Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  They were having breakfast, of canned beef, canned beans and biscuits, when Prindy said he could hear the train coming. The track crossed there on a short but long-legged trestle bridge. They went to watch it. There she was, the mail train on her way home. The driver this trip was old Jack Tinball, who cock-a-doodled when he saw them, so that everybody else popped out their heads to see, and waved and cheered.

  Then they went on their way, merely slowing down as they ran through the Alice River siding, simply waving to the dusty mob making more dust further South. The road skirted Granite Springs well to westward but soon came back to the railway; and there they were, just before noon, running past Beatrice River Racecourse, and seeing the old familiar scene. Down and over the river, up and over the railway, into the empty street, to pull up before Finnucane’s verandah as the man himself came out to greet them; or rather one of them, although there was no doubt about his interest in the other. Where would they be goin’? Eddy had fairly to leap out to stop the bellowed questions. He went into the bar with old Shame-on-us, was out in a moment with a bottle of lolly-water. Then he drank with Shamus, while speaking in subdued tones and watching. Finnucane became quite conspiratorial. When after some twenty minutes they came out together, Finnucane said to Prindy, ‘And so ye havin’ a noice thrip wit’ the noice gintleman, are ye, sonny? T’at’s goot. You stick to him. He’s your friend, ye know . . . your very best friend.’ And he shook the boy’s hand in parting.

  They went on, past Barbu’s, deserted, of course, since Barbu Ram had not yet had the chance to come home. Prindy hung out to stare at the poor little place, as if thinking it was for the last time. Eddy nearly hit the goats through watching him nervously. As they ploughed through the aroma he asked, ‘You like that old Ali Barba too much, eh?’

  Prindy, staring ahead now, replied, ‘Him all right.’

  ‘You like him bein’ your father?’

  ‘He not my father.’

  ‘You know who your father is?’

  Prindy was silent for a moment, evidently much less concerned with the anomaly of his paternity than with Aboriginal ethics, since he asked, ‘When Critchmitch?’

  Eddy looked astonished, this man who knew Aboriginal minds and ethics so well that he was not only second-father to all of the breed in this country but even aspired to become their Number-one Daddy-o. He answered, ‘Aw . . . good while yet . . . pretty near one month. What for you ask me that?’

  ‘No more dis one Moon . . . next one, eh?’

  ‘Yes . . . that’s about it. But why . . .?

  As Eddy should have known, before one could utter the name of a dead person a full year must elapse. Prindy had worked it out: ‘My daddy daid-feller.’

  After a while Eddy asked, ‘You’re goin’ to let me be your Daddy for a while, aren’t you?’

  The grey eyes studied the thin profile for a long moment before the quiet little voice asked, ‘Where we go now?’

  Eddy also took a moment to answer, ‘Aw . . . I take you show him you that Inland country . . . that Centre you know.’

  Eddy glanced, to meet the steady eyes, and perhaps to read in them that indeed the owner of them did know, and that he himself had opened the trap too wide again, a realisation that nearly put them off the red sandy road.

  The Sun was down in the trees and the leaves gilding as they came to Charlotte Springs and ploughed through more goats and roused all the dogs and the human population of a score or so, all the whites of which were in the pub; or at least till the car pulled up before it, when they came lurching out. Stiff-lipped Colleen came out to rescue Eddy from the nosey ones. Evidently she had been apprised of his coming and its import. She told him to drive round the back and she would show them their room.

  Thus did Prindy come to yet another stage in his compulsory rise up from savagery, to being installed in a hotel room; as poor a one as could be found in any civilised country in the world, to be sure, but such a one nevertheless and one where no one of his breed had ever been admitted before. There was a nice white bed, mosquito net, towel, a nice white pot to piddle in. What a long way had he come!

  They went to the shower together, then to the dining-room, with its hissing acetylene lamp and pictures of mad horses in frightful storms on the wall. No one else came into the room except Colleen. The sounds from the bar made it plain that other people were more interested in drinking than eating. After the meal they returned to their room, where Eddy suggested Prindy amuse himself with his music until he came back, that he was just going to look into the bar for a minute or two. Eddy closed the door after him, and very carefully turned the key and pocketed it. He was away a lot more than a minute or two, but not so long that he could not tell Prindy, who had been asleep, that they were a rough mob in the bar, and they would be lucky if they got any sleep. Still, they did sleep, Eddy himself quite soundly.

  Breakfast in the kitchen, again by acetylene; while Colleen, scarcely speaking, cut sandwiches and the place rocked with snores of patrons apparently sleeping everywhere. Then away into the red morning, tearing along to make the most of the cool, with the telegraph poles counting the chains in the miles with a sort of beating. There! There! There! like skinny fingers, as if to give emphasis to what Eddy yapped about for hours, that this was the Inland, a terrible place, waterless, trackless, tuckerless, its only inhabitants naked blackmen who would take your kidney-fat and eat it, if you were silly enough to try running away in it; this to a fellow who had crossed the blighted Frog Country and who now looked out at the water leaping in silver fountains to the thrust of the spinning windmills of the bores and never missed seeing one of the bustards peeping from the scrub or those old-men kangaroos that Eddy might have thought were antbeds. He might have asked whether the naked blacks ate one another’s kidney-fat when there were no silly strangers going walkabout; but he had become his old uncommunicative self since that question of his yesterday: ‘Where we go?’

  Except for one pee, they didn’t stop till they reached York Waters Telegraph Station in mid-morning. The black mob in the camp, mostly naked and the rest in rags, afforded Eddy an opportunity to bring up the wild blacks business again. ‘See what I mean . . . bad lookin’ buggers, ain’t they!’ Then, as he went towards the linesmen lounging on the verandah of their residence, bearing with him the traditional offering of the bottle of OP rum, he warned the boy not to get out of the car, lest the kidney-fat takers make off with him. Prindy obeyed. But as soon as the gentry had disappeared into the house, he gave his Skin Sign to the dusky watchers, got the appropriate responses, including the turning away of some. After a while four middle-aged men came strolling across, two in loin-cloths of grubby flour-sack calico, the others stark naked, all bearing traces of recent painting, one with plaited beard; certainly as savage a bunch as one might wish to meet, at least to look at, from whom anyone particular about keeping their kidneys might easily have been excused for leaping out and running for protection to him who was so eminent a one in the protection business. But the grey eyes surveyed them quite calmly. It was the one with the plaited beard who spoke first, ‘Good-tay, Julama.’ This one was his Uncle, Jalyeri. He answered him accordingly.

  Jalyeri tried him in local lingo; but he shook his head, and himself tried a bit out of his own vocabulary. The others shook their heads. Nothing for it then but Murringlitch. Jalyeri asked, ‘Where you go, my-boy?’

  ‘I don’ know, Kamija.’

  ‘Dat one Mick Cusky, ain’t it?’

  ‘Yu.’

  The others held a lively and lengthy discussion in lingo. Then one, an Elder Brother, asked, ‘Where you come from, Julama?’

  ‘P’liceman been run him up me.’

  Jalyeri asked, ‘Wha’ nam’ . . . you myall bugger, eh?’

  They all giggled. Then one asked, ‘Him yard him you, eh?’

  ‘I don’ know.’

  ‘Me-feller been see him p’liceman tek him halfcaste longa Tchenter . . .’

  They were interrupted by the appea
rance of Mick Cusky himself, yelling, ‘Eh . . . what’s goin’ on there?’

  Prindy’s poor relations dodged out of sight behind a shed. At their action the whole camp vanished. Eddy, strutting somewhat and with hat over an eye, perhaps from having sampled the gift of rum, came to the car, the other men with him. He asked Prindy who the blacks were. Prindy said he didn’t know, while staring at the whitemen who were staring at him no doubt because of what they had heard about him through telephonic gossip. Handshakes between the whitefellows; and then they were on their way again.

  It was close to sundown when they pulled in at Mt Albert Station, the Knowles’s place. The squatter and his wife were out on the verandah to greet the greetable one of them, and with them Nugget, who also greeted the ungreetable, calling, ‘Goodday, sonny . . . how yo’ doin’?’ Father and Mother Knowles weren’t dressed up on this occasion, nor had the guest room been prepared. They told Eddy, when he came up to them on the verandah, that they were sorry, but couldn’t have Niggers in their rooms or at their table, except as servants. You’d never be able to handle the creatures again if one of them were to be accepted as anything like an equal. Things were bad enough as it was, thanks to — er — well, Dr Cobbity. They could camp on the waterhole. They would be sent down some bread and beef. Eddy went red, but said simply that he understood, his only expression of feeling in the matter being to retain the bottle of rum.

  It was Nugget who brought the food down, quite a good meal, which he joined them in eating, but without making any apology for his parents’ attitude. He frankly confessed his acquaintance with Prindy, and treated him like an old friend, and after a swig or two from the rum bottle declared to Eddy that he would have married Nelly, if she hadn’t cleared out as she had; that is, of course, if Eddy himself had given permission: Would he have? Eddy answered promptly, ‘Sure . . . you’re just the right type we want to marry ’em off to.’

  ‘But they reckon she’s dead, eh?’ said Nugget.

  ‘Nothing’s certain. Inquest was adjourned indefinitely.’

  ‘But the young feller’d know. What happened your Mumma, Prindy, boy?’

  Prindy, munching a huge sandwich of bread and roast beef with mustard pickles only stared at him.

  Eddy said, ‘You won’t get anything out of him.’

  ‘Why?’

  Eddy shrugged: ‘Search me. They reckon it’s amnesia . . . but I don’t know. You know what they’re like . . .’

  ‘Manesia? Sounds like sumpin for indigestion!’

  ‘Loss o’ memory . . . due to shock.’

  ‘Aw . . . I see. Yeah . . . I remember he was a bit queer, used to wake up nights singin’ . . . reckoned butcher birds taught him to make up songs . . . eeeeee-aaaaaaaah! Still makin’ up songs, sonny?’

  ‘Y’ ought ’o hear him on the bamboo whistle!’

  After the meal, Prindy entertained them, while they drank the rum, diluted with the chalky water of the hole. Soon they were singing with him, but not so happily as might be, because of Nugget’s terrible voice. Nugget tried to blame it on Prindy, even when Eddy told him be was tone deaf. ‘Course I can sing!’ declared Nugget. ‘Ev’rybody can sing ’t a few in.’ He was no sort of drinker, even worse than Eddy, and was soon unable to sing at all. Then he wanted to talk — to Prindy — about those lovely moonlit nights at what he called Hang On Creek: ‘Jes like t’night, washn’ it, shonny . . . all shiny bright . . . ’n’ pretty Mumma there . . . Aw, Jesus, why’d I let it happen?’

  ‘What happen?’ burbled Eddy.

  ‘Huh-huh . . . ought ’o shot the bastard!’

  ‘What bastard?’

  ‘You know . . . don’ yo’ shonny . . . aw . . . I never had no luck!’ Nugget began to whimper. ‘First he busts that up . . . then he gets bloody coppers there . . . and they find a few clean-skins they reckon’s Vaiseys . . . and I get hunted off me bit o’ property . . . and just ’s a war’s breakin’ out ’o make me rich man . . . aw, ah . . . Wha’ ’appen’ yo’ Mumma, shonny boy . . . tell me . . . tell me . . . ’cause I love ’er . . . aw-aw-aw-aw-aw!’

  Eddy fell asleep; and Nugget went reeling up home through the rocks and the goats in the last light of Igulgul. Somewhere away off a dingo was mourning.

  They were off on their way soon after sunrise next morning, without paying their respects to the Knowleses; which they wouldn’t have been able to, anyway, since it was Sunday, and everybody in the bush lies in of Sundays, if only to make it different from other days. They sped on their way, out of the barren hills, into the barren sandy mulga. It was only mid-morning when they came into sight of the mill of the bore beside which the Prospector’s Alms stood, the settlement itself for a long while unseen, only that blur above the endless vista of stunted trees looking like an outsize one of them. Then when the tiny group of buildings began to consolidate out of mirage it was not that which caught the travellers’ eyes, but what might have been taken elsewhere to be a great gathering of people, striving together for some purpose, raising the dust, and their voices, the latter coming like discordant snatches of song, of hymn-singing.

  Eddy was the first to express his curiosity: ‘They ain’t goats . . . too big, ain’t they?’

  A moment more of staring; then Prindy got it: ‘Donkey!’

  ‘Yeah . . . yeah! For a moment I thought it must be the Salvation Army all gone balmy and come up here into the bloomin’ desert.’

  The donkeys were milling about the water trough. And there not far away from them was a huge waggon, with wheels even twice the height of the beasts surrounding it; and they were not small donkeys, but those very special animals bred by one whose name was uttered simultaneously by the approaching watchers: ‘Billy Brew!’

  Billy Brew was supposed to have five hundred donkeys, and to use as many as one hundred in a team at a time when he had a heavy load. There were all of the alleged five hundred of the creatures, black, white and brindle, and all of them Psalm Singin’, as old Billy himself would say.

  Eddy chuckled, ‘We just got to stop here a while and hear old Billy. He’s prob’ly tellin’ yarns right now to a boozy mob o’ miners from the Pisgah Field. Must be a fair mob in there. Look at the trucks . . . in for the weekend groggin’, of course.

  There certainly was a crowd at the hotel, although not so actively boozy at the moment, not yet having got a go on from the spell they would have had after the conviviality of yesterday, judging by the couple of dozen out on the verandah. They were in all sorts of attitudes, excepting those occupying the few chairs, from sitting with backs to the wall and legs spread out, some with heads drooping in sleep, to lying spread-eagled on the floor; only a couple with bottles and no one with an empty glass, and all who could see squinting like bandicoots caught out in sunlight. The bar was pretty well packed, too, but giving forth only the sounds of glass on glass and talk scarcely above hoarse whispers. They were proceeding to enliven themselves with the aid of that subtle antagonist who had floored them last night and would have most of them down again before the day was out. But they would need some purpose to get them properly on their feet to go through it all again — anything — and there it was, in the form of the new arrivals, or rather in one of them, the one usually not greeted elsewhere, even if hardly ignored. The arrival of the car roused only blinking interest, and the alighting of Eddy scarcely more. What brought the bloodshot eyes wide open and slouched bodies to their unsteady feet and burnt-out throats back into exuberant operation was someone’s hoarse shout: ‘Dat der lil poy vot’s in las’ Sunday Truth . . . look it!’

  They were foreigners, a lot of them, Square’eads, Reffoes, and for the rest a very different class of person from the squatter and his hangers-on. They would have got last Sunday’s Truth even earlier than the Port Palmestonians, because the mail plane called at Boulder Creek. Also probably they would have given a great deal more attention to the paper than the townies, having so much less to entertain them, and those who could not read English, particularly to the pictures in it; a
nd not being Australians and bred to regard Aboriginal persons as not quite human, they might have had very different feelings from what generally would be felt about children chained by the neck and shackled to a lanky bearded laughing policeman. They flung Eddy aside in their uproarious rush to seize Prindy and haul him from the car and carry him struggling onto the verandah, ignoring Eddy’s shouts of protest at their interference with his charge; except one huge fellow with hairless eyes, who shoved a peeling square red face down into his, to ask in a growl like a bear, ‘Vot . . . you copper-man, ja?’ Eddy fell back cringing.

  Prindy looked scared, till amongst those bursting out of the bar he saw the tubby form and grey-bearded face of Billy Brew, towards whom he flung appealing hands, and who shoved through the others, reaching for him, roaring, ‘Gi’m to me . . . I’m his huncle!’ Billy got Prindy, embraced him boozily, then set him down.

  ‘How you he honcle?’ demanded someone ‘He mütter you schwester, old viskers, ja?’

  That roused the laugh that caused Con and Bridie behind the counter to line up the glasses.

  Billy answered, ‘Nein, nein, mein frient . . . I’m his tribal huncle . . . ain’t it, young feller . . . blackfeller fashion.’

  Some other waggish Square’ead said, ‘So! It isht on mütter side you relate . . . but not by marriage, hein?’