Cicada

by Moira McKinnon

  Wirritjil scanned the country for clues that might lead to water. Sometimes it was the grouping of bushes or trees, or the type of rock and formation of the hills and stony outcrops. Evidence of camps—the bones of animals charred by coal, leftover grinding rocks—were a sure indication of water nearby. Emily grew adept at getting the water out of the narrow deep holes. She made a scoop out of sticks and a piece of material. It dripped but held enough and after many scoops they had a billy full for the horses to dip their noses into. They chewed on the drover’s beef as they rode or found shade as Wirritjil dug around the roots of young wattle trees to find grubs or scrambled across rocks to pick shrivelled bitter tomatoes growing in small crevices.

  They were attuned to the horses’ gait and stopped at any unevenness. They collected the horseshoes that fell and worked at the others to pry them away. Wirritjil used grass and hair string and strips of wallaby skin to bind the leather the drover had given them with the horseshoes.

  Emily made the brumby look. ‘See? I am wearing your shoes.’

  Wirritjil carried the firestick, wrapped in dry then damp bark, in her hair and when she went hunting she gave it to Emily. She hunted with her spear and a sharp piece of wood she used for chasing and killing lizards, bush rats and sometimes the small hare wallabies. She dug deep into the goanna and rat holes, using horseshoes in her hands to shovel with. She made huge mounds of dirt around her but often would return empty-handed.

  They woke at moonrise, later every night, and walked until the sun was a quarter of the way across the sky. They moved from the stony country of the range to a brief plain of flat grassland land knee-high in dry millet grass and strewn with slender stringybark trees. The grassland thinned and they came to paperbarks, low and scraggly, strung across dusty clay pans, with nothing to give but the promise of exuberant life once the rain began. Wirritjil searched the ground for rocks and clay depressions that might have trapped water.

  The clay pans gave way to caked sand and sparse trees, thickets of tea tree with scale-like leaves and clusters of small white flowers, or on better ground one or two bloodwood trees with all their gifts of honey, sweet flakes of binykan and fermenting nectar in fading blossoms. Spinifex snakes rose in curiosity and whipped their tails as they scurried away. Others, thin short black snakes Wirritjil called jilingkuwim, jumped up curled like question marks and dropped down again. Emily spied a king brown snake, fat and coiled and poisonous.

  ‘Lunpurruny,’ called out Wirritjil without changing her pace. ‘’Im good tucker.’

  Everything is good tucker, Emily thought with a grimace.

  Wirritjil didn’t chase the lunpurruny.

  The snake barely stirred, just flicked his tongue.

  The three men rode north for two days, keeping in front of the cattle, searching for tracks. Trevor felt the sun bear down on him and his thoughts. He was suspicious of the drover but he couldn’t place why. He went over everything the drover had said, the expressions on his face and the tone of his words. Billy Gum rode with a rolled cigarette hanging unlit from his lips or kept behind his ear, changing it from left to right. He could not find tracks west or east of the plain but he had little time to search as Trevor and John were anxious to keep in front of the drive.

  The cattle were weak from lack of water. Some were angry, braying and biting. Others walked with their heads low. Some had fallen and lay bloating by the side of the plain. High in the sky a wedge-tailed eagle rode the current, his wings widespread and motionless; lower down a pair of black-breasted buzzards circled, flapping as they dipped down with their heavy bodies then rose again. Others were also attracted by the smell of death; the whistling kites rose with barred dun wings from the red ridges, and the black kites with their forked tails gathered in low swirling flocks above the animals that were weak and trailing. The dingoes came together and padded lightly through the hills alongside the herd, their lips moist and their mouths open.

  The drovers and the stockmen worked to keep the herd together and calm. They cut out the sick and chased the belligerent males to the back of the herd time and time again until the beasts were too tired to make trouble.

  On the afternoon of the second day the Aboriginal tracker heard a change in the sounds of the cattle. The herd was moving more quickly, walking up, bunching together. He stopped. The braying was no longer desperate and tired but instead urgent, more frequent. They were talking to one another, telling each other something; something important. It was exciting them. Some had begun to trot.

  ‘Water!’ Billy waved his hand high.

  He spun his horse and galloped to the side of the valley.

  Trevor heard Billy Gum’s shout from the middle of the plain and his horse wheeled in fear. He felt the increase in the rumble, then the acceleration of it. He rose in his stirrups, waving his hat at John, shouting for him to get to the side. Behind him the cattle were moving as one, picking up speed, a mass of brown muscle and horns, the dust rising in front. Trevor and John were in their way. Trevor looked at the herd coming and the distance to safety. He pointed straight ahead.

  ‘Ride!’ he shouted to John. John’s horse shied and John looked confused.

  The cattle were galloping now.

  ‘Ride!’ screamed Trevor again and spurred his horse in the same direction as the coming stampede. John followed. The steers brayed and snorted, caught in their own mad rush.

  A heavy steer was the first to pass Trevor, his head and neck stretched forwards, his eyes rolling, his nostrils caked with dirt, horns scraping the saddle. More raced past Trevor and it was as though they were surfing together in an enormous wave, driven by a powerful force. Horns dug into cows’ bellies and the flanks of the horses. Spit flew from the horses’ mouths. Trevor’s horse stayed steady even when the horns raked lines of blood down his flanks. There was nowhere to move, no room for fright, for there were horns and the crush of bodies on both sides.

  Jim was in the melee, holding his reins with one hand and his hat with the other. Trevor glanced back and saw the drover’s horse go down and the cattle stream around and over the bump. Ahead was the water, a long shallow pool. The herd careened straight into the pool. Trevor and John rode through. The reeds and lilies smashed as the cows, steers and bulls crashed on top of one another. The stockmen set to work pulling them back. The pool was mud.

  The cook came behind with the mules prancing, threatening to upset the cart. The supply boy was last, bringing the spare horses. He led a horse with the drover limp across the saddle.

  John took his hat off and wiped his brow. ‘Bloody stupid.’

  Trevor rode over to the drover. One leg looked misshapen and there was blood on his shirt but he was alive. He winced and swivelled his shoulders so he could see Trevor. His face was thick with dirt and blood. Trevor held his horse quiet. ‘You right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Gonna make it?’

  ‘Up to Him.’ He gave a quiet laugh shortened by the pain it caused.

  ‘You saw the women, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’ The drover shifted himself a little. ‘Think I busted something.’

  Trevor waited.

  The drover smiled at him. ‘Them women, they’re heading back to Cicada there. Gave ’em a rifle each.’ He wheezed and grimaced. ‘They gonna shoot the bastard that did ’em murders. Shoot ’im dead.’ Jim laughed. The dirt fell in powdery clumps as his eyes creased and his lips stretched in a cracked and bloodied grin.

  Trevor turned his horse away and trotted back to John.

  ‘They ain’t here. They ain’t going this way.’

  Trevor whistled to the black tracker and the three turned back the way they had come, south.

  Trevor’s face was grim and his mouth tight. They trailed along the edges of the plain searching for clues. At night, they barely spoke as they sat at the fire. John smoked cigarettes and talked to his dog, his voice rising until his hand snaked out and cuffed the dog across the ears. The dog whimpered and rolled on his back an
d John shoved it with his foot. The dog righted itself, crawled snuffling back to John, and the sequence began again.

  Billy Gum sat back in the edge of the shadows chewing on damper and slipping bush tomatoes into his mouth.

  They reached the camp where they had first met the stockmen. Trevor walked through the sand of the creek. There was a lot of disturbance. Horses and men had been down here. He came to the bend, the sand dipped down where the water had been deepest. A bunch of sulphur-crested cockatoos perched on the branches of a river gum, yellow feathers rising on their heads as he approached, but they didn’t screech.

  ‘Used to people comin’ and goin’?’

  They stared back at him. He crouched down at a digging and touched the sides of a hole that had been lined with small pebbles and grass. There was a good six inches of clean water at the base of the soak. Trevor stood and walked around. He looked at the shapes in the sand. It was like reading clouds. He whistled for Billy Gum.

  Billy Gum ran up the creek. He looked sheepish.

  Trevor pointed to the soak.

  ‘Blackfella soak?’

  Billy Gum nodded.

  ‘Wirritjil’s soak, eh?’

  Billy Gum looked away. The sun glared on the sand and stones of the wide river bed.

  ‘You saw it before, didn’t yer? Why didn’t yer tell us?’

  Billy Gum was quiet.

  Trevor sucked his lips into a thin line. ‘They might die out here.’

  He walked around the soak and squatted, picked up a piece of sand and clay mix and rubbed it between his fingers. He stood up. ‘Billy, where did they walk out?’

  Billy Gum started to search listlessly, moving a branch here and there.

  Trevor grabbed him by his shirt. ‘Do your job, Billy—sure as hell they gonna be found by someone. Someone else might hurt ’em big.’

  Billy straightened up. Without hesitation he said, ‘Thatta way,’ pointing south through the scrub.

  Trevor squatted and drew in the sand. He drew a straight line that was the cattle moving forwards and the arc they knew the women took. The camp. The walk to the plain.

  Trevor stood up. ‘They circled back. They were already south of us before we caught up with the drive.’

  Billy Gum looked away.

  Trevor stood up and took a fistful of Billy Gum’s hair. ‘They watched us pass, Billy. They were here days ago.’

  Billy said nothing. Trevor gripped his arm and threw him to the ground. The cockatoos screamed, swirling above the two men, changing colour from white to yellow as they turned.

  Trevor pulled Billy up by the string of his pants. He saw the tracker’s eyes look away. He was ready to run.

  ‘What is your Aboriginal name? Real name?’

  ‘Nunnawarra.’ He said it low and soft.

  ‘Nunnawarra. Okay, I call you Nunnawarra.’

  Nunnawarra nodded but did not look at Trevor.

  ‘They tricked us, Nunnawarra. You know that.’

  Trevor let the tracker go. ‘Plenty tea, sugar. Do your job. Find the women.’

  In the morning they moved south along the plain. Trevor saw a dip in the range. He looked to the tracker.

  Nunnawarra nodded. They headed towards the dip. It was a stony gorge, a passage from one plain to another. Nunnawarra jumped down and walked on.

  He didn’t say anything, just kept looking at the ground.

  5

  Reckoning

  William rode on his Lewis motorbike, cursing the ruts and rocks and the slop of the petrol from the tin can he carried on the back. He pushed through the sand of a creek bed. He needed an Aboriginal stock worker or any Aboriginal man who knew the land to go out with the station hands, to take the cattle to water or bring them in. It would be at least six weeks before decent rains.

  There was no-one at the camp, just a black butcherbird with frayed feathers that flittered across his face and made him stumble. Even the outlying camps were empty. The horse yards were empty except for the one that held the wild grey stallion. The stallion whinnied at him with teeth bared and William saw that the trough was dry. The windmill on the rise of the hill was whirling freely, unanchored, back and forth in any slight breeze.

  He puttered back to the homestead. The four remaining workers stood on the veranda, the spurs on their boots catching the spark of the sun. William laid his bike on the patchy brown lawn. He walked to the veranda, his boots scrunching on the stiff spikes of the dying grass and on the backs of black beetles that seemed to have multiplied since he had left that morning.

  As he approached, his anger rose at the stockmen standing there uninvited, in his home.

  ‘Boss.’ One stamped his foot and the others shuffled restlessly. They didn’t meet his eyes, just looked above his head or at his chest. A young one stood apart, gazing out to the country, his back to William, leaning with his weight on one leg, bent at the knee, as if he was about to jump.

  The one closest spoke; his face had a slight smile meant to be reassuring but he was sweating and his hands were pushed hard against his hips. ‘We can head out Baldman Spring way, might be water, take the dogs, catch us a blackfella round that part. He show us water while we herd ’em cows, bring ’em to it.’

  William looked at them, trying to fathom the truth. There were seven horses in the home paddock. Stacked along the fence were the saddles and the saddlebags. He gave a small dry laugh. They were going to go. They were spitting in his face while standing on his veranda. He had no choice.

  ‘Need you here.’ He nodded to the young one. ‘There’s work. The windmill at the horse yards first. Rest of you go, find the cattle, get the animals to water.’

  William walked the motorbike back into the shed. He polished the metal until it shone. He began to cough, heaved and spat out phlegm that was yellow and streaked with blood. He sat for a moment breathing heavily.

  In the home paddock the men had already saddled up, throwing provisions in sacks haphazardly. William heard the hoofs of their hasty gallop and saw their forms briefly in a haze of dust, four men and seven horses. They had taken the spares. There were no horses left now except for the wild stallion.

  William gathered himself, took a tool kit and set the motorbike towards the horse yards. The crows cackled from the trees. Two or three flew behind him, their black shiny wings stretched. William glanced back and sped up. At the horse yards, he kicked the stand from the wheel and stood the Lewis straight. The stallion snorted at him. His coat was filthy from thrashing in the confines of the yard and his lips were scratched and bleeding from scraping the base of the stone trough.

  William reached in and lifted the float. He shook it. The stallion stopped a few yards away, his ears flat back, but his eyes were sunken and dull and his feet hardly moved. William dropped the float and stood back from the fence. He followed the pipe up the incline to the tank and banged on the corrugated iron. It was hollow.

  The windmill above turned silently. William climbed the wooden tripod to the crankshaft just below the metal blades. He eased the heavy casing to an angle and could see that the chain that drove the piston to pull the water from the earth was broken and twisted on itself. He braced himself on the wooden trusses and wrenched off a faulty link. He took the pins out of one link and joined it to another. He struggled to get the shortened chain back on the cog, feeling his way up under the casing. With an almighty heave he got it and the piston started with a force that shook the tripod. The casing toppled to the ground. William scrambled to keep his balance then jumped. He sat in the shade of the windmill, drenched in sweat, catching his breath, listening to the clanking sound of pistons. He lay back and tried to separate the poem of the breeze in the trees from that pushing at the windmill.

  He closed his eyes and thought of how to describe the wind by itself and he spoke out loud of the sound of leaves rustling, the clouds he saw skating across the sky, the coolness of air on his skin. He wondered whether the wind could exist on its own, then whether anything could exist by i
tself.

  ‘If I no longer am, it will no longer be.’

  He laughed and sat for a while, listening. He heard the water dribble into the tank and after a few minutes into the trough. He walked back and watched the stallion lick the stone base of the trough and the end of the pipe. He stood close and the stallion eyed him as he sucked at the water. William reached through the poles of the fence, his fingers stretched and his palm open.

  ‘Let me touch you. I don’t want to be scared of you.’

  The horse was startled but he had to drink. William touched the horse’s nose, felt his fur, his warmth, his blood.

  ‘Hey, my stallion, my friend,’ said William.

  A sound of metal scraping against metal came from the windmill. The chain swung free, the blades turned fast, back and forth, against the blue of the sky. The dribble going into the trough slowed then stopped.

  The stallion whinnied and pulled away.

  William walked to the gate and twisted the wire catch free and pushed it open. The stallion lowered his head, staring as though the openness was a mirage. William stood back. The stallion trotted through the gate then, with a sudden spring, spun in the dust and galloped away.

  ‘Everything and nothing,’ said William.

  He rode his motorbike back to the homestead. He resisted the desire to turn into the flat country and burn the bike as fast as it could go. He dragged his foot along the dirt just to see the dust rise. He looked down to the camp. A skinny old gin came out of one of the humpies and sat looking up to the homestead like it had riches that she wanted. She held one elbow high and with her fingers in her mouth warbled and squeaked as if she were a bird with a broken wing.

  He looked away and continued past the workers’ quarters. The doors were open and some swung against the doorframe and back although there was no breeze. White chop bones and old containers littered the base of the steps.

  There was no-one here now, just him and the hungry gin.