The Boundary

by Nicole Watson

  As Jonathon closes, the crowd claps. They may not believe in his medicine, but they have great affection for the practitioner. Charlie hugs Jonathon, whose eyes are misty. Charlie seizes the podium.

  ‘If you want to pursue an appeal, then I’ll support it with everything I have. But I have to level with you mob. Native title is crumbs. They throw the crumbs from their table of caviar and champagne and then they sit back and watch, while we tear each other apart. Brothers and sisters, we have to see through the smoke and mirrors.’

  The crowd is deathly silent. Miranda is taken back to her father’s speeches during the Commonwealth Games protests, when he kept hundreds spellbound. Charlie never wrote any of it down; he didn’t even know what he was going to say until the microphone was in his hand.

  ‘In the last few years, I’ve watched our mob being made to feel less welcome in West End. Most of the hostels have closed and so few of our families can afford to live here anymore. Brothers and sisters, Coconut Holdings just cares about profits. They talk about giving jobs to our people with this Aboriginal Employment Initiative rubbish. But they’ll be paying our people with the very money that the government stole from our grandparents. Coconut Holdings has no honour and neither does the Premier.’

  ‘That’s right, brother!’

  ‘Too deadly, my brother!’

  ‘On this very piece of land, our ancestors fought a brave battle against the native mounted police. They may have been overwhelmed and removed to Manoah, but their dignity and courage live on in us. I say that we stay true to the values of our fallen warriors – our judges.’

  Whistles come from all corners.

  ‘We need to get back to the ideas of the 1970s. When we were calling out, “What do we want?” I don’t remember anyone answering “native title”. This place is the last piece of land we can call our own. We’re not going anywhere.’

  Ethel is pleased that she can still fit into the child’s swing. Those brisk walks through Orleigh Park must be paying off. Each morning, the zestful smell of grass shakes off the embers of sleep. Its huge tree trunks stand like withered sages and from the banks of Meanjin, West End peers into the old money and private river docks of St Lucia. It’s in the early hours that Ethel hears the screams of the water spirits.

  Your time will come.

  Our time will come.

  He promised.

  But there are no water spirits in this place. Meston Park. Blackfellas’ Park.

  Even though the signage arrived only this morning, the blue and white of the Coconut Holdings logo is coated with dust. The earthmover stands inside the fenced area, reminding her of the mission superintendent’s old house. Like Mr McGraorty’s family, the machine lives in a compound surrounded by barbed wire.

  Unlike the other parks in West End, there is no community garden in Meston Park. No bike-riding track. Or welcome sign. Families rarely bring picnic hampers to bide time on the lush green. Years ago, timber had been soldered to the ground to make seats in the hill. But there are never any spectator sports played here.

  Three sides of Meston Park are surrounded by industrial estates and the northern boundary faces a block of mansions built in the nineteenth century. In other parts of Brisbane, the grand old homesteads would have been converted into apartment buildings. But here they remain inconspicuous, like guards at the watchtower.

  Light from cigarettes unveils the drinkers. Huddled beneath the trees, they fill the night with bickering and laughter. She knows the drinking would have begun this morning. They will continue until their exhausted bodies collapse. This place is dense with misery and yet there are no bodies in the earth, Ethel thinks. But you don’t need decayed bones to feel the pain of this place. It pelts down like torrential rain. Only during the huge festivals is the pain drowned out by thousands of feet and music that thunders from portable stages.

  She turns and sees the shabby white timber of the hall in the western corner. Soon it will disappear completely under night’s blanket. Miranda and Charlie will be wondering where she is. All of the mob will be looking for her. For them, this place is the last bastion. They fear that once they lose it, they too will be erased from West End.

  But this is also the safe side of the boundary.

  Hear the stock whip. Curfew. Get to Meston Park before nightfall.

  He had come to her.

  Fifty years ago.

  Red Feathers.

  Childbirth had torn Ethel apart, but she felt nothing, only disbelief that those tiny lips would never draw breath. Eyes closed as though he was in a deep sleep. She begged and begged.

  Please wake up.

  Matron smiled as she said that it was God’s will.

  Ethel found a leather strap from the stables, the remnants of an old bridle. She concealed it in her apron and kept it tucked between her old mattress and its creaky frame. The next day, Ethel sat on the steps of the mission church, staring at the mango tree. When she was small, the older girls in the dormitory would lift her into its bough.

  Lesley snored softly that night. The light in the hallway reflected on her cherub face. Even when she was heavy with child, Ethel had allowed Lesley to remain in her bed. This is what a mother does, she thought. If I can be a mother to Lesley, then I can look after my own baby. But that night Ethel made Lesley sleep in her own bed. Her heart filled with sorrow as she chastised the sobbing child.

  When she knew Lesley was soundly asleep, Ethel slipped outside and silently made her way to the hole in the fence. It was concealed by the boulder, but all of the dormitory girls knew about it. Matron probably did too. But you had to be brave or stupid to crawl through. After Gina was caught with her lover, Matron shaved her head and made her dress in a sugar bag for two months.

  Like Ethel, Gina had been sent to work for a white family, only to come back with a swollen womb. She didn’t know what happened to Gina’s baby. No one ever talked about the babies of the dormitory girls. For Ethel, that was the cruellest punishment of all. She craved some acknowledgment of the little one she had loved and tried her hardest to keep alive.

  Ethel climbed the mango tree that night and sat on top of the bough, making a noose from the strap. She knew her body would probably be found by one of the men, up at dawn to begin work. So long as it wasn’t Lesley who found her, Ethel didn’t care. No one else there had ever accepted her. Twelve years ago, a protector had pulled into the mission and deposited Ethel. She had no country, no name.

  She wondered whether she should say a prayer. Anger welled. If God really did exist, then why had he taken her baby away? She tried to lift the noose over her head, but couldn’t. Her hands were weak, as though an unknown force was trying to keep her alive. Then she heard the sweet melody of the Paradise Parrot. Emerald green and red belly, tail almost as long as its body. It was sitting on the bough. Next to him.

  He had a regal face full of pain. His long legs almost touched the ground. Ethel was afraid at first, but Red Feathers smiled timidly as he took the noose from her hands. Drew her to him and blew air into her face. And for the first time, she was at peace.

  Fifty years ago.

  Now, Ethel sits on the grass in Meston Park, remembering. Her heart sang when she saw him again, at the Court yesterday, flying above the judge’s head. She waited in her room last night, biding her time, until she heard the soft chirping of the Paradise Parrot. She had so much to tell him. Yes, she had been waiting for him. Had never lost faith. Some stories she’d shared with the mob, the lawyers, but other secrets, like his name, the purpose of the feathers, she’d kept. And she’d keep those secrets locked within, until he told her otherwise. Oh yes, Ethel could be trusted with secrets. Been keeping them for fifty years. But he wanted only to fly. It was exhilarating, but she had forgotten how cold it could be at that height.

  He told her that his journey back through time had begun with a
n immense blow to his chest, as though reliving the moment when the bullet had entered him. With his chest aflame, a multitude of hands appeared, dragging his body. When they left him, Red Feathers could feel the cold earth against his face. He was terrified when he opened his eyes. The metropolis of concrete and filth was overwhelming. The lights, the traffic, the noise. Thankfully, one of the water spirits had seen him. It was the water spirit who told him that he had returned to the bosom of Meanjin. He had made it home.

  Now, Ethel watches Red Feathers sitting on top of the slippery dip, his huge legs just touching the gravel. The glare of the streetlight reveals a long face. It’s a ridiculous sight – the giant in the child’s playground. But Ethel knows better than to laugh. She feels his pain, breathes in his torment.

  Red Feathers looks at the hill where seats now wallow in loneliness, the place where he and the other men had charged against the police, the curfew, the boundary, over a century ago. He had stood in front of his wife that day, so his body could shield her. But the horrific pain in his chest drained his mind of thought. As he lay on the ground, his life force ebbing, Horace Downer stood over him. The man’s eyes were crazed, as though all logic had been sucked out.

  Few of the living ever hear the screams of the dead. Red Feathers, on the other hand, is followed by voices constantly. And he sees everything. The living and the dead. Whenever his feet touch the bitumen, the cries of the spirits vibrate beneath him. The most chilling are the parents who wander the streets, calling out the names of lost children.

  Last night, Ethel and Red Feathers saw Downer’s spirit loitering at the top of the hill. At first, Red Feathers thought that Downer had chosen to spend his death protecting the boundary. He wanted to confront him, but Red Feathers soon realised that Downer was on the hill by way of punishment. His body had shrivelled, so that he was the size of a boy. Downer drank laudanum from a dirty flask, with an unquenchable thirst.

  Ethel and Red Feathers flew to Downer’s home above the hill. The two-storey mansion was long and narrow, like the man who had built it. The iron lace on the rooftop balcony had remained virtually unchanged. Countless nights, Downer had sat, clutching his gun. Enforcing the boundary. In spite of the obvious danger, the black men and women took their chances after curfew. They were domestic servants who could no longer bear the separation from their families on the other side of town, lovers who took the ultimate risk, and then there was Red Feathers, who just despised the boundary for all that it represented.

  As they watched from high above, the cries of a spirit woman sent a chill down Ethel’s spine. They could see the image of Downer’s bullet plunging into the back of the hapless domestic. She had just seen her baby girl walk for the first time, and her heart was singing. Red Feathers knows their secrets. In the space of a second, all of that joy, all of that potential, snuffed. Ethel begged him to leave, to take her home.

  Night has finally fallen. Ethel walks over and buries her face into one of his gigantic arms. Red Feathers tells her that the business has begun. She has no doubt that he is strong enough, but Red Feathers is nothing if not compassionate. Compassion for warriors who had turned into drunken beggars was what had ultimately led to the failed rebellion. Watching people who believe they have no power to change their circumstances is more painful than any injury that could be inflicted by bullets. She knows that Red Feathers believes that change is always possible, so long as one draws breath.

  He waited, he tells her now, for the dead man’s people to come for him. He expected the old, pompous white men and their fragile looking women, but was stunned to see the black woman standing behind them. She was young, perhaps fifteen, and her eyes were stained by tears. When Justice Brosnan rose from his body there was an exchange of awkward nods but he was aghast when he saw her. So his Aboriginal ancestry had been kept hidden, and he was not welcoming the revelation.

  Red Feathers wanted to touch her, to assure her that in spite of everything, she still had her humanity. But that kind of contact was not appropriate. As Red Feathers took the pouch from his back, the relatives formed a circle and spoke in hushed tones. By the time his work was done, all of them had disappeared.

  They hear screams from the drinkers’ tree and look across the park. A streak of grey darts, followed by the sounds of a radio. Bodies fall to the ground surrounded by anxious yelling.

  Red Feathers seizes Ethel’s hand and they soar above Downer’s hill again. As they watch the young black man being pushed into the police van, she knows that Red Feathers has finally realised.

  The boundary remains.

  FIVE

  John Tipat’s mother taught him to use the toilet by burning his hands on the stove. At age six, he drowned the neighbour’s cat. Twenty years later, Tipat drowned a little girl. Detective Senior Sergeant Andrew Higgins beat him through a telephone book in the watch house for over three hours. Tipat’s confession would have been thrown out of Court, had Detective Sergeant Jason Matthews not been prepared to lie in the witness box. Now, Jason looks back on that sorry chapter as just another casualty of war, a war that began in the womb. Insanity was the constant precursor to murder. The notion that one had to plead it has never made sense to him. Sane people don’t kill the innocent at random.

  He and Higgins spend their working lives protecting society from the dangerously insane. But when he is in this room, Jason feels like the prisoner. He knows that after the first forty-eight hours, the chances of finding the killer are slim. It has been five days. And the clouds of futility are gathering momentum.

  Coffee and cigarette smoke waft. Black sandbags live underneath bloodshot eyes. You can’t spend years in the underbelly without being shaped by it, he thinks. Study enough monsters and surely you become one. Is he a monster? He doesn’t intentionally hurt those around him. But his soul is impervious. Over the years, he’s enjoyed many short-term relationships, some spanning weeks, a couple for three months. But she always leaves, bundling unfulfilled expectations together with her clothes and CDs.

  Jason craves the solitude of Homicide. But the others have partners, children even. Yet here they are, stress flowing from every gesture. Bodies are beacons of the violence that human beings are capable of. Pencils tap on desks, smokers cough and loners sigh. The whiteboard at the front is blank, the only comfort this room has to offer. Higgins scrawls onto it, conscripting it back into the war.

  ‘Morning people.’

  Higgins removes his black suitcoat and rests it on a chair. Even though it’s eight o’clock in the morning, wet patches have already gathered underneath his armpits. The white business shirt that his wife pressed last night is untidily tucked into his black pants.

  ‘Boss, have you seen this yet?’

  Henly offers a copy of the Queensland Daily to Higgins. The headline on the front page reads, ‘Black leaders placed a curse on murdered judge.’

  ‘Didn’t take them long,’ Higgins says, dismissively. He pauses to boot up the laptop on the desk. In seconds, photographs of the crime scene bounce off the whiteboard. ‘The deceased, Justice Bruce Brosnan, was found lying face down on the kitchen floor. You can see the broken wine bottle and its contents next to the victim. A wine glass was on the bench above the body. Unfortunately, no print was recovered from the glass.’

  Higgins cocks his right eyebrow as he focuses on the base of the glass. ‘At first glance, we thought it was blood. Turns out it’s a rock that’s been ground to a paste.’

  ‘Like ochre?’ Henly says.

  ‘Perhaps. They found the paste on some of the feathers as well. Hopefully, the Forensic Services Branch will be able to provide us with some more information soon. Alright, we need more information on the feathers. I’ve never seen this before. We need an expert who can place them.’ He turns to a female officer, Lacey, sitting in the middle row. Her brown hair is spiked with hair gel. Toned arms speak of many hours in a gym.

 
‘Lacey, can you look into this? Your first port of call will be Dr Bernes at the Environmental Protection Agency.’

  Lacey looks deflated at the task, but nods immediately.

  ‘Nothing else in the kitchen appears to have been disturbed. Perhaps Brosnan was about to enjoy a glass of wine, and the killer came from behind, by surprise.’

  Higgins has aged rapidly since arriving at Homicide, Jason thinks. But that’s normal here, perhaps expected. On rare moments, he catches a glimpse of his partner’s former self. The flamboyance that dances in his eyes like a solar eclipse is infectious. But too many stories have gained him notoriety, the kind that live through harried whispers in corridors.

  All originate in the war, but alcohol gives them fists.

  ‘We’ve received the autopsy report from Doc Thomas. As you already know, this was a particularly vicious attack. The victim’s neck and lips were slashed repeatedly. Two of his front teeth were completely knocked out.’

  Higgins pauses to read from his notes. ‘Brosnan’s associate said goodbye to him just after six. The neighbour, Rebecca Collis, reported hearing a car pull into Brosnan’s home at some time between half past seven and eight o’clock. She also heard an argument between a man and a woman coming from Brosnan’s home, sometime after eight o’clock. Then Emily Brosnan runs to Collis’ house just after ten o’clock. Emily’s alibi is dodgy – she claims to have been visiting a relative up until nine forty-five, but is yet to provide us with the details of this mysterious person.’

  Higgins pauses to clear his throat. ‘Collis also reported seeing Brosnan’s daughter, Isabella, enter Brosnan’s home at midday. Now, Isabella has an interesting past. Ten years ago, she was charged with the attempted murder of her former dealer.’

  Higgins sweeps the room for recognition, but only dredges shock. ‘Yeah, I have to confess it was news to me too. Apparently there was an argument over drugs and the dealer ended up with a knife in his chest. The Brosnans got the best lawyers money could buy.