Benang

by Kim Scott

  Sandy Two told the children of when he was a boy—but it was at Kylie Bay, not here—and had seen hundreds of white men running along a beach after one of their own, who was dressed like a woman and howling like a mad thing. His tongue had lolled from his mouth and trailed in his slipstream. The police stood befuddled, but then—working like sheepdogs—they caught the madman. He protested, laughed that he was just pretending, was just bored with drinking and waiting for his miner’s license.

  The jostling, jeering crowd of men turned their attention to the bellowing cattle swimming ashore. A cow fell as it came into the shallows, its eyes rolling in its skull, and its blood flowed with the turquoise water.

  ‘Shark! Shark!’ Sandy had seen the man carrying a woman in the shallows, and the man had jumped and lifted his feet as quick as he could when he heard the shouts. He didn’t drop the woman or, if he did, she walked on water. The woman was a Mustle, a new Mrs Mustle.

  ‘And that’s how Mrs Mustle got here,’ said Sandy Two. ‘My dad brought her across and your mother was already here, and Uncle Daniel and Aunty Harriette. All of us were here already.’

  Now the three of them watched cattle tossed overboard, and saw how their eyes once again rolled as they staggered from the water suddenly burdened by the return of their own weight.

  Like cattle themselves, men had for some years milled about on this shore; circling, trying to centre and make themselves steady. Some slung their swags onto a wagon, and followed it to the goldfields. Wagons were loaded with axes and shovels, with iron and cloth, with timber, with foodstuffs and finery, and then rolled away, groaning, from water to water.

  Fanny and the two children, as her other children had done, climbed to the top of the load. It was as high above the ground, swore Chatalong, as the tips of the masts were above the ships’ decks. They peered over, down, grinning.

  Men looked up, and saw the faces of that black woman and the children gazing down.

  There was a trail of things discarded; coats, collars, ties ... Hooves and wheels compacted, crushed, cut the earth, marking strong lines through the piles of bullock camel donkey horse shit. Coming up past their very own mine a half a day from the ships, Jack saw the sea a last time, and that white line beside the islands where the swell broke.

  And now it was his, Chatalong’s, turn as a little boy, said Sandy Two. And soon there’ll be this jetty for the boats to tie up to, and those ones will walk down onto the jetty, and across the water and onto this beach right here.

  Sandy Two sat in the soft, white sand and held the boy within the curve of his own body. Kathleen huddled in front of Chatalong and between Sandy Two’s outstretched legs. It was early morning and there was a chill land breeze. They watched a huge boiler being rolled off a ship, and heard it resounding like a vast drum to each tap and knock as it was rolled and jostled into position. The boat tilted alarmingly—it seemed it must capsize—and then the boiler was released. It rose again with a great flower of water, and they could see it, each time, like a vast hollow seed as it bobbed, bobbed, bobbed; it and the boat both.

  In the little classroom the school children heard the teamsters cursing the donkeys, horses, and bullocks, as the animals leaned into their creaking harnesses and toiled up the slope of the beach to bring the great tanks ashore. The resonating cylinders rolled inland, to the ’fields, with long lines of beasts straining before them.

  At the top of the hill leading away from the beach Constable Hall rode alongside Sandy One and two other men as they trudged through the soft sand.

  ‘You got a permit to employ these men?’ asked Hall of the teamster, who was congratulating the long line of animals for having reached the crest of the long sandy slope. Constable Hall repeated his question, ‘These two, Sandy Mason and Harry Cuddles, you got a permit for them?’

  Sandy Two called across to the policeman. ‘I’m helping my father. You know that. I just come over to lend these fellas a hand, all this sand.’

  The policeman turned his back on Sandy Two.

  ‘Don’t be bloody ridiculous,’ said Sandy One. ‘Don’t you know your own laws?’

  ‘The law’s changed,’ said the constable. ‘Whoever employs him needs a permit.’ He continued, ‘No drinking.’

  ‘He’s not of age.’

  ‘Well, even when he is. If he looks under sixteen, then he’s an Aborigine. He looks it to me. You want to keep him away from the camp if he’s not, Sandy. He’s got a woman there, I hear, better be careful—associating with them, you know. Might pick up something. Course, if he’s white then it’s an offence to cohabit.’

  ‘Trouble for being there, trouble for not being there! Well, me and Fanny, we’re married. Got the paper to prove it. And the boy’s birth certificate too, so that’ll prove his age.’

  ‘I’m not talking about your wife. I’m talking about that boy of yours, he’s caused me trouble, you both know it. I can put him on a reserve, I can send him away. If you don’t. And I’m keeping an eye on those younger ones of yours too.’

  ‘We’ve all got rights. They been all brought up as good as anyone. They’re not savages, they’re my kids. They’re people.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you don’t want them associating with darkies then, and you want to tell your missus that too. Tell her to keep her visitors away.’

  a rich lode, or

  Sandy One and his family were a little way inland, living on Mustle’s property. It was winter and the storms lashing the coast had swept into their little grove. Sandy One was not as young or healthy as he once was. The Mustles let him erect a humpy on their land. After all, he was still useful enough around the sheds, and they felt a certain obligation to him and his family.

  A Sunday. Sandy One wandered away, going nowhere really, although he hoped the rifle he carried signalled some firm intention, such as hunting. Unknown to the old man, Chatalong followed him and—even secreting himself along like this—continued to whisper some sort of commentary.

  They moved off into a fine, drizzling rain; the old man, and the whispering boy following a little after him, as if they were part of a series, or a variation upon a constant pattern. By the time they had, as it were, merged, and a tiring Chatalong was beside the dreaming old man, they had already walked a long way, had moved through the series of hills and gullies that ran between the coast, several miles away, and a chain of salt lakes to the north. The narrow-leafed poison bush (so called because it is poisonous to stock, although indigenous creatures eat it with no ill-effect) was rampant in a thin strip of land here, and had provided the apparent reason for the Dones to erect a fence around it some time before they relinquished the lease.

  When it rained heavily, the water rushed through this land via a gully and into a soak near where the Dones’ first homestead had been, and from where they had moved a little over a decade ago, stripping the place of what they could and leaving behind them only dry and already crumbling stone walls.

  Sandy One and Chatalong came across a mob of kangaroos in a small plain of waving grass and Sandy, for some reason, shot at a big buck which would have been too tough for eating. Perhaps he targeted it because of the way it glanced over its shoulder at them, or because it would provide more sport for the dogs, or ... Jack Chatalong could see no apparent reason. But Sandy One only wounded the animal. They followed its blood-spattered trail, and heard the dogs at it, then one of them yelping in pain. The sound sent a thrill through the boy.

  They found the dog whimpering and with its guts hanging out. The roo had sliced it open. The other dogs were tearing at the writhing kangaroo and blood spattered their eyes, ears, snarling snouts.

  Old Sandy shot the injured dog and, as he turned, he saw Chatalong with something in his hands. The boy’s hair was damp from the drizzle; the water in drops and web-like strands, and through the fog of years, of the rum and disease eating him, Sandy One once again saw a piddling little creek, the small sheet of granite and its boulders. Almost all the trees had gone.

  Chata
long stood on a piece of granite which stuck out from the slope in the way bone, broken from its skeleton, emerges from split flesh.

  ‘Look.’

  Floodwaters had torn at the last tree, an old one bent by winter gales, and toppled it. Small gullies had been cut into the soil, and now there were collections of bones, mixed with sticks and small boulders where they had been caught and dumped by the rushing water. Brittle lines of white, of yellow, stabbed from the flat spaces of clay and sucked at what light there was on this day.

  ‘There’s more,’ called Chatalong, faltering. It was a skull he held in his hands.

  Sandy One called him away. ‘Leave it be. Don’t muck about with them, Chat.’

  Hard hooves galloped in his chest as Sandy One called the little boy to him, noticing (in a strange parenthesis as he did so) how pale he seemed. The day cleared momentarily, and Sandy saw a single expanse of grey-black sky and sea over the boy’s shoulder, and a white line appear in it, way out there, about where the horizon would be.

  Then saw gold at his feet. Perhaps a reef of it...

  As you know, Uncle Jack, Uncle Will, with me carrying my grandfather—we went to that sorry place.

  ‘We had the mine just a little way over there,’ said Uncle Jack.

  We were quiet. Where were the words for what we felt?

  The boy Chatalong had to speak, always, as if something spoke through him.

  Once again, Fanny came singing, Sandy One trailing behind her...

  Collect them, all, and stack them, place them rest them together. Bones, white like the skin of the young ones will be, the children flowing on, becoming paler and paler and just as dead.

  Well, Fanny sang. Something.

  We had hidden them away in a crevice, those silent bones. Why? Well, what could we do?

  mine mind awaking

  Daniel Coolman slapped himself on the back. Of course I do not mean this literally, because already he was a bulky, inflexible and stiff-limbed man. He shook hands with himself—if you know what I mean—because old Sandy One had made a find and had come to him for help. They had thought it was reef gold, and they could just pick it off the surface. Trouble was, it shifted about.

  They shafted the earth, but still couldn’t hit the gold spot.

  Daniel had a haulage contract with the Dones, so the mine provided a further connection to the pastoral family, which was good for business.

  Sandy One worked for the Mustles, the Dones, and for his own son-in-law. He kept thinking, strike it rich, be a boss man in this way, his son-in-law’s way. Do that for Fanny, show Harriette, the little ones, that this is the way. Daniel was a man in the town; he kept his wife to the house, their kids at the Gebalup school.

  Sandy One wanted that gold to prove he was someone. He was wishing, hoping it could be so; if only it was not at this place. He told Fanny as much, scraping his sore and stinging tongue through his teeth all the time. Of course, he would rather not dig there, but...

  And if Daniel didn’t want young Sandy working with them, well what could he do about it?

  Daniel hired some men and they put down a shaft. There was always just enough to encourage them. To begin with, Daniel made just enough to buy materials to begin a shaft, to begin to dig. They found just enough to encourage them to continue down, down, down. Like rabbits, said Chatalong, on one of his weekend visits, those rabbits which had followed the Coolman twins across the continent.

  They found just enough to encourage them to cart ore to the railway which ran to one of the big company’s batteries for crushing, then back to the port. This was all the railway they had, despite the persistent protests of the Chamber of Commerce, for whom the isolation from the vast and spreading lines of steel to the north and west was a continual source of anxiety.

  The train grumbled and snorted, rolled to and fro on its strips of steel, ignorant of its isolation, impatient for connection.

  ‘The end of an era,’ the teamsters muttered to themselves.

  The trip from Wirlup Haven to Gebalup had been Sandy’s livelihood, necessary to his independence and self-respect in the town. Now he depended on his son-in-law and the likes of the Dones, the Mustles and more, simply for cash. He carried goods from the harbour to Mustles’ station, and even more occasionally from Gebalup to other stations. Whenever he could he went to his—their—mine.

  Sometimes, coming up from the darkness into the sun, he felt a cold and numbing fear. He felt them there like a whisper, like the memory of a whisper; so how must Fanny feel, she being so much stronger than he? Such loss.

  He crossed land which, neglected, was opened to the sun; was grazed, razed, shaved, plucked. Now the crevices and dimples which still held moisture and where a few trees remained were lavished with visits, had paths worn to and away from them.

  But what made him think a land could be lonely? As if it felt, or thought, or dreamed. Where did such a thought come from?

  So the mine made just enough to keep Sandy One working. And just enough for Sandy One to dream a dream this late stage of his life, because he knew he was dying. His words, his stories were going; now it was his tongue.

  Sandy One erected a hut, a most firm and rigid humpy, around the corner of the beach in what had become their little grove. But, there were laws about camping now. There were reserves, too, for blacks. Even those teamsters still in work had sites where they could and could not camp.

  Chatalong and Kathleen were at the school. Blacks, said the adults. Those pale and tanned black ones. Chalkybones, said the children. The adults kept an anxious eye on the fluctuating enrolment numbers.

  It seemed the mine was nothing but dirt. And there was less and less work for a teamster. There was less and less work for an old sailor, an old shepherd, even if he could read and write. And if there was something about him that made people uncomfortable, this teamster with a gin wife and a bunch of mongrel kids.

  He used to keep a roo carcass hanging in a tree. Constable Hall came to see him about health requirements, noted the roo and the rough toilet, sniffed about the camp.

  ‘Breathe in deep, constable.’ It was a whisper.

  ‘What?’ He spun on his heel.

  Sandy and Fanny, those two children. It was now not so much that they kept themselves apart, but that they were kept apart.

  Young as he was, Chatalong helped the tongue-clicking old man. When they set the explosions underground and mouthed the numbers up in the bright light, Chatalong would watch Sandy One’s tongue, its tip scarred and hard like a parrot’s, and shiver as the earth trembled under his feet.

  The horses carted ore to the railway in tipping wagons.

  From her vantage point on a ramp beside the railway, Kathleen watched the old man approach. His hair was as white as beach sand, and yet bounced like the tip of a wind-wave. Chatalong walked behind him like a small and solid shadow, and then came two teams of horses, each pulling wagons. Sandy walked up the earthen ramp, and Chatalong joined him. The horses paused while the ore was tipped into the railway car below, then returned to the mine without needing a command.

  Sandy and Kathleen rode the second cart back to the mine and Chatalong stayed at the railway for a rest, and waited for the next load. He listened to batteries hammering in the close distance, crushing the ore, pounding. He, the raw earth; together they trembled and shivered.

  Chatalong sat up, wondering at himself, this sudden dragging from sleep into consciousness. Sandy One was lighting a lamp, and the hessian walls leaned into its glow.

  The batteries still pounding in the distance; his own nervous heartbeats.

  The old man’s footsteps faded away and Chatalong was left in darkness, imagining underground. If only the air could stay as sweet and fresh, he could stay underground for ever. He liked the closeness, the way the space around him closed and forced him inward, and how the boundary between inside and out seemed to move, to go away.

  Once he had entered another mine, and they had walked along dark tunnels until his le
gs were numb and the soles of his feet ached.

  He thought these secret tunnels under the earth might, someday, connect. People walking above need never know those hidden beneath them.

  Fanny would not visit the mine let alone go underground. She refused to come, refused to descend. But Chatalong loved it underground, the way you fell from the light and rumbled deep into the earth. Down there he was hidden, was a secret, and yet might return at any time with riches. Coming up to the light he felt like a hero, must have been, the way Fanny embraced him upon each return.

  Chatalong dreamt, underground. In his confused waking he was gummy-eyed and gaping. The brittle sunlight, the air, the sharp noises upset him somehow.

  He listened to his own footsteps approaching the mine. Several people were gathered around the shaft. The construction leaning awkwardly above them—its erect geometry ruined—looked particularly feeble. One of the men put an arm around Chatalong’s thin shoulders.

  It seemed such a long trip back to Wirlup Haven, days weeks years and years. Sandy One should have died. Instead, he was a silent shape huddled on the floor of the wagon, a face lined with suffering.

  Fanny saw strangers arriving with her boy. And they, in turn, saw the challenge in her face. Chatalong, perhaps for the first time, saw that she was a Nyoongar. She was standing before the humpy, and yet moving toward him and growing larger like a plant blossoming. Kathleen seemed sliced by sunlight into shade, light, shade; and the three pieces of her, neatly stacked, leant in the doorframe.

  The earth had closed in around this father-man and left them a remnant. The faces around him told Chatalong this.

  The town rallied. First, the Dones and Constable Hall had a good talk with Daniel Coolman. Wise heads offered advice.