To the Islands

by Randolph Stow

  ‘But to see you now, you and the others—blind or crippled or paralysed with leprosy—thin, covered with sores—flies and trachoma in your eyes. Living with dogs in filthy humpies and refusing anything better—reinfecting yourselves with all the diseases we cure you of...Wretched to be old in your country, old man.’

  The old, dark face showed no light of interest.

  ‘I must go,’ said Heriot, rising. ‘Good day, old man.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and put the butt in the old man’s mouth. ‘Good day, old brother.’

  *******

  —Keep me as the apple of thine eye.

  —Hide me under the shadow of thy wing.

  The church shuffled, murmured, giggled, muttered deep responses, burst suddenly into singing. The little girls sang high, loud and raucous. The men sang deeply, harmonizing among themselves.

  The Lord Almighty—

  The boys grinned over their shoulders at their girls, their fathers.

  —grant us a quiet night, and a perfect end.

  *******

  Gunn was sitting reading in his house when a knock came on the door. He shouted: ‘Come in,’ and a guitar entered, followed by Stephen.

  ‘Ah, you,’ Gunn said. ‘Whose guitar?’

  ‘Rex, brother.’

  Gunn looked away, letting it be clearly seen that he had nothing to say on the subject of Rex. ‘So you still play,’ he said presently.

  ‘Yes, brother.’

  ‘Learn any new ones—where you were?’

  ‘I know plenty now, brother. I sing you that Old Wagon, eh? Real nice one that.’

  Pushing his book away, a trace of resignation in his voice: ‘Yes,’ said Gunn, ‘sing that one.’

  ‘I sit on you bed, brother?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  But once seated on the bed with the guitar across his thigh, Stephen made no movement to play, only fixed his deep and shining eyes on Gunn’s and searched for something there with an embarrassing intensity. Gunn looked away again. After a moment he asked casually: ‘Glad to be back?’

  ‘Yes, brother.’

  Another silence struck.

  ‘Brother—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t do that again.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Stealing, brother.’

  ‘You’d be a fool,’ Gunn said shortly. He was helpless to deal with this sly child who in the next few days would be doing the rounds of the whites who had once believed in and helped him. He could hear the same words addressed ingratiatingly to each in turn, to Helen, to Harry, to himself, and the same glance, though for Helen it would be more melting. ‘I suppose by now you’ve forgotten all Sister Bond and I taught you?’

  ‘No, brother.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Brother—’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘You ask Brother Heriot not to send me away?’

  ‘He won’t send you away,’ Gunn said. ‘How about singing your song?’

  The dark head went down then, the dark fingers worked nimbly at the neck of the guitar. After a bar or two Stephen began to sing, mainly to himself, his hill-billy song of some white man’s boyhood. He sang well, his voice clear and firm, and he was also an actor able to fill his singing with surprising nostalgia. Watching him now, Gunn remembered seeing him in camp corroborees, dancing lithely into the firelight and out again, always in the most prominent position, always the supplest and most histrionic of the group. He could be a ballet dancer, Gunn thought. All that lovely limelight...

  At the end of the song Terry Dixon came and leaned, long, skinny, and red, in the doorway. ‘Didn’t think it could’ve been you, Bob,’ he said. ‘Knew you never went much on that stuff.’

  His eyes wandered to the bed and took in Stephen, uneasily watching him.

  ‘You scared of me, Steve?’

  ‘No, brother.’

  ‘Think I’d go crook at you?’

  ‘No, brother.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Rex is the man that did me wrong. All forgotten, anyway.’

  ‘Is it?’ Gunn asked.

  ‘My part of it. Free pardon from the old tiger because of inexperience.’

  ‘Quiet,’ said Gunn. ‘Not in front of the child.’

  Dixon grinned. ‘I’ve had him. Thinks he knows the lot. Tell the child to go and stand outside his house and sing All The Cowhands Want to Marry Heriot with a big cheerio from a cowhand without any cows.’

  ‘But with pretty heavy hands,’ Gunn murmured.

  The electric light breathed with the panting engine across the road. Stephen, who had been watching it uncomfortably, stood up with his guitar and said: ‘I go now, brother.’

  ‘Stay and sing to Brother Terry, if you like.’

  ‘I better go,’ Stephen said, waiting for Dixon to move from the doorway. ‘I better look after them little kids for Ella. He my cousins, them little kids.’ He was very earnest now, wanting to show Dixon the goodness of his heart, to impress him and receive his forgiveness for having recommended Rex as a passenger on the boat.

  ‘Let the man pass, Terry,’ said Gunn.

  When Stephen had gone Dixon wandered over to the bed and stretched out, yawning. ‘’Struth, tired fella. Thought Heriot was going to go lousy at me, but he didn’t. Just sat me on his knee and told me to remember it next time.’

  ‘He’s not a bad old bloke, if you know him.’

  ‘Not the man I’d pick for my best mate. When’s he going?’

  ‘Don’t know. Not for a while.’

  ‘Too bad. I tell you what, Bob, they need a younger bloke on this place, someone who knows how to make a spot of money out of it. Cattle’s the shot, that’s what I keep telling the old man. They worked it before, about twenty years ago. But all he’ll say is he’s been thinking about it for some time, in a nasty sort of a voice, so I shut up and keep my ideas to myself, the way he wants it.’

  Propped on his elbow, staring at the floor, ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ said Gunn. ‘But I still don’t dislike him as much as you and Father do. Nor does Helen. I don’t know about Harry, no one ever knows what Harry thinks.’

  ‘You’re going at the end of the year, are you?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Just that I never felt I belonged here, on a mission. I’m agnostic, to start with.’

  ‘So was I, when I was your age,’ Dixon said.

  Gunn smiled faintly behind his supporting hand. ‘How old are you, Terry?’

  ‘What would you reckon?’

  ‘Might be twenty-five, might be thirty-five.’

  ‘Thirty-two.’

  ‘What turned you Christian?’

  Dixon rolled over on his side and said after a moment: ‘That’s a rare stinking hair-oil you’ve got on your pillow.’

  ‘Sorry. Shouldn’t ask personal questions.’

  ‘I don’t mind telling you,’ Dixon said. ‘You’ve seen my sort of bloke around, you know what we’re like. Never had much time at school, wander about doing whatever’s got a bit of money in it, droving or station work, whatever’s going.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Gunn said.

  ‘Yeah, you would. You can get sick of that by the time you’re my age.’

  ‘And that’s why you came here?’

  ‘Well, it was like this. One time I was riding up a gully and my horse fell down, broke my leg.’

  ‘Stiff.’

  ‘I was there by myself, just lying there, all night. Getting a bit worried too. So I said: “If I get out of this, I’ll never say Jesus Christ again unless I mean it.” You know the way you think sometimes. Then I said: “God, if you help me now I’ll go to church if I can find one to go to.” You know—?’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘Well, after a bit I got to sleep and had this dream. I dreamt I went back home again to my mum’s place, where we were when we were kids. It was all dark, not a candle in the la-la, as they say. But I went in anyway, and my mum,
she’s dead, she was standing there in the dark. She said: “Why didn’t you bring the kids, Terry?” I said: “Mum, you know I haven’t got any kids.” She said: “Well, where’s the wife, son?” I said: “Mum, I never been married.” She said: “Well, what are you doing, what sort of a life are you leading?” I said: “I’m not doing anything, Mum, I haven’t got a life.” Then I woke up, feeling cold, and the leg yelling at me, and a dingo howling up somewhere, you know how they echo in those gullies. I said: “God, if I get out of this I’ll go and do something. I’ll work in a leprosarium, if you’ll help me.”’

  Look at me, thought Gunn, listening to this and not feeling smart and cynical. I’m growing up.

  ‘Well, they found me next day and I finished up at Darwin, in hospital. There was two kids from this place there, nice kids; they kept talking about “Mission” all the time.’

  ‘Homesick,’ Gunn said.

  ‘Yeah. Well, I kept thinking about it after they went home, and when I got out I came over here and asked the old man if he could use me. Kept me waiting a long time, but in the end he told me to come. So I did. That’s the story of it.’

  He rolled on to his back and stared at the light bulb. ‘I never been sorry. Well, I haven’t been here long, have I?’

  ‘I don’t think you will be. Won’t be sorry, I mean.’

  ‘I like the kids. Some of the blokes are a bit hard to get on with.’

  He scratched his head and yawned. A new silence was broken by a knock at the door and a voice calling: ‘I come in, wunong?’

  Gunn raised his head. ‘Come in, Justin.’

  Entering suddenly into the light, feeble as it was, Justin blinked and looked down. He was of medium height, broad-shouldered, greying, a man of forty with the quiet dignity belonging to that age among his race. There might be something a little comic about the thin legs running from his loose shorts into his enormous sandshoes, Gunn thought, but nothing to laugh at in his face. From below the broad overhang of his forehead his eyes looked out with a dark shine, observing in silence, making no comment. Homely, thought Gunn, looking at the firm, thick mouth, the broad nose; homely wisdom, and strength, and pride. He said: ‘Good evening, Justin.’

  ‘Good evening,’ Justin said, in his deep, quiet voice in which there was not humility but a great carefulness, as if he were afraid that by speaking abruptly he would wound the feelings of the young white man. ‘Good evening, brother,’ to Dixon.

  ‘How’s the world, Justin?’

  Gunn pushed a chair towards him, and he sat down, stiffly, being strange to chairs, with his hands firmly on his bare knees.

  ‘I thought you might wander in,’ Gunn said, ‘wunong.’

  It was their custom to address one another as brother-in-law, since Justin had given Gunn a skin name, a classification in the tribe, which put them in this relationship. And Justin smiled suddenly with his white teeth. ‘I didn’t talk to you for a long time now, wunong,’ he said.

  ‘I was going to ask you something. What was it? Ah, I know, about murders. What happens when a man murders someone?’

  Justin shifted uneasily. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Where does he go? Does he run away?’

  ‘He goes to other country,’ Justin said, ‘that way,’ pointing north. ‘Lost man’s country. He stay in that country.’

  ‘And don’t they chase him?’

  ‘Might be babin go after him. You know, babin, all-round man, real clever man, he could kill him. Or might be they just leave him there, in lost man’s country.’

  ‘You’re a cheerful joker, Bob,’ Dixon complained from the bed. ‘What do you want to ask him about that for?’

  ‘Just interested. He doesn’t mind. Do you, wunong?’

  ‘No,’ Justin said obligingly.

  ‘What have you been doing tonight?’

  ‘I been talking with Brother Heriot. He real sad tonight. He been talking with old man Galumbu about this islands, and that old man nearly crying, wunong. This old men, they don’t like you talking about that.’

  Dixon asked curiously: ‘What islands?’

  ‘Oh, islands in the sea. Where spirit goes. Spirit of dead man, you know, bungama.’

  ‘Where are they, the islands?’

  Justin pointed, reluctantly. ‘That way, brother. They don’t like you talking about it.’

  ‘So a lost man,’ Gunn said, ‘might go through lost man’s country and finish up at the islands.’

  ‘Might be,’ Justin said. ‘If he dead.’

  A small silence came down, and through it Gunn pushed back with another question. ‘Ever seen a ghost, wunong?’

  ‘I heard ’em,’ Justin said uncomfortably.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Onmalmeri. Where all the people was murdered.’

  ‘When was that?’ Dixon asked.

  ‘Nineteen-nineteen,’ said Justin promptly.

  ‘When you were just born?’ Gunn probed.

  ‘No, I was young boy then. Just before they cut me, you know, and start me being a man.’

  ‘Must have been about nineteen-twenty-seven or twenty-eight.’

  ‘Might be,’ Justin allowed.

  ‘Are you going to tell us the story?’

  Justin leaned forward, hands gripping his knees. ‘Yes, I tell you,’ he said. His voice became even quieter, he was a careful story-teller and took pride not only in his narratives but also in their delivery. He fixed his bright, dark eyes on Gunn and Dixon in turn.

  ‘There was two stockmen,’ he said, ‘in fact, three white stockmen, at Jauada homestead. There was Mr George and two other stockmen. Mr George, he was boundary rider, he went out every morning to see if the cattle was running okay, went out early in the morning inspecting the cattle.

  ‘When he done all the boundary he was heading toward home then. Then he came upon a billabong, saw two old native girls in the water. He galloped up to them and said to them: “What you doing here?”

  ‘The two old native girls, they just look at him, they was in the water getting gadja, you know, lily-roots. He ask them: “What you doing here on the cattle boundary?”

  ‘He ask the native girls if they got a husband, he ask them in pidgin, like: “Which way you husband?”

  ‘They pointed, telling him, like: “Under the tree, sleeping.” They couldn’t understand the English.

  ‘He took the two old ladies where the husband was sleeping, and the white stockman ask him: “What you doing in the cattle run?”

  ‘The old man just look at him, and talk in his language that he come getting gadja.

  ‘Then Mr George, he told him that he shouldn’t be round here, so he got off his horse and flogged him with a stockwhip. I think he gave him twenty cuts or thirty, he beat him for a long time. He broke his spears up, he broke the bottle spear, and the shovel spear, he broke the bamboo, broke it half-way up the stick.

  ‘And the old bloke looked at him, he was bleeding with the flogging he had, across his eyes, you know. And he turned around and got the shovel spear, he looked at him, and he threw it at him, you know how you throw a javelin, and Mr George got the spear in his lung.

  ‘He galloped as far as from here to the schoolhouse with the spear stuck in his lung, and he dropped dead. It cut his lung open.

  ‘The old bloke went over, looked in his pocket, got some tobacco and matches, got some bushes and covered the body. Then he left him in there and went away with his two old ladies.’

  ‘Later on these stockmen missed Mr George for supper that night. They camped all that night worrying what had happened to him, and they got up early in the morning, and they found a horse with a saddle not far from the station. They walked over and examined the saddle, found blood here and there all over the saddle, drops of blood on the saddle. Then they mounted on their horse and went out searching for the body.

  ‘They went all around the boundary searching for the stockman. Later on they came upon the billabong. When they looked across some of the distance they saw a m
ob of crows around the body, picking at the body. And they galloped over to have a look under the leaves.

  ‘Couldn’t even believe if it was a blackfellow’s body or a white man’s, couldn’t tell the difference. Only one thing that put the pot away, one leaf. There was a leaf sticking on the body, with blood, you know. All the rest of the body was black, but when they pulled the leaf away, they could tell it was a white man then.

  ‘Straightaway that night they went in with the motor-launch, made a report to the police. Then they got two good policemen, troopers from Albert Creek. Then the troopers got together, finding out who done the murder. Couldn’t get the evidence who done it, so they made their way towards Dampier River.

  ‘Then they brought the troopers to where the body was, and they buried the body and went to the station in the town. So they couldn’t get the right culprit, the one who done the murder.

  ‘So they started shooting natives from Jauada all the way up to Dampier River. So many hundred at Jauada, women, men, and children. And all along the Gulgudmeri River. At Onmalmeri there was people camping near the river. They shot the old people in the camp and threw them in the water. They got the young people on a chain, they got the men separate, shot the men only. While they was on the chain the policemen told the police boys to make a big bonfire. They threw the bodies in the flame of fire so no one would see what remained of the bodies. They were burned to bits. They took the women on a chain to a separate grave, then the police boys made a big bonfire before the shooting was. When they saw the big flame of fire getting up, then they started shooting the women.

  ‘When they were all shot they threw them in the flame of fire to be burned to bits.

  ‘When they finished at Gulgudmeri River they went all around Dala. They got a mob of prisoners there, Richard was there, he was a little boy then. They got up and brought them to Djimbula—you know, not far from the aerodrome strip there, under the bottle tree. They camped there, ready to send them next morning.

  ‘Then one morning a boy went out from here—it was Michael, you know, he was horse-tailer—and he saw these troopers’ camp. They sang out to him. He galloped across, and they told him: “We got more prisoners here. Keep it secret,” they told him, “don’t let Father Walton know troopers camping here.”