Tarrapaldi

by Wayne T Mathews

  “Good,” she continued when he was covered in mud, “now rinse it all off with water.” Then after he lowered himself into deeper water. “That’s right. Swim around and let the river cleanse you of the filth,” Tarrapaldi said.

  While he dog paddled in the deeper water, she placed her spears on the ground in easy reach. Moving to his discarded clothes, she pummeled them at the water’s edge. When satisfied with the results, she hung the clothes over a bush to dry, before returning to her spears.

  “Come out now, Nathaniel Johnson.”

  “I can’t. I need my clothes.”

  “You don’t need them at all. But you do need to come out. Because if you don’t, I’ll spear you, and your blood’ll bring the sharks,” she said.

  “Sharks?” He cast a worried look over his shoulder while he surged ashore, one hand covering his genitals, the other arm pumping back and forth to balance his efforts. She stepped back laughing, still holding the spears though, in a manner that prevented him having a chance to attack.

  “To the rock there, Nathaniel Johnson,” she said, still chuckling. “Climb up onto the rock, and let the sun dry you. Nathaniel Johnson. It’s a difficult name. Do you have an easier one?”

  “Nathaniel. Most people just call me Nathaniel.”

  “Then I’ll also call you Nathaniel,” Tarrapaldi said. “It’s a much easier name. Put your arms back, Nathaniel. Lean back on the rock and let the sun caress you. Tell me, Nathaniel. When was the last time a woman rode your third leg?”

  “Oh my God,” he groaned, when she reached for him with one hand, the spear in her other hand lightly touching his throat, forcing him to lie on his back.

  Chapter Two

  With the tide flooding, Nathaniel conned his boat up the wide river, his sails filled by the easterly breeze. The rugged sandstone cliffs and wild-looking country gliding past. The Aboriginal girl sitting in the bow had her fingers trailing in the water, and was humming a tune he’d never heard. She wasn’t naked now. He’d convinced her to wear his spare shirt while they traveled the river, just in case they passed any other whites. The shirt was a loose fit, but her nipples poked the thin fabric out of shape, while the tails barely covered her muscular thighs.

  It’d been the most unusual, but pleasant morning of his life. After using him, and there was no other way to describe what she’d done, Tarrapaldi had tugged him to his feet and led him back into the water. After washing them both, she’d led him back to the rock, and told him to stay before she vanished into the bush without a sound. She’d returned a short time later in a small canoe made from the bark of a tree, with two ducks swinging by their necks, covering her breasts. With childish delight, she’d used his knife to prepare the ducks. Wrapping them in leaves, and then coating each bird with mud, she’d put them in the fire. They’d been the most delicious ducks he’d ever eaten.

  After the meal, she’d leaned back against a log, with his head cradled in her lap, and told about the country beyond the river where she wanted to take him. About the people she wanted him to meet, and the pleasures she hoped he’d share with her. It sounded like heaven compared to the squalor and horrors of the settlements he knew.

  “What is that tune you’re humming?” Nathaniel asked.

  She smiled. “It’s a lullaby for our baby,”

  He laughed. “Oh really. You’re already having a baby are you?”

  “If you’re who I think you are. Then yes, you have given me life.”

  “And if I’m not who you think I am?”

  “You are, Nathaniel. Baiame told me you were when he let us speak to each other without using our voices.”

  “Who is Baiame?” Nathaniel asked.

  “He is the God you say has forsaken this place. It’s so untrue, Nathaniel. Look at what is around you. How can you think he has forsaken us?”

  How indeed? He thought while quietly humming an old sea shanty song of his own.

  Life hadn’t been easy for Nathaniel. The English tolerated him at best. They scorned and ridiculed him for his accent. Their women had teased him, what women there were among the filthy hovels where the convicts were confined. And on the rare occasion he’d allowed himself to respond, the men had beaten him off. Taunting him. Mocking him and calling him coward. But only when they outnumbered him. For the few who’d tried when they had no backup, knew only too well, that the American was no coward.

  Looking from the tall, dusky beauty in the front of his boat, to the rugged cliffs and wooded lands on either side, seeing them for the first time in a different light, he began to feel that just maybe there was a God after all.

  Gliding around a bend in the river, Nathaniel was surprised to find a clearing being worked by a large number of white men. When they saw him, and the woman in the bow of his boat, they downed tools and began calling each other.

  “Well will you be looking at that. A dusky princess being delivered to the workers,” a withered convict, standing close to the bank, called out with a ribald gesture. “What price are you asking, Matey?”

  “What are they saying, Nathaniel?”

  “You don’t want to know,” Nathaniel transmitted back as they swept on by, the tide still flowing strongly, and the boat traveling well.

  “Oh come on, Matey,” another called from slightly upstream. “Fair’s fair. We’ve got grog up in the shanty. Come ashore and we’ll share the booty of this lovely land.” His cackling laugh was cut short by the slash of a cane wielded by a red coated guard.

  “Get back to work, you foul-mouthed brute,” the guard snarled before calling to the boat. “Ahoy there the boat. Who are you, and where’re you bound?”

  “John Nathaniel,” Nathaniel lied, “and we’re traveling up river to a stand of cedar the wife here has told me about.”

  “Then you can just bring your boat ashore and show me your ticket,” an officer shouted while riding up on a stunted pony. “Come along, Bucko. Bring it about before I send the boats out to board you.”

  “Oh, no.” Nathaniel saw a group of convicts running to where two long, fast rowboats were beached. Then calling in a voice that carried across the water, “I’ve got the tide, Sir, and a fair breeze to carry us up. Have a heart will you, and let us get on with our work.”

  “Bring him in, lads,” the officer called to the men now clambering into the rowboats. “Take it gentle if he behaves. I want to see what the devil it is he’s trying so hard to hide.”

  The rowboats came surging after the sailboat. With a man on each of the three oars on both side, and another on the sweep oar at the rear, it wasn’t a fair contest.

  “What’s happening, Nathaniel? Why are they coming after us?”

  “They’ve seen you on board, and they want to fill you with grog and share your body.”

  “Will they wash first?”

  “What?” Nathaniel said, his eyes showing his amazement at the calmness of her question. “Not bloody likely. It’s unhealthy to wash. They’ll use you, steal all my provisions, and then throw us out in the morning,”

  “Then we must fight them.”

  “We can’t, Tarrapaldi. There’re too many of them, and I’ve only got one shot. By the time I reload for another, they’ll be all over us.”

  “But I have more than one shot,” she said with the calm confidence he’d seen that morning. Taking up her spears, Tarrapaldi moved around the mast and balanced herself on the side. “Sail the boat, Nathaniel.” She fitted a spear into a long, grooved stick with a hook on the end that Nathaniel had thought was a wicked, but flimsy sort of wooden sword. “Tell them to stay back, or I will spear them.”

  “For God’s sake, stay back. She’ll spear you if you keep coming.”

  The officer smiled. “Shoot her, trooper.”

  The guard unslung his rifle and knelt to steady his aim. With a click, the pan flashed, a small cloud of smoke puffed sideway
s, followed by a loud bang and a cloud of smoke that burst from the gun barrel’s end.

  Tarrapaldi saw the flash, and dropped into the bottom of the boat a split second before the ball thwacked into the mast. In a blur of motion, she put down her spears and snatched up Nathaniel’s gun. Swinging it over the gunwale, she cocked and aimed it as she’d seen him do the day before. When she fired though, the recoil caught her completely by surprise, knocking her backward into the boat where she landed on her rump.

  “Stupid weapon.” She threw the gun down and took up her spears, not caring that Nathaniel could not understand her spoken words. And caring even less that the officer’s hat had been snatched from his head by her passing ball. He was still alive and that’s what mattered, dammit. He was too far away for her spears, so she looked to the closing rowboats.

  “Tell them this is my last warning. My next spear will pierce the steering man in the exact spot he thinks he’s going to spear me with his third leg.”

  When Nathaniel began shouting the message to the pursuing boats, Tarrapaldi launched her spear. It was a long throw, but as the last of Nathaniel’s words reached them, so did the spear.

  With a thump, the spear slid between the sweep’s legs, imbedding the stone tip deep into the transom. Inertia snapped the shaft free, twisting it to clout the man in his groin. With a howl of pain, he toppled to the side of the boat, dragging the sweep oar with him, and turning the boat into the side of the other. Several oars snapped in the confusion that followed, putting the rowboats out of the race, leaving Nathaniel and Tarrapaldi to sail on unscathed.

  A shot rang out behind them as they swung round the next bend in the river. But they were beyond the accurate range of the guard’s rifle, and the ball skipped past them before thwacking harmlessly into the bank.

  “Will they learn from this, Nathaniel? Or will they come after us like the wild dogs they seem to be?”

  “They may not come after us today, but they won’t forget. You shot the hat off that officer’s head. And you threw a spear that damn near skewered the other man. If they catch us Tarrapaldi, we’re for the high jump.”

  “High jump? What is high jump?”

  “They’ll hang us, Lass. They’ll put a rope around our necks, and hang us till we’re dead.”

  “And you said my people are savages, without morals or decency.”

  “Baiame,” she cried out with her arms uplifted, her voice bouncing back from the sandstone cliffs, “why have you done this to us? Why have you sent these myalls, these wild men, to destroy us?” But only the echo of her own voice replied.

  “Nathaniel, will they hunt us tomorrow?”

  “Oh yes, you can depend on that. They’ll have boats combing the river tomorrow. They’ll search in every nook and cranny until they find this boat. And if we’re still with it, they’ll take us, dead or alive. They won’t care.”

  “But what if we take the boat down the river tonight? Will they search so carefully downstream?” Tarrapaldi asked.

  “Probably not,” Nathaniel said, “but getting past them will be the devil of a job. And even if we do. So what? Eventually they’ll find us. There’s no getting away from them.”

  “Yes there is, Nathaniel. If they do what I saw them do before I found you, then they’ll fill themselves with their grog tonight, and sleep like the dead. A lightning strike on their shanty wouldn’t have woken them the last time I saw them. We could slip by on the outgoing tide, then I’ll show you a place we can leave the boat where they’ll never see it. It won’t be as easy going to Tunggaree’s camp overland. But it’s not all that hard either.”

  Once the decision was made, Nathaniel steered the boat into a small creek Tarrapaldi pointed out to him. He foiled the sail. Then using the sweep, he positioned the boat out of sight from the main stream.

  A light rain began to fall as the tide turned. So they decided to head back downstream earlier than they’d planned. With the sails still furled, using only the sweep and the current to propel them, they slid past the site of their fight, like ghosts. The only sounds from the bank being the drunken bellows of the English. The only light being flickers from the shanties. The river and surrounding hills as black as the inside of a cow’s belly. Tarrapaldi sat in the bow of the boat and gave Nathaniel directions to steer. He had no way of knowing she couldn’t see anything either, and was navigating more from smell and a feeling she had, than from anything else.

  After several hours of drifting on the tide, with the sweep being used to maintain steerage but little more, the rain slowed and the clouds began to thin, allowing the moon to send slivers of light, in shafts, to illuminate the way.

  Once the tide went slack, Tarrapaldi turned Nathaniel into the bank. It wasn’t until he was right up against them, that he realized there was a way through the mangroves in front of him. A channel led him into a deep, but narrow creek, running up into a valley that hadn’t been noticeable from the main river.

  “We must leave the boat here, Nathaniel,” Tarrapaldi said. Over hanging branches of huge trees on either side of the creek, closed in to snag the mast. “No one will find it here. There’s a cave up the way where we can rest for the remainder of the night. Then in the morning, we can cover our tracks, and head off for Tunggaree’s.”

  With the boat tied securely to trees, Nathaniel clambered out and followed her farther up the valley, ducking and twisting around and between the scrub and trees. It was only a very short time before she stopped, and reaching up, began to put a torch together from the dead and dry little branches she was able to break from the dense scrub.

  “Would it be easier for you if we used one of my candles?” he asked, bringing one out of the sack he was carrying, then lighting it with a flint.

  “Very good,” she said in admiration once she inspected the candle. “If I get you the honeycomb, can you make us more of these?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. There’re a lot of things you’re going to have to teach me, Nathaniel. But by the same token, there’re a powerful lot of things you’re going to have to learn from me, before you’re going to be able to live in this land, comfortably and safely.”

  “That’s a joke, Tarrapaldi. That officer will be spreading the word about us tomorrow, and every man and his dog within a hundred miles will be on the lookout for us.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We’re beyond their grip even now. They don’t know where we are. And tomorrow morning, after we’ve tidied up behind us, we’ll be on our way, on foot through the bush. There’s just no way possible for them to follow or find us. Even if they get a Guringai to try and track us, it won’t do them any good. Because the Guringai don’t know that I know how to leave lies for them to read on the ground.”

  Tarrapaldi led him into what appeared to be a thicket, but with some more twisting and turning to avoid the branches that would have gouged their eyes out, Nathaniel suddenly found himself in a large cave.

  Awe struck, he whistled through his teeth.

  With a speed that was beyond description, Tarrapaldi dropped the candle and slapped both hands across his mouth.

  “DON’T,” she screamed in his mind, “you MUST NOT whistle in a cave, or the roof will fall in on you.”

  “That’s nonsense, Tarrapaldi. It’s nothing but an old wives’ tale. People make up stories like that to scare small children and make them behave.”

  “I know people make up stories, Nathaniel. But this one’s true. My uncle, Wimmera. He thought it was a joke, so he stood in a cave not far from here, and he whistled. The cave fell in on him, and he was buried under a huge slab of rock. I have seen the cave, and the slab that crushed him. I know it’s true, Nathaniel.”

  Nathaniel had picked up the candle while she spoke, and still listening, he’d moved over to the walls, holding the candle up to illuminate the caricatures and figures painted there.

  “What are
these, Tarrapaldi? What do they mean?”

  “Nothing,” she transmitted, looking up from preparing the fish she’d caught earlier in the afternoon. “There’s nothing special about those ones. They’re just there for decorations. Later on, after you’ve had a talk with Tunggaree, we’ll show you some special ones that have magic. And other’s that tell us how to get to Bullima. Lot’s of interesting things like that.”

  After sharing the fish, Tarrapaldi peeled off the shirt she was wearing, “We’re not on the river anymore, Nathaniel. And we won’t be meeting, or seeing, any white men for a long time, so I don’t need to wear this silly thing anymore. You won’t need yours either.” She said reaching across to his trousers and undoing the buttons. He groaned, and she chuckled when his trousers fell to the floor. A draft through the cave, blew the candle out.

  Chapter Three

  Nathaniel woke to the hysterical cackle of a Kookaburra challenging the dawn. Rising from the floor, he looked around for his clothes, but they were gone. Thinking Tarrapaldi may have taken them down to the river for another washing, he picked up his gun and headed out of the cave and down toward the creek.

  “Tarrapaldi,” he called.

  “Will you be quiet,” she hissed in his mind. “Stop stomping around like a wombat trying to impress his mate.”

  “Where are you?” he transmitted, remembering he only needed to think, to communicate.

  “Down by the boat.”

  He found her squatting on a rock overlooking the water, a light line held in her hands. As he approached, she pulled it in. Her hand darted into the water and came out with a mud crab struggling to grip her with its clicking claws. With an economy of movement that was poetry to watch, she opened a sack of his that she’d taken from the boat, and dropped the crab in.

  “Come.” She threw the sack over her shoulder and rose to her full height. From the bulk of it, and the movement from inside, it was obvious she had caught more than one crab. “We’ll eat well this morning,” Tarrapaldi said. “Then I want to go through your things to decide what we’ll take with us before we burn this place.”