Poor Fellow My Country

by Xavier Herbert

  Jeremy saw the Moon down, walking the deck, sighing, clenching and unclenching his fists. When at length he returned to the saloon, he found his former companions too far ahead of him in drink to be good company, and after a single drink more, retired to his berth.

  At dawn next morning they were in Hartog Sound, which from the ochreous mud for ever being churned by monster tides, looked as if it ran with the blood of the thousands of bovine innocents that met their fate in the great slaughterhouse at the head of the waterway. Soon after breakfast the ship berthed at the meatworks wharf, to take on meat. Meat, meat, meat! The place reeked of it. Fresh meat still jerking with the last of life in it. Meat boiling in vast vats for canning. Meat dried with blood and crushed bone and being bagged as fertiliser. The passengers fled, to take a bus into the tiny township a mile away. Jeremy went with them, booked in at the one hotel. Later he looked up a couple of acquaintances, a stock and station agent, a Chinese storekeeper.

  Before lunch he returned to the hotel, there to rendezvous with his meat-buying friends from the ship, who were joined by the Meatworks Manager and the ship’s captain. He stayed with them till they went back to the ship, which was due to sail in mid-afternoon. Then he joined up with some boozy drovers. Soon he was the Jeremy Delacy known for his dry wit in down-country pubs, keeping the place in fits with his tales of odd characters like Billy Brew, Neddy Knowles, Piggy Trotters, his own policeman father. They were fed in the bar, as was usual when what was called a Session was on.

  It was high moonlight when Jeremy left the bar to cross the yard to the latrine. He was almost there, when from behind it and a nearby shed a number of men suddenly appeared. They were all big fellows, Southerners by the conventional dress of black pants, striped shirts, black patent-leather shoes. Boozy as he was, Jeremy looked about quickly, swung round to have the wall of the privy at his back, demanding, ‘Whash thish?’

  The biggest man, a fair bull, with close-clipped bristly hair that shone in the moonlight and a butcher’s face and belly, growled, ‘You were told you ain’t wanted here.’

  ‘Tha’sh so? I haven’t been informed by the mayor yet.’

  ‘Cheeky bastard, eh?’ growled the man, and with surprising swiftness in one so big, aimed a blow.

  Jeremy was too slow to avoid it, took it on the shoulder, but to be spun round so as to deliver his famous left into the man’s fatty midriff. The big fellow grunted, sagged at the knees, gasping for breath now. Jeremy got in a few hard hits at the others as they fell on him, sent a couple down, but in no time went down himself to a well-placed rabbit punch. As he lay they set about him with their shiny shoes, till the bull-man, with breath recovered, heaved up and flung them back. Nevertheless, the bull-man bent over him, pulled his lolling head up by the hair, and growling at the senseless face, ‘’It me below the belt, would yo? Fascist bastard? Cop this!’ he smashed his huge fist into it. Then he let the bloodied thing drop to the gravel, and rose, saying, ‘Okay, bring him along.’

  The others raised Jeremy. A couple of the biggest got shoulders under his arms, and with the bull-man leading, dragged him round the far side of the hotel and out into the street well beyond it. Out of the dark doorway of the stock and station agent’s a tall lean figure stepped. He met the procession, took a look at the hanging blood-streaming face. He asked, ‘You weren’t too rough with him, were you?’

  The biggest man growled, ‘No. He put up a fight. Had to KO the bastard.’

  ‘Better wipe some that blood off him. Give’s y’ handkerchief.’

  Then the lean man said, ‘Right . . . bring him along.’ He set off in the direction of a blue lamp not far down the road. That meant a police station in these parts.

  The policemen were in their office, a sergeant and constable, taking it easy, smoking, with feet up. They assumed more decorous attitudes as the lean man entered. The sergeant spoke: ‘Goodnight, Mister Secretary . . . what can we do for you?’

  ‘Bit o’ trouble, sergeant. Chap off the boat . . . passenger. Throwing his weight round amongst my members. Boozed. Brawling. Thought you’d better take care of him. If he stays here, there’s sure to be more trouble . . . and none of us want that, eh?’

  ‘We certainly don’t. Where’s this chap?’

  ‘Boys’ve got him. Had to KO him to stop him.’ The man turned and beckoned to those outside. When they dragged Jeremy in, the sergeant signed to them to drop him into a wooden armchair, receptacle for many an incapable prisoner, no doubt. The sergeant asked the constable did he know him. The man replied that he’d seen him boozing in the pub, heard him magging about things over the State Border. He jerked his head eastward.

  ‘Right,’ said the sergeant. ‘We’ll put him back over the Border.’

  The tall lean man said, ‘Thanks, sergeant.’ He and his mates went out.

  Rising, the Sergeant said, ‘Let him sleep it off in a cell. Better see if he’s got any belongings at the pub.’

  Between them, as the other men had, the policemen raised Jeremy, dragged him out to the cell-block, into a cell, dumped him on a plank bed, left him, turning the key on him.

  The Moon was well down before Jeremy was recovered enough to take intelligent interest in his surroundings. A door of bars, revealing a blaze of stars, a stretch of ruddy water lit by reflexion from the meatworks ablaze and roaring at its never-ending seasonal orgy of slaughter. At length he rose, approached the bars, examined them, shook them, shouted. He was silenced by a distant voice, ‘Shut up and go to sleep . . . let you out morning’!’

  He sighed, searched the dark place, found a tap, drank greedily and laved his sticky face. At last he returned to the plank bed, removed shoes and stripped to underwear, made a pillow of sorts of what he’d doffed, stretched out, slept.

  Soon after dawn the constable came, with a hunk of bread and dripping and a pannikin of tea. He ignored Jeremy’s questions, locked the door again. But he was back in about half an hour, growling, ‘Come on . . . out!’

  Jeremy followed the man through the station office to the street. The police utility was at the curb, engine running, the sergeant, in bright blue shirt with silver buttons, behind the wheel. The constable shoved Jeremy in with the sergeant, himself climbed into the rear. As the car moved off, heading out of town, Jeremy asked, ‘What’s going on?’

  The segeant grunted, ‘You.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘You’re on your way home. I understand you’re from across the Border?’

  ‘I am . . . but what’ve I done to get run out?’

  ‘We don’t like trouble-makers here.’

  ‘What trouble’ve I made?’

  ‘Take a look at yourself in the rear-view mirror.’

  Jeremy looked. He said, ‘A mob got to me.’

  ‘You started it.’

  ‘Who says this?’

  ‘Listen, man . . . don’t waste your breath. You got a long dry walk ahead o’ you.’

  ‘But you haven’t even asked me what happened!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How can you know when I didn’t tell you? You’ve not questioned me. You’ve not charged me. Yet you’re running me out of the country I paid my fare to come into and my board to stay in for a while.’

  ‘I told you we don’t want your kind here.’

  ‘What kind?’

  The sergeant’s voice rose. ‘Will you shut up?’

  ‘No I won’t shut up. I’m in my own country . . . not Germany, or Russia.’

  ‘You’re not in your own country . . . but you soon will be. Now shut up!’

  ‘I demand to be charged.’

  ‘If you don’t shut up, I’ll put the handcuffs on you and chuck you in the back.’

  ‘By God, you’ll pay for this, sergeant!’

  ‘You talk to me like that, I’ll give you such a bloody beltin’, you’ll have to crawl the rest of the way home!’ So did the sergeant glare that the car almost ran off the narrow track.

  Jeremy subsided, muttering, �
��I have come to Germany after all . . . or Russia.’

  ‘Shut up, shut up . . . unless you want that beltin’!’

  Jeremy sighed, looked out on the desolate scene. They were running along a scrubby gravel ridge, the only means of permanent passage through the waste of salt-arms. Through the mean tea-tree and withered maritime growth could be seen the silvery upper reaches of the Sound, beyond miles of salt-pans already glistening in the rising Sun.

  After a while Jeremy asked, ‘Are you a Communist, Sergeant?’

  The man looked at him sharply, snapped, ‘Don’t give me cheek!’

  ‘No cheek was intended. I just thought you might be . . . seeing you let me be beaten up by Communists.’

  ‘Who says you were beaten up by Communists?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Who’re you?’

  ‘You haven’t even troubled to find out my name. But you’ll soon know when I’ve laid a complaint to your Commissioner about my treatment at your hands.’

  The sergeant looked as if about to roar, but only gave a harsh laugh. ‘You can lay a complaint to Old Nick, if you like . . . it won’t get you anywhere. I’m here to keep the peace during the season. That’s what the Commissioner wants. That’s what the Government wants. That’s what everybody wants . . . except the likes of you . . . which is why you’re getting run out.’

  ‘In effect the Communists run this town while the meatworks’re working?’

  ‘I run this town.’ The sergeant was glaring again. ‘Didn’t I tell you to shut up?’

  Jeremy subsided, dropped head to a hand to cover his bunged eyes.

  After a while the sergeant said, ‘At Invercargill Station they’ll give you some steak for them eyes.’ Jeremy glanced at the hard profile, intent upon the rough track, said nothing. The Sergeant made several other remarks of friendly nature, such as that this part of the country was only fit for blacks, that it got better further on, that he should be able to join a returning droving plant at Invercargill to make his way home, that he’d take him all the way to the station homestead, only he hadn’t the time, had a court case this morning.

  To the latter remark, Jeremy responded, ‘Do you hold People’s Courts in there?’

  The hard eyes searched his. ‘What you mean People’s Courts?’

  ‘Where the Commissars have condemned someone, but hand it over to a mob to give the verdict and carry out the sentence.’

  ‘That meant to be funny?’

  ‘Not really. I don’t feel in a funny mood.’

  ‘Then shut up . . . like I’ve told you a hundred times!’

  They ran the best part of an hour, fast, because the sergeant was skilled and knew the road. The country changed suddenly from gravel and clay to grey sand, thickly grown with scrub of all kinds. Soon they came to a creek. The car stopped.

  The sergeant said, ‘Well, here we are. It’s only fifteen mile to the station . . . best part o’ fifty the other way. Water here. Water on the road. You ought ’o make the station by sundown. Right . . . get out.’ He leaned towards Jeremy as he obeyed. ‘If you come back, you’ll only be put on the woodheap for a week and then run out here again . . . this time with a boot up the arse to start you movin’. Got it?’

  The constable tossed Jeremy’s dunnage down to him, then got down, dusted himself, got into the front. The car swung round, was gone.

  A couple of crows flapped in to land in a bigger tree and watch Jeremy go down to a stagnant pool of water, raucously muttering about him, perhaps about his chances of survival with a face like that and all the flies in the country starting on him. He sat for a while by the water, fighting the flies with a switch of leaves. Then he opened swag and suitcase and rolled bare necessities in the former, to make what was called a Cigarette Swag, fixing a towel through the straps for easy carrying. He put the case in a tree. A good drink; then off towards where he had been told to go. The crows farewelled him: Bastard, bastard, why couldn’ yo’ die heah, heah, heah?

  Harsh country. Still, it abounded in many things that interested him, to which he waved his fly-switch, when they peeped, or spoke to if they did not bolt. A goanna, a frilled lizard, kangaroos, an emu with chicks. Perhaps even a bounteous country for anyone who knew how to live in it. There were plovers on a little billabong, brolgas on a bit of plain — then the criss-crossing tracks of cattle. At length a fence, a gate. More tracks here, and the distant calling of cattle going to late afternoon watering.

  Another gate. Then through the trees a glimpse of white homestead. The Sun was down in the trees. The radio masts were gilding. It was a small homestead, comprising only half a dozen buildings, the Big House only so-big, and looking smaller for being built on the ground and surrounded by an unusually extensive garden. The big kitchen behind, another bungalow, was already lit artificially. Somewhere a power-plant sang. Jeremy headed for the Big House, opened the gate of the garden, went up the gravel path, cigarette swag still hanging from his sweat-soaked shoulder.

  On the front verandah two men lounged in canvas chairs, with a bottle between them on a table, glasses in hands. One was nuggety, grey, the other lanky and young. It was the young man who spoke, shortly, jerking his head, ‘Kitchen’s behind there.’

  Jeremy kept on, said, in a voice hoarse with weariness and slurred with broken lips, ‘Like to see the Boss.’

  The young man drew in his long legs, leaned forward, snapped, ‘I told you where the kitchen is.’

  The older man, obviously the Boss by his wooden magisterial expression, met the glance Jeremy gave him with glassy bloodshot indifference. Jeremy, now at the step, husked at him, ‘What . . . the Boss do the cooking round here?’

  The man’s face flamed. But it was the young man who answered, ‘Don’t be cheeky!’

  Jeremy looked at him, then back to the Boss, who stirred uncomfortably now, grunting, ‘They’ll attend to you in the kitchen. If you want work, see the Head Stockman tomorrow.’

  Jeremy inhaled deeply, took another look at the young man, who was leaning forward now with blue eyes blazing and in an attitude as if to leap to his feet. Then he turned about, marched back to the gate.

  Now the evening was red. Jeremy made for the kitchen. Those within it were plain to see: the cook in whites and cap, a whiteman, almost as white as his clothes, a lanky cadaver of a man, the staff halfcaste women. A woman directed the cook’s attention to Jeremy when he came to the door. The man approached, stared, nodded to Jeremy’s greeting, said in a thin sour voice, ‘Where I seen you before?’

  Jeremy shook his head, asked in a mumble if he could have a drop of soup and slice of bread. The man quizzed a moment longer, then saying, ‘Been in the wars, eh?’ turned and called on a woman to fill a billy with soup. He himself got a couple of slices of bread, put them on a tin plate, handed them over, asking, ‘What happened to the other bloke?’

  ‘He got the sheilah,’ mumbled Jeremy, adding, ‘Where can a man camp round here?’

  Grinning like a death’s head, the cook directed him to the men’s quarters across the way. Jeremy went. There were men out on the long verandah who nodded to him, staring hard, a dog that snarled at him till toed by its owner. He went to an empty room at the far end of the long row of rooms. While he ate his spare meal, sitting on a kerosene case that was all the furniture outside the room, the other men crossed to the kitchen in response to the supper-gong. Afterwards he went to the shower, washed his clothes as well as himself, reducing his covering to the towel from the swag. Then, having hung his stuff on a wire on the verandah to dry, he went into the room and made up the bare iron bed by laying his swag-cover on it, dropped down on it, was soon asleep.

  Next morning Jeremy breakfasted with the other men, was amiably enough treated to begin with and amiable enough himself, but blocked all efforts to satisfy their curiosity about him. The Head Stockman said he reckoned he knew him and tried to work out how and where. Jeremy merely answered that it was a Big Country. He showed he knew something of them by speaking of the co
ok by name: ‘See you got Poor Bob poisoning you.’ It was hardly fair, seeing that Poor Bob had gone to the trouble to make him a special mince, although evidently not without the motive of getting him to talk about himself. At length the men punished him by ignoring him. He returned to his quarters.

  Later on, in badly rumpled if clean clothes, unshaved because it would be days before he could put razor to that puffed, lacerated, black-and-blue face, he crossed to the office building. As he entered he was met by the hard blue eyes of the young man of last evening, evidently the Bookkeeper. The man was seated at a desk. As Jeremy breasted the counter, the man snapped at him, ‘Well?’

  Jeremy had to husk to speak: ‘You do the postal business?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Like to send a radiogram.’

  The blue eyes glinted, as with anger at being forced to do something for an enemy, class-enemy asserting rights under the lunacy of democracy. He rose with deliberate slowness, it seemed, came slouching across, produced a form from under the counter, slapped it down, eyes all the while fixed on the scarcely visible slits regarding him. Jeremy concentrated on the form, wrote: FERGUS FERRIS PORT PALMESTON. STUCK OUT ON INVERCARGILL STATION PLEASE COME SOON AS POSSIBLE PICK ME UP. J DELACY.

  He shoved it at the watching man, who although obviously interested, evidently was not impressed, beyond being somewhat less rude in naming the price. Jeremy paid without a word, walked out, back to the quarters.

  Some twenty minutes later, while sitting reading an out-of-date copy of the West Australian, Jeremy looked up at hearing steps, to see the stocky man of last evening, the Boss, approaching. The man waved to him, and still at a distance hailed him: ‘Jeremy Delacy, eh? Didn’t expect to see you out this way.’

  Jeremy neither answered nor rose. The man came up to the verandah thrusting out a ruddy pudgy hand. ‘You remember me . . . Alec Smither . . . had a horse run second your stallion, Elektron, Beatrice Cup, ’32.’

  Jeremy nodding slightly, took the hand limply.

  The man leaned against a verandah post. ‘Sorry about last night, old man. Should’ve said who you were.’