by David Malouf
The sign was not visible to Barney Mason’s rouseabout, Andy, who was sinking fence posts a hundred yards off on the crest of the ridge; but he did see the rest of it. He had had his eye on those blacks for a good ten minutes.
Watching them emerge out of the ti-tree swamp, the old bloke leading, very tall and thin and gliding like on his feet, he had made a good guess at where they were headed, and laying aside the crowbar, reached for his gun. He followed them all the way down the gully, then, allowing odd minutes for the thick overhang down there, picked them up again just where he expected, on the slope, where Gemmy Fairley’s hammer blows were breaking the clear late afternoon stillness.
‘Got yez,’ he whispered.
If they had strayed even an inch on to Barney’s side of the boundary he would have taken a pot at them; he would have felt justified in that. But they did not.
At one point, out in the open, they paused and looked up, bold as brass, to where he stood, pretty well hidden he had thought, and saw him, he was sure of it; any road, recorded he was there. Then boldly turning their backs on him and with no further interest in whether or not he was observing, the old one, high-shouldered and floaty, still in front, walked on. The bloody effrontery of it! The cheek! The gall!
A moment later the hammer paused, he saw Gemmy swing round; and the next thing they were sitting, all three, with their heads together having a powwow. Right there in the open where anyone could see them. Didn’ even bother to move to the shady side of the shed, as a white feller would, where they couldn’ be seen. Just sat like that in the open, maybe twenty minutes, maybe more.
‘Oh I kep’ me eye on ’em, you can bet on that!’ (Andy, in the excitement of having something to tell, was already telling the thing to himself.) ‘I seen every fucken move they made, you bet I did. Every fucken move. Then them two blacks got up and went right back on the path they come by.’
For a moment Gemmy had continued to sit; he saw that too. Then, slowly, he pushed himself up, reached for a handful of nails, and it was only when the first hammer blows came flying out across the gully that Andy, with a jerk, came back from the walk his mind had taken, all the way to where it had been hovering about down there, trying to catch what the confab was about, and discovered he had, back here, a fit of the pins and needles, and had to hop about, cursing, till he had worked the feeling back into his leg.
When this last bit of him had returned, he set off, shotgun in hand, at a steady pace – no need to rush – to where the feller was at work again, the sound of the hammer bouncing hard off the hillside and whipping round his ears.
Andy was in a state of high indignation. What he had just seen, he told himself fiercely, was just what he, for one, had all along suspected. The bastard was in touch with them. Always had been, secretly, and was ready now to do it openly. In broad daylight! Just wait, he told himself, till Barney hears.
He had worked for Barney for nearly two years. They weren’t close, but he knew Barney; he knew what his thoughts were on the subject of Gemmy bloody Fairley. They were the same as his own. Out of loyalty to his mate, Jock, he hummed and harred and wouldn’t admit it, but it showed. He was an open book, Barney. If he got into one of his worrying fits you couldn’t miss it. Well, it was a good thing, to stick to your mate – he believed that as much as the next feller. But what about me, he asked himself fiercely, what am I then? All I do is bloody work me guts out for ’im, stick up for ’im, keep me eyes open, always thinkin’ of their welfare. So why can’t you come to me, Barney, like a white man, and come out with what’s on your mind. It wouldn’ go further.
In the growing hurt to his pride, which was only part of the greater resentment he felt at the many injustices that had been practised on him, he strode fiercely downhill.
Back in Brisbane, in the time after his wife skipped off, he had had a good deal of strife, some of it with the law. He had broken into the chandler’s he worked at and stole a few bob from the till – well, six pounds in fact, and done a year in the clink. He blamed her. And the Californian – a very smart feller, big talker, who for a time, he admitted, had had an influence over him.
His wife had hated the bloke at first. Jealous! And had ended up bloody running off with him – what about that, then? Could you credit it? And after being drunk for a week, and getting himself into all sorts of brawls, he had gone one night to the back door of McDowells and broken in and taken the six quid, but why he had done it and how he expected to get away with it, he couldn’t say; any more than he could say why his wife, Lorrie, after sounding off for months about what a loud mouth Earl Whitney was, and a cheat and liar, should suddenly up and run off with him. He had known from the start he was the first man they would come after. So how foolish can a man be?
The world was a puzzle to Andy McKillop. He was a puzzle to himself. Two years back, he had come up here just on the off-chance looking for work, and by using some of the fast talk he had picked up from the Californian, who continued to exert a hold over him, had persuaded Barney Mason, who was a decent cove, but soft, to give him a go. He was grateful for that. He had promised himself then that he would never let Barney down, and save for the odd breakout, which left him soreheaded and sorry for himself (he continued to blaze inwardly with a ferocity that only drink, at times, could dull), he had not. He had tried to be a mate to Barney, got sentimentally fond of Polly and the kids. That they were not as fond of him as he would have liked them to be was a disappointment, but he was used to disappointments.
As for this Gemmy – well he knew blacks, he’d had experience of ’em. In his worst period, down there, he had shared a bottle or two with the locals – it wasn’t a thing he was proud of, but never mind – and had been off, once or twice, to their camp – he didn’t boast of that, either. But it was experience. He knew ’em!
‘G’day,’ he said with a sour mouth when he reached the shed. He leaned his shoulder against the wall in a very casual manner, but the blast of heat off it got to him through his shirt and he had to shift. It unsettled him, that small mischance, but he recovered and felt descend upon him the large dignity of one who was here as a representative. ‘I see you been receivin’ visitors,’ he said, rather pleased with the understated humour he commanded.
Gemmy was squatting, a nail between his teeth. He looked up.
Yair, Andy thought, eyes, observing the yellow whites. Like one a’ them. Muddy. Mistrustful.
Gemmy lowered his gaze, and in a leisurely fashion, as if he was here with only the crickets for company, drew a nail and slapped it in. The blows flew straight at Andy’s skull. The nail head glinted in the wall.
‘Ol’ friends eh?’
Gemmy sighted along the plank, which Andy could have told him was not straight, and took another nail from his box.
His way with people he did not want to deal with was to pretend they were not there. He looked right through this fellow now, this Andy, and he was gone. He disappeared into the glare off the wall.
Andy huffed. He knew that trick. He had felt the effect of it before. With his eyes narrowed against the sun and the shotgun across his arm, he stood his ground, all stringy indignation. Gemmy squinted at the plank, slapped the nail in.
That’s all right, feller, you take your time. I ain’t in a rush.
But personal affront was added now to his anger on behalf of the others, and with it came a burst of illumination. He saw what the feller was up to. He was letting on that those blacks had never existed. That he had never seen them. That they had never even been here, any more than he himself was. That they were hot wavering apparitions, produced by the heat or – at the sickening possibility of his old weakness coming up again to dog and defeat him, he lost the assurance he’d had of being a representative here of those who might see him at last as one of them. The sun blazed on his neck. His head throbbed. If I don’t get out of the way of this bloke, he thought, he’ll bloody nail me to the wall. I’ve got to find Barney. I’ve got to get in before he does – bloody co
on!
With a hiss he turned and strode off, afire now with a need to justify himself that was at furnace heat by the time he found Barney. He could barely get the words out.
‘Andy,’ Barney told him, ‘take it easy, eh? Just slow down. What visitors?’
‘Blacks. What’d you think it’d be? Fucken blacks!’ The words bubbled in his mouth and he swung his head towards the gully, eyes blazing. He punched a fist into his palm. It was such a relief to get them out of his head at last. ‘Fucken myalls!’
Barney’s lips parted. The dent appeared in his brow.
Good, Andy thought, good. They’re in his head now.
‘They brung ’im something,’ he shouted. ‘On’y when I went an’ faced ’im with it, the crafty bugger’d hidden it, got it outa the way.’
He blinked. This detail had come of its own accord. He hadn’t realised till now that he had seen such a thing. His mind must have seen it though, when it took its own walk across there and hovered round them while they sat, because he saw it as clear as day. The whole occasion presented itself to him as the clearest picture, and as it did he felt a widening calm.
‘You know, Barney,’ he said softly, ‘I never did trust that feller. I know you never did.’
The word trust was important to him. When it came to his lips he felt the welling of tears. Things would be on a new footing from now on. Trust me Barney. You can. You know you can. That was what his fierce silence expressed.
But if Barney heard the appeal he did not respond to it.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I dunno. Gemmy’s harmless enough.’ The same old song. That was Jock McIvor talk. Andy was incensed.
‘Jesus, Barney,’ he said, ‘didn’ you hear what I said? They come to him. Bold as brass. Why? Why did they come? What did they bring him? He may be harmless, but they aren’t, they aren’t fucken harmless.’
The news alarmed Barney, but he was even more alarmed by Andy, whose sense of outrage, it seemed to him, grew fiercer each time he went over it.
The fact was, things had settled in these last weeks. He did not know what Jock had said to Gemmy, he would not ask, and Jock had spared him the embarrassment of informing him, but he had said something. Gemmy no longer strayed where he was not wanted – not by daylight, anyway, though once or twice when he was out last thing at night –
It did not mean the problem had gone away, of course. Gemmy, just by being there, opened a gate on to things, things Barney couldn’t specify, even to himself, and did not want to ask about, that worried the soulcase out of him. But for Jock’s sake he kept mum. The very last man in the world he would open himself to was Andy. He turned away now, meaning to put an end to the occasion, but as luck would have it Jim Sweetman hove into sight, climbing the long slope towards them. Andy lurched to meet him.
‘That feller’s been receivin’ visitors,’ he shouted, all breathless again. ‘I was there, I seen it! Hell, they come right up to ’im, bold as brass. Myalls! Fucken myalls!’ – the same words, almost, as before, but to Barney they had a different colour now that they were being addressed to Jim Sweetman.
‘Some people don’t think nothin’ of it,’ he shouted, ‘but what’d they come for, eh? What are they after? If it’s two of ’em this time, next week it’ll be twenty –’
Jim Sweetman frowned, his mouth tight with distaste at the crudeness of the fellow’s speech. He was always half off his head, this Andy. He ignored him and turned to Barney: ‘What’s he talking about?’
‘Blacks,’ Andy yelled with genuine outrage. ‘Blacks. Fucken myalls, that’s what.’
He was determined not to be ignored. He had a savage need to convince people of things; but had first, he knew, and he withered at the old injustice of it, to convince them about himself. He knew that look on Jim Sweetman’s face. He had been living with it, in one form or another, all his life. But this time things were different, he had the goods. He got control of the spit in his mouth and started in on his story, and this time, when he evoked the two blacks, he could describe them in every detail; he was astonished himself by what came to him. As if each time he approached the incident it got clearer. When they sat down with Gemmy now, he felt a burning in his right shoulder as if, all invisible, he was leaning right there against the wall of the shed, just feet away, and could see every move they made, hear every word, even if it was some blackfeller lingo they were conversing in. He was inspired.
Barney was astonished. ‘You didn’t tell me that,’ he protested. ‘You didn’t say that the first time.’ It embarrassed him that Jim Sweetman now was taking in every word.
‘You never give me the chance,’ Andy hooted. ‘I tried to, an’ you never bloody give me the chance!’ His voice was thick with emotion. He was on the edge of tears.
Jim Sweetman looked across at the line of greyish scrub, the last strip of country that was in any way comfortable to him, out of which, if this unreliable fellow was to be believed, with his wild eye and unsteady jaw and the spittle shooting out of his mouth, two blacks had walked in, just like that, as if they owned the place, then walked out again.
His own property was one of the most isolated in the settlement. The edges of it were part of the blacks’ traditional hunting ground, and at odd seasons, in the shadowy way of those whose minds you cannot touch, they still passed through it, quietly for the most part. He had no quarrel with them – so far as he knew and so far as any black, once your back was turned, could be trusted; there were a good many white fellers round here, this Andy for instance, that he trusted less. Even now he preferred not to look at the man. He got too much heady satisfaction from being the bearer of ill news. Still …
‘What do you make of it?’ he asked Barney in a level voice. He was thinking of his little granddaughter, around whom his whole world revolved. He saw her wandering off from the safe ground where her mother was hanging out the wash, after a butterfly maybe that kept moving ahead into longer and longer grass. But before Barney could reply, Andy broke in again. ‘I saw them give him something,’ he said.
That did it. ‘Give ’im what?’ Jim Sweetman demanded.
‘A stone,’ Andy said softly, and was amazed himself at the size and smoothness of the thing as it landed slap in Gemmy’s hand. ‘It was wrapped up like. In bark and that – you know. But I seen it alright. Big as me fist.’ And he thrust his closed fist towards them.
A stone. Now how had that come to him? Why had he said that? He sweated. He inwardly beat his open hand against his thigh and cursed. That stone, when they went to look for it, would prove difficult to locate; and Jim Sweetman, for one, would want to see it.
He had been afraid that Gemmy would accuse him of seeing things, and what had he done? He’d given him the chance to prove it. It was always the same. He always went that bit too far. When the stone was looked for and failed to appear they would start to wonder, their voices take on a sceptical tone and the sort of sly derision that leaves a man no way out but to insist, and dig deeper into his own grave. ‘Been seein’ things again have you, old son? Sufferin’ from a touch of imaginitis, are we?’ There was no pity in people.
Well, if it came to the test he would stick to his story and let them choose. Between him and this blackfeller. When push came to shove, they’d choose him, they’d have to. Only he wasn’t sure of it. His bowels went soft in him.
And the stone, once launched, had a life of its own. It flew in all directions, developed a capacity to multiply, accelerate, leave wounds; and the wounds were real even if the stone was not, and would not heal. Andy McKillop felt miserably that he was the first victim of it.
He mooched round the settlement with his head down, scared silly by what he had achieved, and sat at times looking at his closed fist and telling himself that when he opened it, by some magic he did not believe in, it would be there, solid, graspable. See? See? You’ll believe me now, I reckon. He would make them recognise it at last, as proof of the non-existence of that other, heavier and more fatal thing, an imagination.<
br />
But best of all, he thought, might be to tip his head back and swallow the bastard as if he had never coughed it up in the first place.
10
WITHIN AN HOUR of the blacks’ visit Jock had news of it. First from Ellen, who looked serious – she had heard it, in a panic, from Polly Mason – then, as he expected, from Barney, who could barely hold in the exasperation he felt.
Jock felt sorry for him. He was being pressed from all sides: by Polly, by Jim Sweetman, and as always by his own unhappy sense that the world was preparing at any moment to tear away from him the last vestige of security. Jock, however, was determined to insist for as long as he could that there was a reasonable centre to things, though he too had been shaken in these last months; not by what Gemmy threatened but by what he had begun to see in others.
Barney looked miserable. Usually when he came to Jock it was for consolation, and he was looking for it even now. He was alarmed by what he had heard, since Polly was; but what mostly upset him was that he had been shown up in front of Jim Sweetman. He came striding. But there was something in Jock’s steady calm that made the words he had been preparing all the way uphill go dry in his throat. When he spoke it was mildly.
‘Yes,’ Jock admitted, ‘so Ah’ve heard.’
‘Well?’ Barney said. There was a whine in his voice that was very nearly childish. He wanted to be let off the hook. ‘It’s what we been worried about all along. You know that. No use pretending you don’t.’
‘Ah’m nae pretending,’ Jock said.
‘I mean – they just walked right in, in full daylight. Bold as brass –’ Jock gave him a hard look, as if he knew that the words were the same ones Andy had used, and Barney was embarrassed to hear in his voice something as well of Andy’s thin, self-justifying tone. ‘I mean,’ he said, in a voice closer to his own, ‘they didn’t seem to mind who saw ’em. Neither did Gemmy. Andy says –’
