Jack's Island

by Norman Jorgensen

  ‘Oh God!’ Mrs Carter cried out. ‘Oh God! Oh God!’ She was standing at the wrong angle and thought Mr Carter had been run down.

  The smelly old truck thundered past us and knocked a fence post flying. It raced past the bakery and down the slope towards the jetty. Behind me, over the roar of the engine, someone screamed.

  The truck slammed into some curbing and the rear wheels jolted into the air. More pans flew up and crashed back down again, splashing muck everywhere. Then the truck bounced off the curb and hit a low brick wall. With a screech of tearing metal it jerked to a halt, the engine still roaring and the wheels spinning in the sand. After a few minutes it stalled into silence. The stink! Foul-smelling rivers poured from the pans, ran down the street and formed into huge revolting puddles.

  ‘That boy. That poor boy,’ said Captain Williamson, the first to speak.

  But Banjo was the first to move. I’d never seen him run so fast. He jumped over a puddle, leapt onto the running board and peered into the truck. Dafty’s head popped up like a jack-in-the-box. He wasn’t dead, and in fact he looked quite cheerful. A small trickle of blood ran from a cut over his eye.

  ‘Dafty! You half scared me to death.’ Banjo reached to help Dafty out of the cabin. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘See, Banjo. I can drive.’

  ‘Drive, Dafty? You were nearly killed,’ Banjo shouted. And you nearly killed all of us.’

  ‘Where’s Bess? Did she see?’ Dafty asked, ignoring Banjo’s shouting. ‘Did she see me drive? Where is she? Did she?’

  ‘No, I haven’t seen her this morning. I don’t think she’s here.’ Dafty looked crushed and a look of sympathy came over Banjo’s face. ‘I’ll take you home,’ he said.

  Banjo put a hand on Dafty’s shoulder, lifted up his own head and walked tall and straight right at the gawking people. The crowd parted as he led Dafty back up the street. No-one said a word. Maybe they were all too shocked. Or maybe it was the look of defiance on Banjo’s face, daring anyone to stop them.

  Dafty Assaults Mr Palmer

  Banjo and I were on lookout patrol near North Point when we heard the noise. At first it sounded a bit like a seagull but then became deeper and more urgent.

  After we’d found the Jap helmet, Colonel Hurley, the army commander, said we should be official army scouts. He gave us each a pair of old field glasses and a whistle, and an army survey map of the island in a leather folder. On weekends and after school we were supposed to watch out to sea and report anything we saw. Most of all we had to watch for the invasion fleet.

  Colonel Hurley had also given us slouch hats with emu feathers, just like the 10th Light Horse Regiment. Mine was far too big but Mum had padded the rim with newspaper. We called ourselves the First Light Bike Regiment and attached small flags to our handlebars. The flag design was a drawing of two circles, like the view through binoculars, and inside the circles a Jap battleship being blown up. Underneath we’d printed in red: 1st LBR. We’d also made ourselves majors in the regiment. Whenever we came across the soldiers from the barracks—the artillery regiment—they ribbed us about being Light Horsemen and made rude jokes, but we knew they were just jealous because they were only infantrymen with ordinary slouch hats and no emu feathers.

  ‘There it is again, Major Paterson,’ I said to Banjo. ‘That noise.’

  ‘Hello? Is there someone there?’ a voice cried. It came from way down below the cliff, on the beach.

  Then I saw Mr Palmer’s walking stick by the edge of the rocks and his bird-watching log lying by the edge of the path. ‘It’s old man Palmer. He’s fallen down there.’ I peered over the rock overhang to the beach way below. Mr Palmer lay propped up against a driftwood log. He saw me and immediately waved up at me, the relief on his face obvious.

  Suddenly I heard a noise behind us and Dafty stepped out from behind a bush. For once he wasn’t grinning.

  ‘Hello, Banjo. Hello, Jack,’ he said. He stood guiltily kicking the sand with his big toe.

  ‘Dafty, what’ve you done?’ asked Banjo.

  ‘The teacher shouldn’t have hurt you, Banjo.’

  From below the cliff we heard Mr Palmer groaning again.

  ‘We have to help him,’ I said. ‘Quickly.’

  ‘I learnt him. With this.’ Dafty pointed to a large branch about three feet long. ‘To learn him not to hit you. And he fell off the rock. He shouldn’t have hit you, Banjo. That’s not right. You’re my bestest friend.’ Dafty smiled slightly. ‘That sure learnt him though.’

  ‘Oh, Dafty.’ Banjo’s shoulders slumped. He knew Dafty was in real trouble this time.

  First there was the grenade, then the dunny truck and now this. Dafty would face attempted murder, at the very least. What if Palmer died? Then it’d be full-blown, premeditated murder. Dafty might hang. Did they still hang kids? They did once. We saw a plaque at the old Roundhouse Prison in Fremantle about a kid who got hanged back in the convict days for murdering his boss.

  ‘You get down there, Jack,’ Banjo said. ‘See if you can do anything. I’ll ride for help. I’m quicker than you are.’

  ‘You are not!’ I protested but he was already running for his bike. Even at times like this he knew how to wind me up.

  I made my way carefully down the crumbling cliff face, stepping cautiously to avoid slipping on the loose sandstone rocks.

  ‘Jack. Thank God you came.’ It was the first time Mr Palmer had ever called me Jack. It was usually Jones. Or Mr Jones if he was mad at me. He hauled himself up against the washed-up tree stump. The marks in the sand were dark with blood.

  ‘Mr Palmer, are you hurt?’ I ran across the sand to him.

  ‘Nothing fatal, I don’t think,’ he said quietly. He looked terrible. One side of his face and both hands were grazed, and blood had soaked his torn trousers near both knees. ‘But my leg’s given out, I think. Young Dafty might finally have done for it where the bloody Boche couldn’t. Can’t seem to walk.’

  It was the first time I’d ever heard him swear.

  ‘I was lying here thinking how ironic, the whole might of the Kaiser’s army couldn’t quite cripple me but ... a simple boy with a branch of tea-tree...’ He leaned back, obviously exhausted. ‘Poetic justice, I suppose.’

  ‘Banjo’s gone to get help, Mr Palmer. He shouldn’t be long,’ I said, trying to make him feel better. I sat down beside him to wait.

  After a while he spoke again. ‘Jack, you know Banjo’s father. What’s he like?’

  ‘Oh, he’s a bit like all our dads, Mr Palmer. Always at work. Always grumpy. Always tired. Bit too keen on the razor strop,’ I answered too quickly before I remembered Mr Palmer’s own keenness for his cane.

  ‘And his mother? I’ve not met his mother.’ He didn’t seem to notice my comment. ‘She’s back on the mainland?’

  ‘No, she shot through when he was little. I don’t think he remembers her very well.’

  ‘So there’s just the two of them?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I see,’ he said quietly. I wondered what was going through his mind.

  I went down to the water’s edge and wet my hanky to clean his face up. Little bits of sand were stuck to the blood. He winced in pain as I dabbed at his cheek.

  ‘You’d better rest, Mr Palmer. They won’t be long, I’m sure.’

  And Banjo must’ve ridden back like fury to get help because within minutes we heard the far-off wail of the army ambulance’s siren.

  Banjo and Modern School

  A couple of weeks later we had the day off school and Dafty and I were waiting for Banjo on the cliff above the army jetty. It was sort of out of bounds but only just inside the barbed wire fence. A circle of huge sandstone boulders surrounded by thick tea-trees lay back from the cliff directly above the jetty. We called it Shangri-la after the hidden valley in Lost Horizon, the Ronald Colman movie we’d seen a while back.

  We were sitting up on the largest boulder watching the workers unload bag after bag of cement from an army ba
rge. There must’ve been thousands of the grey dusty bags. It seemed to go on for hours. The men had stripped off their shirts but in spite of the cool wind they all sweated like racehorses. Their bodies glistened in the sun and soon clouds of cement dust rose into the air and stuck to them, making them all look like grey ants in felt hats. Backwards and forwards they trudged, each time swinging a cement bag up onto their shoulders and staggering along the jetty to a waiting truck.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ I asked Banjo when he reached the top of the hill.

  Banjo propped his bike against a tree. ‘Palmer came round to my house. He had a letter.’

  ‘Jeez, are you all right?’ I asked. Anything after hours with Palmer usually meant six of the best, or twelve if he was in one of his black, eye-twitching, moods.

  ‘Yeah, I’m all right. He still doesn’t look too good though. He had real trouble walking.’ Banjo nodded at Dafty. ‘No thanks to you, sunshine.’

  ‘Well, what did he want?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ continued Banjo. ‘He reckons I’ve got a chance at a scholarship.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A scholarship to Perth Mod. Perth Modern School. He reckons if I can improve my English then maybe. All my other marks are good enough. He said he’d give me extra tutoring. An hour after school every day.’

  ‘No-one goes to Perth Mod. You have to be a genius,’ I said, hardly believing him. Banjo at Perth Mod? What a laugh that would be, seeing him in a blazer and a school cap and ‘Jolly well done, old chap’, and all that sort of twaddle.

  ‘What’d your dad say?’ I asked.

  ‘I haven’t told him yet. I came straight here. But last week he said I’d soon be strong enough to get a job at the aerodrome. Earn some proper money.’ Banjo sat down on the rock next to me.

  I nodded down at the grey ants below. ‘What? Doing that?’

  ‘Palmer said he’d talk to my dad about it. The scholarship.’

  ‘Do you want to go?’ I asked.

  ‘Course I do. Wouldn’t you? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life humping cement bags like those poor blighters,’ he said, also nodding towards the jetty.

  ‘Do you reckon your dad will listen to Palmer?’ I asked again.

  ‘You know my dad. He doesn’t go much for books and learning. Doesn’t trust teachers. Can’t work them out. He thinks they’re all weird. But he might listen to Palmer because he served in France in the war and got a Military Cross and all those other medals.’

  ‘Military Cross? Palmer’s got an MC?’ I couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Didn’t you see him at the Anzac parade?’ said Banjo. ‘His chest was covered in medals.’

  ‘No, I was home with the measles. Remember?’

  ‘ I saw him,’ said Dafty, ‘Lots of medals on pretty ribbons.’

  So it really was true. Palmer’s limp was caused by the Germans. Grumpy old Palmer the Harmer was a full-blown hero.

  We sat quietly for a while until Dafty spoke. ‘What is a mod?’ he asked.

  Dafty Gets Taken Away

  Senior Constable Campbell came for Dafty early in the morning, just after sunrise. We’d all been expecting it. None of us went to school that morning. And later on Palmer didn’t say anything at all about us arriving late. He knew where we all were because I found out afterwards he’d been down there at the bay as well, just out of sight behind the pilot’s house.

  We gathered at the jetty to see the ferry leave. We had to see Dafty go. Everyone knew he’d never be back. And as simple as he was—and he sure was simple—he was still a friend to each one of us. Just about everyone on the island thought of him as their mascot.

  He wore his new pullover and shoes. He walked slowly beside Constable Campbell, dragging his feet. In his hand he carried a small shabby suitcase tied up with twine. He saw Banjo and the rest of us waiting on the jetty for him and as he shuffled past we saw he’d been crying. Tears ran down his cheeks but he didn’t wipe them away until he saw Banjo at the end of the jetty. He stopped beside Banjo and sniffed.

  ‘I’ve got for you a Christmas present, Banjo.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out the smallest and most delicate blue starfish I’d ever seen. ‘I been saving it, special.’

  Banjo took it and I knew he wouldn’t be able to say anything without bawling.

  Dafty then said just one word, ‘Lassie?’

  Banjo nodded. ‘I’ll look after your chook.’ And I knew Banjo would.

  ‘Goodbye,’ Banjo said. Nothing else, just goodbye.

  Banjo turned his head away. I did as well. It was awful. So unfair.

  Dafty stepped over to Bess. Like at the NCO’s ball, he couldn’t take his eyes from her. ‘Bess...’ He didn’t seem to know what else to say.

  Bess smiled, kindly. She leaned forward and said, ‘Safe journey, my little Fred Astaire. Never, ever change. Keep that breathless charm.’ I recognised the words from the song they’d danced to.

  ‘I will feel a glow just thinking of you,’ she continued. ‘We’ll miss you, Dafty. I’ll miss you.’ She smiled and kissed him on the cheek.

  Constable Campbell put his hand on Dafty’s shoulder but it was obvious he didn’t want to be doing this. ‘It’s time, son. Sorry. We have to go.’

  Little Eric and Christian threw in the mooring lines and clambered aboard. The ferry reversed its engine and pulled away from the jetty, chugging like an old tractor.

  Dafty stood in the stern of the boat against the rail with the constable sitting further inside. I’d never seen anyone look so awkward or uncomfortable as Constable Campbell did at that moment, as if he hated every second of what he was doing. He looked guilty and incredibly sad. Then above the noise of the motor I was surprised to hear Banjo humming. As the boat pulled away his humming became louder and clearer. It was the tune to ‘Waltzing Matilda’.

  Next to him, Bess started singing the words. ‘You’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me.’

  Dafty heard it too. He lifted his head up. He didn’t wave. He just stood there with his hands tightly clutching the rail, not taking his eyes from us.

  The ferry gathered speed and little Dafty Small grew smaller and smaller.

  The song grew louder as the other kids all joined in, sort of self-consciously at first, but then at the top of their voices. ‘Up rode the squatter mounted on his thoroughbred...’

  Constable Campbell stood up and walked away to the front of the boat, his shoulders slumped like he carried the worries of the world.

  ‘Down came the troopers, one, two, three...’

  We stood there singing the song over and over until our voices became hoarse and the ferry grew so small we couldn’t make out the figures any more. It was wrong, what was happening to Dafty. He wasn’t bad. He was just a bit dim and didn’t know any better.

  Eventually the other kids drifted away but I stayed with Banjo, who was staring out across the grey water. We were never going to see Dafty again.

  ‘Banjo, we’d better go,’ I said. ‘Palmer’ll be waiting.

  He turned and stared at me but didn’t move. His eyes were cold and distant. ‘Let him wait,’ he said.

  Mr Palmer Announces the News

  The next morning Palmer didn’t call the roll first thing as he always did. Instead he stood quietly until we all sat down.

  ‘Children.’ He stood at the front of the class and gripped his walking stick. His leg must’ve been hurting like hell as it shook slightly. The scratches on his face didn’t look too good either. He cleared his throat.

  ‘Children, I have some bad news for you all.’ He cleared his throat again and blinked several times. Something was seriously wrong. ‘Timothy Small, the boy you all know as Dafty, jumped into the sea from the ferry yesterday. We think he tried to swim back to the island. Unfortunately the ferry was too far offshore. There is no way he could have made it back.’

  No-one said a word. We couldn’t believe it. Dafty drowned? It couldn’t be. He must be mistaken. Not poor li
ttle harmless Dafty. I sat in my chair, stunned. My heart pounded in my ears. Nothing made sense. Time had suddenly stopped. Everything seemed blank. I heard someone behind me sniff and begin crying quietly and the buzz of a single blowfly against the window. My eyes filled with tears. Floods of tears. I tried wiping them away with my sleeve but there were too many. The tears kept coming and coming, streaming down my cheeks.

  ‘No, he wasn’t trying to swim back.’ Banjo was the first to speak. He didn’t stand up like we were supposed to when talking in class. ‘It’s the song. My song. “You’ll never take me alive, said he”, as he jumped into the billabong.’

  Mr Palmer didn’t seem to know what to say. ‘Perhaps you are right, Paterson. The army is still out looking for his ... him. If any of you want to go out and help with the search then you are...’ Mr Palmer left the sentence unfinished and turned his back to us. A minute later I saw him take out a hanky and wipe his nose. That surprised me. I thought Palmer was as hard as nails.

  He dismissed us soon after. I ran outside without looking at anyone and kept running and running until I reached home. Mum had already heard the news and was waiting for me. I fell into her arms and she held me tight against her apron as I cried and shook and blubbed until I had no more tears left. Exhausted, I went into my room and lay face down on my bed.

  Late in the afternoon Mum woke me with a mug of hot milk mixed with some cooking chocolate she’d been saving, and then about an hour later she sent me down to the jetty.

  People had been there all day, watching the search boats come and go, each one unsuccessful. But now it was almost dark and everyone had left, except for the two figures standing at the end of the jetty, silhouetted against the sea. One was Banjo, and the other looked like Mr Palmer. It had to be Mr Palmer, the way he leaned heavily on his walking stick. What was he doing there with Banjo? Were they hoping for a miracle, peering out over the water at the white horses whipping through the darkening channel?