The rain had ceased. The Sun gilded the first high-flung puffs from the engine as she cleared the shed hissing and squealing. As she came rolling up to pass the parked train, Chas Chase, the guard, a stocky figure in the khaki uniform and wide-awake of the traffic man, dropped down out of his van to stand beside the track in an attitude of waiting. Pat Hannaford pulled up when he reached him. Chase climbed aboard, and shouted above the din of steam and open firebox, ‘Col wants us to pick up a stock waggon.’
Pat nodded, and whirled the wheel that would reverse her, gave her steam and set her rolling back, looking towards the stockyard where a brake of stock cars stood as usual. No more was said. Engine-men never waste words on traffic men. Chas dropped down to the bottom step, jumped off a couple of times to change points, coupled the stock car, and signalling to go ahead, rode the way back and up past the train, standing on the waggon’s brake-lever. Then back to couple with the train. The couplings were of a simple early type, a single spring buffer in the middle, split to hold the heavy hooks of the two vehicles, one hook being pivoted on, and the other falling to grip a stout pin running through the middle of the buffer. There was no automatic train brake. The engine had an air brake for its own exclusive use. Each vehicle had its own hand braking device. For train braking the driver needed to call on the guard by whistling to have him apply his heavy handbrake in the van. Not infrequently the driver had to call on the guard to release the brake, source of never-ending contentions between each end. There were also a brace of chains on either side of the couplings of each vehicle, these to hold the train together in the case of breaking of the couplings proper for long enough to bring the train to a halt and, if possible, rectify the damage. Spare hooks and pins were carried in the van. However, there was no roadside way of repairing broken safety chains.
With the train coupled up for starting and only the Pourin’ Aboard process to be completed, Pat, leaning from the cab and looking backward and seeing the porter, Oz Burrows, trundling a baggage barrow up towards the head of the train loaded with tarpaulins, remarked to Porky, ‘Who’d be truckin’ blood-stock this time o’ year?’
Tarpaulins were thrown over stock waggons only when the stock was very valuable and there was the fear of their being blinded by flying cinders, the waggons being for the most part open to the rush of smoke-laden air. Tarpaulins had also been used to cover such waggons when used, as they had been until a year or so ago, for transporting Aborigines by the police. It was Pat Hannaford, by causing a row that had roused national interest and involved wide industrial trouble and eventually won reluctant veto from top authorities, who had put an end to the practice.
Then scarcely had Pat made the remark, when the answer came to him in the form of unusual movements in the vicinity of the station. There was little Col Collings coming strutting up the train in his khakis, with his lanky khaki mate Cahoon beside him, while converging on the stock waggon was the yellow police utility so heavily laden that she swayed to scrape wheels on rear mudguards, laden with human freight wearing the prison garb of grey and khaki with chains that glinted in the sunlight. Hannaford exploded: ‘Jesus bloody Christ!’ and went leaping down to meet it.
The police car swung so as to back towards the waggon, Trackers Jinbul and Treacle leaping down to come running to open the doors, which were at the end remote from the engine, two upper outward-swinging, a single wide one at the bottom that fell downward. Pat yelled at Collings and Cahoon, ‘What the bloody hell you think you’re goin’ ’o do?’
Cahoon assumed the twisted grin. Collings, reddening, looked at the utility, about to back across their path, signalling the driver of it, Constable Stunke, to keep backing.
Pat yelled across the back of the ute, ‘I’m not haulin’ human bein’s in stock waggons . . . and don’t you bloody think so.’
Cahoon now gave his attention to directing things. The trackers, up in the car, hauled out the men in chains who were standing up, then came and got him who was chained to an ambulance stretcher. Oz Burrows and Collings were unfolding the dumped tarpaulins.
Pat yelled, ‘Okay, you Nazi bastards!’ and turned about and went back towards the engine, but not to go past the end of the tender, in between which and the waggon he disappeared.
Col Collings and his mate, with one eye on him since he’d turned, dropped what they were doing, and went sprinting round the truck to see what he was doing. He had already done it when they got up there — uncoupled the engine from the train.
Collings demanded, ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’
Pat snapped, ‘That’s just what I asked you. I’ll answer you when you’ve answered me.’
Collings snapped back, ‘I’m loading the train, Driver. I’ll ask you not to interfere in what doesn’t concern you.’ He moved to go in and re-couple.
Pat blocked his way: ‘It’s my concern not to break railway regulations, mate. That’s why I uncoupled my injin. Don’t you interfere, that’s all.’
‘What regulations?’ demanded Collings.
‘Regulations say no Aborigine’s to be conveyed in any other vehicle but what’s designed specif’cally for human use . . .’
‘That’s not a regulation . . . it’s a ruling . . .’
‘Well, the rulin’ll do me. Take them poor black bastards out o’ that waggon . . . or I don’t take the train.’
‘You don’t know your regulations or your rulings. The ruling states . . . except in cases of emergency. If you want to see it . . . here it is.’ Collings fished an official-looking booklet from his pocket.
Pat sneered: ‘I’ll take your word for it. I know your a regulations expert. All runts like you are. Just tell me what the emergency is in this case.’
‘Ordinary passenger accommodation taxed to the limit . . .’
‘Havin’ a full train don’t constitute an emergency. You only have to leave this lot behind for the mail train.’
‘The emergency’s a police matter. The police want these prisoners off their hands as soon as possible.’
Pat looked at Cahoon, stared into the other green eyes for a moment, then with a sudden glint in his own: ‘That’s unusual, isn’t it! I always thought . . .’ Then an answering glint in those eyes stopped him. It was generally said that the police kept their prisoners down country as long as possible, because they were paid personally so much per head per day for maintaining them, which could be means to a tidy bit made on the side if you knew your onions.
Cahoon urged even amiable of tone: ‘You were saying, Driver?’
Pat swallowed it, asked, ‘Mind telling me exactly what this emergency is, Sergeant?’
Cahoon grinned: ‘I don’t have to tell you anything, Driver.’
‘Right!’ said Pat. ‘If somebody don’t tell me something, and mighty quick, I’m runnin’ this injin back into the shed and phonin’ my immediate superior, the Loco foreman, that I can’t proceed because of a breach of regulations Traffic’s tryin’ to put over me.’
‘Then you’ll be wasting your time,’ said Collings. I don’t have to tell you anything, either, Driver, except to take this train away . . .’
‘I take orders only from my Guard, Station Master.’
‘Your Guard takes ’em from me, as deputy in this district to the Railways Manager. But I’ll tell you what you want to know, to save the railway’s time. This matter’s been gone into thoroughly with the Railways Manager, the Superintendent of Police, the Chief Protector of Aborigines, and the Government Medical Officer . . . and it’s been deemed by those authorities that these prisoners can’t be kept here any longer in these weather conditions, as a matter of police expediency, and humanity . . . they’re all dangerous criminals charged with murder . . . there isn’t enough food to feed them . . . and one of ’em’s in urgent need of qualified medical treatment. Now . . . will you kindly take this train away?’
Pat swallowed, took a deep breath. Obviously he was struggling with an urge to knock the pompous little man down. In a strangled voice
at last he said, ‘I’ll have it from the Guard, if you don’t mind.’
‘Please yourself.’ Collings turned to his porter, who was directing the spreading aloft of the tarpaulin by those old-time experts the trackers: ‘Oz . . . get Chas.’
The gangling Oz broke into a knock-kneed run.
Pat turned towards his engine, but as he moved, snapped back at Collings: ‘Touch them couplin’s and I pull the injin away and blow her off . . . and you can do what you bloody like . . . but you won’t be usin’ her to pull no Nazi prison train.’ He went up to the cab, climbed aboard, said to the gaping Porky, ‘The bastards ’a’ got it all sewed up. I got ’o think fast, boy.’
‘What you goin’ ’o do?’
‘I don’ know . . .’ cept I ain’t pullin’ them poor black bastards like that, anyway. Bloody Nazi Germany! Let ’em get away with it . . . and they’ll have us in stock waggons yet . . . takin’ us to concentration camps. I said I’d take orders only from Chas. They’re chuckin’ the regulations at me. I’m chuckin’ ’em back.’
‘But ain’t it agin regulations what they tryin’ ’o do . . . after what you done that time to beat ’em?’
‘Agin a rulin’ only . . . with bloody loopholes in it, course . . . the bastards!’
Chas Chase came climbing up to the cab, looking worried. Collings and Cahoon were now standing just below; and a little behind them what looked like all those off the train who could stand. Chas asked, ‘What’s the trouble, Pat?’
Pat snarled, ‘Like you don’t know, you bastard!’
Chase said miserably, ‘I didn’t have nothing to do with it . . . dinkum. They jes sprung it on me . . . regulations and all . . .’
‘Why’n’t you tell me?’
‘Man gets a great chance tellin’ you anything, don’t he!’
‘Well, spill it . . . ask me am I goin’ ’o take the train?’
‘Are you?’
‘You know I won’t.’
‘You can’t win, Pat. They got it all worked out. If you won’t they’ll suspend you, and call on Porky here. If Porky refuses, they got Bill Bolger . . . and he’ll do it to nark you.’
‘Yes . . . the Catholic Action bastard!’
Bill Bolger, officially classified as Pumper Bolger, was the man who operated the water-pumping system locally, formerly a locomotive driver who’d been compelled to give up the job because of ill health, and a bitter enemy of Communism and hence of Pat Hannaford.
Chase asked, ‘You still won’t take her?’
‘That’s it, comrade.’
‘Oh, well . . .’ Chase began to step down.
Collings raised his voice: ‘Driver Hannaford!’
Pat’s ginger head popped out: ‘Ja, Mein Führer!’
A titter from the crowd.
Collings scowled: ‘I hereby suspend you from duty.’
Hannaford gave the Nazi salute, calling, ‘Danke, danke, Mein Leader-schnozzel! If vos load o’ poor bloody Jews or vorkers vot wouldn’t lick your puggin’ arse ’ole, I vould do like shot. But dey only poor bloody mob o’ boongs, not fit for unsen o’ der Master Race, eh, vot?’
A whoop from the crowd. Collings flung them a fierce look, then turned it on Pat, to yell back, ‘If it was a stock train full o’ poor bastards being taken to Siberia, though, it’d be different, eh?’
Pat flamed as darkly as Collings, and spat back, ‘It ain’t the poor bastards get sent to Siberia no more, brother . . . but the likes o’ you and your long khaki mate there, who’ve got to make ’emselves big by makin’ others little!’
The crowd was laughing — some of it, anyway. Some were stony-faced.
Collings looked past Pat, calling, ‘Fireman Jones!’
Porky, goggle eyed, was hanging back. Pat grabbed him, pushed him into the place where he had stood himself. Collings said, ‘I order you to take this train to Port Palmeston.’
Porky goggled down at him: ‘What . . . me?’
Pat hissed above the steam, ‘Take it!’
Porky tried to turn to argue; but Pat, out of sight by those below, shoved him back, still hissing, ‘Take it . . . so long’s I don’t have to.’
Collings demanded, ‘Well?’
Porky, with sweat streaming from his dimpled cheeks, had to get a prod in the back to answer, ‘Okay.’
Collings, plainly taken aback, glanced at Cahoon. Then he turned back to Porky: ‘I’ll get you a fireman.’
Pat hissed behind, ‘I’ll fire for you.’
Porky called down, ‘Pat’ll fire for me.’
‘He can’t . . . he’s suspended. I’ll give you Pumper Bolger.’
Pat still hissing: ‘Bolger’s a sick man.’
Porky said, ‘Don’ wan’ Bolger . . . he’s a sick man. Pat’ll do me.’
‘But he’s suspended.’
The ginger head popped out of the cab: ‘You suspended me as driver. That’s what you addressed me as . . . Driver Hannaford. That’s how suspensions’re made on the foot-plate. Guard comes up and says to Driver: “You’re suspended. Hand over to the Fireman.” Fireman takes over regulator. Driver picks up the banjo. You ought to know that, Mr Collings. You were on the foot-plate yourself firin’, down New South Wales, till you wouldn’t go on strike with your mates . . . and you had to get out and come all the way up here to get a job, ’cause this show’s run by a Big Scab . . . eh?’
He who was named as a Big Scab was the local Manager, Mr Broadbeam, who’d also been involved, on the Boss’s side, in some railway union trouble in the South.
Collings said, ‘I don’ know what you’re up to Hannaford . . .’
‘But I know what you’re up to, mate . . . you’re up to shit!’
‘You’re not the driver of this engine. If you do anything to interfere with the driving of it, I’ll see you’re prosecuted according to the law. You remember that, too, Jones. You’re responsible now.’
Pat Hannaford leered at Collings, extended the leer of Cahoon, who was eyeing him suspiciously, then looked over the crowd, calling, ‘So long as no one can say that I stooped to haulin’ poor black bastards like animals . . . or like the mates of these couple o’ khaki Hitlers here in Germany are doin’ with women and children and old men . . . arhhh!’ He dismissed Collings and Cahoon together with a savagely upjerked thumb, then turned to Jones, saying, ‘She’s all yours, Porky, boy. Handle her nicely.’ Then he retired to the fireman’s side.
Down below was the call of All Aboard — and then the clank of the couplings as the engine was reunited to the train. Porky turned his pop eyes on Pat: ‘You ain’t goin’ ’o give into ’em like that, are you?’
‘I haven’t, have I? I ain’t haulin’ the train, boy . . . you are.’
‘You made me.’
‘So what?’
‘I never ever thought . . .’
‘Stop thinkin’, boy, and leave it to me. That’s what I want. Time to think.’ Pat grabbed up the shovel, knocked open the firebox door, turned to get a shovelful of coal from the bunker, turned again to shoot it into the fire, his face tight with thinking. Porky looked at him helplessly.
Pat said, ‘Get your ’ead out and watch for the right-o’-way.’
Porky looked out. After a while he looked in again, shot Pat a glance, then reached for the whistle — Boo-hoot!
He looked out again, now with a hand on the regulator, gave her steam slowly — Hissss!
She was moving — slowly — Puff! — Puff! — Puff!
They were rolling. Two whistle blasts to acknowledge Chas Chase’s signal that he was aboard. Now Puff-puff-puff-puff-puff-puff-puff — they were striding towards the bridge.
Onto the bridge, with the White Snake only a foot below the track and the force of it such as to be felt right through the steel and into the structure of the train . . . at least into that rear part where Prindy and his mother rode, he kneeling on a seat and staring out at the swirling whiteness, with a blink as each red girder reared as if aiming a blow at him in passing. This was the back compart
ment of the rear coach, usually occupied by the like of these two only, they the only two of their like today, the rest whitemen, to judge by what little could be seen of most of them, so filthy were all from having been working for days in mud, and some even filthier from having rolled in it drunk after spending their earnings with Finnucane.
Over the river and past the yellow lake that had been the Racecourse, where flocks of black ibis and white ibis were rooting with long bills in the mud and keeping as aloof from each other as if being black and white ibis meant as much as being black and whitemen, the difference being that each kind were doing their own rooting and seemed equally proud of their breed. The grandstand and tin buildings looked strange mirrored in the lake. Slow over the Racecourse causeway, which spanned what was really a billabong of the river filled only by Old-man Flood and from which now such a mighty hallelujah chorus of frogs arose as to drown out the roll and squealing of the wheels on rusty steel. Turtles too. Look . . . tuttle, tuttle, tuttle! An old man Jabiru, looking like the old Pookarakka he was in the story in which he settled the dispute between the Frogmen started by old Tchamala. A cloud of black duck on the wing. White duck. Rainbow-tinted pigmy geese. And behind it all the trees running round and round like a big mob blackfellow in corroboree.
Across the swamps that were usually plains where Tchamala’s Dust Devils played. Where all that-lot white ant go in old-man flood? Where all that-lot red ant go? Reckon he can swim like all-about. Out of the swamps and into hills all bright emerald with sweet pickin’ and where silver rocks spouted fountains that joined to become molten red copper gushing under every culvert, drowning the grass. Kangaroos leaping up the hills, going for their lives because of the engine’s Boo-hoot, Boo-hoo-hoot! Then clanging through winding granite cuttings, with the sweet wet smoke blotting out the dripping walls and filling the compartment till you coughed to the engine’s laboured coughing: Huff-huff-huff-huff-huff!
Poor Fellow My Country Page 37
