Storyland

by Catherine McKinnon

  ‘We’re taking you out tomorrow,’ I tell her.

  I pick up the rabbits and walk from the barn to the yard. Abe is nowhere to be seen, nor Bud. I can’t hear the sound of an axe at work either. I walk around to the southern side of the barn, where the laying hatches are. The feed buckets for the fowls are sitting outside the fence. The fowls have not been fed. I can hear the pigs making a racket in their yard.

  ‘Abe!’ I call.

  He don’t appear. I hang the rabbits on a hook near the kitchen. Where’s Mary? My chest goes tight. I run across the yard to the orchard. I see Mary pruning trees and feel relief. Since I heard that cry in the forest I’ve been on edge. It were probably catbirds. Or maybe it were Niall yelling at those hunters. Strange I didn’t hear the shot that nearly got him in the foot.

  There’s a pile of branches at Mary’s feet. She glances up as I reach her, wipes the sweat from her brow.

  ‘You seen Abe?’ I ask.

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s vanished again,’ I say. ‘And he hasn’t done his chores.’

  ‘What’s up with him?’ Mary asks.

  ‘We’ve got to do something about it this time. He has to pull his weight.’

  I grumble my way back through the orchard and across the yard. I unhook the rabbits and go into the kitchen, slap them onto the table. I fetch a cup, dip it into the can of fresh milk and drink until my thirst is gone. I take the first rabbit, turn it belly up, and picking up my knife, cut along the full length of its body.

  A shadow crosses the threshold. I look up.

  ‘Mr Dempster?’

  Dempster’s shirt is all mud and bark.

  ‘Where’s Jewell?’ he asks, his voice low and grating.

  ‘Not here,’ I say.

  ‘When I left for the field this morning, she was in the house,’ he says. ‘Jewell!’ Dempster calls out like I might be hiding Jewell in the kitchen, although it is one room and there is nowhere to hide. He walks away, and when I reach the kitchen door and look to see where he has gone, he has crossed the path and is running up the steps of our cottage.

  ‘Mr Dempster,’ I call. ‘Jewell is not here.’

  ‘Jewell, Jewell!’ he shouts.

  I follow him across to the cottage and stand inside, watching him. Who does Dan Dempster think he is? Dempster pays me no attention. He even looks under the beds. When he is confident Jewell is not hiding in either of the bedrooms, nor behind a sitting room chair, he pushes past me, strides across the verandah, down the steps, and around to the milking sheds and dairy. He also searches the barn and fowl house. I don’t go after him. I wait in the yard, so enraged I feel my whole body flush.

  Mary comes up from the orchard. Dempster returns from the fowl house and stops in the middle of the yard. Mary, arms crossed, gives Dempster her glare. She’s slow to anger is Mary, but once she gets there she is ferocious and does not forgive easily.

  ‘Do you know where my daughter is?’ Dempster asks Mary.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You swear?’

  Mary gives him a sour look.

  ‘You do anything to Jewell?’ I ask. ‘You do anything to make her want to run off?’

  Dempster’s grey eyes rest on mine, steady and cold. His skin looks jaundiced, like some babies I’ve seen. I remember what Connor told me, how his ma once found Dempster on the track out back of Duncan’s dairy. It were early morning and Mrs Farrell were going to help Mrs Duncan with her daughter’s birthing of her first born. Dempster were shirtless and calling out for his wife. Mrs Farrell didn’t know if he’d been drinking or were sleepwalking.

  ‘She could be over at her friend Lucy Needleham’s,’ I say, although I know she had a falling out with Lucy some months back.

  ‘Have you seen this?’ Dempster asks.

  He pulls a necklace from his pocket and holds it out to me. It’s a pretty necklace, made of white stones and string.

  ‘No,’ I say.

  He swings it through the air. ‘Jewell told me last night that your brother gave it to her.’

  I catch Mary’s eye. Another thing Abe hasn’t told us.

  Dempster pushes the necklace back into his pocket.

  ‘If I find out that boy has been with my daughter this morning,’ Dempster says, ‘I’ll come back here and kill him.’

  Mary and me sit on the grass near the creek and wait for Abe.

  ‘We didn’t even ban Dempster from our property,’ I say. ‘We should have done that at least.’

  ‘Never mind Dempster, we got to find out what Abe and Jewell have been up to,’ Mary says. ‘He shouldn’t be courting her in secret, and not without her da’s permission. That ain’t right.’

  ‘And not without telling us,’ I say.

  I see Abe walking down the track from the long paddock. His head is sunk low and his feet kick at the dirt.

  ‘Here he comes,’ I say to Mary.

  We stand and wait.

  Abe crosses the yard and stops outside the kitchen. Only then does he see us.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Mary calls as we go over to him.

  ‘Walking.’

  ‘With Jewell?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ he says.

  We stand in the brisk winter air, sun slanting though the tree leaves.

  ‘I’ll do my chores now,’ Abe says. He offers no apology and turns to go.

  ‘Dempster has been here,’ I say.

  ‘What did he want?’ Abe asks.

  ‘He showed us the necklace you gave Jewell,’ Mary says.

  Abe’s eyes widen with surprise. He stares out across to the low paddock.

  ‘So I made Jewell a necklace, nothing wrong with that,’ Abe says. ‘You know she likes pretty things.’

  ‘Dempster thinks you know where Jewell is,’ Mary says.

  ‘Isn’t she at home?’ Abe asks.

  ‘She’s missing,’ I say.

  Abe screws up his face, like he is trying to work out a puzzle.

  ‘Is something happening between you two?’ I ask.

  Abe don’t answer directly, he is a master at misdirection.

  ‘You saw how upset she were yesterday. I promised I’d meet her today,’ Abe says. ‘I went to where we were supposed to meet. I called and called but she never answered. I thought she must have gone home.’

  ‘That don’t answer my question,’ I say.

  ‘I were trying to look after her, same as you,’ Abe says, hotly.

  ‘Stop it, both of you,’ Mary says. ‘It ain’t like Jewell to go off without telling us. Something is up.’

  We gallop along the shore by the lake. Abe and Mary on Night, Ghost and me, trailing behind. Jewell’s been missing three days now. Everyone has been asking, did she run away or is she hurt? All the neighbours have been out searching, but Dempster made it known he don’t want us part of it. He’s telling everyone that Abe has done something to Jewell. Constable Black were called down but he told Dempster he can’t start an investigation until he knows there’s been a crime. The constable stopped by the farm and asked us all to tell what we knew. We did that and he left without giving away what his own thoughts were. Against Dempster’s wishes we have been out looking for Jewell, but only at night so as not to cause more trouble. We have our own suspicion about what might have happened. Maybe Dempster whipped Jewell after Mary and I left on Tuesday, and she ran off into the bush, then fell and injured herself. If that happened she could be lying in a gully somewhere, calling out and no one hearing.

  The sun sets as we turn off from the lake and ride on through the forest, up past Duncan’s dairy and behind Dempster’s farm. Abe says Jewell sometimes comes to this part of the forest when she wants to hide from her da. The early moon is brighter than a lamp. We halt the horses, dismount and walk through the trees, calling for Jewell, stopping to listen for a reply. Hear only night birds. A bandicoot scurries in dead leaves. Possums eye us from the trees. We creep forward to the ridge of the hill, peer through tall sedges, down over Dempster’s paddocks to the
farm buildings and house. Don’t see no light on. Not anywhere.

  We turn away and keep on walking through the forest, calling, calling, but no Jewell.

  ‘Maybe she did catch a train out of here,’ Mary says, when we stop for a rest. ‘I’ve heard her talk of a cousin that lives in Sydney.’

  ‘She won’t have gone without telling me,’ Abe says, dark eyes glinting.

  He walks off through the trees, calling her name. Mary and me watch him go.

  ‘I got this ache in my stomach,’ Mary says.

  ‘I don’t know where else to look,’ I say.

  A catbird squeals, the sound just like a cat in a fight.

  ‘Where are you, Jewell?’ I whisper.

  The next day after milking, we three ride to Aunty’s place, like we do most Saturdays, but all of us are sick at heart. The storms that came in May beat potholes into the dirt road. There’s a southwesterly and it’s blowing cokework smoke across the plain and the stink nettles my nose.

  When we were kids Aunty would bring us down from the mountain to the beach. There’d be shade all the way and chattering birds. We’d hear the sea from four miles west. On hot days we’d sit on the wet sand and let the waves rush around us. It were one jetty at Port Kembla back then, not two. Nowadays men ride coal trolleys down the mountain and scoot across the flat land like there’s no tomorrow. Sometimes those men have to sit on the jetty for hours, not able to unload their coal because the ships taking it away are still hanging out at sea waiting for the wind to quiet. So the hurry is for nothing. The cokeworks are on the hill at the back of the southernmost jetty. Every day workers shovel coke into sixty-two ovens that burn through the night. On still days I hear the machines hiss and clatter, above the cows and roosters, pigs and dogs, and the slow clunk of axes.

  We ride around the bend in Five Islands Road and there before us is Mount Kembla. Hat Hill it were once called. Up near the top, shrouded in mist, is Aunty’s land, left to her by her da. Further along, with escarpment running between, is Mount Keira.

  I press my thighs into Ghost, tip forward and begin to gallop towards Aunty’s.

  Abe clutches onto Mary as she pushes Night to race along beside me.

  We’re hot and sweaty by the time we ride into Aunty’s yard. The house is in a forest clearing. There’s a giant fig tree growing to one side. It has enormous roots that twist above ground and its branches spread out so far that beneath them an entire village could picnic. Five people, arms held out and standing finger-tip to finger-tip around the trunk, cannot meet to form a circle. That were something we tried one time when Otto first courted Mary.

  We dismount, leave the horses to graze, and go to the kitchen, calling, ‘Aunty! Aunty!’ She’s not about and the fire is burning low. We ladle out water from the bucket set on the table and quench our thirst. Aunty’s da built the house with four rooms and a fireplace. I check that Aunty is not in any of the other rooms.

  ‘The place is empty,’ I say, coming back into the kitchen.

  Abe goes out to the woodpile, takes up the axe and starts to split wood. He has not talked since last night. Mary and me take the path that leads to the caves where Aunty stores her jams and other preserves. She’s not there either, so we walk down through the forest to the creek and find her sitting on a rock, dangling a line. There’s a baby eel squirming in the bucket set down by her side. She has her skirts tucked up and her legs bare, and I see one is bruised.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask.

  ‘Huh?’ Aunty mutters.

  ‘Your leg is all bruised,’ I say.

  ‘Is it?’ she says, looking down at her shins.

  I can’t tell if she is lying or if she truly didn’t know she had bruised it.

  ‘You should live with us now, Aunty,’ I say.

  ‘How bad is your eyesight?’ Mary asks.

  ‘Nothing wrong with my eyesight,’ Aunty says, reeling in an eel that is four times the size of the one she’s already caught.

  In the kitchen Aunty cooks while we tell her everything about Jewell. She slips the eel from the pan onto plates then dishes out the mashed potatoes. We eat but Aunty only picks at her food. She stares at Abe like she’s expecting him to say something. Finally, she pushes her plate away from her. Abe shifts about in his seat, stands and walks to the fire, then he comes back and sits down.

  ‘I can always tell when you have a secret,’ Aunty says to him.

  He sighs and rubs his hands through his hair. ‘Jewell and me were going to run away together,’ he says. ‘Go to Melbourne and get jobs in a factory and as soon as we could, get married.’

  I can’t believe what I’ve heard. ‘Leave the farm?’ I say.

  ‘How come you didn’t tell us this before?’ Mary says.

  ‘Jewell made me swear not to,’ Abe says. ‘And I’ve been thinking, any day now she will turn up and when she does, if I’ve told our secret, she will give me an ear bashing.’

  Abe kicks at the chair leg with his foot. Aunty collects up the dishes.

  ‘Were you going to tell us before you left?’ I ask, unable to stop glaring at my brother.

  ‘Jewell said it would be better for you and Mary if I didn’t. She said her da would be over to see you first thing, and if you didn’t know where we were, then neither of you would have to lie.’

  ‘It don’t sound like a very sensible plan to me,’ Mary says. ‘You don’t know nothing about factory work.’

  ‘Jewell were desperate. I had no choice.’

  Aunty is washing the dishes. She nods her head as though this all makes sense, which it don’t.

  ‘Now Dempster thinks you done something to Jewell,’ Mary says. ‘Aunty, Dempster is telling that to everyone he can.’

  ‘There’ll be trouble, Abe, if you don’t find Jewell,’ Aunty says slowly.

  ‘If Jewell could, she’d let me know where she is,’ Abe says. ‘It’s Dempster that has done something to her, it can only be him.’

  ‘Done what?’ Mary asks.

  ‘The worst.’ Abe stands and paces about the kitchen.

  He looks like he might explode.

  ‘But Dempster were angry when he came looking for Jewell at our place,’ I say. ‘He didn’t know where she were. He weren’t pretending.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’ Abe asks.

  ‘He might be a hard man but he is her father,’ Mary says, poking at the fire.

  ‘He has a temper,’ Abe says. ‘And a temper gets you into trouble.’

  ‘But everyone has looked everywhere for her,’ I say.

  ‘A person don’t just disappear,’ Mary says.

  ‘Mrs Farrell told me yesterday it were Jewell’s own fault, she’s always been too lippy,’ I say.

  ‘Own fault,’ Abe says. ‘Own fault to have her father murder her?’

  ‘Mrs Farrell is certain she’s run off,’ I say.

  Aunty puts down the dishcloth and turns to face us.

  ‘There’s this man I know. Toorung is his name. He can track her down. Once, years ago now, a boy got lost in the forest back behind Dapto. It were the middle of summer and hot as hell but Toorung found that boy.’ Aunty goes into her bedroom and comes back with her coat. ‘We got to get onto this now,’ she says. ‘If it rains, it will be too late.’

  I help Aunty up on Ghost. We make good time, riding back down the mountain. We take the road to Illawarra Lake. Aunty taps my stomach. She points to a small track that leads to the bay and we turn onto it. Trees and thick bush on either side. About a mile along, the track twists around a gigantic tree and we come to the shore. The blue lake beyond is a big belly shuddering. Clouds are shivering ghosts on its surface. An old man and two boys are in the shallows heaving in nets. They have their pants rolled up. The boys are reed thin and bare-chested, the old man wears a shirt and vest. His grey hair is tied up in a knot. The two boys help pull the nets but the old man takes all the weight. He is strong.

  ‘Is that old man Toorung?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ Aunty says.


  On the sand behind, there are barrels lined up. Two kids, a boy and a girl, are running in circles around the barrels, dragging sticks behind them. Three brown dogs trail after the kids, yapping at the sticks, like the sticks are alive. There’s a fire in front of a gunyah and an old woman sitting by it, a possum skin coat wrapped around her.

  ‘That’s Yardah, Toorung’s wife,’ Aunty says.

  A timber house is set back in the trees behind the gunyah. The door is open and a woman steps through. She is older than me but not much older.

  ‘That’s their daughter, Moomung,’ Aunty says. ‘The kids, the older boys and the two young ones, belong to Moomung.’

  Moomung stops to look at us and then goes over to her ma.

  Toorung sees us now but he keeps pulling at the net.

  ‘What do you want to do, Aunty?’

  ‘Wait,’ she says.

  Toorung finishes hauling in the net. The older boys begin sorting the fish into the barrels. Toorung washes his hands in the lake and walks over. He don’t smile but his face isn’t mean. His vest and shirt hang open and I can see long thin scars on his chest and arms. He starts to talk in his language, which sounds familiar though I don’t know a word. What gets me though is Aunty, because she speaks back to him using some of that language and snatches of English.

  We sit around the campfire. The dogs have settled, two with their heads between their paws, the third rolling on its back waiting to be tickled. Yardah boils water and makes billy tea. Beneath her possum skin is a long black skirt and a white shirt, but her feet are bare. The older boys go to wash the cups. They come back and squat by the fire, line the cups up on the dirt. The two little kids grip their sticks with one hand and hang onto Moomung with the other. The older boys want to look at our rifles. Mary and me show them how to load and unload. Abe goes down to the shore, and watches the other fisher-families out on the lake work their nets. A northwesterly ripples across the water where pelicans float. The sun peeks through the clouds but the warmth is like a worn blanket.

  We hear the sound of horses. I turn and see two men riding down the track. Dempster and Mr Farrell. They canter right up to the campsite and halt.