The Oldest Song in the World

by Sue Woolfe

  Craig and Bruce both echoed ‘Hunt them away?’ Beth did the same, her voice higher, like a soprano soaring above the bass voices, ‘Hunt them away?’

  Only Dudley smiled.

  There was a plop. The toy dog, forgotten by Bruce, after clawing at his trousers desperately, nails screeching, had slid to the floor. It landed in a whimpering scramble of back legs and front paws and tail, as it had the day before, except that even on the floor, its eyes were suddenly wide with life, almost whirring in their sockets, as if the mention of hunting stirred some long-forgotten memory.

  ‘What do you mean, hunt?’ demanded Bruce.

  The toy dog barked, not a yelp but a hunting bark as if it was agreeing. The toddler yelled ‘Hunt!’, his baby sister glanced at him and tried to mimic him, but could only produce a gurgle. Then they both began howling. Sabah, seeing that Craig was distracted, pulled away from him, yanked at the stroller’s handles and wheeled it in a U-turn but stopped as its wheels tangled in Beth’s bag on the floor.

  Craig sprang forward, eager to help, untangled the bag and hurled it away, where it slithered against the wall. Sabah wheeled her way out, and he hurried after her, forgetting to farewell us. Seconds later, he popped his head back through the door.

  ‘What you’re all saying is that we’ve done everything that can be done. Yes?’

  He slammed the door behind him, shutting us in together.

  ‘Can’t you imagine how lonely it is for that girl?’ Bruce roared at me. ‘Craig does his best, but we’ve all got to help, or she’ll go right back to her mother.’

  I smelled the barbecue outside the clinic before I saw it. The sweet-faced woman from the council was turning over chops. As we exchanged smiles, there was uproar behind her. I pushed open the clinic door.

  The waiting room was crowded with a hubbub of black people sitting cross-legged on the floor. I sat down next to Libby.

  ‘Government woman,’ she whispered.

  Sister and Gillian were on chairs at the far side. At the door of the doctor’s room were two white men in business suits and a woman, all sitting on chairs. The woman was answering a question someone had put to her.

  ‘You people have to compensate the government for the destruction of property,’ she said. A fair-haired white man I hadn’t seen before listened to her, turned and spoke to the people in Djemiranga. He seemed to know them well because he was naming them in a comforting way. With a jolt I wondered if he was Collins, at last, brought back by the crisis. Beside him towered Skeleton in his cowboy shirt and jeans, now so thin that he seemed to hover, almost already a desert spirit. Then my heart thumped again to see Adrian slumped against the wall, folded in upon himself, head bowed so that his grey hair flared in the light, eyes downcast. I’d never seen him so still. It was almost as if he had given his energy to Skeleton. I knew it immediately: he was waiting to be hunted away.

  The older of the businessmen cleared his throat. He was a tall man of about sixty, with a gnarled, beaten face.

  ‘We haven’t got all day,’ he interrupted, just as Dora asked Collins a question in Djemiranga, merely a meaningless noise to the man, no doubt, so he ignored her. He leaned towards Collins, who glanced between him and Dora. Collins’ mouth was open, ready to speak to her, ready to attend also to the white man.

  ‘It’s a long drive back,’ the man said. ‘We’d like to be home before midnight. Can we wrap this up?’

  Collins said a word to Dora and then turned to the man.

  ‘The people need to understand clearly what’s been said,’ Collins said to him. ‘I’ll translate it as fast as possible.’

  ‘You’re wasting our time. We’ve already stated our proposition as simply as it can be put,’ the white man said, so I knew he hadn’t brought Collins out to translate their proposals. As Adrian had explained, there was no cognisance of or sympathy for the local lack of English.

  ‘This clinic manager before us is entirely unsatisfactory. The people must either pay for the rebuilding of the house, or they must agree to sack him,’ the white man said.

  ‘How much would they need to find?’ Collins asked him.

  ‘You know the costs around here. About $500,000.’

  Collins turned back to the people, and explained in Djemiranga what had been said. It seemed to take a long time, to the businessmen’s exasperation, the way they glanced at each other and eased their ties. I could only make out the odd word, but I heard the English clearly again and again in single digits, ‘$500,000.’

  People interceded with Collins, and he turned back to the white men.

  ‘These are poor people. They scarcely have money to feed their families. They don’t have banks. They don’t have mortgages. They can’t possibly get hold of $500,000.’

  The white man had a ready answer.

  ‘We’ve made enquiries. Their land could be mortgaged for precisely that sum and, after due process of law, turned into a small pastoral lease,’ he said. ‘Or – I’ve brought with me –’ he touched the shoulder of the man next to him, a sweating man who nodded at the crowd and stretched his lips in what he hoped was a friendly grin, ‘a representative of a mining company that could well be very interested.’

  The man nodded.

  ‘We’d be very interested to help out,’ he said in English. ‘We’ve renewed our interest in mining this area.’

  Collins turned back to the people and was part way through the translation, which caused an uproar, when Skeleton stepped forward. The uproar faded into silence, the silence deepened. The white men ceased their huffing.

  Skeleton waited, majestic, commanding utter silence. He drew himself up to his full height. Even the air gave him its attention.

  He half-turned to the white men, and half to the crowd. He had made a decision, and he wanted everyone to hear it. He spoke slowly and clearly, remembering, word by word, his English from his stockman youth.

  ‘Adrian is a good man. A good friend to Aboriginal people. Done my people a lot of good.’

  He took a deep breath, and looked back at Adrian, who seemed to slide further towards the floor. He knew even Skeleton couldn’t save him, no one could save him now.

  ‘A good, good man.’

  Skeleton let the words linger, wrap around us all, around the government woman, the white men in their suits and loosened ties, around his people. He spoke with such gravity it made us all consider goodness, its nature, its worth, and most of all, its rarity.

  ‘Very good. The best.’

  Another silence.

  ‘But –’ He paused. ‘Sadly, we give him back to you.’

  There was a murmur from the crowd. But he hadn’t finished. He stamped, a bare-footed, two-footed stamp that a white person would never do, almost as if he was about to begin a traditional ceremonial dance on a dark night. His long arms, his bare black feet with their pink soles, all of him made me think of the earth beneath the white man’s floorboards, of the country of his ancestors, where his ancestral elders walked tens of thousands of years ago in the Dreaming, creating on their walk its rocks, its boulders, its mountains, its plains, its rivers.

  ‘We give him back. Just –’ He paused again, as any proud leader would do, and the air was cowed, electric with listening. ‘Just give us the dirt.’

  ‘The dirt?’ the businessman called.

  Skeleton had spoken. He didn’t repeat himself.

  There was utter silence, but I couldn’t bear to stay. The door creaked like a scream as I left. I walked past the barbecue and over to our house where the donkey was trying to figure out how to get inside the gate. I gently pushed the animal out of the way, went inside, then stood at the gate and fed it the tufts of the soft grass it liked. Time passed; I didn’t know how long we stood there, as I pulled at long grasses and fed a quietly munching donkey. After a while, Daniel and the blond translator were beside me.

  ‘Adrian’s got to go by nightfall,’ Daniel told me.

  ‘How did the people take it?’ I asked him.
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br />   ‘They’re grieving,’ he said. ‘Mandy in particular. She thinks that the bad spirits are punishing the community for her rebellion.’

  ‘What rebellion?’

  ‘Wanting a medicine plant forest, instead of going to gather it where it grows naturally,’ said the translator. ‘That’s why I wasn’t able to scotch the rumour.’

  ‘What rumour?’ I asked, my heart clamouring.

  ‘People here were convinced those men were from the government, and they’d take away their land.’

  ‘They weren’t from the government?’ I asked.

  ‘Only the woman, a minor ex-bureaucrat who was sacked long ago. No, that was a little pantomime cooked up between the insurers and the mining company and someone’s girlfriend. It was totally illegal. But I just couldn’t get that through. I came too late.’

  His fair hair rushed out almost upright from his scalp, as if it couldn’t bear the turmoil in his mind.

  ‘I couldn’t convince the mob that they wouldn’t be punished for the fire,’ he added. ‘That’s why Skeleton exchanged Adrian for the land. I’m Collins, by the way. I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get back. I had a family crisis but I knew I could leave Adrian to help you. I heard about what was happening and I raced out here to try to stop the disaster.’

  We turned away from each other and watched the people stream down the road. They were walking slowly, not talking, almost the funeral march I’d seen when Skeleton fell sick.

  ‘Does Adrian know?’ I asked.

  ‘I can’t get through to him, either. The sacking’s illegitimate, he doesn’t have to leave. How did the recording go?’ Collins thought to ask me.

  ‘I’ve been getting, let’s say, oriented,’ I said. ‘First.’ I allowed myself to add: ‘Adrian thought that was wise.’ It was almost difficult to say his name, as if it’d become sacred.

  Collins nodded. He had brown eyes that squinted in the desert sun, almost as bright as his hair, so my eyes moved distractedly between them, his brown eyes and his upright hair. But I settled on his eyes because they had kindly crinkles at their corners.

  ‘I knew about the rumour,’ I confessed. ‘I tried to tell Adrian, but he wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Collins, ‘but the old lady – don’t put it off any longer,’ he warned. ‘She’s near death, I’m told.’

  ‘I’ll take you in tomorrow,’ said Daniel quickly, seeing my face.

  ‘She’s not in Alice Springs any more. Her family has taken Tillie home to die,’ Collins told us both.

  In the dirt road, I panicked. I tried to calm myself, but I couldn’t let E.E. Albert down, I was her fieldworker. I must get there, I must get there today.

  ‘The people like it that you didn’t rush in, grab what you came for and rush away. Adrian advised you well,’ Collins was saying. ‘Getting to know them.’

  Daniel and I avoided each other’s eyes.

  I walked into the kitchen. A troopie key dangled, waiting for me to take it and go to the outstation and record the dying old lady. But it was forbidden to take the troopie. Besides, Adrian’s imperatives were more important than mine. He’d feel he had to leave by nightfall. He must go in the troopie. There were two troopies, it was true, but if I took one, he’d have to take the other, then what if there was an accident?

  I wandered down the hall, trembling with indecision. Adrian was pulling things out of the high cupboard in my room. An avalanche had fallen around him, wads of paper, documents, old newspapers, press releases for new medical equipment that the clinic could buy.

  ‘Sorry for the mess,’ he said. ‘But you won’t need this room any more.’

  I saw, amongst the papers, Medicare claim forms.

  ‘I don’t know when I’ll be back,’ Adrian was saying. ‘I’ll talk it over with you on the way in to Alice. Throw your things in your bag. We’re leaving tonight.’

  Daniel came to the door.

  ‘Adrian – you don’t have to go.’

  Adrian kept rummaging on the floor, amongst the mess, ignoring him.

  ‘I’ll take the troopie,’ he answered, making arrangements as he’d done for years. ‘You’ll need to come in with patients later on in the week, and then you can take someone to drive my troopie, to bring it back out.’

  Daniel lingered at the doorway.

  ‘I’m sorry –’ he began, and dropped into silence. ‘I don’t know how –’ He interrupted himself. ‘The missing Medicare forms! I knew as much. And –’ he was propelled into the room by his discovery, ‘isn’t that the insurance company letterhead? There! The missing form we never filled in!’ His eyes were spots of light. His jaw slackened. I saw on his lips:

  How could you do this to us, to me, to yourself?

  How could I bear your stupidity?

  You were my loyal friend.

  But those words died. He swallowed the words, I watched his thick lips crinkle as he swallowed them.

  Adrian, oblivious, kept rummaging.

  But Daniel couldn’t help himself. Though he hadn’t been able to say anything about this rupture in their friendship, he could talk about the forms. He picked up the insurance paper.

  ‘Why did you never send the paper in? They’d just about filled in all the difficult bits – look, it’s just got yellow stickers saying “sign here” – look! Why didn’t you? Or why didn’t you let me?’ He thrust them in Adrian’s face, the toy-like yellow stickers with arrows. ‘Why? Why?’

  He allowed himself another sally: ‘You blame me but it’s all because of you!’

  Adrian swooped along a shelf and another pile of documents fell down. Daniel had to jump out of the way.

  ‘Aha!’ Adrian shouted, deaf to all but his search.

  ‘Listen to me!’ Daniel’s fists were raised, he was about to punch Adrian. But Adrian was gazing at a photo.

  ‘It’s him,’ he said.

  He gazed for so long that Daniel gave up and walked away, slamming the door. Adrian was used to slamming doors and took no notice. I looked over his shoulder.

  It was the photo missing all those years ago from the drawer at our house: the photo of the miner with black people around him.

  Greetings from Gadaburumili. Wish you were here.

  ‘Where’d you get this?’ I managed to mumble, the dusty drawer, the river, my mother’s sad words all filling my mind so that I could hardly speak.

  ‘Your father brought it round. Diana admitted it. It’s him. It’s my father. That’s how I tried to track him down.’

  ‘So my father took it to your place! Why?’

  He glanced at my bewildered face.

  ‘The man who sacked me was my father.’

  I gasped, looked harder, tried to remember the man’s face at the meeting.

  ‘I can’t be sure. I don’t think so. But his name – did you see his card? Did you catch his name?’

  His voice was high, angry. ‘I’d know my own father, wouldn’t I? What’s it matter what his name is?’ And then, even in his agony: ‘I keep trying to get through to you – a name is only a word, and words don’t matter.’

  I heard the ordinary sounds of the outside world. I heard two women walking by on the road, talking. I heard a car driving by. I heard Daniel screaming in the hall: ‘Bastard, bastard, bastard!’ banging his fists, perhaps his head against the wall. I didn’t know if life was the bastard, or if Adrian was the bastard, or if Daniel was cursing his disastrous compliance with Adrian’s demands, or his enchantment, or his inaction. I suspected he was cursing himself. Because it so closely mirrored my own, his pain to me was greater than Adrian’s. I couldn’t move with the pain. My limbs seemed weighted.

  ‘Could you follow him? Contact him?’

  ‘What? Beg him for favours?’

  ‘You followed him before.’

  ‘He sacked his own son – for a scam.’

  He crumpled it in his hand till it was a ball.

  ‘No!’ I shouted. ‘Keep it.’

  He lau
ghed. I’d never heard such bitterness in a laugh. He threw the ball across the floor. ‘Skeleton’s love meant nothing.’

  ‘But he showed how much he values you!’

  He grabbed me.

  ‘You know I’ve always loved you. We’ll start again, just the two of us. You’ve got no reason to stay. This thing about recording the song for universities, in the long run it doesn’t matter to the mob. It’s our sense of history, not theirs. It’s all just our temporary paper culture, not their eternal one.’

  Remember how he loves, my mind said. My mind seemed stuck inside the words.

  I turned and walked out the door, slowly down the hall, past the sloshing washing machine and out to the verandah where I sank in a plastic chair, exhausted.

  At last I knew who the owner of our river house was, the owner of all the deserted river houses probably, the owner who I always expected to turn up, the owner who never turned up.

  Diana was his wife, and you were his son.

  Diana had owned and controlled all our lives.

  Daniel stalked past me and up the road with such a weight on his shoulders, they were hunched. Rayleen and Kathy happened to be walking by at that moment. They stopped him, asking him questions. As I looked at the kindly, unassuming bend of Daniel’s head, a flash of sheer affection went through me, a lightning flash.

  Apart from Rayleen and Kathy, the rest of the settlement seemed deserted. Surely nothing else could go wrong for the next few hours? I thought of Daniel’s lack of rebellion. I decided on mine. Once you lose your enchantment, rebellion is only a matter of a few simple steps. I stood, doubled back, went into the kitchen, and grabbed the forbidden key. I was walking out the door just as Adrian emerged from the bedroom and saw me. I folded my fingers around the key.

  ‘You know I’m your anchoring love.’

  I flinched. He’d remembered my father’s phrase. He’d always remembered everything.

  My mind hammered: Remember how he loves.

  ‘Go and pack.’

  It took a while for me to find my voice. It wasn’t my usual conciliatory voice, eager to appease.

  ‘I’m not coming with you.’