Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  George had said that there was only one way to deal with them, which was to pounce with the crow-bar and roll each one over on his back and settle him with a whack on the belly. It must be done in a moment. Once he started to dig in you would never get the stick underneath him, because he would throw it out with his churning iron claws; and it was useless striking him on the mailed back. Invulnerable as he was otherwise, he was so vulnerable about the belly that a single blow would kill him. The pity was that Mungus hadn’t understood the instructions. But then, being a mungus, he would have to learn the hard way.

  George gave the signal go! The three leapt to it — and Mungus too, with so much strength despite his size, that he dragged Queeny to her feet without her crutch, hauled her reeling into the fray. Quite naturally, poor Mungus attacked his beast with his teeth — and got the shock of his life, yelped piercingly as the spines struck him in the nose, turned howling, swung round Queeny’s peg, spun her, so that she fell, big bottom down, on top of the same heap of prickles, or at any rate as much as still remained above ground, which was quite enough to make her shriek at the top of her terrific voice. They got only four, the style of the three with the crow-bars being cramped not only by the mix-up but by the mirth it caused them. For minutes they were helpless with laughter.

  The laughter went on, in bursts of giggles that worked up to shouts, throughout the couple of hours of cooking. Even Queeny joined in it after a while, and Mungus, and the butcher birds.

  Seeing that one of the bag was that old-man porkypine, there was a good enough feed with the four. Those who hadn’t so far tasted meat of the kind, the inlanders, mother and son, agreed that it was properly tweet-one, tweet-one, the best they had ever tasted. Igulgul was gone over the mountain before they went to bed. Perhaps it was the rich food that caused Queeny to dream again, still of the flying fox trying to take her. She woke screaming, ‘You black bastard . . . you try kill him me, I kill him you!’ She was upset even more than last time, so that it was a couple of hours before they were able to settle down again.

  II

  They stayed on at Mooragetaghee till Igulgul had passed his fullness and there would be less likelihood of meeting that threat ahead of them; or so said George, who was still troubled about what the winds had whispered. He and Prindy went aloft to check on that. It was still away there — southeast or southwest, it was hard to tell. ‘Can’t mek it out,’ said George. ‘Nutching belong ’o Old Man.’ He showed he was referring to Bobwirridirridi by jerking his jaw east-east-northward. ‘Deveren kind trouble.’ According to Queeny, the scoffer at blackfellow logic, the real trouble was that the hunting was good and that a bloody blackfeller was having a blackfeller holiday at the expense of the discomfort of civilised people. There might have been something in what she said, because George and Prindy were out every day hunting, and George was evidently happy to be practising the ancient skills again and teaching them to an eager pupil. The hunting was all that could be desired, so much so that much of the game was spared after being stalked for the joy of it: great kangaroos, emus, brolgas. The western side of the mountain was climatically quite different from that where they were camped. Sheltered from the harsh winds of Dry Season, it was largely grown with rainforest. Here were jungle-fowl and a camp of flying foxes. It was from this side that the Finish River had its beginnings in swampland as prolific in bird life as the billabongs of Lily Lagoons. Duck, goose, bustard, quail, yabbies, mussels, catfish, and always a porkypine or two, were hung about the camp, ready for tossing into the ground oven whenever anyone felt hungry, to be eaten with great cakes of cycad nut, which though it stank after fermentation in water so that all the bluebottles in the country came to camp with them, was so tasty as to be hard to leave alone. Along with the flies came the crows and the rest of the butcher bird population, and a couple of kites — to the perverse amusement of that old eagle, who sometimes swooped low over the crowded trees just to give the feathered bums a fright.

  The women had really little to complain of, but so little to do as to need to complain. It was useless telling them they were loafers like the birds cawing and clucking and whistling around them and had never had it better, as George frequently did through his medium for talking to them, because their answer was that they were not bloody blackfellers and wanted to be on their way to the Beatrice and the civilised things belonging to it that became more and more alluring as talked about.

  How long it might have gone on was anybody’s guess, considering the pigheadedness on both sides. Anyway, it ended quite suddenly, even shockingly, by reason of what seemed to be involved, the cause of it an old-man goanna, of the large spotted rock kind, a prindy, called Warradabil by George.

  The creature had been seen about for a couple of days, having come to join the feasting with the other bush scavengers. No one had molested it, because it was Prindy’s Dreaming Mate and could not be killed without his permission, which he wouldn’t be able to give unless the others were in real need of food. Mungus had had a go at it, but only to get a good fright when the three feet or so of its scaly white belly and throat reared over him, with claws extended and what looked like a hundred sharp teeth bared, and then to get a cuff from Prindy and lecture on the ethics of the thing. He repeated what George had said, that Warradabil might well be Prindy’s dead Daddy’s Shade, called Lamala in western lingo.

  The birds were interested in the goanna only as a rival, he being much too big and ferocious a thing for any of them to tackle even in a gang . . . that is to say the feathered scavengers. For there was that other, the eagle, Watagarra. The great bird would know everything that was going on below and be biding his time. Then there he was, that morning, hurtling down over the rocks in a dive. The scavenger birds saw him and gave the alarm. The goanna, well out in the open, started a bee-line for the rocks. But it happened that Queeny was sitting on a rock just there, and not knowing what was going on, thought the huge lizard was attacking her, and leapt up with a yell and struck out with her crutch. But only lightning or an eagle could hit a goanna really on the run. With all that wood about her, he must have thought Queeny was a tree, and needing the first cover he came to, shot up her, hung for a moment staring into her face with talons hooked in her breasts, while the eagle went over. Then with her shrieking and spitting right onto the long forked tongue he was listening with, and her pounding his armoured back with the head of the crutch, he was moved to shin up further, grabbed an ear and a loop of her knotted hair, and there he was sitting on top of her head, forepaws extended and head turning from side to side, as if delivering a lecture, horny tail round her neck for better support. The three people watching whooped with sudden laughter. The birds took it up. Mungus barked. Queeny shrieked, ‘Tek him ’way, tek him ’way . . . kill him!’ But the others were helpless.

  Now the goanna was watching his baffled foe spiralling aloft. Then Queeny raised the head of her crutch and started beating with it wildly. The goanna grabbed it, probably thinking it a limb of the odd tree, shifted onto it, and as it fell with his weight, came down in swift arc, to land on his back on a slab of rock with the crutch on his belly. He lay jerking, with the wind knocked out of him.

  Queeny raised the crutch, screeching, ‘You bloody bastard!’

  George yelled, ‘No-more!’

  Prindy gasped, ‘Don’ you, Aunty!’

  But with all her considerable strength she brought the crutch down and caught him in the side just as he was rolling over. Again he fell back winded.

  ‘Eh! Eh!’ yelled George and Prindy.

  But she pounded the stricken creature with a succession of swift sharp strokes, so that his belly opened up and guts and blood came bursting out. With a mighty contortion he gained his feet, shot for the rocks again, reached them, went clawing up, got his trailing entrails caught on a projection, heaved himself round to get clear. Again the birds gave the warning. The great head came up. He tried to run for it. But there was Watagarra with great wings out to brake his dive and the win
d whistling through them and talons outflung to grab. Swish! — and there was poor old Warradabil, with guts trailing behind him, having his first flight.

  No laughter now. Even the birds were silent. Prindy, looking up, muttered, ‘Poor-feller, my mate!’

  Then George turned on Queeny, as a brother is entitled to in extremes of bad behaviour, and roared, ‘Wha’ for you do like o’ dat, you bloody cranky rubbitch?’

  ‘Shut yo’ bloody puggin’ mout’, you black bastard!’

  ‘I shut yo’ mout’ for yo’ by’n’by, yo’ bloody stink-shit woman.’ When she raised the crutch to him he yelled, ‘Yo’ look-out . . . I give you spear!’

  ‘Yo’ try it, blackfeller!’

  ‘I don’ try it time I do . . . I do it . . . properly, yo’ bloody halfcaste rubbitch!’

  He turned to Prindy: ‘We got ’o go. Spone dat-one daid daddy belong ’o you, he mek him trouble long o’ we. Come on. Gitchim swag, lil bits tucker. I wipe him out track.’ Even spirits need tracks to find those they would haunt. There was no doubt about the fear of those two unbelievers in Blackfeller Bijnitch, the care they stepped with in clearing out. George told them to stay behind and take the consequences. They ignored him. He was compelled to erase their tracks along with his own by means of his magic brush. Anyway, Prindy, working with his own brush would have done it for them, would have had no choice in the matter, indeed, so close did they stick to him during the exodus; and surely he would have wanted to do it.

  The incident happened in mid-morning. By noon they were clear of Mooragetaghee and heading southward through open forest. Beyond, the view from the mountain top had shown a strip of plain with a line of billabongs down the middle of it, running southward to infinity. They would be following the billabongs, George said. They would camp on a billabong tonight. He spoke of the billabong country, travelled by him in youth, as a veritable Eden. ‘Full of ev’ryt’ng,’ he said, meaning that it was a land of superabundance.

  The forest thinned out to the plain, a silver sea of mirage in distance, at close hand grey cracked mud with a stubble of bleached grass regrown from the annual burning off of the rank stuff of Wet Season by hunting Koongyarrakuns. There was no water yet. Some of the first holes were damp enough to grow moss; but most were just hard-baked clay sterilised by rooting pigs. George had nothing to say about the vanished Eden, only that they must keep their eyes open for pigs, not only for food, but because the big ones were dangerous in places like this where there was no cover. Pigs, he explained, were reincarnated Chinamen. Certainly there were pigs about, judging by the stinking messed up water they first came to.

  The Sun was red in the roadmaker’s dust before they reached water they could drink, in a long thin pool with a scattering of red lilies and a few pandanus fringing reedy banks — and pigs. Mungus went racing to investigate the grunting, disappeared into reeds, came kai-kai-kai-ing out with a huge ridged-backed sow slavering on his very tail. George hit the monster with a boomerang, that bounced off as if it had struck rock. But the sow got a fright, swung away, and became a ball of dust racing and raging, evidently heading for the next billabong. The next generation of reincarnated Chinamen came out of the rushes in search of their coward mother, little fat balls of grey mud, squeaking and grunting. George took a quick look to see if they had a father, then gave the signal to attack. They got the lot, seven. Then when they made camp on the other side of the billabong, they ate three in chunks grilled on the coals of a fire made of pandanus pipes. Afterwards they dug a hole and shoved the coals into it, covered them with pandanus leaves, tossed in the other suckers, covered them with more leaves, and then with dirt, and left them to cook through the night. A purple night, and windless, and soundless save for the distant call occasionally of passing plovers. They lay armed in readiness for the return of the sow; but she never came. Only Igulgul came, sneaking red-faced and badly lopsided up the dusty eastern sky round about midnight.

  As they proceeded next day, the billabongs became larger and more like billabongs than pig-wallows, even though the pigs were there in increased proportion to what there was to hog — not direct proportion, because they could not get at all of it, which was why it was still there. Where there was water of any depth above an adult pig’s head there were blazing masses of lilies through which the ducks and geese swam and over which red-crested lotus birds trotted — it being one of the blessings of nature that the pig, as well as not being able to fly, is a poor swimmer, else Terra Australis would long ago have been overrun by pigs, might even have come to be ruled by them. Several times the party were challenged for the intrusion on their own heritage, and kept clear. At one particularly still-fertile spot they found traces of their own kind; but with the camp these others had used well back as precaution against the arrogance of the new owners.

  George said the blacks who had been there were Koonyarrakuns who had come out of the utterly wild western region, a dozen or so, men, women, and children, evidently bound for the road-builders’ camps, hungry for tobacco and tea and sugar, and a drop of grog, as even they, the freest people in the land, were wont to become. Their trading stuff was the narrow loins of their girls. George claimed to recognise the tracks of a couple of the men, and Queeny those of one of the women, Queeny adding, ‘Dat bloody lubra owe me money . . . promise gitchim what I been lend him from Chinaman. She gitchim all right, I know. But she been gamble all-lot, playin’ card. I belt him dat-one.’

  They made camp that evening on the biggest billabong they had yet come to, where there were no pigs at all, but what was worse, the remains of several, piles of guts that were still being pulled about by kites and crows, and stinking to clean blue heaven. Also there were no water-birds, except half a dozen or so lying as little islands of bright blown-up feathers each with its cloud of bluebottles, out amongst the lilies where it was dangerous for anyone but a blackfellow to swim. That the despoilers weren’t black was evident from the tracks of motor vehicles, scattered beer bottles, a couple broken, newspaper in sheets and scraps, some of the scraps lying with a couple of heaps of what looked like squirming heaps of iridescent metal, so thick were they with happy bluebottles, but were in fact what their owners would probably have called coprus — because, according to the knowledgeable Queeny, airing her knowledge in response to the little-literate Prindy’s puzzling over the odd lettering on other bits of the paper, they were Greeks. Evidently the spoliation was the result of a weekend’s recreation by road-workers. Still George had nothing to say about the change in conditions since his youthful vision of the place as an Eden. His main concern was in looking about for cigarette butts, to augment the almost depleted tobacco supply of the party.

  Next day there was further evidence that human beings of one of the oldest civilisations had taken over the region from the pigs in a way to make it seem that the pig is a cleanly animal. Still no comment from George, only a tinful of second-hand tobacco that reaked of garlic, beer, and pyorrhoea.

  That evening saw them passing out of the domain of the pigs and those who were coming to be called, officially at any rate, New Australians — to spare them the hurt of such names as Dago, Ox-cheek, Hun, Wop, Bait, Pom, commonly used by Old Australians (white) — and entering that of horned cattle and the superior Old Australians who herded them for their lordly Pommy Master, Alfred Vaisey. The last of the billabongs were fouled with cattle dung and churned up mud out of which bleached bones and horns protruded. But they were not troubled about water, because on the very edge of the plain a windmill was rising up to meet them.

  A few head of stock bearing the Vaisey brand were drinking at the iron trough, corellas like a pinking evening cloud hovering over the spinning mill as if waiting for it to stop to let them perch, as indeed some were already perched on the yawing vane. On the fence of a small wire stockyard a few kites were preening, to sit erect and watchful when the cockies gave the warning of approaching humanity. A couple of spur-wing plovers swept up shrilly calling from the earthen tank behind a netting
fence into which the pumped water shot in silvery spurts. It looked as if the party were going to pass by. But it was a stratagem. Round the other side of the tank the men dropped down by the fence, sheltered by tall weeds growing inside, while the women went on towards a couple of biggish bloodwood trees, watched by the corellas. The kites, now in the air, saw the men, but gave no signal, evidently thinking it all that the corellas deserved to be sneaked on when they had eyes to see and wings to fly if not the sense to mistrust every human being.

  George raked four cockies off the vane with a boomerang, and put another up into the mauve cloud that swept over them to protest against the treachery of it, bringing down another two. With that the remainder left, and the kites whistled to each other and dropped back to the stockyard fence to await such pickings as would be. The women came to drink from the trough and fill the billy. Then camp was made under one of the trees; and the kites moved in to join the party. Prindy sang to all of them his song Gilly Galah, while the Sun went down and the mauve and crimson of the dead birds went up in smoke to join that of the sky.

  They went on next morning into open forest. Everywhere now were signs of His Lordship’s, the absent landlord’s, stock: countless hoof-torn pads crisscrossing through the cropped clumps of rusty kangaroo grass and broken spear-grass; new pads, little rivers of dust, old ones, scoured out by Wet Season rains, miniature gullies exposing the conglomerate beneath the skin of grey talc. No more knee-deep Flinders grass growing on the little flats that wound between the hummocks of raised ground as when only the kangaroo as herbivore roamed the land. The little flats were bare white patches. Every shady spot was now a dung heap.