Benang

by Kim Scott

  Now some of the boys from their class converged into a group, trailed behind the hurrying brother and sister. Pooh, pooh, they cried, and they held their noses up in the air. What a smell, what a stink, such perfume.

  Nigger nigger pull the trigger bang bang bang.

  Chatalong bravely ran toward the bigger boys, and they fled, just a bit, before regrouping like seagulls.

  The next time he ran at them they fanned out and made a circle around him, then closed it and, jabbing and poking, pinned him to the ground. One of them chased after Kathleen and brought her kicking and struggling back to the group. They were town boys, that shopkeeper’s son among them.

  They held Kathleen down, and one sat on her chest with his knees on her arms.

  ‘Now, look, you’re a pretty white nigger, ain’t you? You could play with us, if you wanted.’

  ‘Nearly as white as Will. He’s your cousin, isn’t he?’

  Just how white was she, anyway?

  They pulled her pants down to look for the paleness.

  ‘Well, look at that,’ said that one, Mark. ‘You should stay out of the sun, anyrate.’ Turning his back to where his friends held Chatalong and Kathleen, he pulled his trousers down and bent over. ‘I’m a bit dark myself, if you look closely,’ he said, and wriggled his bum.

  ‘My dark ring.’

  ‘C’mon.’

  The boys released them. They made a show of wiping their hands as if trying to rid themselves of some stubborn stain.

  Will held a hand over his mouth and thrust the other into the air.

  ‘Please, Miss, I feel sick.’

  He rushed out retching, and sat on the steps just out of view of the classroom. The magpies warbled, sunshine streamed into the dusty schoolyard, the teacher mumbled. Strips of bark hung from a tree; one of them unpeeled a little further. Will felt at peace, he could relax when he was alone. He could not understand how the arrival of his cousins had made him such a different person in the eyes of everyone else at school.

  A boy came out of the room and, smirking at Will, rang the bell vigorously. Its notes drowned the magpies’ warbling, and the voices of the children—the children themselves—came spilling down the steps, tumbling over him.

  Harriette went with Fanny and Harry Cuddles to the hall where an Extraordinary Parents and Citizens Association Meeting was being held that evening. They stood at the back of the room. Listened.

  It was not easy to keep listening.

  Rather than call out from where she stood Harriette strode to the front of the room. Her voice was soft, yet it carried to those furthest away.

  ‘We’—she said we—‘We have as much right as anyone to give our children an education. More right.’ She said she had been brought up and educated pretty much the same as any of them. Better than some. Her ideals of life were not so different from those of white people. She thought it was possible for her children to have the best of both worlds, the white as well as the black. To be proud of themselves.

  ‘There’s only one world,’ someone called out. A few laughs. ‘Hear, hear.’

  ‘There’s plenty of you here know me, know my father. He’s dying, but he stood by us enough to make sure we got a chance in the world. There’s men here who’ve not done that, who leave kids everywhere, or send them away.

  ‘Some of you say you want a civilised and kind nation.’ Harriette paused, seemed to be trying to adjust herself to the tension and hostility in the room, but when she continued her voice was a little more strained. ‘So why you acting like this?’

  ‘Go back to where you came from.’

  Harriette had had enough of pausing.

  ‘I come from here. There were a lot more of us at one time. I’m married to a white man.’

  ‘You should be with him now.’

  Harriette ignored the call, and continued.

  ‘Some Aborigines they might need some help. We don’t. Just the same chance as you others. Why you trying to keep us back? Is it to make yourselves feel big? Give all children the same chance as your own, and they will do just the same; some good, and some not so good probably. I tell you, we’re no dirtier, or lazier, or stupider, or badder than you. You want to throw all the blame for our troubles—and your own troubles—onto us. You try to keep us out of town, out of the hotels—even some of us who been paying taxes and working as hard as anyone, and you want to keep our children out of schools. How would any of you stand up to that sort of treatment?’

  ‘Someone go and haul Daniel Coolman out of his sickbed, will they? His missus needs it.’

  Bursts of laughter scattered around the room like small fires wanting to join, blaze, destroy. The circles of light around the lanterns reached out to one another.

  Harriette’s breathing was light and rapid. The nerves and anger could be heard in her voice.

  ‘Daniel, my husband, horsewhipped a priest just for telling him—screaming at him—that he’d married a savage, a heathen. If he was well enough, he’d stand by me now. He always stood by me and our children. Maybe you men here tonight are more like my brother-in-law was. Some of you remember Patrick Coolman, don’t you? The sort of man who won’t stand by his kids, who abuses women, who’ll run and leave a woman and children to themselves.’

  The principal of the school tried to restore the tone of the meeting. He said that personally, he had no problem with the Aboriginal children. They were no less clean than many of the white children.

  But Harriette, Harry, and Fanny were no longer there, anyway, because because because ... It was like the sort of hunting that starts off quiet, but then the dogs start howling and there is no calling them back. It was that sort of meeting. At their backs they heard the muttering.

  ‘Any other town around here, they wouldn’t be in town this time of day.’

  ‘Any day.’

  Chatalong had a newspaper, and he propped old Sandy One up and, looking to the old man’s face for signs that he was ready, he turned the pages. Chatalong had learned to read the flickering of eyelids, and the movement of eyes. Sandy One would squeeze the boy’s arm, and tilt his head for yes or no.

  Fanny came over and sat with them. She put her ear to her husband’s lips now and then, and seemed to understand the clatter of his consonants, the hissing and buzzing of his cancerous tongue.

  The three of them huddled together, their hands trapping the fluttering pages.

  Aboriginals in and about Town

  Saturday’s public meeting to discuss the undesirable association of black and white in our school was enthusiastically attended and all agreed it an unqualified success.

  About one hundred and fifty people were present and the meeting voted as one on the issue. It was resolved that unless a reply is received from the Minister of Education by the thirtieth of this month all white parents will cease sending their children to the school until the blacks are otherwise provided for.

  It must be stressed again that unkindliness of feeling towards the blacks is not a factor in this matter of black and white in our school and, indeed, in our town. On the contrary, if the townspeople were not so indiscriminately kind to them, the present trouble would not exist. As it is the place is getting far too good a name among the aboriginals, for every week heralds some fresh arrival. The number of the local tribe is extremely small. It is the threat of the coming of all and sundry that is the disquieting factor.

  The teacher’s mouth was tight, her eyes narrow.

  ‘Mark,’ she hissed. ‘Move away, now. Move to the back of the class. There.’

  Admonished, but pleased at the attention, the boy moved to the corner not occupied by Will and the others. He faced the corner. He glanced across at them a few times before putting his hand up for the teacher’s attention.

  ‘Yes, Mark.’

  ‘Please, Miss. It stinks down here near the blacks.’

  ‘You’re there because of your behaviour, Mark.’

  ‘But Miss, I feel all sick. We shouldn’t have to be with them,
anyway.’

  ‘I will tell you when you can return to your seat.’

  Mark was mouthing the word ‘Nigger’. Nigger Will could see him. The teacher couldn’t.

  Mark knew they shouldn’t be going to the same school together. They were like monkeys they were, and filthy. His dad talked of a White Australia, about the dangers of contamination and infection. It made him passionate, even in this dull schoolroom.

  The boy suddenly fell to the ground. When the teacher got to him he sat up, then fell back into her arms, rolling his eyes.

  ‘It’s the smell, Miss. I ... I must’ve fainted.’

  Uncle Jack and Uncle Will kept shaking their heads. The two of them were often unsure of their footing on these evenings around the campfire, but on this particular night we’d drank a little more than usual. The two uncles were garrulous; one moment weeping, the next laughing, the next shouting into the darkness which surrounded us. At regular intervals one of them would totter into the darkness for a piss, only to reappear in the firelight like some befuddled ghost.

  I floated in the warm smoke a few metres above the fire, watching the transformations in the flame and embers below. My grandfather sat motionless, as Sandy One—my ancestor before him—had also done. Then he suddenly fell over. I think by now it had become a habit. Sometimes he did it to gain our attention, or as a ruse to distract us.

  Will, as I said, was particularly pissed.

  ‘I hate myself,’ he said. ‘I turned my back. I was the only one who could get away with it.’

  ‘Nah, Will, don’t worry about it,’ Uncle Jack tried to reassure him. ‘We were all like that, I reckon. Had to be. I would’ve done the same. You’re a bit fair. It was different. Don’t worry about it.’

  Next week Will Coolman and his seven newly enrolled cousins were the only students at school. The town had withdrawn its children until the issue of the Aboriginal students was resolved.

  The eight students sat together at the back of the class. It was very quiet.

  The principal gave them instructions on what tasks were to be completed for the day. They coloured things in, looked through books.

  The boy Will was ashamed. The whole school had left because of, because of ... What? His cousins? Him? When he spoke his muffled voice sounded strange to him, and although it matched the motion of his jaws and tongue it seemed to be someone else’s voice. He hated to speak in class at any time, but today he feared what words might come out if he were to open his mouth.

  As bad as it usually was, it felt worse this day, with all the white kids and their usual teacher away. The school seemed so quiet, so impatient and angry.

  To make his misery all the greater, Will was hurting, almost bursting with a great ballooning bladder. He sat trying to resist the increasing pressure, making tiny cautious movements in an attempt to ease himself. He crossed his legs once, tried to cross them a second time and somehow knot them together.

  He had to go. Now. He saw the principal’s head turning as the door swung closed.

  He was pissing as he entered the toilets. It was a great hose he held, and he was a firefighter, had tapped some great reservoir, and it flowed through him and flung him about with its force. He tried to keep his feet and direct this yellow fountain.

  He’d have to wait for his pants to dry, couldn’t go back and face the principal and his cousins with wet pants.

  Will slipped around the back of the toilet, and sat in the sun with his legs stretched out.

  The shade moved up his legs.

  As if in a dream he heard the others being dismissed from school. He peeked around the corner of the building and saw the principal at the steps, and his cousins already in the distance. Their voices were soft, and retreating further yet the sun was still too high, the day too warm for school to be finished.

  He was still sleepy from the sun and thought it must’ve been some remnant of sleep which altered his perception, which gave him this sense that he was watching himself, Will, who was in turn watching Jack and Kathleen and all the Cuddles kids as they walked away from him.

  It was dreadfully quiet. The day ticking, rustling and shifting its restraint.

  Will moved out of hiding. The school principal was walking to the gate; and waiting for him were Harry Cuddles and Fanny. The children had climbed onto the wagon behind them. Chatalong was struggling to open the gate so that the wagon could come through. Harry and Fanny were smiling at the principal.

  Five or six of the townspeople had gathered a stone’s throw behind.

  Uncle Harry called out, cheerfully, ‘These children of mine, they’re being cheeky. They told me, they reckoned you let them go home, and I said no, they must’ve got it wrong. No teacher said that. They’re telling me there’s no school today.’

  He laughed again. ‘I’m telling them they can’t fool me.’

  Fanny interrupted. ‘You must be making them work good and hard. That’s good, make them learn. Maybe you want us to round up some other kids for your school as well.’

  Her eyes; Will could see them twinkling even from where he was.

  ‘I did send the children home. We can’t go on like this,’ said the principal. ‘It scarcely seems worthwhile for so few children.’

  ‘How many would that be then?’

  ‘Seven. Not counting Will Coolman, who took himself off earlier for some reason not known to me.’

  ‘But there he is!’ Jack Chatalong was pointing, and the principal turned to look at the runaway. Will felt all their eyes drilling into him.

  The principal turned on his heel. ‘Bring them in,’ he said. ‘I’m teaching them myself. I’ve sent the other teachers home to prepare.’

  Will saw the waiting, watching townspeople mill about like cattle or sheep, then move fitfully away, stopping now and then to chew their ill-feeling.

  His father, Daniel Coolman, was riding toward him on a great Clydesdale.

  ‘Vill!’ he said, ‘Vill.’ His voice was muffled and soft, yet it carried across the distance and was easily understood. He rode past Harry, Fanny, the children without acknowledging them. ‘Et on.’ And he indicated the space behind him. Bandages covered much of the lower part of his face and only his lower lip and chin were revealed. His beard had been shaved.

  Will stared into the weave of his father’s jacket as the horse turned and they went back past his cousins, his grandmother, his uncle.

  ‘Harry’s not even your uncle, not really,’ Will’s father told him as they entered their yard.

  Once he had set the children working again, the principal returned to where Harry and Fanny waited outside the room. The children watched the thin shadows at the window, and thought of the inkstains on his pale fingers, and of his watery eyes.

  The principal glanced around the schoolyard as he spoke with Harry and Fanny, his attention alighting on this or that with as much apparent purpose as if his eyes followed a butterfly, and told them that he didn’t know what would happen, but if the experience at some other places was any indication the problem would not go away.

  ‘So, then, you think we should?’

  ‘Well, if I might say so,’ said the headmaster. ‘You need a school of your own. I can’t control what children say in the grounds. It’s not that I agree with it, of course, but they are obviously not welcome here. That can’t be doing them any good, not at all. And the feeling in the community, well ... We expect word from the minister, and then the police.’

  white, right?

  It had been a quiet school for some weeks now, and not because of holidays. It had been quiet, and you could hear chalk and teacups in the voices of the teachers. Something acrid, something bitter, the hint of a screech.

  Those students stubbornly continuing to attend school said as little as possible. It was their right to be as good as anyone. Will Coolman was taken ill.

  That fucking Harry Cuddles. Remember the other one, caused all that trouble? And there’s that crazy cripple, Sandy Mason—remember him?—living a
t the camp. That’s not right.

  The school expanded around those students who remained; the walls, the fences moved further away—or perhaps it was that the students moved closer together. Even at recess times, they never moved further apart than the distance a ball could cross.

  Fifty-three students had been absent for two weeks. The local member of parliament and the members of various civic bodies were very busy. Doing their duty.

  And then, a next day and things were back to normal. Busy. Children studying, playing; exuberant and innocent. Free from moral and physical contamination, understanding that it was best for the races not to mix, comfortable at the pinnacle of creation.

  There was a smug silence most of the day, punctuated with sharply triumphant whoops and the surge of children’s voices. The absence of seven or so young ones was a great victory.

  Within a few days Will Coolman was also back at the school.

  Harry Cuddles took Chatalong away with him, and the two of them worked for next to nothing. There was no longer a market for possums; the government had banned the hunting of them. Now it was illegal for them to work, and anyway, they were told, they were undercutting the cost of labour. A betrayal of the working man, said some.

  It was no betrayal.

  There is a far greater betrayal.

  They were being squeezed further away to find work. Anything inside of a day’s ride from Gebalup was marginal land at best, and still too far from the railway. But even that land would be cleared soon enough, and in a few decades they would say; What the hell, you can start again, somewhere else, work it for twenty years and when it’s fucked you move on. Our goal is to clear a million acres a year.

  Course, Harry Cuddles had his own land, same way as any white man, but there was little enough money to develop it. They’d take it off him, probably, unless he could improve it, get some fences up, build a house, a shed. The banks would not help him. In the towns he visited, he saw how people were kept in reserves, usually close to the rubbish tip. At Kylie Bay the reserve was downwind of the shit dump. They were breathing it in, deep, all that shit from the town, and you could hardly move, not once you got there like that. Squeezed between spreading refuse, it didn’t matter whether it was a land or sea breeze blowing. The sun rose each day from domestic rubbish; carcasses cans wrappings, and it sank into a growing mound of shit.