Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  The greyness was such as to seem walled with blackness when at last he came to a fairly large paperbark, too large for that water-logged earth, which at some similar season had collapsed, but continued to grow horizontally with half its roots, its substantial trunk held well off the ground with the stubs of stout broken branches, its branches of more recent growth, growing vertically up from the trunk. He went under it for shelter, saw that the under side was hollowed out by fire. It was dark inside, he was going to feel up inside, but backed out, broke off a length of stick, poked around. First a huntsman spider came out, ran along the belly of the tree, then a big black snake, which half hung out, challenging him with darting narrow head, then as if knowing they were kin, withdrew, and went slithering further up. Prindy ran his hand along inside now. There was quite a wide ledge where the snake had been. He was about to heave himself up into it, when he bethought himself of bedding, and on the lee side tore off strips of bark till he got to the dry understuff, collected one bundle of it, another, and another, tossing it up inside. Then clinging with elbows, and swinging up his feet, he got onto the ledge. It was quite dry, and wide enough to hold two of him. He spread out the bark, pulled some of it over him, lay down. It was snug in there, with the outside sounds muted. He sighed as with the luxury of it, was soon asleep.

  He woke in utter darkness. The sound of water was so close that he reached down to feel for it. It was not so near as that. He reached several times, while lying with rumbling belly. Once he swung his feet over. Still safe. He slept again. When he woke next it was grey again. He hung over to see how the water was. Certainly it had risen, but not to within reach. When he dropped down he found it reached his thighs, and was pulling strongly. It was still raining, but nothing so hard as yesterday. Shivering again, perhaps more in thought of yesterday than from actual cold, because the wind had dropped and the air was muggy, he reached up into his recent refuge and pulled down paperbark and wrapped himself about head and shoulders again. Then he set out, due East towards a glowing in the paler grey that would be the Sun just coming up. Soon he found the water coming from northward and getting shallower all the while; but he kept on splashing eastward. The silvery glow was halfway up the wet grey sky when suddenly he was amongst rocks, sandstone, getting bigger, until they appeared in a low dark ridge ahead. He climbed up, only half a dozen feet or so, onto red rocky earth, which although it streamed with water that went cascading down to the swampland, must have felt good to his water-logged feet. Here were substantial trees: bloodwood, ironwood, stringybark. He was watching the ironwoods, probably for sugar-bag. And so going, with the ground becoming more and more sandy and the walking easier, swinging northeastward, at length he came to the Catfish Road, just the pair of tyre-tracks each a foot or so wide filled with silky water-rippled sand, with springing verdure between. He tried the sand for its likelihood to betray his going. The drizzle wiped out his tracks almost at once, aided by the ooze beneath. He went on towards Catfish, surely a very long way from here, walking steadily, but with ears cocked all the while, and eyes, too. Several times he left the road to try rotten timber and was rewarded a couple of times. Then he spotted a likely ironwood, searched round for a length of spear-grass that had not softened in the rain, found what he wanted, and shoving it through his pierced septum, went to the tree, and with arms locking round it and feet and knees gripping to each heave up, in a moment was up to the branch at the base of which he’d seen the tiny hole. Hanging on to the branch with one hand and legs about the trunk, he shoved the straw into the hole, sucked. A few little black bees came out to investigate, walked the straw and had a go at his golden flattish nose. He took no notice, sucking and swallowing. Several times he had to pull the straw out to blow it clear, and had to leave it in the hole while he changed hands and rearranged his legs and wiped off the bees. But evidently he got a bellyful, the way he sighed when he got down and went on his way. So on, with a spell here and there behind a tree that gave a little shelter with its leaning, past noon. He passed through a fence, by means of a grid, probably knew where he was by his hurrying — and there, suddenly, looming out of the rain, was the Corella Bore.

  He halted for a moment, then went off the road and searched for a stout piece of wood, evidently for the purpose of dealing with some creature that could be used as food, the way he approached the place. But nothing was there. The birds would be away in the caves, and stock where timber afforded best protection. However, he made some useful finds; one a few wax vestas in a tin box, only three or four, melted into a corner as can happen with exposure to hot Sun, and a somewhat battered oilskin coat hanging in the engine house, as well as some cotton-waste. Although there was dry firewood in the camping shed, he made no attempt to light a fire in the antbed hearth, but retired at once to one of the hide and sapling beds, spread the oilskin, lay down and slept.

  He slept for about an hour, starting awake as if having heard something, listened, rose and went swiftly to look out. Nothing but the rain, which was sheeting again in rising wind now blowing from the West, and the gush of the water from the overflow pipe of the earthen tank into the overflowing trough, and the groan of the furled windmill turning from the wind. He went back to the bunk and got the coat, tried it on. It was twice his length. Undaunted, he went with it to a projecting piece of the corrugated iron of the building, tore it, ripped the bottom off. Now it reached only to his calves. He did likewise with the sleeves. One of the lengths of hacked-off sleeve he tried on his head, which it fitted nicely. The scraps he bundled together and stowed, along with the match-box. Then with the waste he proceeded to erase his tracks. The waste also went into a pocket. A drink from the tap that ran in from the tank, then out into the rain again, a strange little figure in his capacious outfit billowing in the wind behind. For it was westward he was heading, not on towards Catfish now. Passing over the trackless circle made by the movements of stock, he came to the road to Lily Lagoons, this so much less used than the other that grass was growing high in the wheel tracks. He followed it, head in odd-looking black cap bent to the wind, and behind like a jenny donkey. Thus till the faint luminescence of the Sun was well down ahead of him and he came into the region of limestone outcrops. Then he swung away to the right, northward again. Soon he was amongst the limestone monoliths and the brawling milky streams. Here were turtles in plenty. He eyed them, but otherwise ignored them although he might have taken several, surely for the reason that he knew he would be able to have what he wanted later. Obviously, now, he was making for that cave where he had camped with Bobwirridirridi. It was coming on dark when he grabbed his turtle. It was quite dark when he reached the cave. He entered without hesitation, stripped off the dripping outfit, got out the matches and the waste, went groping, and found dry wood, as they had left it just a year ago, because termites do not thrive in limestone.

  In no time he had a fire going and the turtle sizzling upside down in its shell. He looked about. There was everything as they had left it when dragged away in chains. Who would want to go in there where Snake Men had dwelt and Coon-Coon raided? Besides, other people’s property in the form of weapons and implements, is as sacred as their Shades, to a blackfellow. Clothes are different things; not blackfellow things, anyway. After the meal Prindy curled up in the white dust with the old paperbark bedding and slept. He had been asleep about an hour when he began to sing in that strangled little voice. My Rown Road, but did not wake for many hours. Even when he did wake it was only to stir the fire and then cuddle down again.

  As regards use of an absent person’s property, if it is deemed necessary and one stands in such relationship to the person as to make it proper, there is the simple process of asking permission of the property itself, in the name of the owner. Prindy wanted two light spears and a boomerang. He had to address each piece separately: ‘Kooloo spear belong to Pookarakka . . . you lend me, eh?’ The fact that he must do so surely showed how slightly his recent experiences with what might be called Civilising Influences h
ad affected his basic attitudes. Simple as the process was, it carried grave responsibility. What one borrowed must be taken much greater care of than what was one’s own, and returned. Failure in this respect exacted strict penalties. There was no dodging them. The spirit of the article itself would deal with you, if not the owner.

  Dressed in his outlandish rigout again and accoutred, he went out into the misty rain about mid-morning, and headed northward, passed out of the limestone and into the sandstone, and by noon was close enough to the foot of the escarpment to feel its presence even though he couldn’t see it. He followed the base of it a short distance westward, dodging amongst the great rocks, and then got what evidently he had come for — a brush-tail. Zip! — and it was dying on the borrowed spear. Such a spear could not miss, of course. Hacking the little beast in half with a sharp axe-head of stone, and fixing tail to haunch to make the natural carrying sling, he put the rest into a concavity that bore traces of recent inhabitance by a large snake, then shouldered his prize, took up his precious gear, and set off, heading directly back whence he had come.

  He was well back in the limestone, splashing through the milky rivulets, slipping and sliding in grey mud in which he could see his own precious tracks — when suddenly he started, stopped, warned by that other self of his which would be looking out for him, perhaps by the Yalmaru of Bobwirridirridi, which must have been with him a lot of late, according to his understanding — and swung round, because the danger was all around him — invisible as yet — but in a moment looming, piece by piece, out of the rain — the gleaming black riders on the streaming horses! How many of them? As many as the trees it seemed. He dropped the wallaby, darted for a narrow cleft between two marble monoliths. The harsh resounding voice of Coon-Coon followed him in like the man’s long black-clad arm itself: ‘No good, Sonny Boy . . . you can’t get away . . . we all round you. Come on out o’ there!’

  Prindy had to drop down, because the cleft was too narrow above his hips. His oilskin caught on a projecting piece. He ripped himself half out of it, shed the other half when he got down to hands and knees — but did not let go spears or boomerang. Soon he was crawling, in the dark, shoving the weapons ahead of him; or more truly following where they led. One place was so narrow that he had to go through it sideways, and lost his pants and tore his bottom. Then he saw light ahead, and approached it warily. Bushes shielded the entrance, so that he could stand listening. The horsemen were galloping about, as if it were a cattle muster, shouting, Coon-Coon above the rest, ‘Come on, Sonny Boy . . . don’t be jitty! We ain’t goin’ to hurt you. I’m goin’ ’o look after you meself this time. Me . . . your Daddy-o. Come on Sonny Boy . . . come on, my little boy . . . come to your Daddy-o . . . It’s Christmas, don’t you know? We had a good time last Christmas, didn’t we, eh? We have better time this one. Come on boy!’

  It was easy to hear their horses, because of their slipping in the mud and their puffing. No sound of them ahead now. He peered out. A glimpse of two of them to the left, turned the other way. He shot out, raced across the bushy open space, into the shelter of another clump of rocks. They did not see him. Coon-Coon was now swearing like the trooper he was: ‘You stupid bloody bastards . . . let a bit of a kid beat you. Jinbul, you lump o’ black shit, I’ll flog the puggin’ hide off yo’!’

  They milled around the rocks. He left them behind by dodging from one mass to another, up and over some, under others. They kept picking his tracks up, but only to lose them. Then he seemed to lose them altogether, heard them shouting and galloping well behind. He could easily have swung then back towards the sandstone, beaten them to the escarpment, climbed up it and thumbed his nose down at them, helpless as they’d be with horses and lacking his agility and knowledge of the place — with a couple of hundred miles to put between him and them. But he had to put those borrowed things back. More than that, when at length he got back to the cave with them, he had to clean them of mud, store them as he had found them — despite the fact that near the spot was now a pile of police equipment!

  He took a swift look at the pile: pack-bags of food, tarpaulin-wrapped swags. Then wiping out his tracks with the cotton-waste, he slipped out warily, stark naked except for that mad cap of his, blood streaking from his lacerated bottom, washed down his yellow legs by rain. Now he walked warily, either in water or on rock, leaping from point to point where necessary, going northeastward now, perhaps to double round the pursuers and get back to the sandstone. He must have been doubtful of his chances of escape, for all the effort he put into it, to have gone to such lengths to do the proper thing with respect to the borrowing. He certainly showed it in his scariness. Never had he been as jumpy as now. Hearing a horse snort he wheeled in near panic, seemed ready to rush anywhere. Then he heard stamping, and running to a wall of rock and peering round, saw that under a sheltering projection of it a couple of pack-horses were tethered. No humans. But he passed the place crouching, running from bush to bush and rock to rock. Sound of horse’s hoofs again, but this time thudding and splashing. He turned from it, ran round a mass of rock, almose to collide with a horse and oilskinned rider. The horse reared. The rider yelled, ‘Hey!’ Stunke’s face was clearly visible under the tilted-back sou’wester. Prindy turned his bare bleeding behind on the instant, rushed back where he had come, almost to do the same thing with mounted Treacle. Stunke coming from behind the rock yelled, ‘Corner him!’ He probably meant to get him up against the tall mass of rock. But there was a low flattish mass across the way. Prindy dashed for it. The ground was too slippery for the horses to get a quick start on. He was up on it and over it before they got near him. He fell over in jumping down, saw a narrow junction with another low mass, scrambled into it on hands and knees.

  Bang! — Bang! The rocks rang to the sounds of the shots. He dropped down in the ooze, lay still.

  Then away to northwestward: Bang! — Bang!

  That’s where he had left Coon-Coon and the others. Stunke and Treacle had probably come back to get the packs for moving up to the sandstone. He had almost beaten them without knowing it. But those shots were signals. They would be onto him again in a pack, with his tracks all too plain to lead them to him, wherever he might hole up.

  A heavy silence followed the shots. The wind had dropped. The chuckle of small waters seemed stilled. Only afar the muffled thunder of the great water, of that turgid waste grown into an inland sea from the countless streams and the upwelling of the soakage from the Plateau, sweeping to the suck of that mighty yellow serpent, the river. Prindy rose as if the roar was a voice calling him, and ran straight towards it, seemingly careless of pursuit now. Soon he was splashing in water to his calves, to his knees. They were coming after him. They had found his tracks. Now in the comparative open where the rocks were left behind they could see him. He could have seen them had he deigned to look back, the long line of them, each a lurching shiny black monster in a cloud of spray. They were gaining, gaining fast.

  Water halfway up his thighs now. He plunged into it, swimming although the flow was so swift that debris rushed past him. A couple of times he grounded, rose up beating at the water with his hands as he ran again. He was heading for that point where the Pookarakka had tried to deliver himself into the hands of the Master. Coon-Coon right behind him, yelled to those on the flanks, ‘Keep him out of the deep water . . . head him off!’

  Treacle was about level on the right, turned in, now on that strip of shallow over which the flood poured as over a bar. His horse was so close that its roaring breathing could be heard above the tumult of the water. Prindy glanced as he reached the edge, then went over, disappeared. Coon-Coon yelled, ‘In after him!’

  They were all leaping from their horses, ripping off their encumbering clothes. Treacle was first. As Prindy’s fair head popped up some fifty yards away, Treacle went in, arms thrashing in the preliminary turbulence. Others jumped in, went a little way, grabbed rocks or trees, watching the race — which was obviously with Death making the pace. Fo
r just down there was a kind of hill of water, sloping down to a wall of it; or so it seemed; an illusion for sure; but it could be taken for a great sucking mouth — the smooth slope the tongue, the leaping watery wall the upper lip.

  The tongue caught the two bobbing heads, the fair and the black, so close now as to seem together. The maw opened to them. They vanished.

  Coon-Coon, clinging to a swaying sapling, croaked, ‘Oh, Mother o’ God!’ Then he hung his head and wept.

  V

  Christmas at Beatrice River was spoilt again, as so often in that country where it didn’t belong. Even the Stunke Family, who with German wooden-headedness, seemingly got more out of it than anyone else with their Nordic Christmas tree and singing of Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht, had a lousy time of it this year, what with the keening going on around them on account of the deaths of a couple of persons of so little account really that not only was there no need to pray for their souls, since they were not Christian, but not even to hold official inquiry into their departure hence, when legally they had not been citizens. Normally, Tracker Treacle’s relatives, crammed into the smellful quarters that had been his home for many a year of faithful service to the whiteman’s law at cost of betrayal of his own and for so slight reward, could have been told to shut up their yowling or take it elsewhere. However, that could hardly be done while a superior officer, even if being temporarily treated as a felon, at least to the extent of being locked in a cell, was doing his part of the mourning at the top of his powerful voice: ‘Oh, oh, oh, my Sonny Boy . . . oh, oh, oh, oh . . . and whoy did ye doi, my little boy . . . oh, oh, oh, why did ye doi and leave all the good things behoint ye that ye Daddy-o was goin’ to give ye? Oh, oh, oh, oh . . . no, no not me . . . as Almighty God and the Most Merciful Jaysus is me judges . . . it wasn’t me, daid-feller . . . it wasn’t me’t done it . . . ’twas that divil yeself ye took up with, that Rainbow Snake . . . oh, oh, oh, come back, my Sonny Boy . . . come back from beyant, before, in me grief, I go after ye . . . oh, oh, oh!’