by JH Fletcher
Judy was there, luckily.
‘What on earth happened to you?’
‘Brett hit him,’ Jacqui said.
‘Why would he do that?’ she wondered, rallying around with the first-aid box.
‘Because he’s Brett.’
‘Ouch!’ said John and wriggled away from her as she tried to dab a graze with disinfectant.
‘Be still! There must have been some reason.’
‘He didn’t like seeing me with John.’
‘Thut up!’ John said fiercely, lisping around his bruised lip.
‘Why? It’s the truth. He started saying things and John hit him and —’
‘Got beat up.’ John’s hurt pride stung far worse than his bruises.
Judy had good antennae. ‘Is that all he did? Just say things?’
‘He stroked my arm.’
‘He actually touched you?’
‘Sure. He didn’t hurt me or anything, but he was talking all the time in this yucky voice …’
‘And then John hit him?’
‘Yes.’
Judy stopped what she was doing. She put down the pad of cotton wool. She took John’s hands. ‘Thank you, John. Thank you for what you did.’
Arthur’s ute pulled into the driveway.
Quickly Judy dropped John’s hands and got on with her patching up. ‘Keep this to ourselves, eh?’
Jacqui stared. ‘But shouldn’t Arthur —?’
‘We tell him, it’ll only upset him.’
Jacqui got the point at once. Her eyes went round. ‘War between the Mandales and the Shaughnessys! Wow!’
‘All we need. I’m a Shaughnessy, too, remember.’
‘Once,’ Jacqui said loyally. ‘Not any more.’
Judy was busy with John’s eye when Arthur walked into the kitchen. He stopped.
‘What’s this? A casualty ward?’
‘Something like that.’ Judy peered closer at what she was doing. ‘Keep still, John.’
‘What have you been up to?’ Arthur asked him.
John scowled. ‘Fighting.’
‘Don’t tell me,’ Arthur said. ‘Our friend Brett?’
‘Him and his mates,’ said Judy.
‘That’d be right. That young man always did need support. Did you win? No, I suppose not. What was it about?’
Nobody said anything.
‘Stiff upper lip, eh? More ways than one, by the look of it. Teach you a lesson,’ Arthur told him. ‘Doesn’t do to take on someone twice your size.’
‘That’s nonsense.’ Judy closed the first-aid box. The click of the catch reinforced her words.
‘Doesn’t work if you do,’ Arthur said. ‘That’s how people get black eyes.’
‘Sometimes you have to fight, whatever the odds, if you want to keep your self-respect.’
Arthur looked at her and the children. ‘And this was one of those times, was it?’
‘Yes, it was.’ Judy was fierce about it.
‘And if you lose?’
‘You’re still better off. Because you can lose more by not fighting than by fighting and losing.’
‘I’d dearly like to know what it was all about, in that case.’ And waited.
‘Doesn’t matter what happened. We’re talking principle here.’
‘I see.’ Still he waited but nobody said anything and eventually he gave up. ‘I’d better get washed up, in that case.’
He walked out of the kitchen and down the hall and they heard the bathroom door click shut behind him.
Jacqui said, ‘He still wants to know what happened.’
‘You leave Arthur to me. Tea will soon be ready,’ Judy said. ‘You want to eat with us, John?’
He shook his head. ‘Better get going.’
Jacqui walked to the gate with him.
‘You could have stayed. There’s always heaps.’
John looked uncomfortable, almost angry. ‘Wouldn’t feel right.’
And shoved off without another word. Jacqui watched as he headed down the street, then closed the gate and went back indoors.
‘I hope he’ll be okay,’ she told Judy. ‘Brett hit him awfully hard.’
‘He’ll be fine. Time to forget about it now.’
Something that Brett had said was troubling Jacqui. ‘Is it wrong to be friends with an Abo?’
‘Aboriginal,’ Judy told her. ‘They don’t like being called Abos.’
‘Brett called him a boong.’
‘Brett would. Don’t you ever let me catch you using that word, okay?’
Jacqui looked injured. ‘I was just saying …’
‘I know you were. But it’s not a nice word and I don’t like to hear it. Of course there’s nothing wrong with being friendly with anyone, whoever they are. Friendship would sort out a lot of the world’s problems, if we only gave it the chance.’
Jacqui had no idea what Judy was talking about. ‘John’ll get his own back, you’ll see. That fight isn’t over, like stupid Brett thinks. It’s only just started.’
‘For you, too, I suppose?’
‘I fixed Brett good once. In the days before you were around,’ Jacqui explained kindly. ‘I reckon maybe it’s time I reminded him.’
And Judy sighed.
2
‘Judy’s right,’ Frances said when Jacqui told her about it later. ‘Win or lose, there are times when you have to fight. But it’s better to win, if you can.’
The next time John pitched up, Jeff Toms was waiting.
‘I’ve recruited Jeff to help in your anti-Brett campaign,’ Frances said.
John didn’t like grown-ups muscling in on his affairs. ‘Don’t need any help.’
‘And you’ve a black eye to prove it,’ Frances told him tartly. ‘I thought the idea was to beat Brett, not get beaten up all over again.’
John’s expression said: So what?
‘So let Jeff teach you. He was in Vietnam, he knows about these things.’
‘Did you kill many people?’ Jacqui asked him, interested.
Jeff grinned a little, shuffling his feet, saying nothing.
‘The idea isn’t to kill Brett but to stop him bullying the pair of you,’ Frances told her. ‘You go ahead, Jeff. Take him off with you. Teach him what he needs to know.’
‘I’d have liked him to teach me, too,’ Jacqui said after the two men had disappeared into the unkempt garden. ‘I need to know, just as much as John does.’
‘When John knows, he can teach you himself, if he wants to. One of you at a time is as much as Jeff can handle.’
3
Jacqui tried to talk John into passing on what Jeff was teaching him but he wouldn’t tell her anything.
She was disgusted. ‘Men’s business … I don’t believe in all that nonsense.’
Unfortunately John, it seemed, did.
Jacqui tried to spy on what was going on but Frances caught her and chased her off.
‘Why can’t I learn, too?’
‘Because it would make John feel ashamed.’
‘I don’t see why.’ Now it was Jacqui’s turn to sulk.
‘It’s no easy thing, even nowadays, for a black person to hit a white one. Everything that’s happened over the last two hundred years makes it difficult for him. And it would make it impossible for John if he thought a girl was being taught with him.’
‘Why?’
‘He thinks fighting’s a man thing. As it usually is,’ she added, looking at this niece who was as inclined as any boy to reason with her fists.
Jacqui tried to work it out. ‘You’re saying if I’m there he won’t think it’s worth anything?’
‘More likely he’ll think he’s not worth anything. Only fit to be taught with girls, that sort of thing.’
‘That’s rubbish.’
‘It’s how boys think.’
‘So it’s for John’s sake you want me to leave him alone to get on with it?’
‘Exactly.’
It made no sense but, if it would help John �
�
‘Why didn’t you explain it that way before?’
Frances smiled. ‘I’m sure John will tell you later. If you ask him nicely.’
‘I’ll rough him up if he doesn’t.’
She tried to pump John but he wouldn’t tell her anything. Eventually she gave up, although she was still mad.
‘All I can say, you’d better bash Brett good, the next time.’
Six weeks later, on another Saturday afternoon, it happened.
‘You wanner stroll into town with me, buy a packet of chips?’
She looked at him. ‘Brett’ll probably be playing those machines.’
‘What I’m hoping. Jeff says it’s a good fight, not like the one he was in.’
‘What does he mean?’
‘He hopes I whop Brett good.’
They wandered down the deserted main street, bought their chips — cheese and tomato flavour this time — and came out again into the sunlit glare of a hot and humid afternoon. At the far end of the town, smoke puffed from the mill’s chimneys. The machinery clanked and banged and the air was full of the ripe smell of processing molasses.
No Brett.
Jacqui was disgusted. ‘That’d be right …’
‘Maybe we should head down to Pokies Paradise.’
Jacqui would sooner have headed to the BettaBet, but for the moment that would hardly fit the bill.
‘Okay.’
When they got there they looked through the window. There Brett was, sure enough, his usual mob with him. John and Jacqui walked past, willing Brett to look up, but he was busy at one of the machines and did not. Fifty metres down the road they stopped and turned.
‘Now what?’
‘Now we do it again.’
Slowly they walked back the way they had come. Jacqui was scared but John seemed very confident. She hoped he was right but couldn’t help her doubts: Brett was so big.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing, John Munda.’
If Brett didn’t look up this time she was heading for home, good fight or not.
Past Pokies Paradise they went again. Some of Brett’s mates were yelling.
‘Sounds like someone’s won something,’ said John.
‘I’m out of here,’ Jacqui said.
‘Hang on.’ He stuck his head around the door.
‘Hey, Brett …’
As one, their heads turned.
‘How ya going?’
‘Well,’ Brett said, ‘if it isn’t the boong.’ And came outside in a rush. ‘Lookin’ for another lesson, are you? This rate, I should start charging you, hey?’
And took a swing, right-handed, a huge haymaker that would have taken John’s head off, had it connected. It didn’t. Jacqui, standing behind him, half terrified, half excited, did not see what happened, but somehow John avoided the blow, Brett spun around with John’s hand helping him and the next thing bully boy was flat on his face with John’s foot on his neck.
There remained the others, but they were interested in winning, not fighting. They hesitated, trying to make up their minds what to do, and in that moment their chance was gone.
Brett, face jammed sideways in the dirt, was yelling in rage and humiliation. It was clear that he, too, wasn’t sure how he’d ended up as he had and was full of fire and fury about it, bellowing about what he’d do when he was back on his feet.
‘I’ll kill you! Hear me? Kill you!’
The trouble was, with John’s foot pressing down on the back of his neck, he wasn’t going anywhere. John shoved down harder.
‘You saying something to me?’ Then stood back, standing watchfully. Brett scrambled up, John hit him and Brett was on the ground again, his eye swelling like a ripe mango.
‘Gunna give me another lesson, are you?’ John asked him.
Brett had had enough. He could have got up again but wasn’t game to shift off his bottom. The owner of Pokies Paradise came storming out. ‘You kids get outa here. You wanna scrap, do it some place else.’
‘Reckon we’ll head on home,’ John said loftily.
No one tried to stop them.
4
There were repercussions, of course.
John’s hand was swollen and sore, but that was unimportant. The word was soon around the town that Brett Shaughnessy had been flattened by John Munda, twelve months younger than he was and little more than half his size. Black, too, which troubled some. The Mandales were delighted, as were a number of other people who had been less than impressed by Brett’s loutish behaviour, but talk of that kind did the Shaughnessy name no good and one evening, a week after the fight, Brett’s dad decided he’d better do something about it.
Luke Shaughnessy had been a miner out west until he’d fallen foul of the law over an incident that in Luke’s opinion had been trivial beyond belief. All it had been was a few drinks, a married woman, an argument with her husband and a bit of a stoush. Nothing to get steamed up about. Only trouble was, Luke had been holding a broken bottle at the time and the husband had ended up with twenty stitches in his face. Luke had gone inside for a spell. When he got out neither the company nor the union wanted to know him, his bitch of a wife had taken off and he still had himself and Brett to support. On top of that, there were a couple of debts that looked like causing some grief, so he phoned brother Warren in darkest Queensland and Warren said he’d see him right.
Did it, too; got him a job sweeping up at the sugar mill. Not much after mining, though. Luke hated it and did the minimum he could. Sometimes even less than that; he soon got the reputation for standing around and watching while others did the work.
Now, for the second time since arriving in Goorapilly, he came to see Arthur to complain about a member of his family.
‘John Munda is not a member of my family,’ Arthur said.
‘He knocks around with that kid of yours.’
‘Jacqui chooses her own friends.’
‘Bloody funny friends they are, too, you ask me. A white kid and a boong —’
‘It’s the second time your son’s been in a fight with John Munda,’ Arthur said. ‘Do you know why?’
‘The first time, the black kid got a bit lippy, so Brett sorted him. This time was different. Brett got took when he was walking home.’
Arthur’s eyebrows were sky-high. ‘You’re saying John went for him when Brett was walking home? Without provocation?’
‘What you’d expect from a boong,’ Luke said. ‘No worries, it’s not him I care about. Sort him out in our own good time, I reckon. What I want to know, how much are you willing to pay to hush this business up?’
Arthur stared. ‘Hush what up?’
‘Looks bad, doesn’t it? This business between that kid of yours and the blackie?’
‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’ Arthur’s expression matched his tone; ice would have been warm by comparison.
‘A white girl and a boong? Them fellas mature young.’
‘Jacqui is ten years old. John, I believe, is the same.’
‘People are talking, all the same. Blokes I know see ’em together all the time.’
‘I’ve seen them together myself.’ And waited.
‘I’d’ve thought you’d want to keep it quiet. There’s some think she put him up to it.’
‘From what you’re saying, it would be too late to hush it up, anyway, even if there were anything to hush up.’ Anger spilled. ‘Ten-year-old children … Are you serious?’
Luke glared at him. ‘You mean you’re not going to compensate my kid for what happened?’
‘Not one cent,’ Arthur said.
‘Reckon you’ll be sorry …’ Luke leapt to his feet. ‘Don’ blame me for what happens, that’s all.’
He headed for the steps leading down to the street. As he reached them, Arthur spoke again. ‘If I understand you right, you’re saying you plan to do something to John Munda. A ten-year-old boy. For what you claim he’s done to your son. I’m glad you told me. If anything happens to h
im, the police will know where to look.’
Luke glared, frustrated and furious. ‘You’re lookin’ for trouble, mate. And know somen? I reckon you come to the right place to find it.’
Down the steps he clattered, like slag down a chute.
THIRTY
1
Jacqui had made up her mind; she was going to the top of the mountain.
‘Why?’ John asked her.
‘Because it’s there.’
She had a vague idea that someone had said that before, but never mind.
‘Your folks’ll leather you, they find out.’
They wouldn’t do that but they might forbid it, if they knew what she was planning.
‘Shan’t tell them.’
‘What’s up there?’
The Cloud Forest was up there, and the mystery. The answer to all the stories she had heard: Great-grandfather Colin, who’d been the first to see it; Grandfather Charlie, who’d come all the way from France yet never even reached Queensland; Arthur, who lived right here at the foot of the mountain yet, as far as she knew, had never set foot on it.
Frances had told her that Colin had been her age when he’d climbed it. Whatever he’d found had started the story that had carried on ever since. Now it was her turn to find out what was up there.
‘Maybe there’s nothing there at all,’ John said.
‘At least we can find out, can’t we? One way or the other?’
‘Your uncle’s never done it. Your granddad, neither, what you told me.’
That, too, was part of the mystery. ‘Maybe it’s something only kids can do.’
‘To climb a mountain?’
‘To understand what’s up there.’
John was staring at her. ‘You’re barmy, you know that?’
‘Don’t have to come, you don’t want to.’
‘Course I’m coming.’
2
They said they were going for a picnic; which was true, in a way. They took a rucksack, some rolls and a piece of sausage, chocolate, a sticky bun each, a full water bottle.
‘Where are you going?’ Judy asked.
‘Up into the forest, maybe,’ said Jacqui, deliberately vague.
‘No,’ Judy said.
Jacqui looked at her. ‘No?’
