I Got His Blood on Me: Frontier Tales

by Lawrence Patchett

  ‘How far is it, Callaghan?’ said Dick.

  ‘Just out here. Just a little something. I told the others you’d be just the right man.’

  By the time Dick was outside, Callaghan was already several yards ahead, tramping in his bare feet over a path that skirted his claim. Dick stumped along behind, the water moving noisily out to his right. The path did not seem well travelled. It was half in the bush and half out of it, and Dick had to push branches aside to make his way. At length he caught up to Callaghan again; he had stopped in front of a small creek that dribbled in a steep but narrow gully, the crude bridge across it broken.

  ‘Here’s your problem,’ said Callaghan.

  ‘It’s my problem is it, Callaghan?’

  ‘Oh, it is,’ said the old man, softly. ‘It is.’

  Dick glared at him. The walk had worn off much of his patience with Callaghan. The bridge was a vast tree trunk, evidently supposed to rest on a few broken sticks that were laid in mud at either side of the creek.

  Callaghan eyed him. ‘I can’t get up to the claims upstream if this is broken, you see, Seddon.’

  ‘Why do you need to get up there?’ said Dick.

  ‘Reasons,’ said Callaghan. ‘Plus the men upstream can’t get down here either—can’t get to your store.’

  ‘But they can just walk in the riverbed,’ said Dick, pointing. ‘They always have.’

  ‘Not when the river’s in flood,’ said Callaghan.

  ‘But it won’t work when it’s in flood either,’ said Dick. ‘A proper flood will just sweep this away.’

  ‘It’s our bridge,’ said Callaghan. ‘We need it to work.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Callaghan. It’s not even knee-deep. Just walk through it, man.’

  ‘I’m an old man, Seddon. I can’t be walking through water with things in my arms. And there’s others use this track too, you know.’ His look turned conspiratorial. ‘Women, Seddon.’

  ‘No woman comes this way,’ said Dick.

  ‘Oh, they do,’ said Callaghan. ‘The kind of woman who doesn’t like to be seen in broad daylight—in the riverbed—if you follow me. They have to get to the men upstream.’

  ‘Give over, Callaghan,’ said Dick. ‘That’s a bloody tree. It’s a two-man lift, that tree.’

  ‘Three-man, I’d say,’ said Callaghan. ‘I told the others you’d be just the man.’

  Dick looked away. He was irritated. Callaghan was an irritating old man, and the longer Dick stood in front of the length of broken tree in the creek the more daunting it seemed. Its girth was momentous. He might not be able to lift it at all. At the same time, an old sense of foreboding was working over him. There was such inevitability about Callaghan, about his wheedling and his spindle-shanked refusal to pay his accounts, his doomed and ugly bridge that nobody used.

  ‘All right, Callaghan,’ he said. ‘Get over there and prepare them sticks. I’m not lifting it up just for you to let it fall down again.’

  Callaghan shambled through the creek to the other side, his dirt-rimed ankles showing whitely in the water. Slowly he prepared the broken structure on the opposite bank. To Dick it looked unlikely to hold anything.

  Callaghan seemed satisfied with it, though. ‘Righty-ho, Seddon,’ he said. ‘Lay hold.’

  Dick stepped down into the water, grunting as the creek stole coldly into his boots and rolled-up trousers. He positioned himself so the trunk was on his right hand side, and bent to cradle it in his arms. His plan was to hoist it to waist height, then jerk it to his right shoulder, but at the first strain a gasp escaped him. Its weight was stunning. He felt sure it would fall from his arms.

  ‘Come on, old boy,’ whispered Callaghan. ‘Heave-ho. There’s others watching.’

  ‘What?’ said Dick. Bent to the side and straining, he couldn’t see the old man above him. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘There’s always someone watching, Seddon.’

  ‘What? Go to blazes, Callaghan.’

  Again he heaved at the tree. He had it at waist height; he adjusted his arms and jerked it to his chest. For a moment he panted with it there, his legs quavering under the weight, then he rolled it up onto his shoulder and felt it crush hugely on his collarbone, mashing his ear against his skull.

  ‘Where?’ he grunted.

  ‘Take it right,’ said Callaghan. ‘More right.’

  Inching downstream, Dick felt his way over slime-covered river stones. The trunk crushed and ripped his ear.

  ‘Where?’ he said again.

  ‘More right,’ said Callaghan. ‘Bring it down there.’

  Slowly he brought the trunk down—it crunched on the laid branches, rolled a short way, and stopped. As he straightened, Dick’s shoulder and back seemed to groan. A mangling sensation came from his ear. ‘Help me up, Callaghan.’

  The old man reached and Dick hauled on his wiry arm. Up on the bank he brushed debris from his trousers, wet to the knee from his stumbling in the stream.

  Callaghan watched him reorganise his clothing. He seemed to take satisfaction from the process. ‘Here, your ear’s bleeding,’ he said. ‘Here, Seddon, let me get that.’ He brought a rag from his belt and was reaching it towards Dick’s ear.

  ‘Clear out, Callaghan. Get your hands away.’

  Dick went down the bank again and dipped his own handkerchief in the stream, dabbing it against his ear and rinsing it. ‘Has it stopped bleeding?’ he said.

  ‘You’ll have to hold it there, I think,’ said Callaghan.

  While Dick stood in the stream he did not look at Callaghan but down towards the main river, obscured here by a bend of trees and a drop-down.

  For some time there was nothing but the noise of the stream.

  ‘Yes, I saw you win that foot-race last week,’ said Callaghan. ‘You’re still a master at that, eh? Still a master at winning the village fair.’

  Dick squeezed the wet fabric against his ear and said nothing.

  ‘Yes, I thought O’Brien would catch you this time,’ said Callaghan. ‘He’s the faster man, all around. Oh yes, he’s fast.’

  ‘What’s your point, Callaghan?’

  ‘No point, Seddon. Nothing.’

  ‘Quit bailing me up then, you old sod,’ said Dick. ‘How old are you anyway, Callaghan?’

  ‘How would I know?’ said Callaghan. ‘That’s a nosy question, Seddon.’

  Dick fought an impulse to climb up and cuff the old man, to send him spinning. ‘Don’t make me mad, Callaghan. You can’t afford to.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Callaghan.

  ‘I see what?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing.’

  ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve, Callaghan,’ said Dick. ‘I’ve fixed your bridge now. Tell the others it was me. Tell them to pay up, too, for Christ’s sake. Take me back now.’

  A humming noise came from the old man as he led the way back down the path with Dick following along behind, his ear a ripped site of discomfort, his shoulder insulted and bruised. As he walked he tried not to notice Callaghan’s sticking-out hip bones, the way his trousers swam round his bare ankles. He tried not to picture Callaghan making his way back up the path in the morning, touting restored junk and beaten tin around the tents of other men and their claims. He tried not to see him nosing rheumatically through their crude buildings, fossicking for evidence that someone, if only a passing prostitute, had visited, that something other than gold fever and failure had left its fragrance there.

  The track broke onto the old man’s claim.

  ‘Don’t you want to come in?’ said Callaghan. ‘We’ve got that brew.’

  ‘I drank mine,’ said Dick. ‘Almost scalded me.’

  ‘We’ll have another one,’ said Callaghan.

  ‘I’ve got my beer in the river,’ said Dick. ‘Buy a beer off me, Callaghan.’

  Callaghan was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Thank you for fixing our bridge, Seddon. The men upstream—you’ll hear it from them too. They’ll say that too.’ He shifted his b
alance on his thin legs and looked elsewhere.

  Trying not to look at him against the backdrop of his lean-to, Dick braced against the deep horrid complication of Callaghan. ‘Get me my money, Callaghan,’ he said.

  ‘Aye,’ said Callaghan. ‘Your money, Seddon.’ Again he nodded as if the problem was an ancient one.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Callaghan,’ said Dick. ‘Get a new mug, man. Don’t drink from your billy. Don’t do that, man.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You drank from your billy before,’ said Dick. He gestured roughly at the shack.

  ‘Oh, that,’ said Callaghan. ‘Needs must, Seddon. I’ve only got one mug. It’s the visitor that gets the mug, when they come. The billy’s enough for an old man.’

  Dick grunted and gave up. He went to find his beer in the river. The barrel was cold—hoisting it to his back and looping the ropes over he felt the shock of it against his back, the water soaking through his clothes. He tightened the ropes, felt that great weight of beer settle on him. His ear protested its wound. He glanced one more time at Callaghan—the old man signalled him lazily with his hand—and Dick grunted again. Bloody Callaghan. Then he set off with the barrel on his back, stumping downstream towards the main claims.

  A HESITANT MAN

  I had long been a hesitant man, but now the ship lurched and threw me towards the dark water and the time for uncertainty, it seemed, was gone. I was onboard the Penguin and she had struck rocks in the night and was going down. In fear and obedience I’d followed orders to the lifeboats immediately; I had taken my seat and now clutched the wet sleeve of the man next to me. I was no swimmer or boatman and was extremely reluctant to enter the sea, but I swallowed against my fear and prepared to descend.

  Boarding the Penguin that morning, I’d been in pursuit of a new and bolder future in Wellington. That winter I’d surprised my landlady and employer by applying for a transfer to the northern office of my firm—yet I was neither brave nor ambitious, and when I looked into my coming life in Wellington I saw a secure if unchallenging clerkship in an office with good lighting and, at the close of the day, my own unfettered figure walking through dusk to a modest home. With this careful hope I boarded the steamer at Nelson, nerves cramping my stomach as we traversed the middle-space between my old home in the south and my new one.

  Sitting alone below deck I was not one of those who understood when the ship struck rocks and tore open some time after dark, but when the crew came through shouting there was no mistaking their order to abandon ship; when I followed those instructions to the deck it was straight into a cold clutch of dread and wind spraying over. That ship in that storm was like nothing I’d known—waves slamming the side, and the darkness noisy with wind and the crew shouting, women screaming. I made my own way as calmly as I could, as what little I knew of emergency told me the most helpful action at such a time was obedience to orders.

  In this way I found myself seated in a lifeboat with strange men around me.

  Our craft was among the first ready, but those with women and children were being given priority. Thus a boat crammed with ladies of all ages and squalling children swung out in the night’s buffeting wind and spray. As I watched it was lowered and lowered and finally touched water and flipped over immediately; hit by a broadsiding wave, the boat spilling into the noisy dark all its women and children.

  At this, a stranger at my side groaned and fought free and vaulted to the ship’s railing and leapt over. For a moment his shape was silhouetted against the dark, then he was gone.

  I was dragged to my feet, partly by the man’s momentum and partly in alarm. Standing halfway up, I stared after the patch of night into which this husband or father had jumped so unthinkingly.

  ‘No, sir,’ said a voice. ‘No more. Sit down.’

  I stared—it was the crewman in charge of our lifeboat.

  ‘Sit down, sir,’ he said. ‘The captain will find him. He’ll haul him out—and the others. You stay in the boat, sir. You can’t help them.’

  I had no urge to disobey orders, but in shock I remained paralysed, halfway erect and halfway crouching. Beyond the railing I could hear the women’s cries coming up through the seethe and crash of the sea.

  ‘Sit down, sir,’ said the man. ‘You’re endangering everyone.’

  I sat down.

  Then our boat was lowering. It was a steep drop from the height of the deck, and the suspenseful vertigo of those hanging moments was dreadful—I felt a hollow in my stomach as we went down, down into darkness and then we were on the water as it splashed and heaved. For a time our boat rode the throwing guidance of the swell while a crewman circled his oars, sometimes in water and sometimes in air, the waves falling away beneath the boat as he rowed. I had time to see ahead of me a dark mass of shore before the boat swivelled up a further wave and was flipped over. Then boots and knees were clipping my head as men were thrown across me and then I was in the plunging water. I had already been wet from the storm but now I was submerged and the water was a shocking cold suck.

  I fought the water as it pulled me in many directions, thrashing with my arms while my feet ran under me—down, down I was flailing and then I was thrown up and clear of the water and gasped for air and had seawater clapped into my mouth by a wave. Several times this happened—the sea had such power and I had none against it—and rapidly I was becoming exhausted. I fought the sucking water and was thrown up again and had my mouth filled with water, then I bumped against a piece of timber and hung onto it, pulling my head up to breathe.

  So cold that my breathing came unsteadily, I clung to my board. Once I heard a boy calling out a raw and unintelligible noise but in the heaving surface I couldn’t see him and tried to shout a reply but saw nothing and soon couldn’t hear him either—indeed I believe at this stage I was carried farther from the wreck, as from this point I heard only one or two of my co-passengers.

  Finally I was coming nearer to the shore; I felt the inexorable shoreward shoving of the tide until I was separated from the timber and dumped by a wave. Pinned to the floor of the sea my face was mashed against grit while the wave sucked and pawed at me from above—then I was lifted and thrown forward and felt my knees strike firm ground beneath me.

  I climbed the rocks and sand, sodden and falling continually, but desperate to get ashore. Momentarily I thought I heard someone calling from the waves another pitiful sound of drowning, but as I sloshed up the shore I acted purely on my own desire to pull myself from the undertow. Only a man who has drowned to within a half-breath can know this urgent greed to be free of the waves, no matter who is behind him, calling out for help.

  At last I was on land, and collapsed. In the morning I woke to find two horsemen looming over me, dark and high and improbable. Lifted to a horse I was rescued. After such a night it was strange to feel the solid horse under me, and as I was carried away I searched the water for a sign of the calling passenger I’d fancied I’d heard the night before—but I could see no one, no boy or older victim who might have called out and whom I might, if circumstances were different, have saved from the sea.

  The two shepherds brought me to a farm station. Here I recovered in a supply of borrowed clothes and was fed hot tea and boiled mutton. Here I also learned that the wreck had claimed many lives. We were at Terawhiti, somewhere in the hilly outreaches of Wellington, and the station was busy with ministering women, station men and horses and policemen, as well as survivors who huddled in blankets and borrowed clothes and wore a look of haunted fatigue.

  As I recovered on that day I walked in the yard and found a number of the unlucky deceased of the Penguin arrayed in the woolshed, blankets pulled over their faces. Continually men from the station forayed out on horses to the coast and returned with more of those sodden victims. In the time I’d sat sipping tea in the house and sleeping, it seemed, the lines of bodies had grown considerably.

  Some survivors had walked or ridden out already in a bid to reach Wellington and I was advised
to join them, but as my strength returned I became determined instead to join the rescuers. I had a dread fear of confronting that ruining surf again, but in the grip of some need I wanted to be there, to act and to do, to get to the shore and assist in the rescue. As this idea grew I pursued it with a dogged belligerence that was new to me; asking everyone, I was directed to a constable who was getting up a further recovery crew. This man was burly, his grey hair springing from everywhere.

  ‘Can you stand?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve recovered considerably since this morning,’ I said. ‘I promise to work as diligently as I can.’

  His look grew even more doubtful. My accent or choice of words seemed to have reduced my chances.

  At last he said, ‘Well, we’ll use your hands if you can lift.’ Gruffly then he turned away, leaving me to organise my transport and provisions. He had, I gathered, been already to the site of the wreck and had no illusions about what awaited us there.

  Although such resources were fully stretched I was provided with an aged mare who seemed accustomed to walking in a house paddock at the station and not far beyond. The station men supplied me with this ‘Betty’ in the expectation, I believe, that I would not last long on the ride and could be trusted, on the experienced creature, to return to the station safely. Indeed I was no horseman and was considerably fatigued but once in the saddle I began to feel stronger and, sucking on a broken mutton bone I’d brought in a piece of newspaper, sat firmly on old Betty as she nosed along behind the stronger horses.

  On this trip down the valley to the coast, the station men did not speak frequently. They seemed half-exhausted from the earlier rescue work, and made terse, moreover, by foreknowledge of the task that awaited them. Therefore I kept my own counsel as I rode.

  When we emerged to the coast it was to a sad wreckage scattered on the sand and in pools—lengths of ship timber, lifebelts, and clothes suggesting the violence of the seas that had ripped me and others from the Penguin. Picking over those relics and rocks in the search for survivors, the station men said such detritus was continually coming ashore, fresh items greeting them every time they returned. It was horrid for me to be in the sound of the surf again, its kelpy smell constricting my throat strangely. Against my nausea I gripped the down-hanging reins of the horse and remounted to ride to the bays further round, drawing strength from Betty’s dull age under me, the immutable pointing of her old nose at the ground.