by Paul Collis
Paul Collis is a Barkindji man, born in Bourke in far western NSW on the Darling River. Paul worked in Newcastle for much of his young adult life in the areas of teaching and in Aboriginal community development positions. He has taught Aboriginal Studies to Indigenous inmates at the Worimi and Mount Penang juvenile detention centres and in Cessnock and Maitland prisons. Paul has a Bachelor of Arts degree and a doctorate in Communications. He lives in Canberra and works as a Creative Writing academic at the University of Canberra. Dancing Home is his first novel and won the national 2016 David Unaipon Award for a previously unpublished Indigenous writer.
For my brother Glenn, champion
… and, for all the Invisible people who live in the shadows.
Dear reader,
I invite you to be a player, to be ‘active’ in the novel Dancing Home. Take sides. Be involved in the ideas I’ve written into this book. Think about poverty, power, privilege, suicide, and Aboriginal deaths in custody.
Paul Collis
July 2017
PART I
Chapter 1
Travel Plans
‘Slept with both of ’em!’ Carlos boasted. ‘And the Antz Pantz chick, you know her? On that ad? Useda go out with her too. Taught her to play pool.’
Blackie was sick of listening to the big-noting bullshit that Carlos had been spilling – for the best part of two hours – since they left the windy coast. The wild city of Sydney was beginning to seem distant. He felt like telling Carlos to shut the fuck up or he’d throw him out of the car and leave him for dead. But instead he looked away, out through the window, and counted everything he could till he ran out of patience with counting. Sweat ran down his back, into his crack. Ants in his pants. He wriggled side to side to dry the sweat onto his jeans. He pushed hard into the seat to dry the sweat on his back. He didn’t really feel hot but the speed had him sweating like a pig.
‘Carlos, do pigs sweat?’
Carlos wasn’t listening. Blackie dropped the subject and went about looking at the passing scenery. Everything looked the same sameness. Suburb after suburb, with its sameness of concrete and steel. The cars and shit things, turning everything into a milkshake of flash colours. And then all the towns, the yellow and green roofs. It all looked the same sameness to Blackie.
The houses blended in with their unnatural surroundings. Factories and shops and car yards and office blocks stood on cemented ground. Evergreen trees stood in place of the original gums dressing the street in an attempt to shade the smoky and filthy buildings. The trees and buildings snaked the street in crooked lines, hiding the crooked deals done to build them in the first place. It all just drifted away, as they sped past on the freeways which aren’t free at all. All those roads got them tolls that the weary driver has to pay. But in the stolen car, Blackie, Rips and Carlos didn’t give a fuck. They drove on past the electronic signal cameras. On they drove, on towards Wiradjuri country.
Blackie, AKA the black man, had a short temper at the best of times. These were not his best times – just out of gaol and broke, he decided he had to get away from city and touch the red dirt of his home country. And he had a bit of business to settle with a bastard that had kept him awake through many long nights in the Big House. Verballed by a crooked cop and gaoled for six years, Blackie had been living just to get even with the dog. Wasting little time to celebrate his release from the clink, he set out to exact payback on the verballer, Sergeant McWilliams. ‘Track ’im down. Kill ’im. Track ’im down. Kill ’im …’ Blackie whispered to himself in his cell. And when the time came, Blackie organised a stolen car and a dumb-arse fool by the name of Carlos (who wasn’t in on the plan to kill a copper, but to do the driving) and, with his old cellmate gaolbird Rips, he hit the road.
If Carlos did the driving, Blackie figured there’d be less chance of them being stopped by Highway Patrol, for Carlos, although of Spanish extraction, looked like a whitefulla – straight nose, fair skin, wearing brand-name clothes, and all the hallmarks Blackie reckoned of white people. Blackie and Rips were dark … Dark-skinned dark characters. There’s no mistaking them two that they were not Kooris. And a Koori driving a Commodore in these country towns looks like a sure pinch by cops who assume that the Holden Commodore is the car of choice for Koori car thieves. Blackie smiled to himself now that his plans were in action.
‘Carlos. How come you know that Kylie and Dannii? Ya fucken liar!’
Carlos just winked at Blackie and smiled and said, ‘I know ’em Black. I know ’em.’
They slowly cruised up the main street of Katoomba.
Katoomba is a busy place in the morning. Busy people full of business opened themselves up to another day of trade. Katoomba, the Blue Mountains boomtown in New South Wales. The place where yuppies bought land and built houses to escape the heat of dirty old Sydney. But the privilege that was once the exclusive of those rich people who made it their home, eventually had come to accommodate riff-raff junkies and poor people when the drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres opened in the ’70s and ’80s. Those same rich people spied each other with Neighbourhood Watch vigilance, keeping to themselves mostly in a very un-neighbourly fashion.
The greengrocer, all done up like he was going to Oktoberfest – a leather apron and cap and brown shorts, carried a big orange bag filled with carrots to a wooden wheelbarrow at the front of his shop. He dumped them in, and then carried on carrying other stuff around.
A café was ready for the breakfast crowd with the doors wide open and the curtains tied back, letting in sunlight, making everything look shiny. People hungry for a pick-me-up, hanging out for their morning fix, lined up to buy. The café window had a poster with smiley people in oversized clothes and strange-looking animals on it, inviting the world to ‘Step Up And See!’
Blackie acknowledged the poster with a nod.
‘Circus’s in town!’
Carlos looked quickly to see the sign, but missed it, and almost ran up the arse of the car in front.
‘Where?’
‘Look out! Fuck ya!’ Blackie yelled.
Carlos was good enough to make the adjustment and missed an accident, but he missed seeing the coloured poster too, and felt left out of the action. He got his mind back on the job of driving.
But on the surface of things everything looked bright in Katoomba to Blackie. But it wasn’t his town, so he didn’t care less how people treated each other there. He just wanted to get through the place as quick as possible.
Bright colours on shop walls, bright buildings, shiny glass windows reflecting brightness back onto the street. Sunshine everywhere. Sunshine bounced off leaves turning them to silhouettes, hiding their green identity from view.
Outside a chemist shop, a couple of desperate-looking characters looking poor, weak and craving stood waiting for the shop to open. They were waiting to get their morning fix too – methadone their go. The long few hours after midnight had them twitchy, anxious. Battle scars on their arms, hidden under long-sleeved shirts, cut deep into them, the result of uncounted journeys with ‘Irene’, holding stories of strange new places of light and dark, the slobbering, where the greatest high is found. But now, the battle-scarred slobs held their pain in their scratchy arms, crossed and tucked away from the world of bright-eyed people walking past without saying hello. They were leant against the windows, puffing madly on cigarettes, hating the light, wishing for the doors to hurry and fly open, so they could get their ’done. To be done with their aching, get off the street and slide back to whatever they had dragged themselves away from. Blackie saw them there, leaning. He gave them a nod, the car moved past. One broken-down guy looked up from looking down, and gave Blackie a half-smile.
Next door to the chemist, a big-arse church stood, demanding attention. It had a sign telling all who passed, ‘Jesus Saves’.
‘Ya reckon that white Jesus saves crims and car thieves? You reckon coppers and crims make up in heaven, Carlos?’
‘Fucked if I know, Black. Me mum’s into all that shit – church on Sundays, crosses on the walls at home. S’pose He does … They reckon He does. What do you think?’
For a while Blackie said nothing, then he answered, ‘Only difference tween me and that Jesus, Carlos, is that, I’m a fuck-up!’
‘Whatcha …?’ Carlos asked.
He stopped the question mid-stream when he realised Blackie was looking elsewhere. The Spaniard followed Blackie’s eyes, saw what had caught his attention. Coppers were on the road doing their morning patrol. Blackie was getting paranoid from lack of sleep and too many amphetamines. But the sight of any police car freaked him out. Better to stay out of their way, he figured … And of course, there was the little matter of the stolen car they were in to consider.
Police crept around slowly in their car, checking for odd things and ‘strange fruits’: for people ragged, drugged up, ripped off, acting reckless. They were on the lookout for people who moved too fast. And for people who moved too slow. And they kept an eye out for people who weren’t moving at all. Their experienced scanner-eyes roamed over the street for out-of-place people up to no good. Those whose luck had run out.
‘Look out for those creeps,’ Blackie said without looking at the cops as they passed.
Carlos twisted his head to see, and then nodded.
‘Don’t look, fuck ya! Blend in.’
The cops, dressed in sharp blue shirts, wearing even sharper haircuts, drove past in the opposite direction, slowly, owned the street. They checked Blackie’s car out as they did. Carlos gave them a nervous smile of hello. Blackie pretended to sneeze into his cupped hands to hide his face. He pressed his face against the dash, hiding himself away. The cops gave more than a concerting glance, assessing in a summary moment if Blackie and Carlos were worthy of an early morning questioning. But more concerned about getting to Macca’s for a free coffee, the cops moved on by. The cops drove on unconcerned, though they missed their target group by inches, though they might as well have missed Blackie by a mile. They missed, that’s all that mattered to the black man.
Carlos watched as best he could in his rear-vision mirror until the cops had disappeared in the traffic.
‘Gone?’
‘Yeah … think so. Can’t see ’em,’ Carlos kind of whispered, stretching his neck to see and wiping sweat from his face.
‘Fucken clowns! Good. Now watch yourself ’ere, man. There’s pigs everywhere in dis place. There’s fucken re-abs up here – junkies everywhere. Jest dribe, slow man, like we’re on our way ta work, or somethin.’
‘What’ll I do if they come after us, Black?’ Carlos spluttered, suddenly frightened like a child.
‘Take it easy, bud. Don’t fucken freak out, man! Fuck ya! Be cool. We’ll be right.’
Carlos nodded, but gripped the wheel a little harder, pushing his arse deeper into the seat just in case a chase was in the offing. But the cops didn’t turn back. They were soon out of sight. Both groups drove on away from each other, paying attention to other things.
Young women who dressed like old men, stressed out, in pin-stripes, looking sharp, walking fast, didn’t look to see the nervous men in the stolen car slide right on by them. The walkers rushed to and from the railway station. Carlos slowed right down to perve a bit harder. He began humming the Eurythmics, ‘Love Is a Stranger’, and thought himself smart when he tricked Blackie with a loaded question, ‘What is love?’
‘Caring for someone, ain’t it?’ Blackie answered.
‘Naa. It’s a stranger in an open car …’ Carlos said without time to blink.
Blackie looked at him with a cockeye look and asked, ‘What the fuck ya talkin bout, man?’
‘’Rythmics, ya know … “Love’s a stranger? … pick you up, drive ya” …?’ Carlos sang.
Blackie laughed. ‘I’ll pick you up and chuck ya outa the fucken car in a minute if ya keep askin me stupid questions.’
There was no malice in Blackie’s voice and both men had a laugh together.
Blackie watched the shiny people and thought of ants rushing hither and thither, coming and going from the nest. Blackie’s eyes, sharper than the cops’, saw the ordinary things in the ordinary people. Shiny people doing their ordinary things. Going to work. He saw the handbags and newspapers swinging under their arms. He noticed high heels or flats. Hidden among the ordinary, extraordinary things are playing out little games of hide and seek too. Someone once had told him about the story of the Green Ant Dreaming but though he tried, he couldn’t remember any of the stories, or who told it to him. ‘Fucken mind’s goin to me,’ he told himself.
‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘Sheep!’ he said, looking at the walkers.
But Carlos ignored him, he had busied himself looking at women and dodging traffic. He brought the car to a full stop at the red light.
‘Look there, man!’ Blackie pointed.
A boy dressed in school uniform – red tie, grey socks, grey trousers, white shirt, blazer embossed with the school crest, neat short back and sides, looked to be about sixteen and the world at his feet – dropped eggs in a carton on the road in front of them. And, try as he did, the boy could not put the eggs back together again. He looked up, panicked to see the traffic lights start to flash, and ran the rest of the way across leaving the squashed mess on the road.
Blackie swung the sun visor shade down to stop the sun from getting in his eyes. It had a mirror attached to it, so he checked himself out, comparing himself to the neatly dressed kid who had just flashed across the road. There was bad history written all over his own face, and the future all over the boy’s. Blackie’s thick hair, that was once neatly trimmed and black as coal, was now scraggy. It had turned grey some time back.
He clenched his jaw and raised his lips to bare aching teeth that were worn from age and years of grinding. He checked his face, looking at memories written into wrinkles. Wrinkles and lines, highlighted by dirt, told tales of deeds of a life lived. He examined closely his eyebrows and top lip – more scars there. His knuckles, battered, wore scars too. They’d turn a grey-blue when the weather was cold. Arthritis was setting in early, too bloody early for his liking. He told himself it didn’t matter. Somehow it did. He tried to con himself he was too old to look pretty. He was no schoolboy with schoolboy hope, but just an old blackfulla without anything much going for him.
‘Still a blackfulla,’ he assured himself, and then said louder, ‘I’m still black, hey Carlos?’
Carlos blinked and gulped and said, ‘Yeah man! You’re Blackie!’ Carlos gave him a quick sideways glance to see what he was on about but Carlos couldn’t figure Blackie out. Carlos shrugged his shoulders and went back to looking at traffic and women.
Carlos didn’t know much about Blackie’s life, other than that he thought that Blackie was a smart-arse blackfulla who’d done a lot of time and had a bad temper and that he could fight. Carlos made himself useful around Blackie and the other blackfullas by way of running errands, scoring drugs for them which he always taxed, and in return, the blackfullas offered him a convenient friendship – using him whenever they could. But if any of the blacks had cottoned on to the fact that Carlos was ripping them off, even for a twenty-a-pot, they’d have knocked the cringing little bastard out cold and left him bleeding in the gutter.
‘You don’t even fucken know my name, man. Youse don’t even know me name, bud,’ Blackie said softer.
Carlos had dropped the subject. He had no idea what the fuck Blackie was on
about, and he didn’t give a shit about it, either.
Drugged up for the trip, Blackie began feeling that he’d like another taste. He told Carlos to drive steady, as he was gonna have a line, but then decided to wait till they were down the road a bit. Drugs had him feeling short-tempered. He began thinking about the school kid with the eggs again, and then thought about his own schooling. With an excellent memory, Blackie had gained first place in all of his primary school years. In the days when Religious Education was still being taught in public schools, Blackie came to the attention of the priests who came weekly to his school to teach the students about God. Often on the ‘lookout’ for a ‘worthy cause’, the priests contacted their bishop in Bathurst, and a bursary scholarship was offered to Blackie to attend the private school, All Hallows College in Bathurst, at the completion of his primary years. Things went well for Blackie for a while at the private school. He excelled at sport, learnt the school song, and took a keen interest in lapidary and photography and writing. But the privilege that came with the private school was a very lonely experience for him too. He was the only Koori at the school, and apart from the native Nui Guinea students, also on church scholarships, Blackie was the odd man out. The Nui Guinea boys excelled in sport and academia. But they were far from home and so banded together for company. Their friendly nature was infectious and all were highly valued across the entire school. White boys tried to get to ‘take them home’, to show their parents and locals these exotic black people from the north. Blackie noticed that he was never invited. He thought at first that perhaps he wasn’t black enough to be thought of as something exclusive. But he learnt in time that the Nui Guinea boys were being paraded around as some kind of circus act. ‘No one wants Blackie,’ he told himself. ‘They don’t want a black bastard like me. Well, fuck ’em.’
Whether the Nui Guinea boys knew that they were ‘on show’ or not, Blackie didn’t know. The racism was there. Blackie came to find racism on the sporting fields – ‘… take that, Boong!’, and another knee in the back almost broke Blackie in two. ‘You cunt!’ Blackie muttered, in the final against another college. Yes, Blackie was called a black bastard, a nigger, a coon, a monkey, on the field, and by some people on the sidelines. And the racism was there in the classroom too. When honour days were awarded for academic achievement and behaviour each month, Blackie never got one. At seventeen years of age, Blackie stopped trying to win the prizes of the honour days, and instead, concentrated on sports. His athletic abilities were outstanding, beating the then current and former state and national champions over the 100 metres, 200 metres, in the triple jump, and the long jump and in the cross-country. ‘Youse will never beat me on the field,’ he declared to himself, and for his six years at boarding school, he was never beaten at his school in any race from the sprints to the long distance races. When he finally completed sixth form, he’d had enough of the competition, isolation and education, and returned to his nan’s place in Dubbo and drifted towards laziness and delinquencies. A first-rate education virtually down the drain.