by Bruce Pascoe
But it’s Port Hedland and the grand dame is possibly the bank manager’s wife, or maybe the retired head of the girls’ school. I can’t tell, but how could I? What I can tell is that she is going to get dolled up because there are two or three chances in Port Hedland and one of them is the Camel Cup and no one else would include it as a chance. Well, not quite true, four other women do, but the rest go for the lightweight frock and the slip-on flatties.
How do I know that if I can’t tell whose wife she is? Well, put it down to experience in enough country towns to make me certain.
But look, she was halfway through a stagey sweep of the arm to embrace all the art treasures of Port Hedland when the Old Man stole her oxygen so he could force it across the membrane of a reluctant eucalypt. Everybody had stopped mid-stride, mid-gesture, mid-installation. All except me, because I saw it coming and made myself comfortable on a milk crate in front of Untitled II (gouache and red sand).
The Old Man had time afterwards for a fairly comprehensive summary of Victorian Aboriginal history, and the spell would have remained unbroken except a bird of paradise attempted eye surgery on the shortish woman whose arms were obviously not up to a recital of timeless gum-leaf melodies and a history of a state she wouldn’t recognise in an atlas but for the habit of atlas makers to print the name of states in bold serif type. VICTORIA.
The shortish woman discarded the brief attempt to fish Victoria’s shape and position from her mind because the lurid shaft of the flower caused her to sneeze. The spray of Cecil Brunner rosebuds flopped to the floor and was speckled like a hen’s egg in red dust. Well, it was Port Hedland.
But that was earlier. What’s happening now is that Miss Hermansberg is outlining the history of her own state, which has the shape of a rather stiff and tufted muffin. Miss Hermansberg knows she hasn’t got long because the Old Man is opening and shutting his mouth in an attempt to elaborate on the old days by the Snowy, so she prunes her history, keeping it spare and bald, but a history such as this must take some time. A story of a woman shot in the back by police officers of the realm within gaze of her children, the older girl holding the baby and the boy the billy because it was what he’d been told to grab whenever trouble threatened. Which it did frequently because this was Australia and Australians could find all sorts of reasons why a woman has to be shot in the back in front of her children. Of course, we don’t do that now.
Miss Hermansberg was the baby, and when pressed probably can’t be sure whether she remembers all the details of that day or has been schooled in them by her older sister, who at the time was pregnant to the stationowner’s son even though she was only eleven. But there was a good reason for that, too. Probably because eleven-year-old girls are so promiscuously seductive. Something to do with the packs of swap cards, broken biscuits and tennis balls they carry in the pockets of their school shorts. It pays to carry your own tennis ball because the school can never be guaranteed to have enough money to supply equipment for spontaneous games of handball or brandy. Because this is Australia.
She gets very close to the end of the story and the Old Man reaches for the leaf in his top pocket, but Honeypot claps her hands in delight at the presentation of another pot of Emu Bitter.
‘Come on, come on,’ shouts Honeypot, ‘bring it on.’ She has a striking voice, but the most striking thing about the voice is that for three days she’s been sitting next to Miss Hermansberg and Sunflower and saying nothing and casting her gaze down from an expressionless face. Sunflower – yes, I know I didn’t mention Sunflower, but you try and fit it into the title.
Sunflower is beautiful. Christ, everyone’s beautiful in this story. Sunny is a big girl but her face is still rather gorgeous, and lit by a daunting intelligence. Doesn’t matter how big you get, a handsome face crowned by a coronet of curled hair in a pleasant shade of ginger is still worth a look. But crikey, she is a big girl. The night before, at the impromptu women’s pool tournament, she wrenched her knee and had to sit through today’s meeting with an ice pack pressed to it, rather like a big ham on shaved ice in a butcher’s window.
But Sunflower has been single-handledly – if you don’t count Miss Hermansberg and Honeypot – resisting the new tide of racism released by the government on any unsuspecting black individual forced into the court system of our most northern state, the Flying Muffin.
Sunny is saying nothing because she’s twisting the top off a 150ml bottle of Hardy’s Special Reserve. Drinking makes her serious. More serious. She doesn’t even look up when Honeypot screams, ‘Bring it on, Uncle Jacky Jacky!’
Miss Hermansberg and Honeypot had taken to calling the Old Man Uncle Jacky Jacky because unlike every other conference attendee he refused to wear a nametag. Surely everybody knew his name! Well, everybody but Miss Hermansberg and Honeypot, because they’d only met him once and clutched at the thing that struck them most. He gave them a recital of Jacky Jacky at the baggage carousel in Port Hedland. Well, ‘carousel’ is bullshit because it’s just an old steel trailer with two odd tyres.
Anyway, we men had been in the pub for hours, conducting a refreshing survey of important issues, when the triumvirate of court assistants turned up and spied the Old Man sitting beneath an advertisement for Jack Daniel’s bourbon: ‘Jack sat here.’ They think it’s funny, and I suppose it is in its own way, but we blink up at them like owls because we think we’ve just sorted a structure for the enculturation, or re-enculturation, of every willing boy in Victoria. Wouldn’t you blink like an owl?
But Honeypot is on a mission. ‘Four hours I’ve got. Bring it on. Get me the grog, Uncle Jacky Jacky. Four hours and I’m back in the bush.’
And the bush she means is the alcohol-free community where the government allows residents to buy fuel if they can prove they have washed their faces twice a day. Australia’s a tidy town.
She’s almost capering with excitement, and I can’t take my eyes off the sight because this is the shy girl who you could have been forgiven for thinking was a mute.
And she’s black, as black as you ever see people. There’s a lustre, a dark lustre, that reminds me of the back of a mussel shell that has been scoured to such a degree that the nacre begins to gleam in a sheen of opalescence. You look for the colours but can’t quite pick them because they’re not quite there. The skin is black, so black it shines, and you think you see a little shimmer of ebony pearl. Christ, she’s beautiful.
She’s wearing an old windcheater with arms so long the cuffs roll over her hands and she has to keep flicking them back. The grace of this movement is astonishing. When she picks up the pool cue and addresses the white ball, men’s jaws drop. Well, they are miners from the Western Desert, even though they’re philosophically opposed to black people. Well, it is Australia. But Christ, she’s beautiful.
She spins on her feet and casts her gaze quickly this way and that, looking for the next opportunity to embrace the world.
I don’t mind, I’m an old man. I can gaze at beauty when I please. I’m in awe of the transformation from shy desert girl to bold young woman on the tear. But as she sweeps and jives from pool game to our table, flicking her elegant wrists and scooping up brand-new drinks with whoops of delight, we hear her story from Sunflower, with judicious interpolated whispers from Miss Hermansberg, and are in no doubt that if anyone in the Lucky Country has a right to have one night a year on the tear it is our very own Honeypot, who becomes Honeypot Two Shots because of her increasing ability to give away two shots. She’s a deadly pool player despite having to flick her cuffs away from her wrists every other second. No one can jive around the table and whoop and scream with laughter and keep the white ball under control all the time.
The Old Man launches into Jacky Jacky, deftly calculated to send Honeypot Two Shots into laughter mid-shot. In, off. Two shots. Miss Hermansberg is hiding behind her hands, her shoulders trembling with laughter. Her eyes peek above her fingers and she giggles like a girl, fifty years after she was a girl, but I’ll be surprised
if that remarkable lustre ever leaves those eyes until they are shaded by shovels of red sand. Miss Hermansberg’s eyes glint with discreet and modest mischief.
The mining lad, gauche in denim work shorts and dusty socks rolled above his boots, becomes desperate with her gleeful allure and makes a clumsy and inelegant suggestion, an ejaculation of desperation and hope, but what can you expect, he’s just out of the desert. The Australian subterranean desert mole gets one chance a year to mate, and Desert Boy has fewer. He sees this as his chance, but really it’s a mistake.
I haven’t mentioned the Goanna and the Dancer. The Goanna has smoked something that causes him to grasp the jukebox like you would the shoulders of a favourite aunt, and his body is weaving like a goanna. Lost in the sweet rhythm of Troy Cassar Daly. The Dancer, possibly the funniest man on the planet, has dropped into a reverie, which he is wont to do when thinking. What, a black man thinking in Australia? Well, yes, he is, and if you didn’t know you’d think he was morose, but he’s just thinking, and he’s leaning back against a pillar, deliberately removing himself from our gaze. He also happens to have been the Australian under-nineteen boxing champion ten years ago, so for Desert Boy to make inappropriate remarks to Honeypot Two Shots is a mistake he doesn’t know he’s made. Goanna is still locked in embrace with the jukebox and the Stiff Gins but if Desert Boy had realised he was part of the Miss Hermansberg, Honeypot Two Shots, Sunflower, Uncle Jacky Jacky and Silly Old Bookman show, he would have clamped his jaw shut after seeing the Goanna’s bull neck and chest like a keg of beer, even if he, Desert Boy, was in the thrall of imminent orgasm.
But he didn’t know, and it didn’t matter, because Honeypot Two Shots darted her hand out of her cuff into a lovely declination from the wrist, and the fingers curved as one in a gesture towards poor old Desert Boy. Of course, the loveliness of that hand broke his heart and ruptured his groin.
‘You think I have to suck up to you for a drink, eh? You think, black girl crawlin’ roun’ for her grog. I’m not gunna crawl for a man. I got a man back ’ome, I got kids. One night I got to drink with Ol’ Uncle Jacky Jacky and silly ol’ Bookman, one chance to whip ol’ Bookman’s arse at pool, and no lil’ fella like you gunna stop me, eh. You wanna play pool, get a grip of ya cue, boy, or piss off.’
Well, she was a bit pissed, but brazen defiance became her.
Desert Boy gulped and picked up his cue. The Dancer peered around the column and his arms bowed unconsciously into the shape offering the gloves for lacing. The Goanna looked back over his shoulder and gave Desert Boy a frightening look. How dare he interrupt the Mills Sisters.
The barman called last drinks in a gloomy voice, seemingly resigned to the hopelessness of his mission.
Honeypot Two Shots swept down on him and began purchasing alcohol in bulk. She dropped two cans of Coke in front of Miss Hermansberg, who had already explained to Uncle Jacky Jacky why she didn’t drink, and clinked two pots together in each hand, dangling one pair before Uncle Jacky Jacky and at someone stupid enough to tell stories on paper. The other two were for her; Honeypot Two Shots Two Pots.
But soon we were bushed. Uncle Jacky Jacky retired gracefully to a bed of the softest gum leaves, Bookman went to his room and drank three glasses of the worst water in Christendom. Well, it was Port Hedland. Meanwhile, the Goanna, the Dancer, Honeypot Two Shots Two Pots, Miss Hermansberg, Car Doors and Lizard Lady took a bottle of Scotch and two bottles of Coke out to the swimming pool. I know I haven’t mentioned Car Doors and Lizard Lady, and I’m not going to. I’m too tired. And besides, Lizard Lady is the second-most courageous person on the planet and deserves her own story where her tubby figure is not lost in the effulgence of Honeypot Two Shots Two Pots. But they were there, Car Doors pouring bumper Scotches and smacking his lips with great delectation, Lizard Lady just loving life.
But that’s when the world went black because Bookman was snuggled down in his feather bed. Feathers, bullshit – it was Port Hedland.
Anyway, next morning Bookman finds Honeypot Two Shots Two Pots alarmingly refreshed and bending her lustrous face over the letters pages of The Australian. Like watching Naomi Campbell turn into a librarian. Goodness, we live in a funny country.
A LETTER TO MARLO
You know how in my last story I said I was trying to tell nothing but the truth? Well, this one is the truth too. If you believe my eyes, heart and brain. Which you’d be unwise to do. Completely.
And you know I said it’s for you, well, I lied already. It’s for your mum because you are only one, not even that. It is for you as well, of course, because I was thinking of you all the time; there are a lot of babies in Maningrida. But mostly this is for your mother because she’s got a really good heart and a huge capacity to love. As you know. And she’s Australian. As you are. And me. Which is where the problem starts.
I don’t want to depress you, either of you, but you know how in the first place white people lied, cheated, murdered, raped, pillaged, judged and slandered Aboriginal people? And that was just the fervent Christians; the Scots of stingingly moral rigidity and the Irish so determined to fight for freedom, and the English who would bleed rather than break the law … sorry, Marlo, get your mother to explain it. Well, those people were our ancestors, so you can see we came from very upright stock, but somewhere along the line our deep aversion to black people had a hiatus, which is a bit like a hernia, but during that hiatus someone took their pants down and had sexual congress with the despised. Probably twice. Not the same woman and probably a different man. Get your mother to explain it.
Anyway, you’ll find you’ve got relations from Hobart to Lockhart River. It’s a dog’s breakfast. But if you’re going to tell the truth and live by it, you have to watch closely, think carefully and speak only as often as your brain has completely resolved all of life’s complex tapestry … ah, forget that too, no one likes a mute, except Louis Armstrong. Get your father to explain that.
Oh, and speaking of dogs, I’m a dog wrangler for a vet. I catch ’em, he cures ’em. Which is another thing the white people hate. They want all the Yolgnu dogs killed. Despite the fact that this is Dog Dreaming country. But whites love their dogs and look after them. See the difference? The blackfella dogs have mange and fleas and ovaries. The black flea and mange are European imports into Australia, although no one paid the tax. So we’re here to treat the mange and remove the ovaries of bitches and the Jatz crackers of dogs. If we can catch them.
Of course, the white people come to get their dogs treated too. For nothing. Whites are good at corruption. And their dogs have the same diseases. Fancy that. But they love their dogs more. See, Marlo?
Yes, I know, I’m sounding terse, bitter, unyielding, unfair. I’m trying to tell the truth, but it’s complex. The problem is that someone in our family took their pants off, which we know is wicked, and then someone else in the family remembered those pants and their proximity to the ground, and then we had to say we either believe in those pants or we don’t.
Well, I wasn’t sure whether I believed, but some people told me this and some told me the other and just when we thought this is how it all works my cousin says no, it can’t, it has to work like this. But it was too late for me, I’d got all bound up and wrapped around by the sticky webs of black story … and Australian history, which I was shocked to discover I knew nothing about, despite having studied it at Australia’s best university, some say one of the best in the world. Won’t it come as a shock to all those professors to find they’ve been peddling crap with less credibility than scientology. Get your father to explain about scientology, it’s best if I don’t get started.
But Marlo, I hope you can see the problem with a conflicted, some say confused, heart. Maningrida is a long way north and I’m a mere dog wrangler with a filthy shirt, so a lot of the white people treated me as if I was a piece of poo and most of the blackfellas are just sick of balanda and don’t treat me with much at all.
But as a dog wrangler with a dirty shirt I w
as able to sit back and look because no one asked me anything, no one expected anything I had to say to bear one gram of sense. Pretty bloody good guess, if you ask me. But in the watching I saw the astounding arrogance of balanda when speaking to the inscrutable black face of the Yolgnu. You only needed to hear the words ‘bottom line’ to know that some black fingers were being rapped.
The young woman in the halter top with the midriff bared was twirling her skirts about like some hot-shot media adviser, but it was a lot worse than that – she was an arts administrator and she could barely keep contempt from her voice. She winked at me conspiratorially. ‘These people, what can you do with them?’
Half-arsed mechanics’ boys speak to black Elders with sarcasm dripping off their tongues. Shopkeepers avoid looking at black and try to chum up with whites, perceived whites, in dirty shirts. Until you don’t wink back or refuse to be served before the black woman who has been waiting for ten minutes.
Which makes me an old brindle hero, doesn’t it, Marlo? No, little mate, just someone a bit shocked by what he sees. And a bit frissoned by the delicious luxury of watching, of being ignored.
The tough lady administrator is laying down the fiscal law to a grandfather whose exclusive right it is to tell five-twelfths of the Dog Dreaming. She can add up and he knows the workings of the universe. So how come he can’t understand that there’s been a new flash of inspiration in government and all money for bilingual education has been whisked away so that the evils of his culture can be forgotten? Got it, old man? Well, that’s how it is. Today. Tomorrow, who knows? I’m just the administrator, Sambo; I’m just here to see the Australian government’s will is implemented. And go to Paris for lunch.