Cicada

by Moira McKinnon

  Emily sat at the edge of the firelight. She wished she had something to cover Wirritjil with, to cover herself with.

  ‘Mr Drover, if you cannot protect us both then I must refuse your kind offer.’

  The drover turned his gaze back to Emily. Wirritjil crept into the shadows without a sound.

  ‘She can look after herself in the bush—you can’t.’

  Emily clasped her hands together. She felt her lips quiver and for a moment she could not speak. She stood, holding her hands straight by her side. ‘Mr Drover, I would be most grateful if you could send that telegraph as soon as possible. My servant and I will continue our journey unaided.’

  ‘What’s yer name?’

  Emily opened her mouth but there were no words.

  The drover handed her the torn cloth with the message on it. ‘Read it to me.’

  They stood on either side of the dwindling fire. The drover held his hat in his hands near his chest and bowed his head. Emily let the folds of her nightdress fall and she grasped the piece of cloth in both hands. She read slowly and as she finished two curlews cried out in a haunting exchange and the night became quiet again. Emily held out the cloth to the drover but he did not take it for a moment, his lips moving as if in some kind of prayer, a murmur, and a name. He looked up and reached out, touching the edge of the torn piece of dress. Emily kept her hand still. The drover smiled. It was a slow smile, a sad faraway smile.

  ‘I’ll try for yer, Miss Lidscombe.’

  He took the fabric, folded it carefully and put it in his pocket. He led his horse into the bush and the dog trailed behind.

  The fire was black and the stars that made up the Wadul were dipping below the line of the earth. The moon bitten on its edge paled as the sky lightened. Emily shook out the new clothes. Wirritjil refused the trousers. Emily tried them.

  ‘You think I am going to change into a man.’

  ‘You man.’

  Emily managed a small laugh. ‘Trousers won’t turn you into a man.’ She turned the pockets out; a sixpence and a pound note fluttered to the ground. She looked to where the drover had disappeared.

  The trousers fell around her feet. Wirritjil set the spear in her hair and drew out pieces of string from her belt. She twined them together and gave it to Emily to tie around the waist of the pants.

  Emily started to laugh but stopped as the laughing sapped her energy, sadness welled up in her and hurt so much that she let herself sink to the ground. She looked up at Wirritjil, so strong, her slim arms with the grey-flecked scars, her polished spear and her belt full of bush tools. Emily’s eyes stung and she fought to stop tears.

  ‘You don’t need me, do you? You could go into the bush or even the desert and be safe from me, this hunt, these men, these hunting men.’

  Wirritjil took a step towards Emily and extended her hand to help her. Emily refused, stumbling as she stood. She swayed and stabbed her finger into Wirritjil’s arm.

  ‘I sent him away. Barbarian. You can’t speak English. Look at you. Where is that dress? Where are you taking me? Where?’

  The birds stopped their morning talk. Emily’s finger jabbed at the air. ‘You! Where you go? Where you take me?’

  Wirritjil took a step back. Her eyes were wide. ‘Walk you Miss Emmie, datta way—’ her palm pointed south-west, opposite to the way they were headed ‘—rain come. Go back datta way.’ She moved her palm to face east, the direction they had come from.

  Emily stared at her. ‘That makes no sense.’

  She sat down. Tears came suddenly, coursing down her cheeks.

  ‘I am lost.’ She looked up at Wirritjil. ‘You help me, come to Fitzroy with me, find the policemen. They can take us to Broome, where the ships come in.’

  ‘Policeman.’ Wirritjil said the word slowly and stared out to the plain. She turned back to face Emily. ‘Fitterroy,’ she added and stared at the ground.

  Wirritjil sat by Emily. The sounds of insects were faint in the bush, a soft rustle here and there of small animals foraging. Wirritjil rose and added water to the previous night’s tea leaves in the billy. In turn they drank until the billy was dry, sucking the leaves before spitting them out.

  Wirritjil wrapped the drover’s shirt around her head and the shaft of the spear that was stuck through her hair, and strung the billy from her waist. They strapped the leather bag with its small bulge of water onto the brumby’s neck with the drover’s rope and walked to where the bushes thinned at the side of the plain. In the distance, they heard faint sounds of whooping and hollering as the drive got going.

  They stepped out into the plain. There was a call, a high-pitched sound, and an urgent get back, get back. Then there was another get back, lower pitched and interspersed with a throaty whistle. Emily jumped and peered over the back of the brumby.

  Wirritjil pointed into the line of trees. Emily could see them, birds with grey heads, masked eyes and puffed white chests.

  Wirritjil nodded to the south. ‘Dey come, miss.’

  Wirritjil led the horses onto the plain. She did not seem to worry about their tracks. They made their way to the east side of the valley. Emily looked south for the dust of the hunters. The land and the sky were clear. She peered at the ground to see if the brumby’s hoofs made a different mark on the surface marked by thousands of cattle hoofs. She could see no difference.

  Wirritjil stopped when the sun was directly above, choosing a strong leafy gum tree for shade. They sat on the drover’s blanket, feeling the heat of the ground come through it. Wirritjil picked out leaves that were covered in white flakes, a waxy substance left behind by insects.

  ‘Binykan.’

  She scraped the flakes from the leaves and licked them from her palm. Emily copied her. The binykan were sweet. Emily searched for more of the white-flaked leaves and tore them from the tree. Her tongue became furry and dry, and still she searched, climbing the tree to reach for the higher branches and falling back, sliding, exhausted. Wirritjil gave her water and scraped a shallow hollow in the ground for her.

  Emily rested her head in her hands as thoughts came and slipped away. Surely if they are coming we should be moving.

  The dust was like a mist on the plain, forming shadowy shapes then dispersing again. She stepped into the sun and its intensity bored into her. She retreated to the shade and closed her eyes. Sleep did not come but memories did. She tried to stop them but they were like the clouds of a storm building around her, layering in dark banks, tumbling into her lap.

  At first she had been frightened of the horses of Cicada Springs. They were unruly and fierce or distant and lazy. John, the head stockman, rode them until they were bowed and beaten, their eyes wide and terrified and their bodies covered in frothy layers of sweat. The horses tore at each other in the yard as though they had nothing else to take out their anger on. Jurulu was treated like the horses. They beat him with a whip until he did exactly what they wanted. They beat them all with whips, the horses and the Aboriginals.

  William told the workers that it had to stop. The natives were not to be treated like animals. He walked into the camp and took them presents: picture books, a shirt, a cap, some billies, tea and sugar. Trevor got the horses working and calm. He and Jurulu brought the brumbies in riding through the dust. They broke the horses without whips. They cut cattle quicker than anyone else and roped the young horns and branded fast. They rode out to the plains hunting for brumbies with good lines, the thoroughbred mixes with deep chests, long legs and springy fetlocks.

  Trevor rarely spoke to her, as if he was afraid of her. She was afraid of him, his clouded eyes and set mouth. One mustering day she watched him staring at the sky that was stretched bigger than the world and his hands were by his side closing into fists and opening again.

  It was sometime after the first muster, the beginning of the second year, that William started to beat the natives. He grew angry that there was no child. There was no child, no heir to tie the Bayliss family forever to the Lidscombe fortune
.

  She heard him say that his family had been forgotten. There had been no thought, no question of involving anyone else but William in the marriage. She had never seen his mother, only his father, if it was him, in the distance as he worked on the estate. Trevor was given to them because he was useful with horses.

  A shadow came across her thoughts. She opened her eyes. Wirritjil had thrown the blanket on the brumby and folded it to be comfortable to sit on. Emily touched the brumby’s shoulder.

  ‘When I get back, things will be different. I will ask after his mother and father and when in England invite them for tea.’

  The brumby looked at her with inquisitive eyes.

  ‘I will get back,’ she said, pulling herself up and straightening the blanket under her, ‘and sort everything out.’

  They followed the wide track of the herd for three or four hours, the black earth rising in powdery puffs with their steps. The drive would set their camp soon.

  Wirritjil edged over to the eastern side of the plain. ‘Datta way.’ She indicated to the east then arched her hand in a circular movement to the west.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Dat way, miss.’ Wirritjil moved her hand in a wide arc again.

  ‘Around?’

  Wirritjil paused. ‘Yes, Ammee.’

  They headed up the incline of the range on the east. It was not hard going but the horses were tired and thirsty. They plodded. The sun set and the herd, ahead of them, came to a halt for the night.

  Emily looked behind her. ‘They will see our tracks.’

  Wirritjil nodded.

  On the plain, the herd milled as the drive came to a stop. The men unloaded the stock horses and made camp among a mixed grove of leafy green nut trees and spindly hakea with clustered fingers of thin grey needles. Two campfires were struck, a roaring campfire over which a metal frame was placed to hang pots on, and a smaller campfire for the blackfellas. The men took their hats off and shared a half-bucket of water, washing their hands and faces.

  The drover rode to the south and looked back. No dust, no wind. He rode to the east, close to the edge of the plain, and saw a bird start quickly from a tree. He settled his horse to be still and scanned the other side of the valley. There was movement. He could just make them out in the twilight walking slowly across the hills. He watched awhile and went back to the camp.

  Wirritjil and Emily concentrated on seeing the snake holes and shale that the horses might slip on in the twilight. They kept to the low rise of the range for an hour or two then sloped back down to the plain in front of the herd. The mare limped and Wirritjil walked. Emily hoped they would cross to the other side and camp, but Wirritjil kept them going north, where the herd would be driven. They walked on the edge of the plain, close to the line where the scrub became thick. The lopsided moon rose well after the last glimmers of daylight and brightened the night. As the sky lightened at dawn Emily begged Wirritjil to stop.

  ‘The drover said Fitzroy was south-west,’ she called out.

  They passed a wide dry creek bed but Wirritjil ignored it and instead of checking for water kept the horses going north as the sun came piercing and hot over the horizon. The brumby stopped and refused to go further. Wirritjil poured water from the leather bag into the billy and gave both horses a short drink. It was their last water.

  The valley baked. The herd was long behind them.

  Wirritjil scanned the bush line to the west. Here the trees, acacia and wattle bushes were thick but the range rose sharply behind the margin of bush in jagged steps of orange dotted with slender white gums. She led the horses into the bush and they turned back, heading south, picking a path deep into the scrub. After a couple of hours they came across the wide white creek bed, the watercourse they had passed. They turned and rode east alongside it, back towards the plain, for a short distance. Emily ran her tongue over her lips. The sun was almost directly above them.

  A mighty river gum, its green leaves bright against the white wood of its trunk, sat tall on the outward sweep of the watercourse. This was where in the wet season the water would spin down, flanking on the curve before spilling out to soak the plain. The bank was several feet high and the tree’s massive roots, exposed by the torrent in the wet, twisted through the air and sand, had grown bark.

  A flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos decorated the tree’s great branches like flowers. They screeched at the appearance of horses and people, flapping their wings in a dance of white fans, raising the yellow feathers of their headdresses to look like plumes of a war ceremony. They stayed in the tree, hopping from one foot to another as they peered down at Wirritjil digging in the creek bed.

  Wirritjil felt dampness in the pebbly sand and dug hard until water began to seep and wet her fingers. After some time she was able to scoop with the billy and fill it to a third. She came up the bank and gave Emily sips and let the horses take a mouthful each. She took the leather bag with her and came back with the billy and bag full. On her third trip Wirritjil made a small cairn of pebbles under the roots of the tree and placed the rolled cigarette the drover had given her inside it.

  In the evening, Emily went down to the creek. Wirritjil’s well was about three feet deep with small stones and pasted clay on the sides. The water on the bottom was several inches deep and clear.

  The three men and four horses rounded the southern end of the range. They waded into the sea of hoofmarks the herd had left behind. A single gust of wind came hot from the south and sent a spinifex ball tumbling before them.

  ‘Hey, Billy Gum, where’s water?’ John called to the black tracker.

  ‘Little bit thatta way.’

  Trevor wiped the dust from his lips. ‘Cattle. How far away?’

  Billy Gum jumped down and walked slowly in a large circle. He held up one finger, waggled his palm and held up two fingers. Cattle flies came in clouds and the tracker spat as they crawled on his mouth. He walked away, crossing the plain, looking at the stories of footsteps in the ground. Trevor and John dismounted and drank in the shade of their horses and in a cloud of flies, waiting for the tracker to return.

  ‘No tracks.’ Billy Gum pointed south.

  Trevor turned northwards.

  Before dark they saw where the cattle had halted and churned, ripping every blade of grass from the soil, and they saw the deep scuffs of the fights of young steers and the dusty dips where cows had slept. The cattle drive had camped in that spot.

  The two hunters and the tracker camped. Billy Gum sat a way back under his own tree with his swag, which was just one blanket, his khaki shirt and a flour bag full of lengths of hair string, dried leaves and shells from ancient inland seas.

  Trevor set the billy on the fire and mixed flour to stew with dried beef and onion.

  John raised his hipflask. It was empty. He kicked at the dog as it crept closer to the fire. His eyes narrowed at Trevor. ‘You don’t drink, do yer?’

  ‘Nup.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My mother drank, my father drank.’

  ‘I thought they were, like, workin’ class.’

  Trevor nodded.

  ‘We don’t have that much here, you know: workin’ class, the lords ’n’ that.’ John sucked on the end of the hipflask and stuck his finger into the opening. He pulled his finger out and licked it as he spoke. ‘I never saw my mother. My father, he drank. He beat me real bad. I was bad. Stealing bread from his plate once. Broke my arm then. The only person that didn’t beat me was my granma. Yer could do anything, like, and she would hug yer in her arms and tell yer how good yer were.’

  Trevor stirred the stew.

  John threw his flask on the ground and took out some tobacco. ‘Old ladies are the best people in the world. The world should be full of old ladies.’

  Trevor handed John a plate of beef swimming in the floury fluid.

  John pushed at the beef with his fork. ‘Did yer ma die drunk?’

  ‘She died of consumption, like Billy had, but he lived and she di
ed coughing and real thin.’

  ‘Billy?’

  ‘William.’

  John laughed, spitting a bit of stew on the fire. ‘William Lidscombe. Big boss.’

  Trevor ignored him. He took the tracker a plate of food. He stopped and looked at the sky. He was afraid of it, the sky. It was there facing him when he was trying to sleep, with all the men that might come out of it, in their uniforms with their bayonets and hidden wounds and the horses, jumpy at the smell of fear and gunpowder.

  ‘Hey.’ John rolled his swag out. ‘Why yer scared of him?’

  Trevor stepped back into the firelight. He cleaned his plate with a handful of dry leaves. ‘William?’

  ‘Yeah, boss boy. Is it ’cos he can read and write and you can’t? I can’t and I’m not scared of him.’

  ‘No,’ said Trevor, ‘I’m scared because he can play the pianer.’

  John hooted with laughter and Trevor walked away from the light of the fire to stare down the phantoms in the sky.

  In the morning they searched for clues. Trevor led the horses and the black tracker walked in the scrub, squatting down every now and again to look at a turned rock or examining the trees where the bark might be scraped or the leaves crushed. He called out. He had some tracks. Hoof indents in the scrub moving south from the cattle camp. He followed the prints, weaving in the scrub. Trevor caught up to him. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Cowman horse.’

  They made their way through stands of trees with heaped rough bark and drooping branches of bright leaves. Dried nuts decaying to stringy fibres littered the ground.

  Trevor dismounted. Billy Gum pointed to the row of slight indents, horse tracks coming in from the plain.

  John pulled at his horse to make him stand still. ‘So they camped here?’

  ‘Yeah, boss.’

  ‘Stockman came?’

  ‘Yeah, boss.’

  The prints were lost out on the plain and the men followed the path of the cattle drive. Billy Gum went back and forth. On the east side where the land sloped upwards, he stopped. ‘Tracks dat way.’