“I comma for job.”
“There ain’t none.”
“You mean there’sa no job in thisa whole town?”
“Yeah.”
“There musta be somathing.”
“There ain’t.”
“Hey! You taka you fucking head outa you fucking paper an’ you look ata me.”
The clerk had been through all this many times but there was a chilling command in this voice. He looked at Sal for the first time. “They’ll want men at the Babinda mill at the end of the month. That’s about thirty to forty miles back down the track near Innisfail.” If Sal had been more astute in judgement of his fellow man, he would have noticed the spite which flickered for a moment in the man’s eyes. And there was an unpleasant edge to the man’s tone. The clerk looked at Sal’s hands, which had become soft and pink during the past twelve months, and said, “Hey! Wait a minute! There’s work at Barbaro’s cane farm, he wants cutters.”
As Sal left the employment office pimple-face said, “Gawd you’re a bastard, Bill.”
Bill said, “Fuckin’ wog.”
CHAPTER
9
The bus trip to Mossman was an hour and a half of expectant hope and Sal could hardly contain his impatience. Near the end of the trip, after some heated words and arm waving, the bus driver emptied him out at Giacomo ‘Johnny’ Barbaro’s farm. He pointed in the general direction of the homestead which was somewhere in a jungle of sugar cane.
Sal found a red dirt road that penetrated the cane and proceeded along it far enough to be doubtful there was any house on it. He was about to turn back when he heard voices and continued on. The house was in a large clearing and a rotary clothesline draped with flapping bed linen hid the owner of a shapely pair of legs terminated in thongs.
“Scusa. I’ma look for Mister Barbaro.”
“He’s in the house. Who wants him?” asked a pleasant voice.
“I’ma Salvatore Bernardini an’ I comma to cut. I’ma senta by the government an’ I gotta the ticket.”
The legs walked to the end of the bed sheet and Sal was confronted by the most beautiful pair of soft brown eyes he had ever seen in his thirty years on this earth. He stood with his mouth open, unable to speak or look away, he heard a flyscreen door squeak open and clatter shut. A baritone ocker voice shouted, “Who is it Maria? What’s going on?”
The angel spoke. “It’sa Salvatore Bernardini, Poppa, an’ ‘e’sa comma to cut. ‘E’sa senta by the government an’ ‘e’sa gotta the ticket.” There was mischief in her eye.
“Cut it out, you little minx. Come up here onto the verandah, Salvatore. Have you ever cut cane? Show me your hands.”
“I no cutta cane but I worka hard.”
“Not for a while by the look of your hands.”
“I work onna the Snowy for tenna years, an’ I worka verra hard.”
“OK I’ll give you a start. But I bet by the end of the week you’d rather pick up a King Brown than a cane knife. C’mon let’s go down and meet the crew.”
Sal had seen them from the window of the bus, hacking away at the green wall, but had paid scant attention. Now he could see what they were up to. There was a pair of iron rails which ran parallel to the bitumen for as far as the eye could see and a gang of men was laying a spur line into the green, sugar cane jungle. Johnny Barbaro introduced him to the gang, about fifteen in number, and left him in the care of a huge redheaded man about Sal’s age. As he left, Barbaro said over his shoulder, “Don’t be too hard on him for a start, Harry.”
Harry Rigby was the contractor and his gang was put together by natural selection. If they couldn’t keep up with Harry, they had to go. Many an experienced cutter, newcomer to the gang, threw in his hand after a week or so. The big redhead looked at Sal and made the silent comment that if he turned up tomorrow he, Rigby, would be surprised.
They toiled through the morning till lunch; Sal was working with Rigby laying the rails. The rest of the crew was cutting and stacking the heavy cane to make a path for the tracks. At lunchtime Maria appeared with a large tray of fresh-cut sandwiches which she placed on the ground. She said to Sal, “Get in before the bugs, there’s plenty more if you want them.”
Rigby shouted, “Scran!” and the rest of the crew gathered around the food. Maria disappeared to return a short while later with a giant enamelled teapot and a wooden fruit box full of china mugs.
After lunch the rail layers struck a snag in the shape of a huge rock. It had worked its way up from the depths of the soil and was now barring the way. “Chuck me the banjo.” Rigby directed at Sal who blinked in ignorance at the request. Rigby tried again, “The fuckin’ banjo.” Sal did a slow clumsy pirouette, searching, and again came up empty-handed and blinking. “The shovel! Yer fuckin’ wog.” In a flash, Rigby was on his backside. There was a trickle of blood snaking down his chin from a cut lip, above which were two puzzled eyes, wide with surprise.
“You no calla me wog!” Sal was standing back with murder written in his dark scowl. There was a nervous laugh which came from the crew who had now turned to watch. They’d not seen their boss sat on his arse before and were keen to see just what stuff he was made of.
Rigby jumped to his feet. “Well, we’ll see about that,” he said, and when he was ready, he added, “Yer fuckin’ wog.”
Sal charged and Rigby stood him on the end of a stiff straight left. Sal’s legs flew out from under him and, suddenly, he was looking at the sky. He scrambled to his feet not sure what had happened, he charged again with the same result. The crew was unanimous in their support for Rigby. After all he was their boss but peering through a screen of sugar cane, Maria, summoned by the first “Oooooh” from the crew was mutely imploring Sal to stay down. She had seen the redheaded giant in action on previous occasions from a similar hiding place. She knew he was relentless and, to her way of thinking, invincible.
Sal was Rigby’s bunny. He kept on charging in and after a dozen or so attacks he still found himself on his back, but each time he did it took longer for him to get to his feet. Rigby on the other hand was getting bored with the whole thing. He wanted to get one good shot at Sal. But he couldn’t get more than one straight left home because Sal kept out of range until he thought it was again time to charge. When he did he ran into Rigby’s left hand and went down.
On Sal’s next charge Rigby wanted to hook but he was afraid, if he missed, Sal could be inside him. A head-butt, an elbow or knee might do him some damage so he again poked out his left hand. This time it was open. He laid the heel of his palm on Sal’s forehead and crossed a hard right which opened a crescent shaped gash on Sal’s cheekbone. When Sal went down, he rolled a couple of times. He tried to get up but flopped forward on his face, his blood forming a blossom in the dirt.
Rigby wasn’t even breathing hard when he turned to the crew and said, “Righto you blokes, back to work.” They shook their heads and pointed. When he looked in the direction of their fingers, there was Sal, swaying on his feet with his fists up looking for Rigby through a curtain of blood and dirt and semi-consciousness. And Sal was making another, albeit tortuous, charge.
Rigby nailed him again and the gash opened wider. As Sal went down Rigby pleaded, “Somebody get ‘im off me, fer Christ’s sake.” Nobody moved except Sal who had struggled to his hands and knees and was attempting to rise again, blood was now pumping from the gash. Rigby sat down beside him and lifted his head by the hair and said, “Fuck yer! Don’t get up again. You win, I won’t call yer wog again.” And he added, “Not seriously anyway, mate.” The crows’ feet around Sal’s eyes deepened and he gave Rigby a bloody, ghostly, toothy excuse for a grin while the three-cornered tear, under his eye, flapped and dripped.
From her hiding place Maria watched the whole brutal episode. She wanted to help Sal to his feet, she wanted to take him into the house to clean him up but Rigby already had his arm aroun
d him and was leading him to his ute. They passed close by Maria and when she saw Sal’s face, she let out an audible gasp. Rigby found her and said, “Tell yer father the new bloke’s had an accident. I’m gonna get him stitched.”
“What did you do?” She asked Rigby who thought she was talking to Sal.
“‘E tripped an’ ‘it ‘is head on a rock.” Rigby answered for him and added, “I’ll take ‘im ‘ome an’ pick ‘im an’ ‘is gear up in the mornin’, ‘e can live in the barracks.” From that moment a loose, weak bond was formed around the trio which was to grow and become tighter, and stronger, over the years.
“Hello Helen,” said Sal slowly, “Sep often talks about you.”
“Hello Sal. He talks about you, too, and I’m so pleased to meet you,” said Helen taking Sal’s calloused hand in hers and at the same time casting her eyes in Harry’s direction. Harry understood the questioning look and nodded slightly, he would explain the ‘Sep’ bit later. The man on the end of Helen’s arm would have been about six feet tall had it not been for the slight stoop, a legacy of thirty years of working with sugar cane. He was a handsome man with white hair and a deeply tanned complexion. A crescent shaped scar on his left cheekbone didn’t detract at all from Sal’s good looks.
“You two are the first to come, can I get you a little wine?” Sal asked in his slow manner.
“No vino for me, old man, I’ll have a Foster’s, a VB if you’ve got any.”
“I know what you like, Sep, I was asking Helen,” from Sal, again in slow precise terms. Before she could answer there was a banging at the front of the house and heavy footsteps down the hall punctuated by a light staccato of high heels.
“Sal! Where are ya, y’old bastard?”
“Shush! There might be visit…Oh gawd! Harry, you silly bugger.” This came from behind the red bearded giant that burst in on the trio in the kitchen, he stood, open mouthed when he saw Helen.
“Stop perving, Harry,” from the little bird of a woman snapping at Harry’s heels.
“What else can a man do, Mavis?”
“Introduce us, you dummy.”
Sal took over. “Helen, I’m not sure that you should meet this man. He has absolutely no class. I don’t know why Mavis doesn’t leave him and run away with me. However, since he’s here, you’ll have to meet Harry Rigby, and this is his long-suffering wife, Mavis.”
“Are you the nurse I keep hearin’ about? Hmm! Lucky Sep.” Young Harry gave a groan and rolled his eyes.
Helen felt barely significant with her tiny hand in Harry Rigby’s great claw. She squeaked, “Pleased to meet you Mavis, Harry,” as she salvaged it.
Sal leapt to her rescue. “The food is ready and the wine is chilled, why don’t we sit down?” He fetched dish after dish from the kitchen and he beamed while everybody ignored the electronic beep of the microwave and complemented him on his cooking. The evening was a lot of fun, Harry Rigby’s booming voice, and Sal speaking slowly and precisely, retold old stories that both Mavis and young Harry could mime to, but Helen was in fits of laughter until the wrong side of midnight.
Rigby glanced at his wrist and said, “Shit! I gotta be up at sparrer far...,” Mavis kicked him under the table, he looked at Helen and changed his mind mid word, “…chirp in the mornin’, I’m goin’ fishin’ an’ I avta be there an hour early to sign everyone on. I’m outa here, c’mon Lover.”
Mavis dutifully followed him out of the front door to their pickup and it honked its way out of sight down the dusty road through the cane field.
On the long ride back to town little was said until Harry and Helen crossed the Barron River at Stratford. “You’re very quiet. Did you enjoy the dinner? What do you think of the old man?” He asked.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard a person speak so clearly and correctly and I think he’s a gorgeous old man, but he really shouldn’t be on his own, at his age.”
“It’s by choice, he’s happy as he is.”
“I’m sorry, Harry,” she apologised, “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“No offence taken. That’s how he is,” he wanted to explain, “he’s at peace with the world.”
She changed the subject. “I think I like your namesake, and I do like his wife.”
“I’m his namesake, and yep, you’ll like him when you get to know him. As for Dad, he speaks that way because of me. He didn’t want his boy to suffer because his father was a wog. He hired a tutor who used to come to the farm at night, the tutor was a Pom. Now Dad’s got this Italian-EnglishAustralian accent that sounds pretty good, I reckon. But you should hear him when he gets excited, it’s not often, but when he does not even Italians know what he’s on about.” He blinked and swallowed and looked away. “Sorry. I always get a bit misty when I start thinking about the old man, he’s had a pretty hard life, and I haven’t helped him much.”
Helen put her hand on his arm. “I had a wonderful night, Harry, or should I call you Sep?”
“I’d like you to, my friends call me Sep.”
There followed a kilometre of awkward silence, until he said, “I guess you’re wondering why I call myself Harry?”
She nodded.
“Well it’s all part of this wog thing, Helen.” He sighed and continued. “Y’know, ever since I was a little kid it’s been my way never to regret anything, especially mistakes. It’s negative to dwell on them, they can’t be changed, but I file them all away in memory and they help me to make decisions later on. I still make mistakes, sure, but they’re usually not the same ones as before and, like I say, I refuse to regret them.”
“This is getting a bit deep, Harry Sep, for this time of night.”
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that the time and the energy that’s wasted in being sorrowful could be put to better use repairing any damage that a mistake might have caused rather than wallowing in sorrow. Now, having got on my soapbox and said all that, I’ve got to tell you that, when I was a kid, I made one dumb mistake that I do regret to this day. I hurt the old man so badly and I had no idea till I grew up what I’d done. To this day, to the old bloke’s credit, he’s never complained. But I know what I did; it’s all part of the same story. Can I tell you about it? I’d like to.”
Helen wondered how many others he had told, it didn’t matter, he needed a confessor at this moment. “Sure, Harry.”
He pulled to the side of the road and parked by the deserted saw-mill.
Harry Bernard began…
…Giuseppi Harry Bernardini was born in the Cairns Base Hospital to Maria Bernardini nee Barbaro, the Cairns born wife of Salvatore. Sep, as his father called him, was named after his grandfather and Sal’s only true friend Harry Rigby. He was a large baby, five kilograms at birth and he gave his tiny mother such a hard time she never fully recovered.
Maria, after five years of patchy ill-health, succumbed one day to Ross River fever, an extremely debilitating mosquito-borne disease. Maria contracted it, ironically, on one of the many holiday trips undertaken for her convalescence.
Heartbroken is not a strong enough word, Sal was devastated and dysfunctional. When the parish priest came to the house to offer the obligatory condolences Sal said “Fucka you!” And when the good Father trotted out the hoary old chestnut, “You will be stronger for this, Salvatore, the Lord works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform,” Sal said “And fucka you god, asa well!” He shuffled off into the house to begin another brief romance with the bottle. It sent him further into depression.
He carried on caring for young Sep and during the day his drunken incompetence was a distraction which helped him through. But in the loneliness of night and the small hours of the morning there were no distractions. The memories of his beautiful Maria with the soft brown eyes; the laugh which filled him with love; her warm, ever open arms, it all came hauntingly back until he believed she was there beside him. His exploring
hand would inch across the empty bed and his sobs would cause little Sep to turn in his sleep and murmur.
Sal’s mind endured with the help of the bottle but his body suffered, and when Harry Rigby looked in on him one day, he was shocked by what he saw. “Jesus, fucking Christ, Sal, what’s ‘appened t’ya old son? I’ll send Mavis around t’look after ya.”
“No Harry! I no want her to see me thisa way.”
“What about young Sep ‘ere, ‘e looks like you, fucked.”
Sal looked at his son with shame. Sep had inherited the soft features of his mother but now they were caked with grime. The cleanest spots were on Sep’s top lip under twin rivers of mucous which streamed from his nose. At that moment Sal turned the corner of his grief.
“We be alright fromma now Harry. True.”
Sep couldn’t remember his mother. The face that looked at him from old photographs of the Box Brownie period was just that, a face. But he did remember a comfortable warmth, and a softness which ended abruptly about the time he started his lessons.
The school years for Sep were a lot of fun, and after his first scuffling encounter with Harry Rigby’s son, Billy, the pair became inseparable. Sep was a bright boy and there was so much in the classroom to interest him. But there was much more to interest him in the many creeks that crisscrossed his dad’s farm. It was these interests that placed him, academically, somewhere in the middle of the class and regularly at the top of the truant inspector’s monthly list.
The first day at school was a traumatic experience, for Sep. He went home in tears. Billy was confused and he was sent home with a note. As introductions were being made at roll-call by the teacher, she asked each pupil to stand. They were to acknowledge their name as it was called. When Guiseppi Bernardini sat down the girl next to him called him a wog and Billy made her nose bleed.
None of the three knew the spiteful meaning of the expression but Sep knew that it was something bad. He had seen the dark anger that clouded his father’s eyes when the word was tossed at him by pimply youths and by not so pimply no-accounts. Of the other two the girl was only repeating, probably without malice, something that she’d heard at home. She also went home with a note.
The Cooktown Grave Page 4