacle.
Everyone having such a good time.
Or nearly everyone. Sandy Two had hardly moved. He glanced along the row either side of him. Saw the intense faces which surrounded them.
‘Get into it, Sandy.’ But now Sandy was also laughing. He laughed at those pecking at the swinging, sticky buns. He stepped back, and he laughed at the spectators.
Daniel, his brother-in-law, ran along the row tossing flour into the sticky faces. It clung thickly. The faces were suddenly white, shocking. One of the Mustle boys ran from the other side. He grabbed Sandy and pushed him back with the others. Sandy staggered, struggling to keep his balance because his hands were still tied behind his back, and one of the Mustles was smearing treacle into his face. Sandy felt their hands leave him, and he tried to stand as tall and proud as he could. Even with treacle smearing his vision he saw Daniel Coolman running at him, and that he didn’t hesitate before tossing the flour.
Laughter rose and broke over Sandy like waves, rose and roared like the air through the blowholes along this granite coast. He held himself still, like granite, remembering black and white minstrels, and various other shameful entertainments.
As soon as he was free he splashed water on his face, and rubbed at the sweet shit, the caking flour there.
There was a corroboree at the end of the day, for the white folk. Some very old men from Mustle’s most distant station arrived in the back of a dray, dressed in old underpants and pieces of cloth. A couple of farmhands joined them. Sandy would not dance. ‘What do I know about that stuff?’ He stood away from his mother, asking this of anyone who would listen. He stood over amongst the paperbarks, sneering, crying inside.
He felt a hand run down his back and squeeze his upper arm. He snorted, and turned to his mother with his chin raised.
The dancers went through the motions, and young Sandy heard children crying, the harsh words between the mothers and fathers; saw his father helping his drunken brother-in-law to the cart, and a little boy behind them.
Constable Hall and Kevin Mustle left him with four donkeys and an old cart to carry the dancers back to the camp.
Wirlup Haven had a school, and barely enough students to keep it open. In the one room were the children of the telegraph operator, the postmaster, various harbourside officials, the storekeeper, and a station manager. Gebalup’s school was larger because of the company mines, and a few farmers lived close enough to the town boundary to make the trek to school worthwhile for their children. Occasionally, a family—hesitating before leaving the port town—found their children had already been enrolled at the Wirlup Haven school.
Sandy One, Fanny, their boy, and the two small children had a permanent camp in a small grove of peppermint trees, a couple of miles west of Wirlup Haven and the most easterly examples of such trees along the whole south-west coast. You could step out from among the dunes, onto the beach, and then around the sand into the town; a store, a pub, a telegraph office and a clutch of shabby storage sheds. The schoolroom leaned against the back of the telegraph office.
Sandy One walked Chatalong and Kathleen to school for their first day. He swaggered into the schoolyard, calling out greetings to anyone in earshot. Chatalong jogged at his side, Kathleen close behind. The teacher seemed surprised but warmed to Sandy One’s friendliness. After all, the school needed to keep its numbers up to retain its funding. Here were two pupils. They were likely to stay. She liked the job, and was courting one of the Mustle boys.
She swept little Chatalong and Kathleen into the classroom with one arm and closed the door with the other. The boy turned as she did so, glimpsing the old man’s back as the door closed and he stepped from the tiny verandah.
Kathleen scanned the class quickly, saw the faces turned to her, the teacher’s desk, and the dark surface behind it all marked with loops and lines and squiggles of white.
So they were welcomed in, this brown-skinned boy and his fairer sister; this talkative boy and the girl who stared and listened. The first thing Chatalong needed—it very soon became obvious to his teacher—was to learn to listen. Like his sister. It was not easy, Chatalong seemed to talk as he breathed, and so the teacher simply had to tie a handkerchief about his mouth to accustom him to the absence of his own voice, and to help him realise that daylight and his own silence could coexist. Kathleen sat with him, reading his eyes and small movements, fearing that otherwise she would lose touch with him completely. He would not stand that isolation. He needed words moving in and out as he breathed.
But the boy took to his books with an appetite, and readily wandered into the stories the teacher read to them in the afternoon. Learning silence, he played the voices inside his head, and brought them out for his sister to accompany in their intimacy as they stepped the white strip of sand in the afternoons.
Chatalong, particularly, was elated when he saw only his own footprints on the morning’s sand. He liked to judge just how far the tide and waves would come during the day, and then see, in the afternoon, the evidence of where he must’ve flown for a while before the marks in the sand resumed. Kathleen walked higher, taking the soft sand, and preserving her trail. In the afternoon she walked the same path so carefully that each footprint was surrounded, before and after, by its companions going the opposite way. Chatalong experimented, walking backwards in exactly the same prints, and concentrating on getting his weight right so that the marks would still read of forward movement. He never achieved this, as Fanny proved to him.
He dreamt of chalk moving across the black space of board, and how it left small trails of powder. He liked the curving letters best. Some of the others were like weapons, he thought. Spearheads, axes and shovels. Kathleen took pleasure in the regularity, the patterns of their writing exercises, and cared less what these things said.
Fanny left them in the mornings at the spot where the beach curved to show the little town, and each afternoon as the children rounded the same curve they saw her waiting at the edge of the dunes.
Late in the year Chatalong began to linger on the beach where the boats unloaded. Kathleen continued on, and the boy would see her and Fanny as he rounded the curve of the beach, the two of them talking softly and drawing in the sand as they waited for him.
They had begun building a jetty. Jack read the numbers, 1906, cut into a pier, and when he got around the curve of beach to where Fanny and Kathleen waited in the shade of some rocks he told them of the numbers, and drew them in the sand. He drew other letters, and read the words.
Sometimes Sandy One would be there also, and he laughed at Fanny and read the words and numbers with the boy and girl. They counted together on their fingers and taught her something of what they knew.
‘Yeah,’ Uncle Will said, in one of those long spaces between memories. ‘I went to school in Gebalup. Me and some of my sisters. They were fostered out.’
The smoke caught me, lifted me with it. I looked down upon scalps, and an occasionally upturned face.
In the afternoons Chatalong counted the jetty piers. They stepped further and further from the shore. He thought of them as like steps, like places where some athlete in giant’s boots could leap, from one to the other. But then what? Wave his arms about, this pretender in giant’s boots? Wave his arms about and fall into the sea.
‘Sometimes,’ Uncle Will or Uncle Jack told
me, ‘Fanny talked about those islands. They used to take our people out there.’ So it must’ve been Uncle Jack talking, because Uncle Will never talked that way. ‘They took people out to the islands and left them. They were places of the dead. Some of our spirit is out there now.’
The jetty stepped toward those islands which often looked like blue haze or heavy clouds on the horizon. Other days, you could see the detail of them, the furry vegetation, and the grey-bone parts of them where the sea smashed. Between the island and a distant headland, the horizon shifted and rippled.
Jack Chatalong used to watch the lines of the horizon moving right to left, disturbingly contrary to the way his eye learned to follow the words on a page, until they gathered themselves together, and the world split, and that white flower forced its way through. It blossomed, died, presumably sent its seed away. Each different, each the same.
Sometimes, from their camp, you saw the sun appear at that intersection of sea, sky, and land.
The jetty stepped toward those islands. Stepped toward the ships which came from out there, as if squeezed from that regular, rippling rent where sea met sky.
Chatalong waved to Sandy Two, who leapt from one of the teamsters’ wagons and came over to Kathleen and him.
Chatalong leaned against the young man’s leg, and wrapped an arm around it as if it were a sapling. This was their home. They watched the ships rock on the windswept sea, their bare masts swaying like skeletons. The boy and Kathleen held Uncle Sandy’s hands. The ocean was rows of white-haired heads moving toward them, with that quick moment of darkness between each one. The sea outside the reef was covered with them and inside the crashing foam, after a little peace, they formed again—smaller, weaker, fewer—in the blue and green around the moored ships.
Tiny men swayed on cobweb ladders and clambered over the sides of the ships into rowboats. Each tested his balance for a moment on the thin wood between himself and the sea’s surface before falling to his knees, or into the arms of his fellows. They folded themselves among one another and the boxes and bags of supplies.
