Walking the Boundaries

by Jackie French

  Martin shook his head. ‘At the zoo once.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You don’t mean to eat it, do you?’

  ‘Of course. Opossum’s good tucker. It doesn’t take long to cook either with a halfway decent fire. Maybe an hour. Come on. I’m hungry. My belly’s so empty it’d ring like a bell if you tapped it.’

  The white legs disappeared down the hill. Martin followed her as she struggled with the knot in her skirt. The brown folds fell over her legs again.

  The water was a swamp in the fold of the gully below the hill. A trickle of clear water seeped through a patch of rock, then trailed off into the soil. Meg thrust her hands into the reedy mud, and began to plaster it over the possum.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  ‘Getting dinner.’ She glanced up at him. ‘Ma’d say your tongue is robbing your belly. If you’d shut your mouth I’d get this done faster.’

  ‘Yes, mademoiselle,’ said Martin. He watched her slither her hands into the mud again, then pull up some knobbly bits from underneath the reeds.

  Meg sat back on her heels, the muddy possum in her hands, and a pile of dirty tubers by her feet. ‘“Mademoiselle” is French, isn’t it?’

  Martin nodded.

  Meg sighed. ‘I wish I could learn French. I suppose you go to school and everything and all.’

  ‘Sure. Don’t you?’

  Meg bent over and gulped some water, then got to her feet, swinging the mud-plastered possum in one hand. ‘No,’ she said shortly. ‘Where would the likes of me go to school?’

  ‘School’s not all that crash hot,’ said Martin.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ said Meg. ‘You’ve got a chance to learn. Da always said when he found the gold at the end of the rainbow he’d send me off to school. He’d give Ma a diamond tiara and Gran a red petticoat of silk. And Gran would laugh at him, and say who’d see her petticoats at her age, and that he should be ashamed of himself for thinking wicked thoughts like that of her. They were good times that we had,’ said Meg.

  ‘Your dad sounds a bit like my mum,’ said Martin. ‘She says you have to have money in this world. But she doesn’t laugh like you say your dad did.’

  ‘He was always laughing,’ agreed Meg. ‘It’s like the laughter’s died now that he’s gone.’ She scooped the tubers into the crook of her arm. The possum swung by its tail in her hands as she walked back up the hill. The fire was glowing now, a pyramid of flames beneath the trees. The coals were like orange berries, winking beneath their coat of ash.

  Meg threw the possum onto the flames. The mud sizzled, then stopped, baked hard, as the flames leapt over it again.

  ‘Hey! Won’t it burn?’

  Meg shook her head. ‘Not inside the mud.’

  ‘But you haven’t taken its guts out or anything.’ Martin thought of the hollow frozen chickens they bought to roast sometimes when Mum wasn’t too tired to cook.

  ‘Don’t need to. They’ll shrink up to nothing this way. They’ll make the meat taste sweeter, you wait and see.’ She tossed the tubers onto the edge of the fire.

  Martin’s stomach lurched. The pasty was bad enough. There was no way he could eat mud and possum, still with its fur and guts. But he couldn’t go hungry for the next twenty-four hours either . . .

  Meg crouched by the fire, her arms round her knees. Her plaits were the same colour as the flames. Even her eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. ‘Tell me about your time,’ she asked suddenly.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Everything. Tell me about school. About the farms. Tell me what the bush is like in your time, what the people do, tell me.’

  Martin was silent. What should he tell her? How could you explain your world to someone so far away? All the things you heard on the news, or read about at school. The flames snickered in the cool night air as he began to speak.

  A GOLDEN MIST SAT on the far hills. Soon the moon would be rising. Martin’s voice was hoarse with talking. Meg wanted to know everything — what a library was like; how they got around the city without horses; how many platypuses were left in New South Wales; what price wool was selling for in his time; if bandicoots could live in improved pasture . . .

  Meg got to her feet and poked the possum with a stick. It was dull grey now, as ashy as the dying coals around it.

  ‘Should be ready,’ said Meg. She pushed it out of the fire and threw more wood onto the coals. The flames licked the fresh wood and ate it hungrily, flooding the campsite with a low red light.

  Martin looked at the grey lump with disgust. Surely even Meg couldn’t eat that. She didn’t look concerned though.

  ‘Are you going to bash it, or will I?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Meg lifted a hunk of wood instead of replying, and brought it down sharply on the possum. The baked mud cracked. A smell of burnt fur crept out, then was covered by the scent of roasting meat. Meg began to poke the mud off with the stick. Martin bent nearer. Maybe it was just because he was hungry, but it almost smelt . . . good.

  It didn’t look too bad either. The fur had stuck onto the mud. The meat looked moist, as far as he could see in the firelight. It wouldn’t do any harm just to taste it . . . He took a piece Meg offered.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Meg.

  ‘It’s good,’ said Martin. It was what he had said about the pasty, but this time he was telling the truth. It was a bit like chicken, a bit like mutton . . . you could forget that you were eating possum.

  ‘I told you I could cook,’ said Meg with satisfaction. ‘Ma says I’m the best cook of my age around. Not that she’s saying much, you know, because I’m the only one she knows. Da used to say I could cook a cockatoo and make it taste like chicken, but that was just his blarney. No one can cook a cockatoo, they’re much too tough. Now parrot pie, that’s really good.’

  She rolled the tubers away from the coals. Martin broke one open carefully, copying Meg. The outside was like charcoal, but the inside was still soft, a bit like sweet potato but more fibrous.

  ‘What are they?’ he asked.

  ‘Reed roots. They’re good at this time of year, sweet as honey, soft as boiled eggs. They get too stringy in the winter, but. You don’t want to go eating them then. The pollen’s good as well. You can make a pollen cake if the rocks are hot enough. I’ll show you some time.’

  They pulled at the meat with their fingers. Soon only the bones were left, and the innards, shrunken by the heat to a small dark sac inside the ribcage. Meg scraped out a small hole by the fire with a bit of wood, then tossed the remains of the carcass into it.

  ‘We don’t want dingoes or shooshoo cats nuzzling round the bones while we’re asleep,’ she explained, wiping her fingers on a tussock. ‘Lazy beggars they are. They’d rather steal than hunt.’

  ‘Dingoes? Do they attack?’

  Meg shook her head. ‘They like dead meat mostly, and frogs and things like that. I watched one hunting frogs once. It jumped all over the place, like it had hot coals beneath its feet. It looked like its feelings were hurt because the frogs wouldn’t stay still and let it catch them. Dingoes sound creepy at night. I wouldn’t want to wake up and find one staring at me.’

  ‘No,’ said Martin with feeling.

  ‘The fire will help keep them away. Mirragong’s half-dingo. Her fur’s sort of yellow underneath the black. That’s what Mirragong means — dog. Tame dog, not wild dog. It’s a different word for wild dog.’

  ‘Do you speak Aboriginal?’ asked Martin.

  ‘I know a little of Nellie’s language. All the tribes have their own language, I think. This old blackfeller came round last year, and Nellie hardly understood him. He wasn’t from round here.’

  ‘Nellie taught you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Meg paused, gazing at the dying flames. ‘She had to. I had to know her language when she taught me things . . . the secret things. She taught Ma too. She said they must continue, even if there were no bullong left. We had to go on with them. She said it was important . . .’<
br />
  ‘What sort of things?’ asked Martin curiously.

  ‘Just things.’ Meg glanced at him. ‘I can’t tell you. Bullong things. Women’s things. You wouldn’t understand.’

  Martin felt annoyed. It wasn’t as though he’d tell anyone.

  ‘What about your father? Were they secret from him too?’

  Meg nodded. ‘Ma said that was one of the reasons she loved him. Because he could look the other way. Like the black men. They looked the other way when the women went out for women’s business. They pretended that they didn’t see.’

  ‘I think it’s stupid,’ said Martin.

  Meg didn’t look at him. ‘One day I’ll find a man who thinks like Da did,’ she said. ‘One who can understand the secret things. One who loves this place in his way, and lets me love in mine. He’ll come riding down the track and I’ll see him through the branches. I’ll see the way he looks at the valley, and I’ll know this is where he needs to be . . .’

  Martin snorted, but quietly, so that Meg didn’t hear and get stroppy again. Soppy stuff . . .

  Meg was silent suddenly. ‘Martin . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If the land is cleared . . . if the trees and animals go . . . if the bushes don’t flower in their seasons and the swamps are drained for dams . . . if the world is full of sheep, not wallabies and bandicoots and koalas . . .’ She was silent again.

  ‘Well, what?’ demanded Martin.

  ‘I won’t be able to do the secret things,’ said Meg in a small voice. ‘No one will.’

  Martin shrugged. ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘Nellie says it does,’ said Meg uncertainly. ‘Nellie says without the secret things the world’ll die.’

  ‘Nellie’s an old woman,’ said Martin. ‘What does she know about the world?’

  ‘Nellie knows things,’ said Meg stubbornly.

  ‘I bet I know more than she does,’ said Martin. ‘More about what’s important anyway.’

  ‘What do you think is important?’

  ‘Well . . . having money to do what you want. Having people think that you’re okay. Living in a really good house . . . having a computer . . .’

  Meg was still looking at the flames. It was as though she hadn’t heard him. ‘Maybe that’s why the secret things matter. Because they are part of loving the bush . . . not just loving it . . . being part of it.’ She gestured at the drooping leaves above them, striped silver in the starlight, their undersides orange from the flames. ‘I’m part of the bush. I’m like the roos, like the opossum . . .’

  ‘We ate the possum,’ said Martin.

  ‘One day I’ll die,’ said Meg, ‘and a tree will grow on my grave, and an opossum will live in the tree. I’m part of the bush and the bush is part of me. That’s part of a song that Nellie sings in her language, but I never understood it before. I don’t want to live in a world of just human things . . . paddocks for sheep and grass to feed them and fences and houses and roads. Even if I were rich I’d feel like I was poor.’

  ‘You’d give up being rich just to keep the bush?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be me without it,’ said Meg simply. ‘I’d only be a . . . a . . . shadow person . . .’

  ‘A shadow person?’

  ‘I’d look like a person,’ said Meg. ‘But I’d only be a reflection in other people’s eyes. I wouldn’t be connected to the world at all.’

  Martin was silent. She was crazy. She had to be crazy. Just like Old Ted was crazy. He could just imagine what the kids at school would say if they heard her. They’d have hysterics just looking at her — that ragbag skirt and those stupid plaits tied up with a small piece of string, and her dirty feet.

  Something howled in the valley. It was answered on the hills — a high sharp hooting that echoed through the trees. It was so high it seemed as though it would shatter the stars, or break the purple sky into tiny bits. Was it a dingo? He’d never heard a dingo. He’d never seen a bandicoot or a mountain cat or a bettong. He’d never even really seen the stars. You couldn’t in the city, not bright like this, so many in the sky. Suddenly he felt an enormous sense of loss.

  Meg stood up. ‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘There’s two blankets in the swag. One each should be enough if we sleep on dry bark.’

  ‘Where do we get the bark?’

  ‘From the trees, of course. Did you leave your brains out in the rain? Where did you think you’d find bark? Down in the creek? You’d sweep your hair out in the dustpan if it wasn’t tied on,’ she muttered, grabbing a rock and chipping into the bark angrily. The bark stripped off easily, in long thin flakes, and she threw it on the ground. ‘You get more bark,’ she ordered. ‘I’ll see to the fire.’

  Martin watched her out of the corner of his eye as he pulled at the bark. She pushed the ashes out of the half-dead fire, then added more wood. Then, with a bit of bark, she scooped the ash back onto the new wood.

  ‘Won’t that put the fire out?’

  Meg shook her head. ‘It’ll stop it burning so fast. That way it’ll last till morning, and keep us warm.’ She reached down and untied the blankets, and handed him one. They looked at each other in the starlight.

  ‘Goodnight, Martin,’ said Meg uncertainly.

  ‘Goodnight, Meg,’ said Martin.

  THE BARK WAS LUMPY. Half of him felt hot from the fire; the rest was cold. The stars winked like countless flames flickering through moth holes in a blanket.

  The moths had been at this blanket too. It was thin, and full of holes. It smelt as well, like wet dog, or cat piss. His legs ached from walking. He suddenly remembered he hadn’t cleaned his teeth. He grinned in the darkness. His toothbrush was probably floating out to sea by now. He wondered if it was in his own time, or Meg’s. Maybe someone from Meg’s time would find it — a green plastic toothbrush with Fred Flintstone on it. They wouldn’t know what on earth it was.

  His eyes began to close. He’d never felt so tired.

  ‘Martin?’

  ‘Yes,’ muttered Martin.

  Meg’s voice was hesitant. ‘I lied,’ she said at last.

  ‘What about?’ Martin sat up, wrapping the blanket round his shoulders. Was it all a hoax . . . all that about Nellie and the secrets? Maybe he hadn’t gone back in time at all . . . maybe . . .

  ‘About my shoes.’

  ‘Your what!’

  ‘My shoes. I said I had shoes at home.’ Her voice was very small in the darkness. ‘I told a lie. I don’t have any shoes. I never have.’

  The fire flickered with red tongues. Somewhere another possum screamed. The sound cut off abruptly. Had something grabbed it? An owl, perhaps, or a fox?

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Martin finally. ‘Go to sleep.’

  The red hair settled back into the blanket. Martin wriggled over the rough bark. The moon was rising now, a golden egg on the horizon, pulled like a puppet from the tall black trees. At last he too slept as the possum screamed again.

  SIX

  Yabbies

  IT WAS THE BIRDS that woke him. A kookaburra gurgled in the tree above, like it was practising for the main event, then let out a chortle that filled the world. It was as though it woke up every bird in the hills above the valley — twitters and shrieks and a long liquid sound that echoed through the trees. It was like a million bird calls intertwined, too mixed up to pick out a single one.

  Martin tried to open his eyes. It wasn’t even light yet. The air was still grey with night. Why didn’t those stupid birds shut up till it was morning?

  The kookaburra yelled again. It must be on the branch right above him. Maybe it was going to cack right in his face and . . . ugh! Martin sat up quickly. He glanced over at Meg. She was stretching. Her plaits were rumpled. She leant over and scattered the ashes of the fire. A faint red spark leapt up. Meg threw on more wood, then saw that he was awake.

  ‘Morning! How about yabbies for breakfast?’

  Martin blinked. ‘Yabbies? What on earth are yabbies?’

  ‘Don’t you
even know what yabbies are? Where were you when they were handing out the brains — behind the door? Yabbies are . . . well . . . they’re yabbies, that’s all. How can anyone not know yabbies? They live in the creek.’

  Martin staggered to his feet and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘It’s too early to think about breakfast.’

  ‘It’s not too early. It’s the best time of day.’ She started rolling up her blanket. ‘Come on. Throw me yours over.’ She tossed him her length of bone. It was cold, and blackened round the edges, with a plug of bone at the open end to keep the coal in. ‘Shove a coal in that, will you? Then we can put the fire out.’ She began to dig up the leftover possum carcass.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘To catch the yabbies, of course,’ said Meg.

  Martin shuddered.

  The sky turned dark then paler blue as they tramped down the hill. Light filtered through the leaves and sent the shadows skittering across the ground. The air smelt like fresh bread, all moist and warm and sweet. On the horizon the clouds were pink, with the first buttery drops of sunlight piercing through.

  It was a different path from the one they’d taken before. ‘We don’t want to go right down into the gorge yet,’ said Meg. The possum carcass swung from her hand. The scraps on the bones had dried black and grey on the bones overnight. ‘It’ll still be dark down there. The sun won’t find its way down for hours. Anyway, this way’ll take us round more of the boundaries.’ She stopped by a wattle tree and picked off a blob of gum.

  ‘Yuk,’ muttered Martin, as she stuck it in her mouth. Meg tossed him over a bit. He tasted it. It was faintly sweet, faintly bitter. He spat it out. Chewing gum was better.

  They made their way down the hill they’d camped on, along a ridge, up and down another rise. Suddenly the creek was in front of them. It looked different from the way it was in the valley — still lined with casuarinas, but shallower, not as steep or fast, with no boulders scattered like marbles through its course.