The Middle of Nowhere

by Geraldine McCaughrean

  Then it came.

  Like a dust storm, grief spun in through the myrtle trees and smashed Comity in the face, choking, stinging, blinding. She stood on the verandah and wailed and screamed and sobbed for the loss of her mother.

  Smith, the wiremen, the Afghan cameleers and the stockmen disappeared as quickly as water soaks into dry ground.

  Herbert Pinny did not cry. He worked. He had always loved his job, prided himself on his skill and accuracy. Decoding and recoding Morse takes great concentration, assembling sentences out of the dots and dashes, clicks and silences. Now he found that it took his mind down a deep dark corridor to a small, soundproof room where nothing could reach him, not even the grief beating on the door, trying to get in.

  He stayed in the machine room all day and sometimes all night too, because it was not safe to sleep. While a man sleeps, his enemies can creep up on him, pour dreams in at his ear and fill up his head with faces, fantasies, false hopes. Coiled tiger snakes wait under a man’s pillow, ready to whisper in his ear: It is still true. She is still dead.

  He found he had to avoid Comity somewhat. A child’s tears are as infectious as chickenpox. But the girl would cope. She was eleven after all – almost eleven – would be eleven soon. Children are resilient, and what good was he to her anyway: this father who had brought her to the middle of nowhere and so killed her mother? …No, no, hush! Concentrate, man, concentrate. Shut out everything but work.

  So Herbert Pinny worked. He did not cry – which baffled and bewildered Comity. Some days she seemed to be drowning in tears. She thought she was signalling frantically for rescue, taking her father tea, touching his sleeve, trying to catch his eye. But Pinny only bent his head lower over his notebook.

  No one else on the station wept either.

  Was it wrong, then, to cry? Comity wondered. Was she supposed to be glad, because her mother was with Jesus in Heaven? No one else on the station seemed to be mourning – just avoiding her, extra-busily going about their work. Only her friend Fred, as he fed the chickens, sprinkled a few crumbs of comfort in her direction too.

  “Trees cry also,” he said, as Comity struggled to find a dry corner of handkerchief so as to blow her nose.

  “Who do?”

  So he took her to see the yarran trees and the red drops of gum welling out of their bark. “They been cry since Death get going,” said Fred. “Beginning of the world, Maker Byamee hang up a bee nest in this tree – say to Begin Man and Begin Wife, My world is your world now. Take what you want, no matter. Go all over where you want. But hands off this tree, you hear me? One day the wife she picking up woodbits under yarran tree and she see honey-shine and she take one lick and she go at that tree lick-spit quite contrary to all what Byamee say. Wo-ho! Old Bat live in this tree. She shake up Old Bat and away he fly. Death Bat. He taking death all over everywhere. Sorry business for Begin Man and Begin Woman. Bat make big damn black shadow, him. Fly over me some day. Fly over you. Down go us. Tree so sad that tears run down still, yah?”

  Comity sometimes wondered why Fred, who was younger (probably) than she was, knew more stories than she did. Maybe Aboriginals were born knowing stories, she speculated. Fred knew a limitless supply: stories oozed out of him, like gum from a yarran.

  She looked closer at the red droplets, touched one with a finger. The gum was hard, not wet, and yet it was a comfort. It was. Just to know that someone other than she had openly cried. When she got back to the house she would tell Mama the story…

  And there it was again, that electric jolt that shook her heart in its socket and made her want to spew up a gallon of tears.

  “You ask Jesus?” said Fred.

  “’Bout what? Creeping into His bosom for comfort?”

  “Nah. Send the Missus back a while.”

  “Mama?!”

  “He done it hisself. Come back.”

  “That was different. He had to make sure the Apostles had got things straight. Jesus never fetched anyone else back.”

  “Damn did.”

  “Damn did not.”

  “Damn did. Fellah Lazarus.”

  “Oh, him. Yes but he was family. Or a family friend, leastways.”

  “Jesus come round here pretty a lot. Missus call him friend.” Fred was certain of this – Mrs. Pinny had sung it often enough: “What a friend we have in Jesus”. He had particular cause to remember, because Mrs. Pinny had tried to teach him to sing it, and hymn singing had turned out to be nothing like Kinkindele native singing. It was a battle neither side had won.

  Mary Pinny had not set out to teach Fred anything. Most of Comity’s lessons took place on the verandah, though, and Fred had a way of finding himself a job to do nearby. One day, Comity looked down and saw, through a knothole in the wooden decking, the glimmer of a brown eye. She said nothing, not wanting to get Fred into trouble. But a week or two later, when the termites had been busy, Comity’s chair leg went through the boards and narrowly missed skewering Fred in the head.

  Comity’s mother was not annoyed (except about the termites). She even asked if Fred would care to join the class. Of course, he refused point-blank. Somehow, though, the open-air classroom expanded to incorporate Fred. He came chiefly for the stories, and once Fred heard a story he never forgot it. Hence his extensive knowledge of the Bible and his certainty that Jesus and the Missus had been close friends. After all, stranger people than Jesus had moved into the Kinkindele district with the coming of the Wire. And any friend of the Missus was all right by Fred.

  Secretly, Comity and the yarran trees were not the only ones to have shed tears over the dusty mound in the yard. Mary Pinny had smiled at Fred, included him, shared her stories with him, and in return he had adored her.

  “How would I do it?” said Comity suddenly as they walked back from the yarran trees.

  “What do?”

  “Ask Jesus to send Mama back.”

  “Go in his gunyah. Ask him,” said Fred with a shrug that suggested nothing could be easier. And of course there was only one place Jesus was likely to pitch camp at Kinkindele, and that was the paper store.

  There was no actual chapel on the compound, but naturally Sundays could not go by without some kind of religious service. Sooner than open up Telegraph House to all and sundry, Pinny appointed the paper store as the station’s place-of-worship. It was no bigger than a potting shed, but every Sunday, seven adults and a child would crowd inside, stand in a circle, elbow-to-elbow, recite a prayer, sing a hymn and listen to Pinny reading from the Bible. He read badly, leaving a space between words as if dictating a telegraph. And Comity, standing opposite him, could see his forefinger knocking out the Morse against the seam of his trouser leg. Sometimes he even punctuated out of sheer habit. “A man went down to Jericho stop.” “Jesus wept stop.” To her shame, Comity found herself wishing her mother would take over; she read so b-e-a-yutifully and made everything come real.

  Smith would not have Fred inside the chapel, but made him stand outside and listen. (Comity quite thought it was because the store was too small for eight. She did not realize she was supposed to look down on the Aboriginals: her mother and father never had.) Shut out of Jesus’ gunyah, Fred imagined the place to contain powerful spiritual magic. If he had been allowed inside, he would have found nothing very awe-inspiring about the stacks of forms, shelves of spare parts, or the smell of Smith’s armpits. Comity tried explaining to Fred that Jesus did not actually live in the stationery store, but when Fred got hold of a wrong idea he gripped it so tight that it was hard for anyone to remember he was wrong.

  By the time they got back from the weeping yarran trees, Comity’s own tears had dried to salt stripes on her cheeks and her heart was straining free of despair. She would ask Jesus to bring her mother back from the dead!

  The paper store was kept locked, because, as well as paper, it contained kerosene, battery acid, methylated spirits and solder, sheep drench and some valuable coils of fine wire. The Company was fearful of thieving natives. Head O
ffice was fond of warning the stations against “thieving natives”. (Head Office – like Fred – could be very convincing once they got an idea into their heads.) Comity fetched the key from the house and unlocked the door, as she had done countless times before. Now, though, her hands were shaking uncontrollably and her mouth was dry at the thought of an interview with Jesus.

  She would not ask forever. Just long enough for Mama to see her piano and maybe teach Comity to play a tune on it. Just for long enough to get her mother’s face and hands and hair fixed in her mind so she would never forget them…oh, and to tell her about seeing that flock of budgerigars – and about the yarran trees crying. Just for long enough to say sorry for cracking open Pilgrim’s Progress that time, so that the pages fell out, and for putting it back on the shelf and not owning up. And just for long enough to make Father go outdoors sometimes and go to bed once in a while.

  “Will you come in with me?” said Comity, and Fred was there like a shot. For years he had been aching to see inside Jesus’ gunyah. Besides, he too wanted Mrs. Pinny back.

  Inside, Comity propped up The Light of the World picture that was forever falling off the wall. With Jesus there in the painting, knocking at that door, holding up his lantern, the stationery store already felt lighter.

  “I don’t have my Sunday bonnet on!” she whispered suddenly, aghast. “A lady cannot just wear hair in church!”

  So Fred wound her hair up on top of her head, like a lardy cake, and stuck a pencil through the knot of sun-blonded strands. Then they kneeled on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, and prayed for Jesus to think again about taking Mrs. Pinny to his bosom, and to raise her back to life as He had with his pal Lazarus.

  “Or Jairus! You raise up that Jairus gal also!” put in Fred, in case Jesus had forgotten.

  As the sun moved over Telegraph House and shone on the outhouse, pecked lines of sunlight showed through gaps in the plank walls, as if Comity and Fred were in a golden cage whose frame was glowing hot. Sweat trickled down the nape of Comity’s neck. “Give her back, sir! Please! We cannot do without her, nor anyone can!”

  Then the door flew open and Smith grabbed Fred by the hair and threw him outside to land on his back amid the chickens. The blacksmith picked him up and threw him down again several times, then set about methodically kicking him.

  “What you doing, Mr. Smith? Stop! Mr. Smith, stop!” yelled Comity, dragging on the man’s shirt: her two hands could not circle the great thickness of his wrist.

  Smith took off his belt, vowing on his mother’s life to beat the very flesh off Fred’s bones. Perhaps he meant to go for his trouser belt. If he deliberately chose the broader band of saddle leather buckled round his loins, he was forgetting why he wore it: to relieve a double hernia and a back strain. His back twinged; his hernias swelled, and he was obliged to give up. Fred bolted under the pole fence. Infected by the violence in the air, the chickens pecked out each others’ head feathers.

  Smith ran limpingly over to Telegraph House and Comity trotted after him, baffled as to what crime Smith thought had been committed. What did he have against praying? Even as she squeezed past the piano on the verandah, she could hear Smith’s ranting, clear through the house wall:

  “…can’t be trusted…not fit company…no daughter of mine would be…” His voice, harsh as a saw rasping through wood, snagged on knotholes of pain as he clutched at his back or belly.

  Herbert Pinny was not accustomed to stationhands barging into the house. Startled to his feet, he had knocked over his stool. He looked panicked rather than outraged. “What were you and the boy doing in the stationery store, Comity?”

  “Praying to Jesus, Papa! Fred and I were praying to Jesus about Mama!”

  Her father peered at her like a man trying to wake out of a deep sleep. He looked for all the world as if he had more important things to think about than Jesus or resurrection.

  “Now I heard everything,” fumed Smith. “His kind? Praying?”

  “Mr. Smith kicked Fred, Papa!”

  “Fred acted contrary to Regulations,” said her father. “He should not have entered the store. Unauthorized persons are not permitted on Company property.”

  “Kicked him three times, Papa!” said Comity.

  “Regulations…” said Herbert Pinny.

  “He touched her hair!” blared Smith and dared Comity to deny it.

  She pulled the pencil out of her topknot. She wanted very much to ram its point into Smith’s hernias, but instead she explained – very slowly, very fully – about the store being the chapel, and about not having her Sunday bonnet and about Fred fixing up her hair.

  Forced to back down, Smith began rebuckling his broad belt. He assured Mr. Pinny that he had never – no, never for a moment! – suspected Miss Comity of any misconduct; only the blackfellah. Comity was bewildered. What kind of misconduct was ever done in a paper store, let alone a chapel?

  “Praying indeed. Thieving, more like. Check the stock: that’s what you need to do now, sir.” Smith added this new excuse for kicking Fred.

  Herbert Pinny moved some forms about on the countertop. “I…” Regulations, it was true, did require him to keep a close check on Telegraph Company property. If there was a chance Fred had pilfered from the store, Pinny ought to investigate it. Unhappily, he followed Smith to the sunlit doorway before coming to a halt. (Comity half expected him to stretch out a hand and check for rain.) He bent and refastened the laces of one shoe. He did up a waistcoat button that had come undone. Finally, he stepped out onto the verandah. The sight of the piano made him flinch.

  Spring was written, in an elegant calligraphy of white clouds, across an azure sky. A never-settling snow of thistledown danced and hovered in the air. A pair of wallabies seemed to be comparing their front paws, over by the fence. Black cockatoos were sitting in the myrtle trees.

  Smith set off for the paper store and Comity followed at a run (in case he took something, just to make Fred look guilty). When they looked back, the Stationmaster was skirting the yard, keeping close to the buildings. Where there were no buildings, he clung to the pole fence instead, eyes screwed almost shut against the sunlight. He looked for all the world as if he was afraid of the open air. With a last clumsy burst of speed, he crossed the threshold of the stationery store to find the other two staring at him, and turned his face away.

  Watched by The Light of the World, he checked all the shelves in the store, blank-eyed. “There is nothing amiss here.” Finding Comity’s Bible, he opened it, and was ambushed by his wife’s handwriting on the flyleaf:

  To our darling daughter Comity on her birthday…

  He threw it back onto the shelf as if it had burned him.

  “Lock up and replace the key on the keyboard please, Comity,” he said, and found his way back to Telegraph House around the perimeter of the yard, like a blind man feeling his way.

  “Did Smith hurt you?” Comity asked Fred when she found him in among the blue gum trees.

  “That goona?” He snorted his contempt. She sat down beside him. “One day I go Altjeringa,” he said. “Fetch back my mama too.”

  “Where’s that? Far off?”

  “Altjeringa. Land of Maker Byamee. I say, ‘Give her back, Byamee kubang. Big mistake you make taking her. She formidable bad cook. One day she poison you like-as-not. You send her back to me, you should. Let her poison me.” He ran the heel of one hand across his cheekbone.

  “Your ma’s dead too? I never knew!” Comity was shocked. How was it you could know someone for ages and yet not know major things about them?

  “Long time.”

  “I’m sorry. I always thought the laundry lady Lulu was your ma.” This seemed both to astonish and insult Fred, so she added hastily, “Your dead people go to Altjeringa and live with Maker Byamee, do they?”

  “Yay.”

  When Comity asked how Fred would get up into the sky in order to meet the creator god, he corrected her geography. He knew the journey was overland because o
nce, in Dreamtime, a hero called Yooneerara had walked there for a look, without waiting to be dead. “Byamee bigly pleased with him: That some walk, kurlang! You my kind of man!”

  The story of Yooneerara was long – Comity’s attention drifted sometimes, but it was restful to hear Fred yamble on. His vocabulary was full of words he had learned from Mrs. Pinny and Sunday service; somehow that made his stories all the more soothing.

  “Can I come?” she interrupted before he had even finished. “When you go to Altjeringa, can I come?”

  “Yay, Lilly-Pilly. Jesus be there also maybe I bet. What a friend Byamee have in Jesus.”

  But Comity’s admiration for Jesus had taken rather a downturn. She had been thinking. Apart from the nastiness in the stationery store (which He could easily have prevented), there was the matter of the tiger snake. How hard would it have been for Jesus to stretch out a finger and kill the snake in the wash basket? And yet He had done nothing. He could have expunged all tiger snakes from the entire world. But no, He had just stood by with his lantern, His fresh-washed robe, that smug look on His face, and let the snake kill Mama and slither away, scot-free. He had just stood there, knocking on a door, thinking about nothing except wanting to get indoors and stay there and not come out again.

  Herbert Pinny did not reach out a finger either, except to tap his Morse key.

  He received messages, decoded them onto his notepad, then recoded and sent them on, his finger on the Morse key, tap-tap-tapping until the used page of the notepad could be torn off and impaled on a metal spike.

  COME HOME FATHER AILING

  1000 MERINO READY

  DELAYED STOP DO NOT WAIT SHEARING

  ARRIVE DARWIN TUESDAY FORE NOON

  SOLICITOR WANTS PROOF OF DEATH

  Other people’s lives, other people’s worries, other people’s business; other people’s joys and tragedies. All of them came into Herbert Pinny’s machine room, briefly rattled at his eardrums, then passed through his hands and on across the awful, unimaginable distance to the other side of the continent. The words came, the words went, but Herbert Pinny stayed, impaled on the sharp metal spike of duty, at one lonely spot on the map.