August removed her dirt-covered shoes at the back door. The house and yard were a flurry of people chopping firewood, rearranging the demountable furniture and chatting about the scorched grass that grew like spider veins. The Aunties were laying dinner plates on top of the tables, wherever a chair could be squeezed in for a table setting. Children were running around, babies tumbling on laps and into arms, wriggling between conversations. People yelled out ‘Augie’ and August waved, didn’t want to talk and quickly entered the kitchen just as old Aunt Betty scolded Aunt Missy: ‘Why aren’t you wearing the hat I got you for Christmas?’
‘Don’t really wear hats all the time, Aunty.’
‘Well, I’ll have it back then if you’re not going to wear it!’
Aunt Missy turned from Aunt Betty, busy with a tray of curried-egg sandwiches, ‘Here we go,’ Aunt Missy whispered to August under her breath. ‘Jesus, save me.’
August smirked, shuffled through the commotion, past Elsie explaining to Uncle Fred about the Heritage Society offering to come and remove the stained-glass window, ‘… piece by piece for us. An expert, they said, as if it’s the only thing worth keeping out here.’ Uncle Fred shook his head and rubbed his good arm on the back of his neck in astonishment.
August weaved out the other side of them and went to the attic to change. As she closed the door she heard Aunt Missy and Aunt Betty laughing. She thought about how every family has its own special language. Its own weird sense of humour that’s stuck in the past. The Gondiwindi sense of humour, she knew, was bickering until laughter. She whipped off her shorts and t-shirt, took the black slip from the pile and put it on. She pulled on the black blouse and long skirt and wrapped a clean pair of black espadrille laces around her ankles. On the back of the door a mirror hung from waxed twine and a thick nail. August stared into it, tucked and untucked hair behind her ear, the clump that Mandy had touched. She put on mascara, and drew tinted lip balm over her mouth. She didn’t look at herself for long, she hadn’t ever. Since the age of nine maybe, on account of her lazy eye. And on account of not liking what she saw. She thought that she probably hadn’t looked into her own eyes, or anyone else’s, or even a camera shutter, for longer than one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. Whenever she had her photograph taken she would turn her face to the side at the last moment, and was used to people yelling, ‘August, you ruined it!’
There would be no photographs taken today. She strung the long strap of the small velvet purse across her body, put the packet of cigarettes into the pouch, and pulled a handful of tissues from the box on the desk and shoved them in too. She’d never been to a funeral before. The family never had one for Jedda – she could still be alive, after all.
Back downstairs, August looked at the collection of wine bottles sitting in a bath of almost melted ice-water in the sink; ordinarily, feeling this way she’d pour her prescription, but instead she poured a glass of water and stood at the counter drinking it. When it was almost done she threw the remainder into the sink. Jedda used to do the same, their mother too. August had seen Nana do it the previous night before they’d gone to bed and asked her why they all did that, threw the last bit away? ‘Well,’ Nana had thought for a moment, ‘I think we did it because when the house ran on tank water there used to be sediment at the bottom of the glass, so you never drank the last bit.’ They had inherited the habit.
August lit a cigarette outside. ‘Get those darts away from the house, womba!’ an uncle yelled from his perch in front of the Test cricket. She held her breath and ran out beyond the garden.
The sun was high and nothing cast a shadow. A white plastic marquee without walls was suspended over the fold-out tables filled with food and protected by gauze fly covers. A stack of plastic plates and cutlery sat at the end of the table, and a clutch of cold beer bottles perspired in the heat. Archie Roach was trying to be heard from the old speakers of the portable CD player. A barbecue plate was being cleaned with steel wool, the tossed water hissed and steam rose from the burnt parts. People gathered close to the house in twos and threes, shared awkward sombre conversation. The fire pit waited in the distance near the first row of wheat. Now and then an unavoidable chuckle broke through the yard. Poppy had lived through and out the other side of adulthood and there were plenty of stories to share. Aunt Missy was telling Eddie about the time when she was little and her dad used to take her fishing for eels before school. ‘Slippery suckers. Your grandad had a twelve-foot tinnie for the river but it never got much use except by my dad. We took it out when there was any flooding of the dam. I remember it was early that morning, breakfast would come after the work he used to tell us girls, even if it was a Saturday.’
‘Mum too?’ August asked.
Eddie smiled at August, and turned again to hear Missy continue the story.
‘Yeah, your mum was there, Aunty Nicki too,’ Missy said, and put her arm around August’s shoulders. ‘That morning all we needed to do was collect the bloodworms from the riverbank. We took the shovel deep in the sand, dug it fast so the worms didn’t know what was going on, dumped it into a sieve and let the sand run out leaving the worms wriggling in the strainer. You know how to worm, Eddie?’
Eddie slowly shook his head, laughing.
‘Bloody young ones!’ Aunt Missy said, nudging another aunty beside her. ‘So we had a bucket of worms and put our kit in the tinnie and pushed off the bank. Tied our hooks, cast our lines and soon Jolene’s line was pulling real hard, Dad was screaming You have to be quick, Jolene! She couldn’t do it, so Dad took over and pulled this giant eel into the tinny! We were huddled at the keel screaming, the eel thrashing on the hull. Dad grabbed his knife and went to cut the line free then the eel’s big mouth grabbed the bloody knife off him and cut Dad’s hand! We screamed more, there was blood everywhere and an eel with a sharp bloody fishing knife in its mouth!’
A small crowd of family members had leant in to listen to Missy’s story, their faces elated. ‘So Dad grabbed the worming shovel. Close your eyes girls! he yelled. We didn’t though, we were screaming but still looking!’
‘What happened?’ August asked.
‘He necked the head clean off! Back home he strung what was left and skinned it and then Mum took over, and we ate eel cake for the best part of two weeks.’
‘Burramarramarra – you got to be real fast with those eels!’
‘What’s that, Uncle?’ Missy asked Uncle Fred.
‘Jump hand do – make the hands jump!’ Fred waved his good hand and arm to catch the imaginary eel. ‘They are slippery bastards.’
‘Burramarramarra that’s for sure!’ Aunt Missy said and laughed. The small gathering all chuckled, it was a good story. Poppy had been the family’s unifying thread, August looked at them laughing, gathered together and doubted she’d ever see any of them again.
August approached the food and drinks table. Under the plastic sheath of a loaf of supermarket bread, several flies were trapped, eagerly crawling over the crust. She opened the mouth of the bread bag and they flew out. Looking up from the table she spotted her cousin Joey.
Last time August saw Joey he was borrowing an elastic necktie from the region’s worst lawyer, following a line of boys like him into the stone building, and then he never emerged from the courthouse. Four years’ juvenile detention, one of which, when he turned seventeen, spent in the adult prison in Penn Town. He’d been lucky – all their cousins had been tried as adults, is what everyone had said. She’d been there on the night in question and had skipped school to be there for the half-morning trial, the gossip and styrofoam cups of tea shared on the court steps. After the trial she returned to Prosperous, and that same day wrote a note for Nana and Poppy then ran away with her birth certificate. She’d hitched on a road-train truck along Broken Highway to the other end of the country. Got a job pruning on the vineyards, picking fruit, sleeping in a tent, then saved and got a plane and a job here and there and finally outside of London. And that’s all she’d eve
r done: temp work and running. Nothing to show.
Joe’s facial hair was long and sparse as if he’d persisted in growing it wherever it could. The hair wired like a small finger off the end of his chin and each half-corner of his upper lip.
‘August!’ he yelled when he saw her see him. He rushed from the plastic chair. He was wearing a proper suit and tie. He took August’s neck into the crook of his elbow.
‘Long time no see!’
‘Forever.’ It felt so good, she thought, to see Joe.
‘Come check out my car.’ He led her with the torch of his held-out light beer. ‘It’s a Mazda MX-5, Aug. Bought it because – if you haven’t heard – I’m a businessman now.’ He stood back and opened his suit jacket slightly, chin to the sky.
‘Where’d you steal it from?’
He ignored her snark, he had too much to say.
‘Mum show you the app I made? Raking in thousands, cousin. Five figures.’
‘High roller!’ she smiled sideways at him.
‘Aug, true god, in juvie I got like, the equivalent of three university degrees! Nothing to do there but read. I read about Mabo. That dude, what a smart fella. Anyway, Pop used to visit. We’d smuggle stuff to each other, smuggling ideas. I was in his ear for years – I said, Pop! You got to claim the land as ours, Native Title! Pop asked how much native vegetation I reckoned was on the farm. I thought fifty-fifty. Try again, he said. I’m like, I don’t bloody know. He says it’s five per cent! Alright, alright, so we scrapped that idea. But then I got free lessons on computers there – well, for the small price of public safety. I just wanted to get out and make some money, you know? I was ready for it … Pop gave me the idea for the first game – you seen it?’ He took a sharp breath and then let it out. ‘So, how are you?’ He took a swig of his light beer then added, ‘Fuck, it’s hot!’ and pulled out his phone. But he caught something about her that made him tuck the phone back into his jacket pocket.
‘You alright? You’re a bit different, Aug.’
‘Haven’t seen you since we were teenagers! You look bloody different, too!’
‘Nah, I mean sad. You seem real sad.’
‘Pop.’
‘Ow, we’re singing him, we’re celebrating and carrying him today – don’t be sad, cuz.’
‘Maybe I just feel weird, I don’t know. Stuff changes. I feel as if I’m just floating through life or something. Like my whole life I haven’t really been me.’
August unclasped her purse, took out another cigarette, tapped the filter on his bonnet and lit it. She felt on the edge of tears. She’d never heard Poppy talk politics before, but he’d been talking about Native Title with Joey; it was as if she’d missed out on a version of him.
‘I reckon us blackfellas feel that way these days, but you have to move on. What’d Pop say last time I saw him? Chinese saying – oh yeah! It goes, One fella makes a net, another fella stands and wishes. Make a bet who gets the fishes? Gotta make a net, that’s the whole point of life isn’t it?’ Joey cracked a wide smile of white teeth.
‘Is it?’ August managed a tiny smile back.
Joey had known some things when they were kids, known before the other kids did that adults lie, that they can be mean and bad. He knew before the girls that waving to police officers in the street didn’t make a difference to your life or death, and he’d known that Prosperous was really special before August ever realised, too. He heard something in the world the way she smelt and tasted it.
‘You know much about the mine?’ August asked.
‘Motherfuckers, yes.’ He stepped back and pointed his beer up towards Kengal. ‘And those fucking hippies on a sacred site. Watch out, aye, they got nits those dirty buggers.’
He lowered his voice, but continued talking just as fast. ‘This is the deal a-right – Falstaff ’s strapped for cash, they ring a coal-seam gas company and invite them! So they come survey, no good for CSG, but giddy-up, a fucking mecca of tin under here. So then the Falstaffs are like, “Er, nah, we don’t want to lose the house.” About six months later the company have dug up some technicality saying it’s government land anyway, and they won’t even get a part of the pie. Well they’ll probs get just the value of Southerly House, good for them I guess. I mean the whole mine and Falstaffs discovering the 99-year lease could have happened anyway, but they kind of dug themselves an early grave. It’s depressing, isn’t it? Knowing this place is soon going to be a big pit.’ Joe stopped yapping and pointed his beer. ‘Look, Rosie’s here.’
His little sister was playing with her phone on the verandah steps.
‘How old is she now?’ August asked.
‘Ten going on twenty-five, according to Mum. She’s got a picture of Beyoncé in her wallet, prays to her like she’s a saint. She’s a good egg though, locked herself in her closet the other day after she read Harry Potter and found out she wasn’t a real witch. She cracks me up.’ He nudged August, trying to rouse her to how he knew her before.
‘Do you talk to Eddie?’ August gestured to the field where she remembered Joe and he had spent every weekend and school holiday slashing rows for pocket money and then disappearing into the bush.
‘I saw him before. We say hello when we bump into each other, small town but, you know …’
‘What?’
‘He got me locked up, didn’t he? You ever heard from ya mum?’
‘No, you?’
‘What – your mum? Can’t even remember her.’
‘Do you hear from your dad?’
‘Good one. Nah.’ Joey spat on the ground behind him.
Aunty Nicki wandered out to the makeshift car park with two glasses of white wine. August thought she looked stunning, in red heels and a sleeveless black shift that stopped at her knees.
She leant over and hugged Joe and August with her inner elbows, her hands occupied in the air.
‘You two okay?’
Joe shifted next to her. ‘We’re good, Aunty, telling Aug about Eddie’s family and the mine.’
Aunt Nicki passed August a glass of white wine.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Is it true? That they invited the mine here?’
Aunt Nicki rested against Joe’s car.
‘Mining – that’s all everyone’s talking about, isn’t it!’ She put her free hand on August’s shoulder. ‘It’s complicated, see. You know I work for the town council now?’
August shook her head as Joey started walking away, called to her, ‘Back in a sec, need another beer.’
Aunt Nicki continued. ‘Well, that application came in a couple of years ago. There’s about ten or so farms with CSG; now some of the farmers in Massacre don’t like it, they’re scared of the water table or the thing leaking, which it sometimes does, and then the family has to go stay in a hotel. Some like it because they get a bit of compensation, because this is a long drought; this isn’t just crops dying, it’s cattle too, and people need money. Now all that Eddie’s family did was allow them to look, that’s it. The other option is to lock up the gates, but they let them come. That’s okay – that’s polite, some people would say. Problem is, they’ve struck gold in a way. So, both houses are gone. That’s it. Albert, he tried to get the council to survey, he thought there was cultural significance here, whether it’s the scar trees or the house itself.’ Aunt Nicki looked at Prosperous. ‘But they don’t have to unless the town council flags it. You get me?’
‘So Nana is really going? When?’
‘Well, next week. They’ll all be gone next week. Nana’ll be fine, she’ll stay with Mary.’
‘Joe mentioned Native Title. That he talked with Pop about claiming the land.’
‘Couldn’t ever happen – I’ll tell you why – there’s no artefacts. No water in Murrumby, no fish – and fishing would mean Nana, or whoever’s living here, would have a cultural connection to the land to maintain, the … well, “resources” – okay? Another thing, there’s no language here. Our people’s language is extinct, no-one speaks it any more
so they can tick that box on their government form that says “loss of cultural connection”. You see?’
‘Poppy taught us some.’
‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes song? Yeah, he taught me that too. But I mean language that is connected to this place, this landscape.’
‘Nana told me last night Poppy was writing a dictionary.’
Aunty Nicki shook her head before she answered. ‘Even if he was writing it, won’t change anything. They grew up on the Mish, remember, and language wasn’t allowed. Under Queen and Church here.’ Aunty pointed to the steeple, bent and rusted atop Prosperous. August wanted to stop her, correct her, tell her how she’d heard Poppy even when she was young, heard the way his tongue changed, heard words no-one else seemed to know. But she didn’t say anything.
‘When are you going back to England?’ her aunt asked, and licked her finger, smudged dust from her dress hem.
‘Soon.’
‘How wonderful, living overseas. Bet you can’t wait to go back.’ Aunt Nicki smiled and took August’s hand then and they walked towards the gathering Gondiwindi who were descending from the verandah stairs in a slow, mournful swarm. ‘Come now, it’s time to say goodbye.’
TWENTY-ONE
Reverend Ferdinand Greenleaf ’s letter to Dr George Cross,
2nd August 1915, continued
V
As the years passed, our numbers continued to fluctuate. Natives who had nowhere else to go came drifting in from neighbouring rivers, some travelling hundreds of miles on foot avoiding capture to see our Mission for themselves. Although some men left of their own free will, many families stayed on and we made housing arrangements without fuss. In 1886 I sent a letter to the Department of Public Instruction signifying our continued need for materials and attaching a thorough list of the items we were in desperate need of – rations, sugar, tea and figs of tobacco, and also boards, iron, doors, windows for the schoolhouse. Six months later the Department telegrammed to announce a visit to inspect our progress in order to approve funding. I immediately rounded up the children and for a week of days and evenings we practised from the Bible until I had many quoting from it by heart. The Word of God was truly becoming a light to their feet and a lamp to their path! On the big day, and without a moment’s shyness, little Mercy ran up to the inspectors and tugged at the sleeve of one of the gentlemen. She then quite confidently, and without encouragement, recited William Hickson’s version of ‘God Save the Queen’. Three hours later, at the close of the inspection, I was informed that all of the materials would be supplied as well as a skilled carpenter at our disposal. They had recognised the importance and the unmistakable success of the day school, and, furthermore, I think due to sweet Mercy, elected to raise it to the position of a public school, thereby securing to our institution all the benefits, they promised, enjoyed by every White school in the Colony. I was overfilled with joy and promise on that evening and I gave my thanks upon my knees for some hours.
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