Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  So they sat, while the Moon streamed in on them till the place was ablaze with enchantment, and the records played half a dozen facile combinations of notes in a hundred tinkling or strumming varieties: Frankie and Johnny were lovers, oh, lordy how they did love . . . An old spinning wheel in the parlour, spinning tales of the long long ago . . . A gal in Cherokee and she’s waitin’ there for me . . . I’m headin’ for the last round-up, yoddle-doh, yoddle-dee, yoddle-doh yoddle-dee, hoddle-doh-dee-dee-dee . . .

  As the Moon went down behind the river trees, Nugget, stowing away the last record, said, ‘Been a wondferul night. If only we’d ’ad a drop o’ grog. We’ll have some cocoa, eh . . . and some yo’ new brownie, what say, Nelly?’

  As Nugget rose to go through with Nell to the kitchen, where the acetylene still burnt, Prindy asked him, ‘Wirelitch?’

  ‘You wan’ some more wireless, eh? Sure thing!’ Nugget switched it on.

  Snap of switch, hum of warming apparatus — then a flood of silver sound, of flutes: Sibelius’s Entrance of the Little Fauns. Prindy caught his breath, straining towards the little window of light from which the wonder seemed to come.

  Nugget said, ‘He sure likes that high-brow stuff . . . where’d he learn it?’ He asked the question of Nell, who, looking at her enraptured son, shook her head apparently at utter loss. Prindy was lost to them, anyway, lost to Knobby’s and Queeny’s laughing talk while the others were away, lost to everything but the undulating stream of silver that he seemed to see. When it was all over and a voice announced that that was the end of the session, Prindy looked up to find Nugget watching him. Nugget handed him the pannikin of cocoa and slice of buttered brownie that had been awaiting him for some time. He asked, ‘Where’d you learn that kind of music, sonny?’

  Prindy looked at him uncomprehending.

  Nugget said, ‘You must’ve heard it somewhere. Where you been hear him, eh?’

  Prindy hesitated, then answered, ‘Butcher bird.’

  Knobby guffawed: ‘Ask a silly question!’

  Nugget said, ‘Well’s about bedtime. You wan’ ’o go out the dunny, or have a pee?’

  Prindy said he’d have a pee. Nugget took him out to a tree, held him while he did it. The dogs came out of their dust holes to join in, and Knobby, who guffawed over it, ‘We’ll ’ave to be puttin’ up signs painted Ladies and Gents . . . aweeeah!’

  When Nugget was putting Prindy in his made-up bed, the boy said, ‘I like tchileep dere . . . long wirelitch.’

  Nugget chuckled, ‘So you can hear them butcher birds in the mornin’, eh?’

  ‘Yas.’

  Knobby guffawed again. Nugget said, ‘Come on, we’ll shift his bed down there.’

  Prindy was off to sleep soon enough. Not the others, however. It was midnight before the tossing, without talking, of the brothers ceased, and the whispering of the women. The wind had dropped. There was no sound in the world except the very distant calling of curlews. Then suddenly an odd whistling right there in the house, shrill and torn and hesitant, like the practice-singing of a young bird in the wind.

  Nugget, the first to wake, lay listening, rose, and came to the radio, as if thinking the sound came from there, then discovered it was Prindy. As he bent over the boy another dark figure came up — Nell, wrapped in a blanket. Nugget caught his breath as he turned and saw her curly head against the stars. He whispered, ‘He’s dreamin’.’

  She answered on indrawn breath, ‘Like o’ dat plenty time . . . I don’ know wha’s matter him.’

  Prindy whistled again, the first notes of his Butcher Bird Song. Nugget gave a little laugh, leaned near to her to whisper, ‘He thinks there’s a butcher bird in the radio.’

  ‘I tek him inside, eh?’

  ‘No . . . he’s all right here. I like him here. I like him a lot.’

  As if he heard it, Prindy sighed, turned over. Nell breathed, ‘He’s all right now . . . he tchleep properly.’

  As she moved away, Nugget went with her, whispered, ‘I’d like you to stay for good . . . will you?’

  Without answering, she slipped into the passage.

  He turned to find another dark figure. His brother’s snicker came from it, and the thin nasal voice: ‘Night-’orsin’, eh?’

  ‘Aaarh!’ grunted Nugget, and turned his brother back along the verandah, adding, ‘Kid woke us up, tha’s all.’

  ‘You was seein’ ’er back to bed like, eh?’

  ‘Aaarh . . . will yo’ shut up.’ Nugget stopped for a moment in passing Prindy to look down at him. Going on with his brother to their beds behind sacking screening at that other end of the verandah, he said softly, ‘I like that nipper. He’s got sumpin, sumpin special, I reckon, sumpin I’d like to bring out o’ him.’

  Knobby snickered again, and said as he settled down into bed, ‘His mother’s got sumpin special too . . . what I’d like to get into . . . eeeeeeah!’

  Nugget was silent. Sounds of subdued mirth came from Knobby several times as they lay settling down. Then suddenly Nugget said, in a throaty voice, ‘You don’ mean nothin’ what you said ’bout Nelly jes now, do you Knob?’

  Again the snicker, ‘Wha’ you reckon, mate?’

  Nugget heaved himself up in his bed: ‘Now, listen, Knobby . . . you gi’ me your word you wouldn’t go playin’ roun’ with any woman while you’s like you are . . .’

  ‘Who’s playin’ roun’?’

  ‘Well, don’ talk like that ’bout a nice girl.’

  ‘You wan’ ’er yo’self, you mean?’

  ‘I don’ wan’ nothin’ . . . only you don’ go poxin’ up anyone roun’ here.’

  ‘That’s right . . . rub it in!’

  ‘I’m not rubbin’ it in. You’s here so’s you can get cured, ’cause you don’ wan’t to go to Town with it. I’ll fix you. But you leave the women alone see.’

  ‘Aw . . . shit!’

  ‘I know you.’

  ‘Aw, balls! Let a man go to sleep, will yo’?’

  By the sound of them, it was a long while again before they slept.

  Next day was Sunday. No work, as Nugget had said. Breakfast was no less festive than supper had been the evening before, with a great pile of steak and onions as its fragrant offering, along with that bread — ‘Oh, that bread!’ as Nugget kept saying, while stuffing himself with it. There was no hint of the tension between the brothers betrayed last night. After hanging about over the breakfast table for an hour or more, leering and winking, while his brother gabbled, Knobby went off to get a horse and go looking for stock. Nugget took Prindy over to the tool-shed, to make the crutches he had promised him, as well as a better one for Queeny.

  Nugget talked all the while, showed all the tools and explained their uses, told Prindy how he would begin to teach him as soon as he got on his feet. Prindy sat gravely, apparently understanding what was said to him, but perhaps not even listening to the spate of words, interested more in this odd whiteman, surely like none he’d yet encountered. The business in the tool-shed went on beyond the crutch making, was actually being concerned with the apparatus for cleaning the washed tin ore of mica, an invention of Nugget’s of which he was very proud, when Queeny’s contralto rang out across the yard, ‘Smoke-ooooo!’ They had a race to the house on the new crutches, with King George, at work on the woodheap, cheering them on. Prindy won by a crutch.

  There was a pile of buttered brownie of yesterday’s baking and small buttery cookies hot from the oven. ‘Ummmm!’ was Nugget’s delighted comment.

  Nugget and Prindy went for a run in the truck to the place where the gravel was mined, to sample the stuff for taking more later. Nugget explained the process of what he called Bullin’ the Ground, which meant to loosen it with explosive. ‘Big bang,’ he said. ‘You got ’o see that. Next week, after I been to Town. Like to come to Town with me, Friday?’

  Then back to midday dinner, to find Knobby returned and joking with the women. Dinner consisted of cold beef with sliced onions and mashed sweet potatoes and cu
rrant slice with custard. ‘Boy, oh, boy!’ said Nugget to his brother. ‘And you’s always talkin’ ’bout the good tucker you got workin’ on the road . . . Wan’ ’o go back the road now?’

  Knobby snickered, ‘Might pinch yo’ cook and start a ranch-house on the road.’

  Queeny asked, ‘Wha’ nam’ rench’ouse?’

  The term had but lately been introduced by itinerant construction workers now thronging the land. Knobby answered, ‘Cook-house for big mob men. They pay good.’ He added with a leer, ‘Couple o’ good sorts like yous’d make more’n a quid or two on the side, too.’

  Nugget frowned at that, and growled, ‘Cut that out, Knob!

  ‘Arrrh!’ was Knobby’s comment; but he grinned and winked at the women, who, by their expressions, may not have gathered what was meant, even though one was a procurer and the other had a conviction for soliciting, such being the ignorance of their kind of the civilised language of the land.

  After dinner the men had what they called a Lay-off for about an hour. Then they both went out to bring in some cattle Knobby had found. They had a paddock somewhere up the creek. They came home to bath and dress up again, and to supper of steak-and-kidney pie and steamed pudding. Nugget said, ‘We’ll have to get a couple o’ buffaloes a week to keep up with this.’

  ‘What about some poultry?’ suggested Knobby.

  ‘Crise, no . . . leave the chooks alone . . . Nelly’ll be wantin’ all the eggs she can get, eh, Nell?’

  ‘I mean wild stuff,’ said Knobby. ‘Ducks and geese.’

  ‘Good idea. We’ll go out to the Duck Holes one day, eh?’ Nugget turned to Prindy: ‘Any good with a gun, young feller?’

  Prindy answered, ‘I goot wit’ spear.’

  Nugget laughed: ‘Good on yo’! You can do all the huntin’. Save us ammo.’

  So it looked as if the newcomers were already accepted as permanent members of the household. Another indication was Nugget’s asking the women to make a list of the things they wanted when he would be going to Town.

  Another musical evening on the moonlit front verandah, but with the difference that when the News Commentary was done with and the Concert Hour was announced, Nugget asked Prindy if he would like to listen to the radio rather than the gramophone, and getting an eager yas, had Knobby help him carry the radio round to the southern side verandah, where Prindy sat amongst saddlery to listen without intrusion. The radio music was classical waltzes: Tchaikovsky’s Waltz Serenade and Dance of the Hours, Brahms’s Waltz in A Major, Sibelius’s Waltz Krieg. When it was over and talk resumed, Prindy switched off, as Nugget had instructed him, and lay back on his couch of pack-bags, evidently going through it all over again by his humming.

  Thus Nugget found him when he came round to take a look. When Prindy said he wanted to stay there, rather than to go round to The Man on the Flying Trapeze and the like, Nugget said he’d try to get him another classical program. As he tuned, La Golondrina came in, played on flute, the long notes like the swooping flight of swallows in sunlight. Prindy leaned to listen so eagerly that Nugget, watching him, commented, ‘Looks like I won’t be makin’ a shit-ringer out o’ you after all. Maybe, ’stead you’ll grow up to ’ave a dance band.’ Prindy was listening only to the music, Nugget went back to the others, to tell them about it, to add, ‘Must buy ’im a mouth-organ when I go to Town.’

  Nugget next found him asleep, and carrying him round to his bed on the male side, asked him had he had enough music for the night, to which Prindy nodded, but perhaps in his sleep, because when the household settled down, he began to sing in his sleep, just a sweet, strained, soprano note or two, of La Golondrina. Nugget got out of bed and came and talked softly to him about getting the mouth-organ. Prindy sighed, turned over.

  In the morning Prindy went down with the men to work on the tin, and helped with the concentrating. Nugget said that in a day or two they’d be finished sluicing this lot, and would dry-blow the ore in the shed and bag it, that he wanted as much as he could to take to Town to meet payments. But the very fact of expressing the want seemed to turn off the run of tin from the sluice-box. There was so little for three to do concentrating, that after smoke-o Knobby said, ‘Bugger this. Jes waste o’ time. I’m goin’ ’o do a bit o’ shootin’. Fancy roast duck. Can’t wait’ll Sunday.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Nugget. ‘But you better ask Nell if she wants it. She may be cookin’ sumpin else.’

  ‘They’ll keep’ll tomorro’ this weather. See yous.’ Knobby set off up the bank.

  Up at the house, Knobby changed into moleskin pants and put on a shirt and sandshoes, then got a shotgun down from the front verandah wall and a belt of cartridges, and went through to the kitchen, where the women were preparing dinner. He said, ‘Goin’ ’o get yous some ducks.’ At the edge of the verandah he turned back, to say, ‘Wha’ ’bout comin’ ’long with me, Nelly?’

  Kneading dough, she dropped her eyes. ‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘Don’ ’ave to walk. Go in my ute.’

  She muttered, ‘Cookin’ dinner.’

  ‘Leave it to Queeny. Do you good ’ave a break.’

  Nell said, ‘Boss say we go Sunday.’

  ‘Boss, is it? I’m boss, too, y’know. Come on.’

  She went on kneading. He sighed: ‘Okay . . . on’y thought you’d like a ride. See yous.’

  When he was out of hearing, Queeny giggled, ‘He don’ mean ride in motor car.’

  ‘Eh, look out!’

  The battered old utility truck came backing out of the tool-shed to round the yard, and then head off northward with noise and violence of movement suggesting an angry driver. Nell, looking after the vanishing dust, was plainly troubled. Eyeing her, Queeny said, ‘You got ’o show dat man you like him brother more better.’

  ‘Eh, look out!’

  ‘Da’s right. No goot two whiteman want one woman. He jealous bugger, whiteman. I know. Plen’y fight for me when I young feller. Spone you don’ wan’ dem two-feller fightin’, you got o’ mek him tweet’eart long o’ dat-one Nugget quick.’

  Nell showed her agitation in her kneading for a treacle rolly-polly.

  Knobby was not back for dinner. The effect of his absence was marked. Although it was always Nugget who initiated the playful nonsense that so far had been part of the meal, without his brother, who had mostly guffawed and winked, he was serious now. He kept talking of Prindy’s future, saying he must have some sort of schooling, couldn’t just play about in the bush like a black kid. ‘He’s white,’ he kept saying. ‘He’s as white as me, nearly . . . and he’s got a lot more brains. What we goin’ ’o do with him, eh? No good takin’ him down the Beatrice. That Delacy mob . . . they won’ do nothin’ for him.’ It was evident that he was trying to get Nell to say something, if it were only to tell the truth about why she and the boy were here, a subject so far not gone into. Nell would say nothing, despite some urging on the part of Queeny to listen to the Boss, because he was talkin’ goot way.

  It was a restless lay-off they all had after dinner. In fact Nell went on with her bread-setting, and Prindy sat out on the woodheap, with King George and the dogs, sharpening up an old tommy-axe Nugget had given him, using the axe-stone. Then Nugget and Prindy went back to the sluicing.

  Late in the afternoon Nell, with kitchen chores done in readiness for supper, went to shower and dress up. She was still in the bathroom, but bathed and dressed, in the act of finishing off the prettying up with briliantine from a pot on the shelf, when she heard Knobby arrive back. He was already driving up to the shed before she heard him, the sound of his approach having been drowned so far by the tumbling of water into the tank as always at this time of day, being pumped up from the creek. She peeped. As Knobby drove into the shed, she grabbed up towel and discarded working dress and slipped out through the curtain that served as door. She was halfway across the yard, passing the woodheap, when he called to her, ‘Hey . . . Nelly!’

  She half-turned, gave him a little wave, kept on.

  ‘Wait
on . . . come ’n’ gi’ me ’and with the poultry.’

  She kept going. Queeny looked at her sharply as she came hurrying into the kitchen, to go through the house. As she was coming back into the kitchen, Knobby entered, carrying a bundle of slaughtered whistler ducks. He asked, ‘Wha’d yo’ run away for . . . frighten’ I’s goin’ ’o ask you to pluck ’em?’

  When she didn’t answer, but went on to attend to things on the stove, he addressed himself to Queeny: ‘I do me own pluckin’. Champion duck-plucker, me.’ When she giggled, he added, ‘Anything in the way o’ pluckin’ . . . that’s me.’ When she squealed with what was probably false mirth, he guffawed, and went and hung the ducks on a hook down the other end of the verandah. Then he went to the front to get shorts and singlet and towel. Coming out again, heading for the shower, he said to Queeny, ‘Any time you wan’ a pluck, I’m yo’ man.’ Again she squealed. Laughing he went out. Before he came back, Nugget and Prindy were there. Nugget complained about his not having plucked the ducks, saying it wasn’t fair to leave it to the girls. Without any more play on the word Pluck, Knobby said he would do the ducks tomorrow morning.

  It was curious how the manner of the brothers changed in and out of each other’s presence. Over supper Nugget was as vociferously jocular as ever, and Knobby the same silent, leery observer.

  The night was spent like the night before, only with the difference that Nugget tried listening a little with Prindy to a classical music session again from Batavia. He soon gave up, saying, ‘No, I’m ’fraid I don’ know what’s it got, sonny. Leave yo’ to it.’ He went round the corner to Frankie and Johnny. Prindy was quiet that night, perhaps because it had been string music and it needed the flutes to reach his dreaming.

  At breakfast next morning Nugget reminded his brother of the duck-plucking. He need not have bothered, even though Knobby pulled a face as if the idea irked him, because, as was soon revealed, he had it all worked out. He told his brother that he would get onto it at once, and come down to work afterwards. The others went off leaving him out on the woodheap with the ducks, chopping off their heads. As the truck halted in its usual place at the top of the bank, he watched. When the crew vanished into the cutting he rose swiftly, came to the kitchen, up to Nell, who was washing up, with Queeny drying the dishes for her. He spoke to Nell, breathlessly: ‘I’ll be wantin’ ’ot water, love . . . for the duck-pluckin’ . . . eeeee! Get’s some, eh?’