A Prayer for Blue Delaney

by Kirsty Murray

  Nugget Malloy was true to his name, a short nuggety man with a weathered face. Deep smile lines were etched around his eyes. He wore a battered, dusty hat, a grubby white shirt, and trousers with suspenders that he snapped against his chest as he grinned at Bill.

  Bill laughed and hitched his hat back. ‘You still running that two-up school of yours?’

  ‘Feeling lucky, are you?’ Nugget said, grinning.

  Colm stood awkwardly behind Bill, one leg straddled either side of Rusty, trying to keep her near him. But there was a crowd of camp dogs sniffing around Tin Annie and Rusty soon slipped away to join them.

  ‘See you’ve still got old Rusty with you, but who’s the midget?’ asked Nugget, looking Colm up and down. ‘No, don’t tell me. You can’t help yourself, can ya? Always picking up strays. Ever since I first met you. Didn’t the last one give you enough trouble to last a lifetime? When are you gunna learn?’

  Bill laughed again but he seemed a little embarrassed. Colm looked down at the red dirt and drew a line in the dust with his toe. He wished they hadn’t come here.

  A plump, dark-skinned woman came out of the shanty house and joined in the talk.

  Colm felt even shyer. He’d seen plenty of Aboriginal people in the towns they’d driven through but he’d never spoken with any of them. It hadn’t occurred to him, when Bill had mentioned Nugget’s wife, that she would be anything other than white.

  She kept glancing at Colm and smiling. Colm didn’t know where to look. Bill pulled out a brace of rabbits from the back of the ute and handed them to Doreen.

  ‘Beauty, Bill. You never come empty-handed,’ said Doreen affectionately. She handed the rabbits to one of the children and then reached out and patted Colm’s hair. ‘This one’s nearly the same age as our Rosie.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Nugget. ‘Rosie can sort the boy. You and me can do our catching up down the pub, old mate.’ He hooked his arm through Bill’s and drew him over to the ute.

  ‘I’ve been on the wagon for a while now,’ said Bill, sounding uneasy.

  ‘Get out of it. Billy Dare? On the wagon? C’mon, mate,’ said Nugget, wrenching open Tin Annie’s door and climbing inside. ‘We’ll be home late, Dor,’ he called.

  Colm folded his arms across his chest and glared at them. What was he meant to do now? As if Bill knew what he was thinking, he turned and winked. ‘I’ll be back, Sonny Jim. You keep an eye on Rusty. Make sure Nugget’s mongrels don’t eat her alive.’

  Colm called Rusty over to him. Doreen yelled out to someone in the bungalow in a language that Colm didn’t understand. The flywire door banged open and a tall, slim girl around eleven years old came out with a fat baby boy balanced on her hip.

  ‘I’m Rosie,’ she said, looking at Colm as if she were sizing him up. ‘Mum says I’ve gotta keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she speak English?’ asked Colm. ‘I didn’t understand what she was saying.’

  ‘She only speaks English when Dad’s around. Dad doesn’t like it when she speaks language, but she reckons we’ll never learn any if she don’t speak it,’ said Rosie, leading the way into the tin shed.

  The bungalow looked scrappy with its tumbledown verandah and clutter of tools piled up outside, but inside it was comfortable. The floor was pressed earth. In one corner was a big cast-iron bed with a woven rug thrown across it, and in the middle of the room stood a table with a golden-brown loaf of hot and steaming damper and an open tin of dark raspberry jam beside it.

  Rosie went out onto the verandah and fetched a bottle of milk and a dish with butter on it from the Coolgardie safe. The smaller kids jostled for position at the table, their hands outstretched as Doreen cut thick slices of damper and smothered them with butter and jam. Colm stood in a corner of the room, wishing Bill would come back soon. He suddenly realised that Doreen had been speaking to him but he had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t caught a word. She smiled at him, waiting for a reply.

  ‘You not hungry or you just deaf?’ said Rosie loudly, as if she were talking to a simpleton. ‘Mum makes real good damper. You gotta try it.’

  Colm couldn’t remember the last time he had tasted jam. Its sticky sweetness made his tongue tingle. Rosie smiled at him from across the table. ‘You old Bill’s grandkid, are ya?’ she asked.

  Colm shrugged uncertainly, damper halfway to his mouth, ‘Are you Nugget’s granddaughter?’

  Rosie laughed. ‘Nah, he’s my dad.’

  Colm looked at the crowd of faces around the table. ‘Are all these kids your brothers and sisters?’

  Rosie rolled her eyes. ‘You must reckon my dad’s an old goat or something. Nah, these are my big sister’s kids and some of them are cousins and . . . well, they’re all our mob anyway.’

  Colm wondered if he had cousins, somewhere in the world. If he did, maybe there was an auntie like Doreen who would invite him for afternoon tea.

  Doreen spoke to Rosie again in that strange jumble of words that Colm couldn’t understand. Rosie answered her in English and then looked at Colm.

  ‘C’mon, you, I’ll show you around.’

  Colm followed Rosie out of the shed and into the dry, sparse scrub. She led him down a track and stopped to break something from a tree. Colm was surprised when she put it straight into her mouth.

  ‘Here, you, help me get up and I’ll get you some too.’ She scrambled onto Colm’s back before he even had time to answer and tore from a branch a handful of some strange spiky plant with small buds on it.

  ‘Good tucker this. I think your mob call it mistletoe, but round here they call it tjitjiku mai - good for kids.’

  When Colm shook his head, Rosie grew insistent.

  ‘Not as sweet as jam, but good lollies, and they’re free. Try it.’

  Reluctantly, Colm put some of the plant into his mouth. She was right. It was sweet and it made his mouth feel moist and fresh. He thought of how hungry he’d been on the long walk from Bindoon, yet he’d walked straight past gum trees that had this sort of mistletoe hanging on them.

  They kept walking and all the while Rosie chatted, telling him everything about her family, about her dad and her big sister who worked on a station somewhere outside Kalgoorlie. There were so many people in Rosie’s family that Colm had trouble keeping track of them all. After a while, he stopped listening. He wondered when he’d hear the sound of Tin Annie coming up the dirt track.

  Rosie showed him the shaft that Nugget was mining. He was a lone prospector, working his own claim, trying to scrape a living from the meagre amount of gold it produced. Behind the bungalow was a hill of tailings from all the other shafts that Nugget had sunk without striking it lucky. Rosie insisted on racing Colm to the top and then leapfrogging over mounds of rock to get to the bottom again. Even if she talked a lot, she knew how to make a good game out of nothing. Colm felt as if it was years since he’d played games like this.

  As the afternoon wore on and Bill didn’t return, Colm began to grow uneasy. He couldn’t eat any of the food Doreen had prepared for tea and he refused to join the other kids in the big bed that they all cuddled up in together. He sat with Rusty just outside the front door, waiting for Bill.

  Colm woke at dawn. Doreen had covered him up with a blanket and Rusty was nuzzled in close, warm against his chest. All morning, he paced restlessly back and forth outside the bungalow, staring down the track that led to Kalgoorlie. Rosie grew tired of trying to engage him in conversation and wandered off into the bush with one of the younger children. By midday, Colm couldn’t stand it any longer. Whistling Rusty to him, he set off down the track.

  The shadows were long, stretching all the way across the wide streets of Kalgoorlie when Colm walked into town. He saw Tin Annie straight away, parked outside a corner hotel. All his worry dissolved at the sight of it. But when he stopped and peered into the cab, there was no one in it. He walked over to the pub and stared in through the windows, cupping his hands around his eyes to help him see into the glo
omy interior. There were men at the bar but none of them looked like Bill or Nugget. He was standing next to Tin Annie wondering what to do next when he heard someone groaning. The sound came from the back of the ute. He stood on tiptoes and gripped the edge of the tray to pull himself high enough to look in. There, stretched out on his crumpled swag, was Bill. Beside him lay Nugget, his face flushed red, his mouth open. Bill opened one bright blue eye and looked at Colm for an instant before he shut it again and folded an arm across his face.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, Sonny Jim,’ said Bill.

  ‘You’re drunk,’ said Colm, disgusted.

  ‘We had to celebrate. That’s what you do, when you haven’t seen an old mate in years. You celebrate.’

  Nugget rolled over and turned his back to both of them.

  ‘Doreen’s been worried about you,’ said Colm. It wasn’t strictly true. Doreen had actually told Colm not to worry and that the two old men would turn up like a pair of bad pennies.

  ‘Well, it turned into a bit of a bender, our little celebration. But we’ll be back tonight. Couldn’t bring Nugget home to Doreen until we’d both dried out, could I?’

  Colm snorted. He wanted to shout at Bill. Didn’t he understand that he couldn’t just up and disappear? Didn’t he realise that Colm had been sick with worry?

  ‘C’mon, Rusty,’ said Colm, turning to walk away. But the old dog took a running leap at the ute and jumped into the back. Colm heard Bill and Nugget groan. He sat down on the running board of the ute and buried his face in his hands.

  15

  Seven sisters

  When Bill announced they were staying at Nugget’s for the week to help sink a new shaft, Colm felt a ripple of unease. The days slipped past, and hardly any work was done on the mine. Bill and Nugget weren’t around long enough to do anything.

  At first, Colm tried to keep to himself. He put his swag on the verandah so that he could watch for Bill and Nugget’s return. He would take out his harmonica and play long, soulful tunes to make the hours pass more quickly.

  Doreen and the other children would sit by a campfire a short distance away from the bungalow, and sometimes visitors from other nearby camps would come and join them. Rosie tried to get Colm to join the others but he stubbornly held his position on the verandah.

  ‘You know,’ she said one evening, ‘I reckon you’re boring.’ Then she got up and walked away.

  Colm watched her disappear around the side of the bungalow and was suddenly ashamed. Every evening Rosie had stayed with him, missing out on the fun, and he’d barely talked to her. For a while, he sat listening to the sounds of laughter and conversation drifting across the night air. Finally he got to his feet and whistling for Rusty to follow, he went round the back to join the others.

  Rosie was sitting close to Doreen, listening intently. One of the little girls was curled up in Doreen’s lap and the other children leant against her as well. Colm stood on the edge of the firelight.

  ‘Good to see you, Colm. You come sit with us,’ said Doreen, patting the earth beside Rosie. “Bout time you stopped worrying about that old man. This story, this one’s for Rosie but maybe it’s good for you too.

  ‘The home of our people, Ngarrindjeri people, it’s a long way from here at a place called Raukkan, way over in South Australia. Raukkan, it means “the ancient way” and I’m gonna tell you about those ancient ways, the dreamings of our people. This story, it’s as old as the night sky.’

  Doreen’s voice grew deep and sure as she began her tale. In the smoky night air, the words seemed infused with magic.

  ‘See them stars? They’re the Mungingee. ’ said Doreen, pointing at the sky, turning the face of the little child in her lap and indicating a bright cluster. ‘Those stars, they’re our ancestors, wise girls, those stars.

  ‘This is the story of those girls, those girls that became the stars. Rosie, she’s still a pummi, just a little one. But one day, she’ll be Yartooka like those girls up there. Long time ago, these girls, the Yartooka, they go to the Elders and they say, teach us. Teach us to fight hunger and pain and fear. So the Elders taught them. They begin to train them.

  ‘Three years the girls learn with the Elders and then the Elders say, now is the time for the tests. For three days those girls have nothing to eat and travel long distance. Three days and no food, yet they walk many, many miles through hard country. Then on the fourth day, they’re offered kangaroo meat for their tucker, but these girls only take a small piece. They know to be greedy makes them weak and to control their hunger makes them strong.

  ‘Then they learn to fight pain. The Elders break their tooth, cut their breasts until the blood runs and then rub ash into the wounds but the girls, they know how to be strong, they fight that pain. And the Elders say, you willing to do more tests? And the girls say yes, they will do what must be done. So that night, the Elders take the girls to a camp, and when the night comes the girls throw down their possum-skin rugs to sleep, but as they lie still something crawls over their flesh and bites them all over. And then they see they are camped on ant-hills and the Elders are testing them. They lie all night on the ant-hills but they don’t complain. They fight the pain. And then in the morning, the Elders see these girls have fought pain and won.

  ‘Then the Elders say there is one more thing that they must learn, one more thing they must conquer, and that is fear. That night, they tell stories of the spirits, the ghosts that will come and haunt the girls, bad spirits that will steal them away, evil spirits that don’t wish them well. The shadows start to move, and the girls, they grow afraid, and then the Elders tell them this is the burial place of their great-grandfathers. And the girls lie in that burial place all night and they fight the fear and in the morning, the Elders see the girls have stayed at the burial place and fought their fears and won.

  ‘And the Elders and all the people celebrate these girls, these brave and strong Yartooka. The selfish people, they’re not happy. They afraid all the time, too much time thinking of themselves. Greed and pain and fear, they come when you think all the time of yourself. The Yartooka, they were strong, brave, fought the pain, fought the fear. The Great Spirit, he was so happy with these girls he sent the Star Spirit to them and the Star Spirit gathers up the seven sisters and takes them up to the sky. No more suffering for those girls. They shine a light for everyone, for everyone who is afraid. When you feel hunger or pain or fear, especially if you’re afraid, you look to the sisters. The sisters, they help you do any brave thing that must be done.’

  Colm looked up to where the smoke spiralled above the camp. Rosie leant closer to him and took his hand, using it to point out the stars Doreen was talking about. The Seven Sisters shone out in a bright cluster.

  Jimmy, the littlest of Doreen’s grandkids, came and sat down on Colm’s lap. His curly hair tickled Colm’s chin and he pulled one of Colm’s arms around him. His skin felt warm and silky. Colm sat very still, so still that his leg went numb beneath him. He didn’t want to frighten the little boy away. When the fire grew low and Jimmy had fallen asleep, Colm carried him back to the bungalow and laid him in the big old cast-iron bed.

  Every evening from then on, Colm joined the other children around the campfire while Doreen told stories. Sometimes they were about her family and things that had happened to them. Sometimes they were like fairytales, stories from another time and place where animals talked and people had magic inside them. In Doreen’s stories everything had a spirit, even rain, hail and sunshine, and every spirit had a story. Colm couldn’t keep track of who everyone was or where they came from but he didn’t mind. Somehow, all the stories connected up, like a great big swirling pattern that everyone and everything was a part of.

  Every night Colm stopped for a moment and looked up at the Seven Sisters shining brightly above them. Bill had told him that they were also called the Pleiades and that sailors used the stars to guide their journeys across the ocean, but Colm liked to think of them as seven girls like Rosie. I
f he could have a sister, he would have wanted her to be just like Rosie. Sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles and cousins were like parts of a whole universe of family that he’d never thought about before now. At least Colm had Bill and Rusty - but did that even count?

  16

  Come in, spinner!

  One Sunday morning, Colm woke to hear Tin Annie revving loudly in the yard. Colm had seen Bill and Nugget come in late the night before, reeking of beer, so he couldn’t believe that they were heading out again so early.

  Later in the morning, Rosie and Colm sat in the shade of an ironbark tree. The heat was excruciating. Rusty lay beside them, panting fast.

  ‘Did your dad take Bill to church or something?’ asked Colm.

  Rosie chortled. ‘Not on your life. Sunday’s two-up school. Big day for Dad. He makes more money out of two-up than he ever gets out of the ground.’

  ‘Two-up school?’

  ‘You really don’t know anything, do you?’

  ‘I know Bill and he doesn’t need to go to school. He already knows something about everything.’

  Rosie laughed. ‘It’s not that sort of school. Besides, I don’t reckon you know Uncle Bill like you think you do.’

  ‘I know him better than you,’ said Colm.

  ‘Did you know he was famous?’

  Colm looked at her sceptically. ‘What for?’ he asked.

  Rosie frowned. Colm could see she wasn’t sure about the details.

  ‘I reckon one thing he must have been famous for was boxing. My dad was a top boxer before he got old. Bill and Dad did the circuit together, you know, going round the country in boxing outfits. Fighting in tents and all. My uncle, he was a boxer too, and he brought Dad home with him one night. That’s how Mum and Dad met. Mum’s first husband was a boxer too, but he died.’

  ‘Bill was a boxer?’ Somehow Colm found it hard to imagine. He couldn’t make a picture in his head of Bill as a young man, especially one that punched up other men for a living.