True Country

by Kim Scott

  ‘Maybe. Like one arm of me is.’

  ‘That not everything. You believe you is, you feel it, you can be Aborigine all right. You believe, you belong. But, yes, maybe too late for you.’

  Yes, Sebastian was visibly shrinking.

  ‘I’ll have to learn a new language,’ said Billy. ‘That’s a lot of words, just for food, eh?’

  Gabriella continued the tangent, ‘That’s like what I said to my tutor the other day, “You people have too many words”—speaking about English.’

  Deslie nodded his agreement.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Those stories,’ Sebastian asked, ‘you want some more?’

  Billy shook his head. No. Yes. But. No time.

  ‘You sing a story like Walanguh could,’ said Fatima, ‘that’d be a proper powerful one. Write about it all here. I’d help you. What you say?’

  Sebastian nodded for Billy, and mumbled approval. He meant to say, ‘The old people, they couldn’t read or write, but they had their stories in their mouths and they had them in their hands. They danced and they sang all their stories...’ But his words came out broken and jumbled, perhaps because he was shaking so much. He had shrunk, and Billy felt himself looking down upon him as if he was a child.

  ‘You look tired,’ said Gabriella to Billy.

  ‘No. A bit. Some time by the river, fishing, will help me.’

  Sebastian had become solid again. ‘Maybe catch you a barra, eh? Some people are lucky. After all this time, now you know the word.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ...And Knowing

  He first saw the bronze and silver flash in the black water, as the barramundi swooped from invisible depths to investigate his lure. Swooped? It was as if it appeared, disappeared. Was there, an arc of it about the lure for an instant, then ... gone! It was a big one, he’d seen it snapshot clear.

  Now he knew it was there.

  So he cast again. Let the lure settle. Let it be a sick fish, that’s what he had been taught. He made it twitch, paused, twitched.

  There!

  He felt the strike run along the line, the rod, into his shoulders. The line was tight like a blade the rod bow-bent the reel singing. The great fish leapt and shook itself and the tiny fluorescent lure rattled at its jaw. The fish hung there, in the air against blue sky bloody cliffs, it dark with the river depths, silver scales engraved and shining like stars, the fame in its eyes.

  Invisible again it sped and circled in the depths. He saw it a moment below his feet as it tried to drag the enchanted lure from its jaw. Now unseen, out to the centre of the river, the water bulging above its own deep power. Then launched again, shaking, about to take flight, shaking, shaking itself, shaking that lure. Which did, slowly, tumble free. And the line went limp and folded like a scribble in the breeze.

  A fish splashed heavily. Ripples lapped the rocks at his feet. Defeat.

  He retrieved the lure fitfully. He was robbed of the power, just a man and pieces of plastic. So close. Such terror for a fish, such a big fish, as big as he surely.

  Of course he tried again, continued to cast, but no. Not today.

  Find another place. He packed up his bag of craft and lures and moved on along the water, his eyes keen and looking, looking all the time for signs.

  But his nostrils were working too, working overtime, and there was a heavy stench of death upriver. Something large had died.

  He moved on faster, wanting to find that death and get past it, making that the first thing in his mind.

  He stepped to the top of a rocky outcrop beside the river, into a buzzing cloud of flies, and looked upon the death. All at the same time. It was difficult to breathe.

  There, trapped in the fishing net slung across the river was a large crocodile. The net was the one Gerrard had given Samson. Samson the ranger. The crocodile had torn the net away from one bank and wrapped it around itself again and again in a great tangle, and now was stiff, half in half out of the water, belly up, with its great jaws thrusting at the sky and its white teeth bared. Flies moved across and above it in dark patches.

  Billy looked down. He was standing in ash. Clots of dried blood and the large curled scales of barramundi were scattered across the rocks. Billy felt his own blood banging in his ears, and his chest was tight with the stench and the heavy heat.

  Those bruised clouds, that oily dark river. The bloated crocodile, its head grinning at the sky. The hot day was pocked with buzzing black patches. Billy scuffed through the ash scales dried blood and moved away, his head spinning as if become a planet, alone, orbiting away from us into the dark deep spaces in the sky.

  He moved away, almost retching, moved away upriver inland upwind to get away from this this death this death.

  Billy made his way along the bone-dry bank, moving in and out of shade, stumbling across the uneven rocks which radiated heat. The river here, at this late time of year, was motionless and narrow. In many places it was possible to walk across it. River black, rocks glowing red with heat. Green algae blurred the edges of the dark river. Thunder broke and rolled across the sky. Sometimes the river valley held its course and Billy saw the distant horizon, the hills like a smudge, blurred and fusing with the sky, the vicious lightning twitching.

  There, not so far from the camp, just down from the High Diving pool, was a shallow crossing. The river ran rapidly here, but was only ankle deep. Billy left his shoes and fishing gear on the rocks and walked into the water. He crouched in it to cool himself. The sound of the running water helped soothe him. He wedged himself among some rocks, and lay down. With his head in the water he could hear, within the rushing bubbles, the clicking of pebbles as they rocked and moved.

  He stood, tall and revitalised, and felt the breeze breathing against his damp skin, the small rapids tugging at his ankles. On the other bank there was a faint track. This seemed a place that you could drive a vehicle across at this time of year, but the track was old and faint. Billy approached it. As the thunder rolled along the river toward the sea, and the distant lightning tongued the earth, he started along that path.

  And, still barefoot and wet from the river, Billy was suddenly in a clearing. There were large boab trees, some sheets of corrugated iron rusting on the ground, and the remains of a few very small huts among the dry grass on the clearing’s edge. This was the old people’s camp, the old site where the people had stayed years ago in the early days of the mission and before.

  He turned and beheld a view of the river, the entire mission and community. He had not realised that he had walked up such a slope. The mission grounds were exposed and vulnerable. The dark leafy green of the gardens, the darker shaded poultry runs, the pig pen. He could even partially see into the monastery courtyard. There were people sitting around a table in there. It could be Father Paul, Gerrard, Alex, Murray, Jasmine. Some others. They seemed to be having a meeting, making plans. But, of course, they were no longer all here. They had left, were leaving.

  He could see the coconut palms lining the road into and through the camp to the mission gates. The rows of huts, the dusty tracks; the river snaking from far inland, the rain clouds moving along to the deep pool in the river beside which the mission squatted. The shallow sluggish rapids. Just down from them, on the far side, he could see even the speck of his fishing bag and shoes where he had left them.

  The site was far superior to the other side of the river, except perhaps for tilling and working the soil. From here a youthful Fatima had carried her crippled father to the mission and back, and it was here that all the wild nights of dancing, and the many depraved scenes complained of in the school and mission journals had taken place. The place had, then, finally been successfully evacuated.

  The high slope provided a cooling breeze. Boab trees and grass worked to conceal the rust and rotting timbers, the frames of old huts, and the ashes of long-gone fires. For a moment the sun broke upon the site, washing it in rich afternoon light. The thunder continued to roll along the black river.


  Billy peered inside one still-standing hut. The doorway forced him to stoop as he entered. He felt trapped, even within a ruin. It was a tiny enclosure. Wire mesh shelving sagged from the walls that remained.

  He found another faint trail leading away from the clearing. Was it a path? It showed itself with each firm step; a patch of bare earth, a curve around a tree stump, and yet disappeared again behind him.

  Billy moved into the bush, parting it with his hands, imagining and making a path. As he left the clearing the heavy clouds and thunder rolling along the river crushed the light.

  He moved, still following the curious trail, among a group of rocks the size of houses, small cliff faces, concealed caves.

  As he came out from among them another rusting hut stood before him. It was larger than the others. Billy approached. The door was closed with a large bolt, which slid smoothly. Billy peered in. It seemed windowless, dark, stuffy, and hot. He stepped inside, smelled timber and sweat. There were wire mesh shelves along each wall, leaving only a small corridor down the centre. On the shelves were wooden objects, carvings, engraved and ochred wood. There were tapping sticks, didgeridoos, spears ... other things. He looked at them, held some. They were smooth and worn, and fell into the hand readily.

  The rain startled him. A few taps on the corrugated iron, as if of inquisitive fingers, then a loud drumming. Inside the shed it was deafening. The wind started up, was suddenly roaring. Billy smiled. Caught in this shell, and yet within the roaring wind and rain, he felt a part of it all. Within it, but sheltered and safe. The door banged shut, opened, banged again with the wind. Billy turned on his heels, around and around, and laughed aloud in the deafening roar. He stood in the doorway, holding the door, and although he was on the lee side of the shed, the twisting wind blew the rain back at him in great fat drops.

  He closed the door and waited peacefully in the dark roaring heat. Outside, the rain pelted and lashed the bush. Silver thorns were leaping in the deep black pool of the river, which gathered itself inland, and now came rushing, rushing with the rain. Water swirled around the shed where Billy sheltered, it curled, collected mud, and flowed away down the slope. The rapids rose, and flexed. Billy’s fishing bag and shoes, they were swept away as the river and the darkness came.

  This rain was not going to pass. People would worry about him caught out in it.

  Billy left the hut, bolted the door. He was already drenched again, his hair and clothes flat against his skin. Rain stung and wind tore. He slipped down the pathless slope, through the clearing. He splashed across the space—high trees tossing, boab trunks black. There was no view.

  Yes, for a moment. Dimly, the mission grounds, the coconut trees; the camp dissolving and blurred across the white water. Gone. The river was now a frothy tumult. Great sinews of water tore at the rocks.

  Unusually cold already, and shivering, Billy stood at the river’s edge. He entered the river slightly upstream from where he had crossed a short time ago. The water slapped his knees, grabbed him. Pushed and pulled him. He slipped. He turned back because he knew he couldn’t cross, but slipped again. The river coiled around him, took him, wanted to swallow him.

  Billy knew it as a snake. It threw him about at the same time as it wrapped around him, pulling him to it and deeper, stilling his struggles. Then free, he bounced of rocks, gulped air, swallowed water. A second coughing breath. Twisting. Muscles spinning him, holding. Light distant, a circle of light at the end of a long tunnel. It was a throat. Quiet, warm, soft darkness. He was swallowed and within.

  Three figures in the grey glide down the slope from the camp. Perhaps Fatima, Moses, Samson; thin and black spirits in the grey diagonal rain. And, behind them? Sebastian, stumbling, and Liz, hesitating and led.

  Billy, limp, his brain quiet, floats out of the rapids, and the thin spirits drag him to the frail, pale djimi on the shore. They stand in a circle around him.

  The roaring and drumming. Water running through the hard places. Such a sound and yet to feel so warm and dry.

  This bed—it’s seen from above—this bed in a small room. Dark people come into the room, look, speak to the pale woman with flaming hair who sits beside the bed.

  The dark people, the pale one, white ones, listen to the patient’s sentences rambling and breaking. The words bounce around the room and fall softly, broken, to the floor. Those watching listening smile, wrinkle brows at one another.

  At the foot of the bed, his long-dead father in work clothes. Like the photo of him leaning on the front of his grader, with his white sleeves rolled up over his dark arms. Grandmother too, white hair and dark skin, tickets from the horse races bunched in one hand, flowers in the other. Sebastian, Fatima, Gabriella there also.

  Billy feels Walanguh beside him, they’re mute and grinning, they’re drifting out the window together. Lifted by a desert wind, high in a moonless sky, they’re drifting in silence, each as if alone, but all the time looking, trying to see, searching for a place to land.

  Billy in a blue sky, clouds cobwebbing his vision, sun on his back, the air sharp, the shadow of clouds gliding across the scrubby ground below. The shadow of him. He cannot take his eyes from his shadow. The sun shining right through him, warming burning charring insides to black coals as his shadow fades. And he knew who he was, he recognised the land below him. The river snaking across burnt earth sprouting bits of green, that pool in the bend of the river, the green mission grounds, the cross of the airstrip ... The rain spat in the window, onto his face.

  I felt it.

  See? Now it is done. Now you know. True country. Because just living, just living is going downward lost drifting nowhere, no matter if you be skitter-scatter dancing anykind like mad. We gotta be moving, remembering, singing our place little bit new, little bit special, all the time.

  We are serious. We are grinning. Welcome to you.

  Acknowledgements

  The quoted material appearing in the chapter ‘Preparations’ is from Kalumburu: The Benedictine Mission and the Aborigines, 1908–1975 by Fr Eugene Perez OSB, published by Kalumburu Benedictine Mission, 1977.

  The quoted material appearing as epigraphs on page ix are from: Diesel and Dust by Midnight Oil, courtesy of Warner Bros, and Affinities by Charles Boyle, 1977, courtesy of Carcanet Press.

  The Author

  Kim Scott is a descendant of people who have always lived along the south-east coast of Western Australia and is glad to be living in times when it is possible to explore the significance of that fact and be one among those who call themselves Nyungar.

  Kim Scott began writing for publication shortly after he became a secondary school teacher of English. His first novel, True Country, was published in 1993.

  In recent years he has received grants from the Literature Board of the Australia Council and the Western Australian Department for the Arts to enable him to devote more time to writing.

  Kim Scott’s second novel, Benang: From the Heart, was published in 1999. Benang won the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award.

  He lives in Coolbellup, a southern suburb of Perth, Western Australia, with his wife and children.