by Kim Scott
At church, when they put the words to hymns up on the wall, Deslie looked at the words as he sang, just like he was reading them for the first time.
He was a funny boy, that Deslie. Make you laugh. Make you cranky too. He fought with the other kids a lot, and sometimes he was a bit sneaky. But they teased him because he was not from their country, because his parents didn’t want him, because he was dumb at school.
Deslie remembered one good thing about his school at Beagle Bay. He did go to school every now and then, and each time it was more awkward for the teachers to know what to do with him. So one time they gave him a book with a cassette tape. The book was not much good to him, except for some little pictures in it, but he listened to the tape. He remembered it. Billy was surprised when Deslie talked to him about it, and he asked Billy to read it to everyone in the class.
Deslie and Billy went fishing down in the gorge. They were walking back, Deslie carrying a barramundi almost as big as himself. See? Told you he was a good fisherman. Billy had caught nothing.
The fish was heavy and they took turns carrying it as they picked their way over the red rocks, gleaming from countless polishings by sand and wet season rapids. Really, they needed a canoe or a raft. And Deslie said yes. This is like ... I could be Huck, and you Tom, he said. Billy wondered about that.
And Billy did read Tom Sawyer to the class; he skipped bits when his listeners started to wilt at the onslaught of verbosity, just bits here and there.
The younger boys made a raft and took it out at High Diving, and pushed one another of it, and sank it, and swam back and made another.
But they drifted away from the book, it on one current and they another, because there could be no white man running away from the law here. And why was that Negro like that?
It’s like in Australia, maybe, when you go to Derby or Wyndham. Or, yes, the people in Darwin and in Katherine did look at you, sometimes, as if they think we are like that Negro.
Early in the year Deslie used to come over to Billy and Liz’s place to visit. He shared meals with them several times. They heard him telling the other kids. ‘We had supper, didn’t we?’ and he’d list the food to the other kids. They realised he was bragging to the others and suggesting he was a favourite.
Sylvester said once, ‘I don’t like to go to other places, people that I don’t know.’ And, after persuasion, ‘Shy, maybe, or something like that.’
They started to dissuade him from coming because of this, and because they started to feel exploited, almost, with Deslie turning up at meal times, and leaving soon after unless they were watching a video or television. At school, also, he took up all their time, wanting their attention, and they had to write down what he said so that he could copy it into his journal. But even then he couldn’t read it back.
A film was shown, most weeks, at the basketball court and most of the indigenous community would be there to view it. The audience was, of course, small. As was the screen, which perched just off the edge of the basketball court facing the office.
One time, when a film was showing for the third consecutive night, Billy and Liz went along in response to the rave reviews issuing from their students. They sat on the ground, their backs against the office shack, just to one side of where the projector threw its beam from the doorway.
A full moon rose and shamed the flickering images on the shabby screen. The globe in the projector failed, and while it was being fixed and cursed, the children skipped around, and nimbly through, the adults sitting on the dirt.
The film voices were thin and brittle in the night, in contrast to the voices of the watchers, which sounded thick and warm, imbued with the darkness. The scents of sweating bodies, of rubbish and decay, of the bush and the river nearby prevented them losing themselves in the film. But the security of friends and family, the easy reach to home, the very clashes between this world and that of the film added to the experience and significance of watching it.
Deslie found Billy and Liz in the dark as children sank into sleep around them. Small bodies lay huddled and scattered on the ground. Deslie sat next to Billy, their shoulders firm together. ‘You treat me like I was maybe your own son.’ And he fell asleep, his head on Billy’s shoulder.
But it was not so, it became less so. He came for no more meals alone. Liz was not sure that she trusted him, and didn’t like it that he would come so early in the morning. He called to her as she left the house one morning. She heard, and looked, but could not see him. Eventually his voice led her to him. He was under the house, face down in the soil, and giggling at her confusion. Another time he told her how he had looked in the window and seen her walking around in her dressing-gown, still stumbling with sleep.
Deslie called out to Billy also, and Billy found Deslie snaking along in the darkness under one of the classrooms, his grinning teeth spitting laughter, his eyes sparkling with excitement.
Someone, at the mission, said they remembered Deslie when he was a small boy, at Beagle Bay, and when he was called Derek. He had to change his name when someone in the community, who had the same name, died. That wouldn’t have helped him at school, having to work out how to read and write a new name.
They remembered, or someone they remembered had told them, that Deslie always had a small can tied around his neck, and petrol in that can. Well, yes, that’s partly why he came here, because his cousin was worried about him and the vehicles in here are nearly all diesels. But his cousin had kids growing up, and a son just a little bit younger than Deslie himself.
Deslie was better now. But every now and then, no! He dipped a rag in the lawnmower tank maybe. Petrol ate up his insides, his brain, everything. Burned the nostrils, moved astringently, forcing into fissures and pushing hollows and enclosures within him that could never be filled. Next day at school he knew nothing, not even numbers, and was quiet. The others might whisper about him. His cousin gave him a proper hiding, too, after his sniffing.
So he might bump himself and you heard a sort of ringing sound. Emptiness within him, and his dark glazed eyes reflecting, especially, dark spaces, shadows, the night sky.
True. He was our youngest, our best trained blackfella. And not even in his own country. And he all the time dying away from the inside out.
Not Listening, but Learning
For a long time we knew about Araselli’s growing belly, about the baby inside her. She stayed here, swelling and swelling, keeping inside and to herself for a long time. Then she went away to Wyndham to stay with her aunty.
She came back. In the old days people thought you got a baby from dreaming, from spirits coming into you. Now people know different, the young ones could even stop having babies and still have their fun if they wanted. Better not let Father Paul know but. Silly buggers. Maybe there is still some of the old way in it.
So whose baby was it? It was black, proper black. Everyone could see it was Alphonse’s son. We knew for sure then. There you are. They had a baby together.
It was a pretty one. Everybody was happy to have a new baby. They could believe that they did not know, not for sure, where it came from.
And Araselli was proud and strong with everybody. Once, when all her friends were around her, she took the baby from Stacie’s arms and quickly walked to Alphonse who stood with his back to her. She bumped him, he turned, she said his name and thrust the baby at him. He took the child, perhaps instinctively to save it from falling, and turned in a circle looking down, looking down at the grinning gurgling child in his arms. Alphonse and child. Alphonse himself grinning too big. The biggest smile.
He said nothing. He gave the child to someone so that they could return it to Araselli who had walked back to her friends and was laughing with them.
So. Araselli and Alphonse. They began to swagger around together, in front of everybody, talkingsmiling together. Nothing bad happened to them. They shouted back at the people who growled at them. Their parents gave up, because after all they had been arguing with them for too
long and had not been able to change their minds. Brother Tom, the Sisters, they shrugged, they smiled, they held the baby, they drank cups of tea with those two and their baby. People gave up. They was young, good looking, happy.
But, they have promised ones. They rumbud. Before, Araselli and Alphonse only talked through certain other people. They were not allowed to look or talk to one another. But that’s only the way it should be, the way it used to be. They used to do it like that, even Araselli and Alphonse. But now? Now they live in one room, have a baby together, don’t hardly talk to anybody else, don’t worry about nobody.
Things are all anykind and make no sense.
Alphonse is a strong young man, and clever too. When he was a boy, about Deslie’s age, he went away to Melbourne with Father Paul. He went in a big sports day there. He came back with shining trophies which he gave to Father Paul to look after, and they put his photograph in the newspapers and wrote about him.
Father Paul let Alphonse go and use a room in the mission to do exercises. He made him lift weights, and he timed his running with his watch.
But Alphonse lost interest, being busy with Father Paul all the time after work, and working with Brother Tom all day in the garden. He got too tired, and he didn’t really want to go away running against white fellas anyway. What for? Not for himself.
They trusted him at the mission. He used to drive all the machines, and they knew he could be left to do jobs on his own.
He was always the one who drove out to the airstrip and loaded and unloaded supplies. When they put the telephones in, Alphonse would ring the orders through for the mission. Then, without the mission knowing, he arranged for them to bring beer in. For himself alone.
Now? Alphonse and Araselli, with their baby child, stay in one small room, and they keep it for themselves. They have a video player. The room is dark because they have a heavy blanket across the window. When the air-conditioner used to work it was cold too, and they would stay under a blanket. It was different then but, because that was before the baby. Now they lay there in the dark, and it’s hot, and the video screen flickers colours across their faces, and their eyes reflect the screen, and they look at their child and see the two screens in his face, and they look at one another and see them there too.
Deslie tells Billy that they just lay there all day and don’t let others in. Have some grog, too. The other girls, and Stacie tells Liz this, reckon that Araselli’s just bossy, and is scared of the other girls taking Alphonse away from her. She used to be good fun, but now! Not any more. She gets cranky.
Some of those girls, and women, been going over to that builders’ camp, and drinking beer. It’s not good you see. They get a little bit drunk, and friendly because they like it, you know, and they do silly things gunna cause trouble. They not ask the men, not ever. Those white blokes shouldn’t ask ’em over to have a drink. They sneak over there you know, don’t tell anybody where or when or whatever, but we know. Believe us, we know.
We told council, ‘No grog.’ But, no one listens.
That Araselli. What’s with her? She want trouble? Plenty of it already anyway, with her going with Alphonse when they’re rumbud and they have that baby. We talk about this and talk about it and we have to do something, or there be all sorts of things going on make Karnama go down get worse too quick. But who listens? We got no stories, we got no punishments. We losing it. We losing that power.
In the evenings the builders make a campfire by the shed where they sleep and store their gear. They sit around, eat, and drink. They drink until they are sleepy or until they know if they have more they cannot work tomorrow. Experienced drinkers.
All the school teachers went there one evening. They were asked for a meal. They walked into the light, and sat with those men. Billy smiling, quiet joking, but not able to say much and often not being heard. Annette left early because of young Alan. The big heavy flanked men conscious of that woman who remained among them.
As the night aged Liz got angry with the talk of the people who lived here, with the men’s muted braying about women, their own appetites. She stood up, said some angry things, and the men said they were sorry, and not used to a lady in their camp. She got angrier, blazed there in the light, and left. Alex tried to explain it away. At the school, he said, it’s very trying, we’re all tired. And Billy said I think she is right, quietly, I agree with her, it seems there is nothing to say. And he disappeared.
Some mutterings. Then, like testing, like reassuring itself, a louder voice. Haw.
Each night the laughter and the voices carry from behind the mission workshop where they are camped. Haw haw haw from the flickering firelight and the bright neon torches. The pop and fizz of cans being opened, and the jokes about the women and who they fancied.
Eh Barry, that Sharon fancies you mate. You gunna try her, or what?
I’m a married man, mate.
She’s all right. Put a bit of weight in her legs. Big tits.
Shit, I wonder if you grabbed ’em young and tied their fuckin’ feet up like the chinks do, eh? Stop ’em gettin’ such big hoofers. Squeeze some meat back into their fuckin’ legs.
Fuckin’ legs.
What’s her name? Araselli? You get her up the duff? That baby yours?
Nah, too black for you.
She’d be all right, I reckon.
Geez you’re a desperate bastard.
Haw. Haw, haw. Cans popping, meat sizzling on their fires.
People have seen some of the women over there. On the edge of the light. Shadows were there, different voices. Just for a laugh and a drink they say.
Raphael and one or two other men went over to the camp one Friday, night-time, evening, to talk, have a drink. But they were not wanted there. It was polite. They had a drink or two, but knew they had to go. When they left it started again.
Haw haw.
A Saturday morning, very early, and Milton was knocking at Billy’s door. He came in and sat down.
‘Oh no, what I gunna do?’ He laughed ruefully and pushed himself back into the armchair. ‘Mr Seddum sack me I reckon. Alex gunna sack his gardener.’
Billy was puzzled. He studied Milton closely. ‘Milton you’re pissed. You been drinking, haven’t you?’
‘No. Not just now. Last night, yeah. I didn’t know, see.’ His head was bowed. He straightened and relaxed his arms, pushing himself to and fro in the cushions of the armchair. He looked up, gave an unreliable smile. There was something shameful in his pleading, bloodshot eyes. ‘I had just two maybe three cans so I was little bit drunk and I had the taste of it. Someone gave me little glass one, you know bottle, and I had that. I didn’t know.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘If I go and tell them now ... They forgive you. It better to confess and say you did do wrong. They forgive you like Christ, eh? Oh, but that Father Paul, he frighten me. He must forgive me, eh?’
‘Forgive you for what?’
Milton pushed himself back into the chair again, then drummed his fingers on its arms. He pivoted both bare feet on their heels and moved them in little arcs.
‘I didn’t take ’em. I only drank some. I knew, and I wasn’t gunna drink any then. But they was already stolen.’
Billy laughed shortly, and leaned toward Milton. ‘You buggers pinched Brother Tom’s home-brew and now you’re feelin’ guilty.’
‘Not me, that other mob. I should tell them now, eh? That best. My father said I should ’cos they know.’
Milton felt guilty, but he was also frightened of what might happen if he told them. Especially of what Father Paul might do.
He kept shaking his head, talking of confession and forgiveness, his head down and his forearms resting on his knees. Billy and Liz looked at one another.
Eventually Billy walked over to the mission with Milton. They passed within twenty metres of Sebastian, who sat in the shade of a tree outside one of the houses. He appeared not to look at them.
Billy left Milton s
tanding by the outer wall and large gate of the monastery courtyard and continued looking for Father Paul. He found him at the other end of the monastery building examining the door of the old kindergarten. Billy realised why Milton had not been keen to look for Father Paul over this way. This must be where they kept the home-brew.
‘G’day Paul. Bit of strife last night I hear. I had a visit from someone who knew about it, and’s now wracked with guilt. He’s waiting over at the monastery there. Okay?’
Father Paul hesitated a moment. Looked at Billy a second time. ‘Right. I’ll see him later. Thanks.’
Much later that same day two cans of beer sweat on a laminate table in the monastery courtyard. Two cans of beer are lifted to two mouths. Father Paul’s fingertips are nicotine stained, and his thick fingers sprout tufts of fair hair. Like the hand of God, it is large, and mottled, and the fingernails are bitten down to the quick.
‘I always sleep with my door open. Anyway, during the night I woke up. I was lying on my side facing the wall, but I knew there was someone inside my room. So I turned, as if in my sleep, and I could tell who it was. Raphael and Alphonse. They came only a few steps in before one of them grabbed the other’s arm and beckoned towards the door with his head. I heard Raphael whisper, “Not here.”
‘They were drunk, I could smell it. Raphael’s a dangerous bastard. I couldn’t see any point getting up then. But I was angry. So when I found out they’d broken in and pinched the beer, I knew who it was.
‘So I went over, early in the morning, and walked into where they were sleeping. I knew they’d be crook as dogs. It was all bluff. I was shouting, “Let’s fight, come on! You break in and steal from the mission, you’re looking for trouble.” I walked in rolling my shirt sleeves up and just stood over them.
