‘You might knock your teeth together next time,’ Macauley said.
‘Eh?’
‘What’s the bloody idea of sneaking up on a man like that?’ He made himself clear.
‘Sneaking? Bless me heart and soul, friend, I wasn’t sneaking. Can I help it if my feet have taken on the silence common to the shy denizens of the bush and so on? Is it not natural for a man to become a part of the night and the very surroundings and so on when that man has been all his life a traveller in nature’s wonderland, as I have?’
‘Have it your way,’ Macauley said, offering the newcomer no encouragement. ‘But blow your nose next time. Otherwise, I’m liable to hit out first and ask questions afterwards.’
‘I see that I have startled you, friend, and I give you my apologies. It was not my thought to make an enemy when I came to your fire, but a friend.’
He walked into the glow of the firelight, and Macauley conned him quickly and thoroughly. He stood saggily as though inert and suspended from an invisible wire. He was slightly stooped in the apparent attitude of bending over handlebars, likewise invisible. He had a puckered mobile face, grizzled eyebrows, a large nose and one scarlet eye. He spoke with a quick, glib fluency as though he hadn’t much time to voice his thoughts, before the world folded up and men were denied the benefit of hearing what he had to say.
‘Yes, I like to listen to that water running,’ he said, squatting down on his haunches and matily helping himself to the warmth of the fire. ‘That water’ll talk to you if you let it. She’ll tell you stories, friend, stories that’ll put you to sleep or make your hair stand up. And stories to make you laugh. And so on.’ He raised a red-ended twig to light the trumpet-shaped cigarette in his mouth and sucked rapidly to draw the ignition. ‘And she’ll go on telling ’em for years. She’ll never run out. She can’t. If she ever runs out of her own she’ll pick them up from the Darling and she’ll pick them up from the Barwon; from the deepest south to the farthest west she’ll pick them up, and she’ll never let you down. She’s the king of them all, the Castlereagh.’
Macauley sat down on the log, still eyeing him, sorting him out. How did they get like that? Too long on their own. Too long on the backtracks. Too much sun and too much space and not enough human voices. A pocket for everything like a filing cabinet. A set of habits like a tool chest and equally necessary. A pet phrase, a fixed row of words. A name for a pannikin and pals with a billycan. Tender with knick-knacks and touchy over trifles. The old maids of the bush.
‘What do you wear that thing on your head for?’
The swagman turned his head, peering first with his blood-shot eye, then with the other. He chuckled puckishly.
‘What is that I see? A little girl is it? Yes, a little girl.’
‘What is it called?’
‘That, my dear, is an eyeshade. Why do I wear it, you ask. For many reasons. To get the full benefit of the sun. To avoid the risk of having sweat rot what hair I have left. To scratch my head the easier. See?’ He demonstrated. ‘And so on. Now, if that was a hat I would have to take it off. I wear it to shade my eyes, that’s all, for my eyes are not what they used to be.’
From the look of it, Macauley thought, he had been wearing it since he was Buster’s age.
The swagman stood up, stretched himself, and slumped again. ‘You know me, of course?’
‘I’ve never seen you before,’ Macauley flattened him.
‘You know my name, though?’ The swagman said, and he said it, Macauley thought, as though it was on jam tins all over the country.
‘I might if I heard it.’
‘Desmond,’ said the swagman.
Macauley shook his head. ‘No, I can’t say I have.’
‘I take it, then,’ said Desmond, after a pause, ‘that you are not a great reader, or perhaps your memory is not as retentive as it might be.’ He leaned forward. ‘You can read?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Sort of,’ Macauley said.
‘Oh,’ said Desmond with a disappointed air. But he cleared his throat. ‘My name often appears in the pages of the Farmer and Settler, Country Life and The Bulleteen, and so on. I write verses, you know. You know what verses are? Poetry. That’s what I write, friend. And I just sign my name Desmond. Of course, my full name is Desmond Aloysius Thomas O’Dowd, and so on, but they can’t get it in, and besides a single name is easy to remember. Now does that recall anything to you?’
Macauley shrugged negatively. ‘Maybe it’s because I don’t read poetry,’ he said, easing the blow.
‘Oh, you don’t know what you’re missing, friend.’
‘Yes, I do,’ Macauley said. ‘That’s why I don’t read it.’
‘Well, I can’t understand that. Perhaps you will change your mind when you read my scrapbook. I have it among my things. Remind me to show it to you tomorrow.’
‘I’ll do that.’ Macauley couldn’t have been less interested.
‘They pay you for it, too. I do all right. I’m not too clever on the spelling, but I don’t worry about that. They’ve got some good spellers down there, and they always fix it up and so on.’
‘Fine,’ Macauley said.
‘But I can’t understand it, no, I can’t. It must be what one might say a bugger when a man can’t appreciate poetry.’
‘You mustn’t say that word,’ Buster piped up.
‘Word? What word, and so on?’
‘That word you said. It’s a bad word. My daddy said so.’
‘Go to sleep,’ Macauley said loudly, chafing with embarrassment.
Desmond cocked his head to one side like a cockatoo, and the firelight glistened on the eyeball of his one red eye. He tapped his forehead, muttering, raking his memory. Then he straightened up with an expression of shocked enlightenment. He swept his eyeshade off his head and bowed, slightly but quite sincerely.
‘Neither I should,’ he said. ‘Leastways not in the presence of a lady. I beg your pardon, young miss. It is very rarely that I make such a forks pass, and so on, I assure you.’
Macauley yawned. He had made up his mind. He thought the old bloke was all right – definitely kinked, but harmless. Still, he didn’t want him around, magging his head off. He’d had enough of his gab for one evening. He wanted to shake him off. And he wanted to do it without hurting Desmond’s feelings. He exercised every hint he knew, stretching, yawning, everything, but Desmond was only getting wound up. He had a whole lifetime of knowledge and experience, and a pillar of lore, opinions and comment the diameter and height of a jarrah, and so far he had only knocked a splinter off it.
Macauley thought a mug of tea might do the trick. He went down to the river and filled the billy. When he came back Desmond was perched on Macauley’s bit of log and leaning forward talking to Buster sitting before him.
He broke off and glanced up at Macauley. ‘Did she talk? Did she tell you a story?’
Macauley shook his head. ‘No,’ he said dryly. ‘She’s fast a bloody asleep, like everybody else ought to be.’
‘She’s not asleep,’ Desmond denied. ‘She never sleeps. She’ll talk if you let her.’
‘One gab artist at a time is enough for me,’ Macauley said, meaningly.
The shaft whistled over Desmond’s head. He went on to tell Macauley how you had to put everything else out of your mind and listen with all of your soul. He told him of the stories the river had told him: of the drover’s horse that whickered in the moonlight, galloping along the river bed, under the surging waters that played music in its nostrils and teased out its tail like a golden bush: and the ghost of the drover following after; he told of the fat Chinaman at Menindee: Hop Chick with the fat jolly face like a face nicked in a pumpkin by little boys, and how when he died they put him in a coffin they knocked together from bits and pieces, so that you could read on it: This Side Up; Handle With Care; Keep Away From Engine, and Powdered Milk, One Gross. There seemed to be no end to the tales of this quick-fire raconteur.
‘Here, get that into you
, Des,’ Macauley interrupted the flow.
‘Desmond,’ Desmond corrected him politely. ‘I don’t care for the abbreviation. Some people may be misled by it and so on; might think it short for desert, dessert or even dessatisfied. You see what I mean?’
He lifted his mug and took a loud schloop of tea. He continued with a further rigmarole about his name. Buster knocked on his leg like a door to distract his attention.
‘You know any more stories?’
No, moaned Macauley to himself. Aloud he said, ‘Didn’t I tell you to go to sleep?’
‘I know just the story for you,’ exclaimed Desmond with great vigour. ‘Wait till I roll meself a smoke and I’ll tell you.’
Macauley put a hand to his forehead and pulled it down over his face. He shut his eyes, feeling the daze of words. Desmond joggled a mouthful of tea, swallowed and began:
‘There was an ant who was dopey and half deaf, and because he was half deaf and dopey all the other ants treated him bad. One day the ant came scurrying into the nest full of importance. He had heard a great sound, he said, and it meant danger. They must move. He described the sound. It went like this: “Glup-glup-gleep. Glup-glup-gleep”. And so on. All the other ants laughed. And one said, “Our brother has heard a grasshopper drinking, and he fears it is a bad omen.” They laughed till it was like a little carnival in the ground. And the poor dopey half-deaf ant, he felt very downcast indeed. He was no good to anybody. He couldn’t do anything right. He put his head in his paws and cried. Then another day he heard another sound, but he only laughed and said to himself he was not going to make a fool of himself again. And so on. But all his brother ants told him to get out of the way. They shoved and jostled him. He saw them all making for high ground, and taking their bundles with them. He didn’t catch on. He only felt superior. In a little while he was all alone. The thunder rumbled and the rain came and knocked him flat. It washed him this way and that and pelted him about so that when it was gone he lay unconscious and half dead. He didn’t care much. He was too sick of himself to care about anything. Then he heard thunder. Boom-boom-boom, and so on. And the thunder was God. And God was talking to him, and this is what God was saying, “Lift up your fiddle-face. Throw back your shoulders. You are one of mine as much as the rest. And I have work for you. Go into that house and wake that sleeping child.” “Why,” said the ant, “why pick me for the job? I’m sure to make a botch of it.” “Who else shall I call upon?” said God in a boom of thunder. “There is not an ant left in the place, save you, and you are the one to help. Go into that house, I say, and wake that sleeping child.” And the half-deaf dopey ant staggered into the house not knowing what it was all about. But he soon saw. There was a child asleep in a basket on the floor, and at the foot of the basket was a great fierce tiger snake. The ant went pale. How was he to wake the little babe, and so on? He could only think of one way – bite the child. So he crawled into the basket, and worked his way along the chubby leg and up under the baby’s napkins. Then he braced himself and bit the nice warm flesh. And when the baby woke with a yell and squirmed and kicked the little ant nearly died with fright. He scrambled up the napkin and had a grandstand view of a man racing with a great stick and beating the snake till it was dead. Then a woman came and lifted the baby, and as she lifted it she saw the half-deaf dopey ant, shaking stupid with terror, and she said, “Oh, look, this little ant must have woke our baby and made him cry; it’s just as well, for if we hadn’t been roused our baby might be dead this minute. What a good little ant.” And she picked him up, and they kept him in a jar and gave him sugar and nice things to eat, and made a fuss of him and so on, and in that jar he lived happily for the rest of his life.’
Desmond stopped and stayed silent, savouring the hypnotised look on Buster’s face. Macauley, too, had observed the raptness of her expression all through the story.
‘Did the river tell you that story?’ Buster asked.
‘No,’ said Desmond, ‘my mother told me that story. For, you see, I was that baby in the basket.’
Macauley laughed loudly. He couldn’t help it. The prospect of this old bundle ever having been a baby seemed too ridiculous for words.
‘What’s the matter?’ cried Desmond, with some indignation. ‘It’s true.’
His sedateness only sharpened the ludicrous picture in Macauley’s mind. He burst into renewed laughter, stood up and staggered under its impact. Desmond looked cut to the quick. Macauley wiped his eyes.
‘It’s joy,’ he said. ‘I’m laughing with joy that you escaped.’
Desmond was satisfied.
‘Tell me some more.’
‘All right, I will.’
Macauley butted in firmly. ‘Not tonight, old-timer. No more. Save ’em up. She’s got to get some shut-eye now. I’m turning in, too. Good night.’
‘Oh, don’t mind me.’ Desmond blinked. ‘Go ahead.’
He turned round to the fire and pulled his seat nearer. Macauley got under the blanket and pulled it over his head. Desmond sat there a long time, talking to himself, or anybody that cared to listen. The fire burned down. Macauley dozed, conscious of the birl of sound drifting across to his suffering ears. He was about to yell, when he heard Desmond tell himself it was time all men were in bed, and he glimpsed him walking away towards his camp still talking.
Macauley approached his contacts next morning. The sawmiller said he could use him right away; the building contractor couldn’t give him a start until Thursday. Macauley thought it over, and took the second job. It was a job in which he felt himself freer to handle Buster. She could come along with him. Besides, it would keep him going for four weeks. The sawmiller only wanted a temporary hand and could not hold out anything for him after a week. He wouldn’t take him on for the few days until Thursday. To conserve his money, Macauley decided to camp on the river bank until he started work. Then he’d get into a boarding house or hotel room somewhere. The idea repelled him, but it was the best way out with the kid. On his own, he would have camped on or close to the building job.
He didn’t see Desmond all day, but at nightfall he was back on the same site. He saw him mooching over the flare of his fire, having his tea. It looked, Macauley thought, as if he wasn’t coming over tonight. Probably he had talked himself hoarse; or the novelty of new faces had worn off. He was back in the cupboard with himself. Not a bad old cow, he thought, but, hell, what an ear-basher.
Macauley was wrong. Desmond came over, all right, and he was all geared for action. He was in fine fettle, having just dined, he said, off the carcass of a chook kindly given to him by the cook at Tattersall’s Hotel. He had his scrapbook of cuttings which he took great pride in showing to Macauley. It was a sixpenny exercise book, stained and dog-eared; the cuttings were secured to its leaves by little strips of gum paper stuck across each corner. He got his gum paper free at any post office. Once the officials heard the purpose for which it was to be used, Desmond said, they were more than pleased to oblige him. They were honoured.
He insisted on reading some of his jingles. Macauley honestly thought they were not bad, and told him so. Buster was anxious to hear more stories, and Desmond was only too happy to tell her. Macauley left them to it, becoming no more than a thinker and a listener on the outskirts. He watched Buster listening entranced, creeping closer and closer to Desmond until she was sitting at his knee.
Macauley swung the billy when the moment came. By the time he had made the tea, Buster was yawning, but fighting against her weariness. Desmond was only getting his second wind.
‘You don’t know what a boneyard is,’ Buster said.
‘Everybody knows that,’ Desmond responded.
‘It’s where they put people when they get dead.’
‘That’s right. And so on.’
‘I seen a boneyard once.’
‘I’ve seen plenty,’ capped Desmond.
‘What’s people got to get dead for?’
‘They don’t get dead. They die,’ Desmond taught
her. ‘They die, see? Die is the word. Well, now, why do they die? Well, it’s a habit, just like anything else. Like eating and sleeping. They’re habits, when it’s all boiled down. When you get sick or worn out, and so on, it’s the habit to die. There’s nothing else left for you to do.’
‘Does everybody die – every everybody?’ She was struggling with the incomprehensibility of the notion.
‘Everybody in the world,’ Desmond said with great certainty.
‘Will you die?’
‘Yes.’
‘Gooby won’t.’
‘Gooby, too.’
‘Will I?’
Desmond seemed stumped for an answer. The subject possibly was getting too much for him. He looked at Buster, and after a pause patted her on the shoulder. ‘You look tired, young miss,’ he said. ‘You’d better lie down now and go to sleep.’
‘Will you tell me some more stories tomorrow?’
‘Yes,’ Desmond promised. Buster crawled under the blankets, yawning loudly. She settled down, and Desmond, his gnarled hands cupped about the hot mug of tea, kept looking at her, seemingly unaware of Macauley’s presence. He might have been alone in the solitariness of his camp going on with one of his soliloquies.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Even you. Even you with all your beauty and cuteness and charm; all your spirit and loyalty. The stars die and the greatest of the great trees; the fruit that comes in the gush of summer, and all the living things, great and small. The hills break down and the rivers change their courses. The beautiful women, the good men, the sweet children, the best pony you ever had, the prettiest houses, the dog on the tuckerbox – they all die.’
He said it with such feeling, with such mystified wonder that Macauley felt embarrassed as though he had no right to be there. He emptied the slops out of the billy, appearing not to have heard. To his surprise, the old swagman stood up and, ignoring him, walked away in the direction of his camp, mumbling, as in a trance.
Macauley found the restlessness stirring in him the next day, and he thanked God that he would have something to occupy himself with on the morrow. He and Buster went for a long walk down the river in the morning. They returned and had some dinner. Desmond was down on the bank with a couple of fishing lines. Buster spent her time running backwards and forwards between him and Macauley. Finally she stayed with Desmond while Macauley shaved.
The Shiralee Page 17