At Uncle’s request, Warrain had gone with him. Figgie was protecting his ancestors’ home, he said, from the Central Powers and those men in that strange underwater ship we had chanced upon in the bay. Figgie landed at Gallipoli and died on the beach that very same day, as did the invincible Warrain. Although new city ordinances would never allow the three of them to meet on the streets of Paradise again, Captain Davenport died only a few feet away from Figgie and Warrain, defending an indefensible beach in an indefensible war.
I knew then what I know now. That Figgie’s spirit is still part of the mountain we gazed upon that summer evening when we asked what the future would bring. Back then, he said if we were lucky, we would remain true to our child-selves. That same mountain still graces the horizon, still holds our spirits from that time. I vowed to protect it from ever changing or forgetting us. Every year I purchased a little more of it, and every year I planted a blue fig tree in his memory. Now there is quite a grove of trees on Figgie’s Mountain for anyone to enjoy, a quiet grove that acknowledges the sacrifices made by Aboriginal soldiers who fought in the Great War.
After I lost Figgie, it seemed that everything from that time in my life began to disappear. Abe’s son Benjamin went to college and became a manufacturing engineer in the new German Republic. Abe moved his family to follow his son, and we wrote faithfully until the horrors began, after which I never heard from them again. Lon made the National Team that won the Sheffield Shield several times and opened a restaurant in Melbourne called Lon’s that his family still owns.
Corowa, Kabam, Merinda, Tathra, and Ghera were destined for domestic service, but I couldn’t let that happen to my cobbers. I helped place them with art school friends and paid them not to be servants as best I could. None of them lived past the age of forty. When Uncle heard that Figgie and Warrain had died, he left his hut and became an orca, taking all his beautiful stories with him. Aiden was the last of the Dawson’s Station people to go. His granddaughter wrote that he was dying from bone cancer and wanted to speak to me. I visited him instead. He was thin and small, much as I had recalled him to be.
“Tell me that it’s true,” he said weakly from his hospital bed. “Tell me we really rode those whales the way I remember.”
I reassured him we did and that he had performed splendidly.
“I’ve done so much in my life,” he rasped, “but that was the most incredible, the greatest thing to ever happen to me, yet no one knows but us.”
Paradise never reached its pre-storm heights of commerce. When the orcas were gone the next morning, Bittermen was the laughingstock of New South Wales. His scheme to bring hydroelectric power from the Snowy Mountains only brought scandal and was as flawed as his canal. By the end of the Great War, he had sold all his holdings and moved back to the States. By leaving, Jungay and the other orcas had saved the bay. Unwanted and unproductive, the bay remained intact, left to its own laws to thrive and nurture the future. Capable of great kindness and great cruelty, Arizona pushed me to define who I was. She lived a long and wealthy life. After she passed, her executors found she gave generously to the study of orca and human behavior.
Loch Bultarra is abandoned now, waiting to be reclaimed by the bay. The graves are weathered and unkempt. Before leaving for first-year art school (which I discovered that Ettie Richardson had partially paid for as my anonymous benefactor), I asked Papa to take a walk with me. He knew where I was going and let me take his hand and lead him there. We visited the graveyard together.
We stopped at Pop Alex and Nana Effie’s stones as we made our way to Mum’s grave. I finally opened the letter in her brooch. I’d been afraid of it for so long. I read it aloud, ending with this short and beautiful phrase: “Always live with charity in your heart and in a place to absorb the suffering of the world.” Then I asked Papa to pin Mum’s brooch on me and we cried and grieved over her grave. We did the same for Asa, Eli, and all the others, too.
With the orcas gone, Papa took what little money there was from Bittermen’s settlement and sold the shad, whaleboats, and equipment to buy a small two-mast caravel. He figured now that people didn’t need whale oil, they might be interested in watching these graceful creatures and hearing old stories of the hunt. Papa rented out the empty bunks, saying rich people would pay a lot of money to pretend they’re poor so why not help them out.
Mama-girl stayed on to cook for the guests, and it got so that by my later visits, she gave up her room and just stayed with Papa. Charlie Brennan, who had survived the collapse of Pelican House, came to live out his last days at Loch Bultarra. Mama-girl said he spent hours every day talking to my drawings on the tool room wall.
Now faded to near nothingness, the raw passion of those crude drawings still startles me. How could anyone ever be that in love with the objects they were conceiving? Seeing all the old names—Derain, Matong, Burnum, Yindi, and little Kayle—makes me yearn to be with them once again.
Papa lived long enough to see Elvis gyrate on the telly, but wished he hadn’t. That summer he flew with me to Japan for one of my exhibits. When the pilot announced we were flying over the volcano Mount Ontake, he squeezed my hand and kissed it. He now rests next to Mum and his kin, as he’d always wanted.
Though the night still cups a last bit of moon, the tide is coming in. A warm breeze is blowing from the west that will grow in intensity as the day takes hold. For now, I dabble my feet in the cool sand as I walk along the bar toward the open bay. Above, the Southern Lights create a cathedral ceiling of vaulted waves extending into infinity. A handful of small meteors slash orange darts across the shimmering green sky. Figgie had often told me that these streaks of light were unborn children coming to earth from their mother’s Dreaming to deliver their birth totems.
Shadows dance atop the surf, drawing me into the bay. The warmth of its waters feels like an old glove fitting my hand. I don’t see Jungay until he’s almost on top of me. Knowing I can’t jump on his back as I used to, he dips his top fin to the water and tenderly lifts me onto his back.
“Show-off,” I said, patting his familiar scar. “Took you long enough.”
I check my collar for Pop Alex’s chock pin as Jungay leaps westward toward the heart of an unknown bay that I face with fear and anticipation. A bay that contains the Dreaming of all our ancestors and delivers us to oneness.
We are leaving on a wondrous journey. Me and Jungay.
The Whaler's Daughter Page 24
