Dust

by Christine Bongers

  ‘I guess the local priest would have been happy enough to welcome a dozen new parishioners into his tiny church. But when he called on them and saw for himself the mean little shed, the snakes and the flies … Well, he had to do something. He offered to help find them something better and shipped them off to the People’s Palace, a couple hours away in Rockhampton.

  ‘The name might have got their hopes up a bit. Two tiny rooms for the twelve of them, while Uncle looked for work … He found some, chipping burrs at Theodore, a hundred miles away. He took the two biggest boys and the eldest girl – your Godmother Riet – to cook.

  ‘Left Aunty Anne with seven littlies, one just a baby, alone in the stinking heat of Rockhampton.

  ‘Poor thing. Didn’t have two pennies to rub together. Not a word of English. Just awful.’

  Mum sighed and shook her head.

  I wondered what sort of madness could knock whole families out of their clogs and send them spinning helplessly around the globe to a harsh new life at the world’s end. I opened my mouth to ask, but she’d already moved on.

  ‘My dad, your pa, was building a new dairy on our farm outside Biloela. Big Kenny Andrews helped him pour the slab. He’d heard a migrant family out of Rocky was looking for work – Big Kenny was a Catholic and a good builder, according to Dad.

  ‘Kenny said he’d heard they were hard-working, the Dutch. Said he’d heard they knew milking.

  ‘Dad didn’t know too much about Catholics or about the Dutch. But he knew about work. Knew anyone prepared to chip burrs in January could get up before dawn to milk. He offered the twelve of them the little house on our other block and half shares to work the new dairy.

  ‘Riet told me years later that Dad guaranteed them sixty quid for the first month’s work. When he gave them seventy quid – the full half-share – they started to believe that they might have a future here after all …’

  Mum shifted gears suddenly as though the meander through the past was moving into new terrain.

  ‘Then your dad arrived with his good English that he’d picked up working in the mines in Canada. I’d see him at the dances, looking like Errol Flynn in his one good suit.’

  Her eyes drifted down to her hands.

  ‘We all went dancing on Saturday nights in those days. All the young people.’

  She stood and smoothed her skirt with those once-beautiful hands.

  ‘We were married before I found out that he hated to dance. He never let on, not once, in all the Saturdays we courted.’

  Somehow the photos had made it back into the box. All but one tiny black and white square that had slipped from a fold in her dress when she stood. I picked it off the chenille bedspread and stared at the tall girl with dark hair, shy on the sand in a dark strapless swimsuit and white cat’s-eye sunglasses.

  Dad reckons Mum never thought much of her looks. But the dress shops in town still asked her to model size 12 at their fashion parades. Even now. After all those kids, they still asked.

  I laid the photo on top of the box, next to the one of the good-looking larrikin rolling a durry, eyes glinting at the camera. Strangers to me. Not parents at all. Just people I didn’t know.

  People with a past.

  A loud whine erupted from the next room. The Electrolux, cursing the black beetles in front of the TV.

  Mum had moved on.

  I’d missed my chance.

  The only one left to ask was Dad.

  chapter 13

  The heat hammered at us. Pounding down from a remorseless sky, radiating up from the raw, dark earth. Trapping us in a sweltering vice as we crawled like ants across the hard-scabbed ground.

  We trudged in the dusty wake of our little Massey Ferguson tractor, raking through the broken earth for any debris left over from the clearing. Picking up sticks and hurling them onto the long, wooden-planked trailer for burning later.

  A blue polystyrene water bottle wobbled on the back, tormenting us. One by one, we cracked and summoned a burst of speed for a bum-hold on the trailer and a brief respite.

  The fierce play of sun on tin was the only sign of life over at the Kapernickys. Their roof glittered in the harsh light, jeering at our struggles to comb clean our land.

  I imagined Aileen smirking behind the shades, a cool glass in her hand, while I sucked at a battered old bluey, the water spilling, warm as spit, from an opening smeared in mud.

  The world shrank to sticks and dirt, dirt and sticks. The clattering throb of the tractor. Flies cloaking the boys’ T-shirts in front of me. Waves of heat hovering in frustration above the baked earth.

  How was it possible that water could lie beneath such land?

  Dad had sunk a bore. On gut instinct. Near the dry gully in our back paddock. Looking for a wrinkle in the artesian basin that lay unmapped and elusive beneath us. A mountain range of water that thrust up occasional peaks within tantalising reach of the surface, before plunging abruptly away.

  ‘Twelve feet,’ says Dad. ‘Just twelve feet in the wrong direction and you get nothing but dust.’

  He’d know.

  Drilled the first two holes just eight yards apart. Nothing but dust.

  The rigger shook his head, walked away. Said he was mad when Dad called him back, stood dead centre of the two failed attempts and pointed a work-hardened finger straight down.

  They worked in silence for what seemed hours, then Dad straightened and smiled. And we knew.

  He’d clipped the corner of a surly sulphurous pocket, under no pressure to vent its contents. If we wanted that water, we’d have to go get it. Hit up the bank manager for a Davey pump and generator. Make it come to us. To water our land. Feed a new crop. Bring in some money, so that maybe this Christmas we’d score more than the Matchbox car set the six of us had to share last year …

  But first he had to get the land ready. Bring in the one-legged woodcutter to pick over the tall timbers that marked out the sorry bones of a long-dead gully. Then call in the dozers, linked by a thick chain, to grunt and growl across our land.

  ‘Stay away from the gully,’ Dad warned. And they did, felling wide paths through the ratty old brigalow that shivered and convulsed as it crashed in a haze of dust and shrieking birds.

  Fierce machines, roaring and pushing up mounds of splintered trunks and broken crowns. Lumbering off as the shadows lengthened, leaving a breath of silence that was quickly broken by the spit and sizzle of dry leaves catching, the woomph of eucalypt oils igniting, flames shooting higher than the trees had ever reached in life.

  The night sky, bristling against the onslaught of exploding pools of fire, black like the new soil exposed, red like the blood roaring behind my eyes.

  Now it was up to us.

  Six kids. Twelve feet. Plodding in the sooty wake of our old Massey Ferguson. Picking up sticks. Clearing the last of the debris that could foul machinery if left to the plough, to the scarifier, to the planter.

  Twelve feet. Dragging and stumbling across the broken ground. Pausing longer with each longing look flung back down the laneway. Until finally our wishing summoned a reprieve: a puff of dust furling into a roiling cloud that steamed towards us.

  We thudded onto the trailer, snagging Dad’s attention over the throb of the engine. He nodded and swung the wheel at the surviving shade that struggled amidst the scraggly trees still lining the gully.

  Our visitor sprang from a Statesman, all business; the solid mass of an aggressive paunch leading the way round the bullbar. A thick leather belt held a tight rein on low-riding moleskins and the sturdy cloth of a buttoned-down shirt. A hairy, sun-badgered hand adjusted the tilt on a fine felt hat, revealing nails that were clipped and clean, like a woman’s.

  ‘Billy.’ He made it sound like he was doing Dad a favour, turning up.

  ‘Edgar.’ Dad shook his hand. ‘Thought you’d be at the Schneiders’. Selling them up for the bank.’

  ‘I was, Billy, I was. Left one of the lads to finish up. Thought I’d slip away, have a quiet
word.’

  The stock and station agent’s eyes flickered over the boys, spragged out in the shade and rested briefly on me, suspicious, at Dad’s side.

  ‘Cec Manwaring’s interested in your place, Billy. Sixty thousand cash. Happy to keep you on to work the place, if that’s what you want.’

  ‘Paid sixty thousand for the place six years ago, Edgar.’

  The agent nodded, as if in sympathy. ‘Been hard years, Billy.’

  The wing-ding-a-ding of a two-stroke clattered in from the distant highway, built up a head of steam, then faded slowly away.

  The agent tried again. ‘It’s a good offer, Billy. You should think about it.’

  ‘He doesn’t need to think about it. We’re not selling.’

  The agent looked down at me and smiled. ‘Now, that’s probably not for you to say, sweetie.’

  Dad’s hand gripped my shoulder. ‘She’s nobody’s sweetie, Edgar.’ He offered his other hand. ‘Thanks for stopping by. My regards to Coralie.’

  The agent forced a smile and shook Dad’s hand, his eyes flickering over the paddock. He licked his lips, tasting the air, like a snake.

  ‘You know where to find me, Billy. Anytime you want to reconsider.’

  ‘This scone –’ I held it like a rare jewel between two sooty palms ‘– is the only part of me that’s not dusty.’

  Big Hairs grunted. ‘It’s not part of you.’

  I stuffed it in my mouth and sprayed crumbs. ‘Ith now.’

  It worked. The black mask of Dad’s face cracked white at his teeth and his eyes. I’d made him laugh; taken his mind off this sorry land and its tawdry broken promises.

  He’d never give up on this black soil country. This dirt with a mind of its own. Lurching around underground, buckling the bitumen on the way into town, cracking fibro and flipping tiles off bathroom walls.

  Out here it lay calmly enough, sunning itself in our freshly cleared paddock, radiating a dusty haze that had settled on Dad like a second skin. Whispering in his ears, sniffing at the insides of his nose, blackening every bit of his sweat-soaked body. Dulling his hair to a misleading grey.

  I gulped at the icy green cordial Mum had driven out specially. ‘You look like a black fella.’

  He held a crazed enamel mug steady while Mum poured strong white tea from a thermos. ‘Must’ve been here too long.’

  I grabbed at the opening. ‘Would you go back? To Holland? If you could?’

  He squinted and sucked the last of his cigarette down to the butt. Stubbed it out in the thirsty ground. Shook his head, not bothering to look up.

  ‘Why not?’

  He glanced at Mum. ‘Too used to the good life now, aren’t I, Ev?’

  She passed him another scone, slick with melted butter in the heat. ‘We’re out of jam.’

  A look passed between them, in a code I couldn’t break, making my next words come out sharper than intended.

  ‘Don’t you miss your family?’

  The hum of insects rose up out of the dead grass. Dad’s eyes glistened like wet clay.

  ‘Mum and Dad are long gone. My brothers and sisters …’ He hesitated. ‘We write. That’s all we can do. Maybe one day …’

  He gulped at his tea, then tossed the dregs into the dirt and handed the enamel mug back to Mum.

  ‘We need to get going. Get this paddock finished. Get a summer crop in the ground.’

  We dragged ourselves, complaining, to our feet; the little boys limp in the heat, heads hanging, faces shuttered against the harsh light.

  His eyes measured each of us. ‘You kids learn how to work, you can do anything in this life. Remember that.’

  He turned, reaching the tractor in three easy strides. He swung himself up and squinted at Mum through the glare. ‘We get this land worked up, we’ll get ahead. You’ll see.’

  She nodded, easing the harsh lines around his eyes. He dropped the Massey Ferguson into gear, threw out his arm in a casual salute and swung the wheel back into the shimmering heat.

  I mopped my face with my towelling hat and jammed it back onto my head, falling into step with my brothers as Mum packed up.

  Over at the Kapernickys, nothing had moved except the angle of the sun.

  The cruel light had leached what little colour remained from the faded paint of the farmhouse and had pooled shadows, deep and silent, at its feet.

  A bubble of anger expanded in my chest.

  How was it possible that a Kapernicky could know something I didn’t?

  chapter 14

  Valda and Jenny Sykes glowed pink, jumping up and down at the front gate when Mr Blinco pulled up at school.

  Aileen Kapernicky nearly bowled them over as she strode past, Janeen trailing in her wake.

  I waited while the rest of the busload filed out: the price of privilege for a seat in the back row. It was as far from Aileen Kapernicky as I could get. Since the fight, an unspoken agreement had kept us at opposite ends of the bus, the classroom, the playground.

  Poles apart.

  The thought stopped me halfway up the aisle.

  Opposite magnetic poles are supposed to attract. ‘Like’ is supposed to repel ‘like’.

  Aileen and I had repelled each other from the word go, but we weren’t alike at all. The thought gave me the creeps and I shrugged it away.

  We must have been the exception that proved the rule. What Mum would call a contradiction in terms.

  ‘Come on, Cecilia! Get a move on!’

  The twins could hardly contain themselves. They lived way up the steep and rocky end of the valley, in cattle country, worlds away from the dust platter of our cropping lands. They arrived ten minutes before us in a little twenty-seater that chuffed round the Bells Creek circuit.

  It must have been a long ten minutes; they had news and were tripping over each other to get it out.

  ‘There’s another new girl in Grade Seven –’

  ‘Wait till you see her!’

  ‘Her parents just bought the Jambin Pub –’

  ‘– and they want her to make some friends before the holidays start –’

  ‘She’s up in the classroom now with Mr O’Driscoll –’

  ‘Come on, come see!’

  We charged up the stairs, across the sun-worn planks of the verandah, and pressed ourselves against the window over the port racks. I could see a bright spot of colour, a fall of hair glowing red-gold against the dull backdrop of the classroom.

  Mr O’Driscoll glanced up and waved us in.

  ‘Girls, this is Hayley Harris. She’ll be spending the last couple weeks of the term with us. I hope you’ll make her very welcome.’

  Valda nudged me and Jenny let out a little self-satisfied giggle as though she had conjured the effect herself.

  The new girl had the longest legs ending in the shortest mini ever seen at Jambin State School. When she turned our way, psychedelic hoops of shocking pink and lime green swung from silver hooks in her ears.

  Brian Vernon and Dalwyn Johnson were the only other boys in Punk’s year. Brian stared openly, while Dalwyn, face bright red, concentrated fixedly on the empty page in front of him.

  Punk had the window seat and a top view of a new-looking harvester chomping its way through the sorghum across the road. He kept glancing at it while reloading spit balls into his broken biro. He wasn’t even faking it; he really was oblivious.

  By morning tea, Hayley Harris had worked her magic on everyone else, apart from the Kapernickys. Her eyes had skated over them from the start, returning again and again to Jenny, Valda and me.

  An excited flush crept up my neck. I was no longer a third wheel, throwing the Sykes twins off-balance. I was part of Hayley Harris’s magic circle.

  We deserted the jungle gym and monkey bars for her, clustering in the cool under the school. Drinking in her milky white strangeness, hanging on stories that could only come from an exotic creature schooled in the ways of places far removed from the Callide Valley.

  Her green eyes da
nced around us. ‘So, who’s going to the Jambin dance next Saturday night?’

  Glances passed like hot potatoes between us.

  Dance?

  She might as well have asked if we were going to the moon.

  We knew that both the moon and Jambin dances existed; that people had gone there; that it was theoretically possible that any one of us might go there one day. But this Saturday?

  My parents didn’t even go. Which begged a question.

  ‘Don’t you have to be a grown-up to go to a Jambin dance?’

  ‘Anybody can go.’ Hayley sounded impatient. ‘My brother Sean’s in high school – he’s putting together his own rock band – anyway, he wants to check it out and he said he’d take me.’

  She looked at us like we should say something. We were so lacking any hometown advantage at this point, she must have wondered why she was bothering with us at all.

  ‘This is apparently the only social thing that ever happens around here – the once-in-a-blue-moon dance. You are going, aren’t you?’

  ‘Sure.’ That earned me a jab in the arm from Jenny and a look of alarm from Valda. ‘Yeah, I’m going. I’ll see you there, definitely.’

  I sauntered off to the sunny sanctuary of the jungle gym. No way was Hayley Harris following me out into the open with that skin.

  Aileen Kapernicky cartwheeled in lazy loops a safe distance away at the Big Tree, with Janeen propped at its base, with a book.

  I was caught in a web of my own making, trapped in no-man’s-land by my own big mouth.

  That afternoon, Hayley Harris slotted in next to me on the back seat of the bus. Punk frowned at the usurper, then moved over, giving us more room.

  I hardly spoke, regretting my rash promise at lunchtime. But it was a short trip from the school to the pub and Hayley was first off, tossing a bombshell over her shoulder as she left.

  ‘Seeing that you’re coming to the dance too, why don’t you have a sleepover at my place? Then we can go together. It’ll be fun.’