The Yield

by Tara June Winch

August had screamed out to their nana, she felt the yelp at her throat then, ‘Jedda bit me!’ And Elsie appeared in her mind, she was there in the room telling Jedda off for playing savage, then took August’s wrist and inspected the bite mark on her arm. She could see the front-tooth gap in the skin, the gap that Jedda didn’t have, but that August did. Elsie told the girls to get to the bathroom and there she squeezed a full tube of toothpaste onto the bowl of the sink. Elsie told Jedda to help August put the paste into the tube and told them both, a punishment for August, a lesson for Jedda that, ‘It’s impossible to unsay the things you shouldn’t.’

  August wanted to keep collapsing into the sheets, but her mind was tracking. She gently pushed Eddie’s head from her, shifted in the bed and began to tell him that story.

  ‘Shh,’ he said, and tried to lean her back, kissing her neck, coaxing her to come with him.

  ‘I don’t want it,’ she said, the words dropping from her mouth like heavy rocks into calm water.

  He pushed off the bed swift and stood. His penis, in a spread of fine brown hair, was full and quivered above his thigh. ‘What do you want?’ He looked as confused as August was.

  She didn’t know what she wanted. But somewhere she knew she didn’t want the blindness of fucking. Of feeling. Perhaps, she thought, she was too used to feeling the ache of never being satisfied.

  ‘Yesterday, you said stay. But the tin mine?’

  ‘Stay in the continent, yeah! Move to the city with me!’

  ‘And what if Jedda came back here? What if she came home and no one was here?’

  ‘Is this a joke?’

  ‘And just forget about Prosperous? Because I don’t know who I am without this place.’ August said the thing before she knew it was true. ‘Because some people have nowhere else to go back to ever. Just the idea of Prosperous here, when I was away, was a comfort. It’s a place I could always come back to. All that childhood stuff, stuff your parents keep for you, stuff from when you were a kid – there’s nothing of that for me.’

  He was yelling now, ‘But you never came back.’

  ‘If I wanted to though, I could’ve,’ and she too yelled. ‘I’m back now!’

  ‘That’s part of being an adult, August, you make your own place to come back to. You think I want to be in my childhood home forever?’ He slapped his arms against the bed. ‘Fucking hell, August! You want the truth?’

  ‘Truth.’ She parroted the word. She pulled the sheet over her chest, not knowing at all if he had the answer. Then she whispered, ‘Why are you angry?’

  ‘The truth! The truth is that I wanted to run away, too. Why did you get to leave? Why did everyone else get to move on but me?’ He threw his arms into the air and slapped them back down on the mattress, paced back and forth near the foot of the bed and punched the wall. Flakes of plasterboard split into the warm air.

  He looked at her then, and spoke through his teeth. ‘You want to know the truth? I wanted to sell the property. I wanted to get paid finally. A fucking wage from this constant slog that gave me nothing. I used to work the field and look over at Prosperous every fucking day, waiting for you to come back. You want the truth? Prosperous is a dwelling! They fucking surveyed the property – it’s not even a house! It was a slave yard, August, where all your grannies and poppies learnt to be servants and fence builders and if my fucking grandad hadn’t let the Gondis live at that dwelling, you’d all be homeless drunks like the Vegemite Valley lot. We saved you! You want that truth? I’ll show you the fucking truth.’

  He ran out of the room and August threw the covers back to find her bra and get the hell out of there.

  He stormed back in before she could leave, yet he was slower, sure now and still naked, and emptied a box of books onto the floor. He snatched a pile of envelopes without addresses on them. ‘I’ve been packing this whole house, haven’t I! Reliable Eddie! You want to know what I found? I found this before your pop died! I didn’t even have the guts to show him! Here! I’ll read it to you!’

  He jumped on the bed, standing over her feet. Their legs were touching, their bodies separate. His face was flush with adrenaline, she cowered into the pillows. He pulled out the first small card from the envelope. ‘Thank you for your contribution to the Falstaff Collection. The Museum Australia. Submission: Message stick, elaborately carved with kangaroos, emus, snakes. Number, 1. Dated: 500 years. Axe heads, approximate number 10; Anvil stones, 5. Dated: 400 years.’

  His legs were shaking, his hands and voice too.

  He ripped out the next card, ‘Submission: Wooden club, elaborately carved with tribal incisions. Number, 2. Dated: circa, 5000 years. Shield, engraved with pattern, Number, 1 70cm × 11cm. Dated: 3000 years.’

  He ripped out another. They were both trembling now. The taste was nausea.

  ‘You want to hit me?’ he screamed. ‘This is where all your culture is! Under fucking glass! The dates! My fuckhead father donated the last one! In 1980 – just before we were born! Submission: Wooden shovel, intricately carved with brolgas, used for digging earth mounds. Number, 1. Dated 7000 years. Milling grinding stones, approximate number, 35; Anvil stones, 7; Fire stones, 30. Evidence of agricultural activity dated: circa, 10 000 years.’

  When he’d read the last card he ripped the quilt away from the mattress and slapped the envelopes onto the bed, and walked, inconsolable, out of the room. August pulled the sheet off her body and grabbed her clothes, dressed and ran. They both knew everything had been said.

  She hurried through Southerly’s English garden to the other side of the low fence. The dirt was hot, unbearable to walk on with bare feet, but she wanted to feel it, feel the boil of the ground, flinch over the protruding gum roots. She wanted the bull ants to stun her. They fled up the roots instead.

  She took a good look at Prosperous from the dirt driveway. It was a relic, not a house. Above it, she imagined she’d spot birds of prey, but no birds at all circled in the white-hot zenith. Only on the roof gutter a lone shrike, cloaked in sun, its head cocked, watched.

  THIRTY

  eternity, things to come – girr Did you remember that the ‘rr’ is trilled? It sounds like disappointment when you say it girr. And this might disappoint you, but I can’t tell you what the things to come are, what happens tomorrow, just as nobody can tell me.

  day after tomorrow – nganha-gunhung-guwala The last weeks of my life have been spent sitting out here at Prosperous. I can look up and see all the work I’ve done in the years. Repairing the roof, installing sealed windows into new frames, the guttering, fixing loose floorboards, painting the outside. I haven’t done much work on the thing the last few years. Eddie lends me the tools I need and holds the ladder. And the rest of the time I’ve spent at the library. I will miss the library when I can’t visit there anymore. I’m going soon, I’m going nganha-gunhung-guwala. I’m trying not to dwell on it too much and trying to finish these words during the hours I have each day. Maybe I won’t finish everything I meant to, but maybe someone else will tomorrow, next day, someday. Remember Matthew 6:34, Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

  dead man – gudin After they’d drained the dam, and searched the property three times, after I’d made my spear and sat with my evidence for long enough, I left the house in the night, and pushed the car out the driveway and halfway up the street before turning on the ignition. I drove to the boarding-house flats he lived in. I crept up the side of the building and looked in the window. He was watching telly, feet up and drinking a beer like he didn’t have a worry in the world. I leant my spear outside his front door; I put my boot between the screen and knocked. ‘Who’s there!’ he said. ‘Me,’ I said. He cracked open the door and I shoved my boot inside, grabbed him by the throat and with the other hand brought the tip of the spear to his chin. ‘Walkabout time,’ I said. I walked him to the car, put him in the driver’s seat and told him to drive out to the back of the satellites. I held the spea
r low against his side: ‘Drive steady or you’ll be in trouble.’ We didn’t pass another car at that small hour. When we arrived I told him to walk out nice and easy for a talk. Under the light of the satellites I asked him flat: ‘Where is Jedda? You tell me and I won’t hurt you too much.’ He put his head in his hands swore he didn’t know, but I knew then. Only a guilty man hides his face. I took a couple of paces back and raised the spear. ‘The further I go back the further this thing is going to go through you, Jimmy,’ I warned. Well, just like that he took off and I threw my spear, got him in the back of the thigh. He staggered a little and I took chase, but the bastard held the thing there and ran into the night. So I knew then. I knew everything had fallen apart.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Reverend Ferdinand Greenleaf ’s letter to Dr George Cross,

  2nd August 1915, continued

  VIII

  For a number of years I have been in fear for my life, as if a likely denouement to the recent events. Two months prior I was ordered to report to the Police Station of Massacre Plains. There I was questioned for some hours, interrogated about my ancestors, my Bible and my loyalty. The Mission was raided many times, our rations halved again and again. The people of the township, who never looked favourably on my work with the Natives, had, in recent years and months, threatened myself to no end, and for what reason? Each day I have searched Scripture and my heart and head trying to understand.

  From the beginning of the new century it seemed Australian nationalism was growing, and every newspaper devoted great space to explore the topic. Some people had an unwavering conviction that Australia should be united under a common identity, founded on the pioneers, the geography, the flora and fauna – not the immigrant, nor the Native.

  And the Aborigines Protection Board’s eventual reaction was swift and unyielding. Seven boys, John, Michael, Bobby, Percival, Samuel, Graham, Richard, and three girls, Isabel, Sally, Kathleen – that on this date range between two years of age and seven years of age – were forcibly taken in the years 1908 to 1914 to the city, I believe, or taken to children’s ‘homes’ throughout the state to be trained for work, trained to be pliant. They were too young to be sent away – eleven years would have been sufficient! We were unable to find exact information of where the children went. Their parents cried every day. Many parents ran away, choosing to conceal their infants with them in the bush, though most were captured and divided.

  You may think, dear Dr Cross – what does this prove? I say, in sober truth, that a species of slavery does exist in this part of the King’s dominions.

  After these incidents a great agony settled in the Mission and in my heart. I feared we were all breaking apart when I received the first of the news on August 26th, 1914, that there was trouble for my fellow countrymen: the descendants and immigrants from the Prussians and Germans of Broken were being harassed. Their houses razed, their German-language books burnt. The newspaper brandished all the news we’d needed to understand:

  BRITAIN DECLARES WAR ON GERMANY

  It was not a fortnight after this that the Constable, the one who had shrugged his shoulders, ordered me to the Police Station. My hour had come round at last; Keller’s also.

  At the Police Station, they had us register on a yellow form our name, date and place of birth, address, trade or occupation, marital status, property, length of residence in Australia, nationality, and naturalisation details.

  We filled them out and the Constable laughed. ‘We don’t like you, Greenleaf,’ he said. ‘And now we can do something about that.’

  I was ordered to report each day to the Police Station and they would decide, depending on my continuing, full co-operation with the Protection Board, whether they would send me to gaol or not, or worse. But what could be worse? Nothing could be worse than seeing those children too young transported away.

  I had visited the Police Station and signed a registration form each day for nearly twelve months before my internment. I know the others have been sent to internment camps elsewhere. I acknowledge that they endured a terrible fate: their family bonds broken, businesses shut down and livelihoods taken from them – but they haven’t become the enemy to two crowds.

  I retired to my hut during the days when I heard the wagon and vehicles arriving to take the children away. I kept pressing upon the residents that my hands were bound, that I could not do a thing against the Law. They ceased to address me fondly as gudyi and turned from me, as they should have, as I deserved, with a deep and wounding contempt.

  THIRTY-TWO

  carving on trees at graves – muyalaang The books say a civilisation must meet four criteria: it must show house building, domestication of animals, agricultural activity, and reverence for the dead. Reverence for the dead, this is the carving on the trees, this is the ceremony, the care. The Gondiwindi didn’t throw them in the earth and walk away. There was great mourning and care of the body, dance and ceremony and a permanent place for those to rest. I have discovered, just recently, that the old people built a cemetery too, but I cannot find it. It seems when I ask the ancestors, they show me many places – too many unmarked gravesites all over this country – and they cry, and say they weren’t responsible. But when the ancestors were in charge of their living and dead bodies they can find the spot, and we take flowers to those holy places. We have always been a civilisation, us.

  catch you, crush you, kill you, eat you – dha-l-girri-dhu-nyal We were having a barbecue at the house one Christmas night. It had been a hot, ragged sort of day. We had family over, a few were getting on the bottle. They weren’t driving and they knew they could stay out in the shearers’ annexe, which we always kept neat and tidy. By 10 p.m. everyone had gone to sleep. During the night something woke me. It wasn’t the ancestors because the whirly-whirly was still out. It was a creak of the floorboards. I went out to the kitchen and looked up the staircase to the attic. Well my guts got punched because Jimmy Corvette was climbing the stairs. He saw me and came back down immediately, the stink of beer of his breath. He acted a fool then, like he was drunk. ‘I was gunna tickle the girls,’ he said, giggling. ‘Get out,’ I said. I told him he was a fool who couldn’t handle his liquor. At the back door I grabbed him by the shirt. ‘Not back to the annexe. Walk home,’ I growled into his face. And when I said dha-l-girri-dhu-nyal – he knew I meant it.

  catch, take unawares – girra-warra Jimmy ran off with that spear in his leg and turned up in the hospital, infected. He wouldn’t say I had done it, even on his deathbed. I signed the visitors’ log, I walked in and asked him where Jedda was. It took me a long part of a day to get the words out of him. ‘I didn’t mean to, it was an accident,’ he said. ‘Where is she?’ I demanded. I won’t forget his four-word response: ‘In the water, Uncle.’ I peeled his bandage back and spat into the wound. I told him when he got out of hospital I was going to torture him to death if he didn’t take me to Jedda. I meant it. Visiting time was over at 8 p.m. Well, he died of sepsis through the night and I never found our darling all the rest of my days.

  cold, be changed, be dead wanting cover – baludhaay When our loved ones are gone, and bent and lying out in their graves, the eternal home of the soil, they need to be kept warm, so we cover them. The old people they baludhaay their people, their loved ones. To keep them warm, and to help them in the next part of their journey – which was to change form. I just wanted, all this time, to wrap Jedda up safe and warm.

  THIRTY-THREE

  August walked below the shrike and didn’t cry. On the verandah she spotted Aunt Missy and Elsie inside the house packing. She spun from the back door, facing the field to smooth her hair. She held the box in one hand, and with the other she ran her fingers along the faces of the buttons, to be certain they were all fastened.

  With the blunt end of a butterknife Aunt Missy was prying little rectangle gold and silver plaques from the bases of Poppy’s fishing and vegetable-garden trophies. On the table a corkboard was spread with white glue for the plaques. A b
ox sat on the floor accepting the tens of plastic moulds of miniature cups and chalices. Poppy had spent his retirement on the upkeep of the garden and fishing at Lake Broken and along the full end of the Murrumby, the other side of the dam, two hours south. He never displayed the trophies. Aunt Missy sorted them straight from the storage box.

  ‘How are ya – you missed lunch?’ Aunt Missy kissed her cheek and then narrowed her eyes, sniffed at the air around her. ‘He-llo,’ she said stirring. ‘Where’ve you been, niece?’

  August put her hands on her hips, nodding at the trophies. Trying to ignore her but more trying not to tremble. ‘Can I help?’

  Aunt Missy started cackling then.

  Elsie looked out from the doorway of the big room. ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Nothing, Nana, Aunty just farted.’ August looked at Aunt Missy as if to say shut up. Her aunty smiled back at her as if to say I won’t.

  Aunt Missy lifted her chin to Elsie, ‘August thought it was a new perfume from town.’

  Elsie shook her head and ducked back into the big room, mumbling under her breath.

  August took Aunt Missy’s elbow gently, serious now. ‘Eddie’s family had artefacts, from here. They donated them to a museum.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Papers, he’s found submission papers or something.’ She paused and looked towards the end of the lounge room. ‘We shouldn’t say anything to Nana. She’s got enough going on.’

  Aunt Missy glanced behind her, then back to August. ‘You sure they’re from the property?’

  August nodded and shrugged. ‘It’s weird.’

  Missy pinched her bottom lip, deep in thought, and broke from it, scrunched her face at August. ‘It’s sad.’ She looked through the back sliding door, out to the trucks in the field. ‘Where is he?’