by Nick Hawkes
Archie said nothing.
Chapter 12
Benjamin watched the Cessna 210 taxi up to the end of the dirt runway in a plume of dust. Ken McLeod, the pilot, was a flying padre with the Uniting Church. He had promised to pick Benjamin up in two days’ time when he would be flying from Halls Creek back to Kununurra.
As the plane hurtled down the runway, Benjamin threw his swag over his shoulders and began to walk across the sparse scrubland to the town he’d vowed never to set foot in again.
Small white houses with deep verandas were set out in a grid pattern reflecting the institutionalizing hand of the white man. Rusted car bodies and the glint of light on discarded glass bottles was evidence of the town’s cultural torment. The comfort and convenience of Western ways had come at a terrible cost—the degrading of a people’s identity, meaning and purpose. Smart phones rather than the wisdom of the elders were now defining the identity of the young, introducing them to concepts they were poorly equipped to manage. The result was a growing culture of resentment, passivity, and hopelessness.
He scuffed his way through the red dust to the town, in a sour mood. However, his grim thoughts were sabotaged by the sight of a group of children who were running and skipping their way toward him. They were accompanied, inevitably, by a motley pack of the town’s dogs.
None of the children wore anything more than a pair of shorts. As they came closer, their curiosity gave way to shyness. Big eyes—dark, liquid pools—stared at Benjamin from beneath tousled hair. More than a few had snotty noses, but they nonetheless looked adorable…and, as Benjamin knew only too well, deceptively innocent. The sight of them began triggering memories of the past. Rather surprisingly, they were happy thoughts—memories of messing about at the waterhole with children just like those running toward him. He looked over to the hills in the northeast. That’s where he’d gone with the women after the dry season to dig up nests of harvester ants and collect their store of grass seeds. He particularly remembered walking with the old men along the creek bed as they taught him the names of the bushes and trees…and what they were good for. He had loved that. To know about the land around him, the trees, the stories—that was what centered him and stilled him…before he’d had to return to…
Benjamin greeted the children in their own language. They responded with a barrage of questions that quickly established who he was. They danced around him as he walked into the town, demanding to know if he was carrying anything interesting. He led them back to the schoolhouse where the students were at morning recess—a fact that explained why so many of them were available to meet him. Benjamin was not at all sure they wouldn’t have come even if they had been in class. Despite government incentives, children didn’t need much of an excuse to absent themselves from school. Benjamin had been the exception; he’d loved school and seen it as a place of safety…of escape.
Ten minutes later, he was standing in front of his old home, the house of his uncle and an assortment of relatives who came and went week by week. It appeared to be deserted. His uncle’s recent death would explain that: no one wanted to go near the place. Benjamin mounted the steps and opened the front door. The house had been cleaned out. There was no sign of his uncle ever having lived there. Even his uncle’s sour, musky smell was gone. The house was completely bare. It was highly unusual.
Benjamin stepped from the front room, back into the hallway. He stood there, staring at the handle of the door on the left. Flakes of paint had worn off to reveal the metal underneath. It was the handle his uncle had turned to check that he was asleep—before opening the door on the right, to his sister’s room.
He screwed his eyes shut to block out the memories of the whispered wheedling, her cry, the slap…and her muffled sobbing. The familiar voice shrieked at him: “You should have done something!” He wiped a hand across his eyes and walked down the cracked linoleum to the back door. Benjamin pushed his way through the flimsy fly-screen door and stepped out to the weedy, baked earth of the backyard. Very little had changed. The lemon tree in the rear corner had obviously not been watered for some time; it was barely alive. His uncle had loved it. He had routinely peed against the trunk. “It’s good for it,” he would say before using the hose to wash his pee into the soil, occasionally swishing the water over his feet to cool them.
The other tree was still there. The big one—the one on which he’d built a swing with some rope he’d found—the rope she had used.
Behind him, a gust of wind pushed the fly-screen door open. It creaked and groaned a little before banging shut again with a “klat.” Someone had come in the front door. He listened to the footsteps. As he did, a swirl of hot wind raised a spiral of red dust. A willi-willi. It swayed briefly like a live thing before it whisked into the air and dissipated. Benjamin shivered. He knew it to be the spirit of his sister—restless and crying for help. He put his head in his hands.
“Ay, Benji.”
Benjamin looked around to see the flat, impassive face of a woman looking at him through the fly-screen. Which auntie was it? Aah, yes…red bandanna…same face…a lot older. Auntie Doola. He nodded, “Auntie.” It wasn’t much of a greeting after twelve years of absence…but then again, not much more was expected.
“You stayin’?”
“Nah, just visiting.” Benjamin instinctively slipped into the patois of his childhood, adopting the unemotional monotones of his people. It was brutal, direct, and economical. No energy was ever wasted on such niceties as ‘please’ or ‘thank you.’
Auntie Doola scowled. “This bad place.” She paused. “Where’s ya swag?”
“At the schoolhouse.”
Silence followed. The woman continued to stare at him through the fly-screen. Eventually, she said, “Jabirrjabirr waitin’ for you.”
Benjamin knew better than to ask how it was that one of his people’s elders already knew he was in town. He looked at her, asking with his silence for more information.
Auntie Doola turned her head and nodded over her shoulder. “Men’s place.” Taking understanding for granted, she turned and padded back down the hall on her bare feet.
Benjamin felt a prickle of unease. The men’s place was not somewhere anyone went without invitation. It was on the other side of town from the airstrip, near the bank of the river. The men met there to talk their business under the shade of some big trees—pretty much as they had done for centuries. The earth under the trees had been worn flat over the years. A fire was sometimes lit in the middle of the clearing for special occasions. The fire used for communal cooking was closer to the town, and everyone gathered there. It was a popular place, particularly if anyone was cooking kangaroo tail. Incongruously, this delicacy could be bought frozen from the tiny supermarket in town, albeit at considerable expense. Hunting, he reflected sadly, was no longer seen to be a priority. The women would burn the hair off the tail in the fire and scrape it clean before wrapping it in foil and nesting it between rocks that had been heated in the fire.
Fire.
Fire was important here. It allowed hospitality and communality. As a child, he had always stood at the back, away from the fire, acutely conscious of his white skin—not wanting to be visible but desperately wanting to belong. Hiding in the background sometimes allowed him to hear things he shouldn’t have heard. On one occasion, the men had talked about the local welfare officer. He was a half-caste like Benjamin but was generally considered to be a good bloke—at least when the men were sober. The officer had asked if he could receive the initiation rights that would make him a member of the community. Benjamin winced as he remembered the conversation.
“We took ’is blood and made a scar inside ’is arm by the elbow. We didn’t tell ’im ’ee got the scar on the wrong arm. ’Ee not one of us.”
This remark had struck Benjamin in the heart. He was at the age when boys were being tapped on the shoulder and went missing with the older men for five weeks. They returned, still sore from the initiation cuts on their flesh, b
ut they returned as people who belonged—who had begun their journey to manhood. Their initiation process would continue over three months, a necessary concession to the white men who were insisting that the kids go to school. The old men spoke of days when the process had taken five years.
Initiation signaled a big change in a boy’s life. Before it happened, kids could run pretty wild, larking about down by the river, playing string games…and annoying the girls. However, initiation quietened them down. The boys would be taken in hand. They would begin to hear the dreamtime stories, their story…and learn the responsibilities that attended being a man.
No one had tapped Benjamin on the shoulder.
A short time later, he’d found his sister hanging from the gum tree in the backyard.
When the Christian Brothers came to the remote school a month later, they had been impressed with Benjamin’s school grades and offered him one of the scholarships to Rostrevor College reserved for remote indigenous people. The school was in Adelaide, on the other side of the continent.
He had accepted the scholarship immediately.
Benjamin swatted at the flies…or was it at the conflicting emotions that were assaulting him? He threaded his way through the low scrub and spinifex to the river. It was really little more than a creek which dried out to rock pools for some months of the year. There was, however, a rich stand of trees along its banks—eucalypts mostly, including woollybutt and iron bark. The wood of the iron bark was highly resistant to fire, so lengths of it were often used in the cooking fire to turn and arrange the food.
Benjamin could smell wood-smoke as he approached the trees sheltering the men’s place. The fire was alight. Unusual. It was warm…and it was early in the day.
Three men were sitting on the ground on the far side of the meeting place. Benjamin recognized them immediately.
Jabirrjabirr was sitting in the middle, with one leg cocked in front of him and the other straight out…pretty much how Benjamin remembered him sitting twelve years ago. He had scruffy work-boots on and a battered hat. His gray whiskery beard seemed to have grown a little in length over the years. A thin wisp of smoke drifted up from a small fire on the edge of the fire pit.
Benjamin stood respectfully, just back from the beaten earth of the meeting place, waiting. It was rude to come to a man’s fire without permission. The men watched him in silence for some time, assessing him. Finally, Jabirrjabirr raised his head slightly. Benjamin came forward, not looking into their eyes, greeting each of them by name as he sat down.
More silence followed.
“Ay Benji, been longtime. You big now…a man,” murmured Jabirrjabirr.
“I still have much to learn,” said Ben politely.
“Why you come back?”
“Sky fella, bush padre, tell me to come here and talk.” Benjamin knew that it was, in fact, Jabirrjabirr who had asked him to come. The question meant that he was still being assessed.
Silence.
“Your uncle…gone. Bad business.”
“My uncle…gone. Good business.”
Jabirrjabirr showed no expression, then nodded. “Bad man.”
Jabirrjabirr’s comment caused Benjamin to react. “Yes. Why you not help us…help my sister?”
“You angry, Benji?”
“Little bit. Mostly sad. Very sad.”
“So you run away and become a whitefella?”
“You say I don’t belong. Maybe you give me initiation scar on wrong arm. Maybe no initiation at all. I am ‘Throwback,’ remember.”
A long silence followed.
“Some things we not allowed to do, Benji. Our ancestor spirits watch.”
“But my mother was Kija.”
“Your mother was half-caste…your father from mob down south. Maybe ’ee half-cast too. Look at your skin.”
“I can’t be blackfella…and can’t be whitefella.” Benjamin dropped his head.
Jabirrjabirr picked up a small stone and started tapping it on the ground rhythmically. Tap, tap…tap, tap. As he did, he looked up at Benjamin, eyes glittering in his weather-beaten face. “Benji, it’s time you heard some stories. You got no one else to tell ’em, so I tell you.”
Jabirrjabirr looked ahead, seeing into another time. “Your mother was a good woman. Good lookin’. Caused a few fights. She married your dad…a Gunditjmara man from long way. Jabirrjabirr inclined his chin to the south. “’Ee come up with a mob of blokes to work on the big water job.”
Benjamin knew that Jabirrjabirr was referring to the huge Ord River irrigation scheme that had transformed agriculture in the Eastern Kimberleys.
Benjamin watched the smoke from the fire curl through the tree branches and caress the leaves before disappearing into the sky. Jabirrjabirr continued. “Your mum was another bloke’s missus before, but she run away with her daughter. She became your father’s missus and got pregnant…with you.” Jabirrjabirr kept up the rhythmic tapping of the stone on the ground.
“But you didn’t want to be born. Got stuck.” Tap, tap…tap, tap.
Benjamin found the rhythm soothing, like a mother’s heartbeat. It was quite at odds with the drama of the story he was hearing.
“Your father died trying to get her to hospital where you was born. ’Ee got the mission bloke to drive you to hospital but ’is truck got stuck in the creek in the floods. Your dad got your mum out and went back for the other fella but both died.” Jabirrjabirr paused before adding, “Your dad was a good fella.”
Tap, tap…tap, tap.
Benjamin was stunned. He had known nothing of this story, nor had he appreciated the drama surrounding his birth. His father hadn’t run off as he’d always supposed; he had loved his wife enough to risk his life. His head swam as he sought to understand the significance of what he had learned. His dad was…good, even heroic. He had cared for his woman.
Jabirrjabirr continued. “You was born…but your mum never came good. Became a drinker and lost her looks.” Jabirrjabirr put a hand on his chest. “Sick heart. She died when you was little.” He looked at Benjamin. “You seen her grave?”
Benjamin nodded.
Silence. Tap, tap…tap, tap. Curling smoke. Swirling thoughts.
“Did you bury…my father?” asked Benjamin eventually. How strange it was to say those words, “my father.” He couldn’t remember having ever said them before. Tears began to well up in his eyes. He could now speak of him—and know him to be, as he was, Gunditjmara.
“We put ’im on a platform in a tree.”
Benjamin knew that this was conventional practice. After several months, the bones would be collected, painted with red ocher, and laid to rest in a special place. He blurted, “Did anyone get his bones?”
Jabirrjabirr looked away and shrugged.
Benjamin closed his eyes. No one had got them. No one had laid them to rest. Over the years, the tree platform would have collapsed…and the dingoes would have got to the bones. Benjamin pinched the top of his nose to repress a surge of emotion and deep sadness. His father may have been a good fella, but he was not one of them.
Tap, tap…Tap, tap. The heartbeat continued.
Jabirrjabirr glanced at Benjamin. “Now you know your story. Every man should know his story. This…your story.” The tapping stopped abruptly. “Now I tell you another story. This…a story of what happens in Kija country…maybe long time ago, maybe not.”
Benjamin was instantly aware that the mood of this story was different. The very air was scratchy and violent. There was a harsh edge to Jabirrjabirr’s voice.
“For longtime, if a fella sneaks into our land from another blackfella mob wanting trouble, we catch him and kill him. But killing is bad. If the other tribe find the dead body, they have to start a war and kill for pay back. This bad. Many people can get killed, perhaps for longtime. So, we hide the body so ’ee can’t be found.” He looked at Benjamin with bleak eyes. “No body. No payback. It’s good.”
The smoke from the fire now twisted and turned, writhi
ng as if in agony. Benjamin knew he was about to be told something that would be significant to him. He held his breath.
Jabirrjabirr continued. “You know them termite mounds? We got many sorts in our country. Big ones, small ones, fat ones, sharp ones. The critters always busy mending and building with mud. We put a hole in one and put the fella inside. Little time later, critters fix the hole…and ’ees gone. No one sees ’im.”
Barely pausing for breath, Jabirrjabirr asked, “You know why your uncle had a limp?”
Benjamin blinked at the change in direction of the conversation. “Um, yeah. He told us he had an accident while fencing up at the homestead.”
Jabirrjabirr fixed Benjamin with the same bleak look. “’Ee not tell truth. ’Ee limp ’cos we spear ’im in the thigh.”
Benjamin was shocked. This was the most severe form of punishment a blackfella could receive short of death. “Why?”
“’Ee hurt a girl.”
An awful possibility of the significance of this conversation was beginning to suggest itself. “He raped my sister,” he said. “Often. Bashed me many times to keep me quiet.”
Silence.
Jabirrjabirr continued as if he hadn’t heard. “’Ees not here any more. No one knows where ’ee gone. Maybe longways.” He pursed his lips. “No sorry business for ’im. Can’t do it if there’s no body.”
Benjamin was appalled. He asked carefully, “Did he hurt another girl…recently?”
“Maybe.” Jabirrjabirr looked directly at Benjamin. “Real blackfellas, we look after our women. We not shit.”
Benjamin nodded slowly.
Jabirrjabirr continued savagely. “If you have blackfella heart, you will look after your women.”
The challenge, more than the harshness of the language, kept Benjamin mute.
Jabirrjabirr got to his feet, picked up a machete lying beside him and said, “You, me…we go up the river and have a look at some old places, eh?”
Benjamin stood up, bewildered, trying to keep pace with what was happening.