Cicada

by Moira McKinnon

  The boy lifted his head but did not meet Trevor’s eyes. ‘He say big rain bin come. Go after big rain.’

  ‘Big rains might be here for many months.’

  Trevor took bread and dried beef from his saddlebags. He broke the bread in his hands and put the pieces and the beef on rocks in front of Charcoal. The boy went over to a large tin of water, dipped a small basin-like labi in the tin, filling it and returned, putting the bread and beef in the labi. He sat it next to Charcoal so that it rested against his knee.

  ‘Where was Charcoal born?’

  ‘Big desert country thatta way.’ The boy pointed south-east.

  ‘Ask him how he knows the rain is coming.’

  The boy hesitated then asked the old man. The old man replied in slow mutterings that went on for some time and the boy laughed wide with strong white teeth, and the old man laughed too and then they were both quiet.

  The boy locked his arms behind his back. ‘He looks dat sky, see it comin’.’

  Trevor smiled. ‘You right there.’

  Charcoal began talking again, quick this time.

  The boy nodded and faced Trevor, looking right into his eyes. ‘There ’em snake, one, in the water, in the waterhole, river, them big all over, maybe underground, sometime he come up, we sing ’im down, sometime he travel longa bit, make rain.’

  The three were quiet. Trevor standing, the boy half his height and the old man sitting cross-legged in the dust. Trevor sat down. The boy did too.

  Charcoal talked as he pounded the seeds, which were now almost as fine as the dust on the ground. His voice rose and fell, he dropped the rock and held out his arms straight and made the sounds, ‘Kawk awk awk awk.’

  The boy was listening hard. He turned to Trevor. ‘He say ’em, all ’em birds. Him bin go, him bin come. Bird come with big sharp thissa one—’ the boy pointed to his mouth ‘—longa tail, he black and white, white here—’ the boy ran his hands over his chest ‘—blacka here—’ he held his arms out ‘—and bit blacka here—’ he pointed to his backside. ‘Them bird lay ’em eggs in nests not belonga him. All night he go kawk, awk, awk. Then rain come.’

  The old man laughed and nodded. He put his hand into the labi and picked out the sodden damper and slurped it out of his cupped hands. The boy pulled a strip of beef from the water, chewed it a bit and gave it to Charcoal.

  The women crept back to the camp with the babies. One looked at the fine seed dust being picked up by the slightest breeze and scolded Charcoal. In the distance other hunters were returning, jogging slowly, carrying kangaroo and turkey on their shoulders. There was sudden action in the camp. The women stoked the fires, dug oven holes, and others looked around for where the ochre and clay had been put. The boy disappeared, called by his hunting companions to prepare their game. Trevor was forgotten in the commotion.

  Trevor packed up as he listened to the talk in the beer yard. He slept in the bush and in the morning rode leading two horses. The camp was sleeping after a night of feasting and dancing but the old man and the boy were waiting for him. They said they would come with him for a bit. Trevor didn’t want to tell Charcoal that a stockman from Cicada Springs had been killed with a woman’s digging stick and that the police had sworn to have the murderer hanged.

  A gleaming two-door Model T Ford was parked at the front of the Fitzroy Crossing police station. The station was empty except for two men: Constable Linklater, a large man with blond hair who stood at the door, and Sergeant Perez, a small wiry man with olive skin and a thin oiled handlebar moustache who sat at Linklater’s desk. In front of Sergeant Perez, on a piece of cotton cloth, were a gun and a piece of wood.

  Perez touched the wood with the tip of a silver letter opener. It rolled, revealing a burnt pattern of waves and dots. It was a dark-coloured wood that had been smoothed to a shine and shaped to a sharp point. The point and much of the shaft was stained with blood. Perez spoke as he rolled the wood. ‘My ancestors on one side were Spanish. Two great countries, Spain and England, came together in war. Countries of equal civility. The outcome was a good mixing. An enriching battle. Can you imagine the British when the Spanish Armada came sailing so bravely, all the sails full? Much of what they learnt then contributed to the greatness of British sea power.’ He looked up at the constable as if to emphasise his point. Linklater nodded.

  Perez continued, ‘Here, there is no meeting of minds. The gulf is too wide between the races. Savages cannot mix with an advanced society. Add the Asians. Smart but no order. Look at the scuffles in Broome town. I knew allowing Asians to stay and breed would cause problems. Throw the pearls down and those who have not sworn allegiance to the King’s order, they behave like dogs.’

  Linklater’s boots were tight; he wished he could sit and swing his feet onto the desk as he usually did. He was a heavy man, fair-skinned with cheeks that turned scarlet in the heat. He uttered a small ‘ahem’ as if clearing his throat. ‘It’s risky, that pearl diving. Lot of ’em die . . .’

  ‘They gotta work. Learn manners. How to bloody speak. They can’t expect milk and honey.’

  Perez pushed the digging stick hard with the letter opener. It rolled off the cloth onto the bare wood of the table. He stared at it. ‘Iron wood, a killing stick for goannas. A killing stick. Corresponds with Mr Tom Jeferies’ story.’

  Linklater shifted his weight a little. ‘Sir, I have never heard of a black woman killing. They just don’t. And why would she attack a man relieving himself?’

  ‘Who else would use this weapon?’ Perez stood up and marched back and forth behind the desk. ‘You saw the body. Brutal. The gun was likely his and he tried to defend himself but he was already close to death. It was sport to end him with his own gun.’

  Perez looked at Linklater and frowned at the continued doubt on the constable’s face. He raised his hands. ‘You know the native mind? Jeferies works for the Aboriginal Protection Board—think he’d lie? And if so, why?’

  ‘We will be questioning people from the camps, sir.’

  Sergeant Perez opened his eyes wide and his lips tightened. He sat down and picked up the gun, examined the smooth wooden grip with the polished diamond shape in the centre. He pressed the hammer. The barrel sprung open. ‘Yep,’ he said, as though he had thought about it many times, ‘a young strong woman, she could do it.’

  A single fly buzzed in the heat of the room and the shirts of both men were wet with sweat. Perez closed the barrel and laid the gun across a typed sheet of paper. ‘Jeferies insisted she was alone. There is a story that this woman kidnapped a white woman, and not just a white woman, an English woman of significant inheritance. Do you know where that woman, Mrs—or should I say Lady Emily Lidscombe, is?’

  Linklater opened the door; the air outside was as hot as inside. ‘No. John Calhoon came here with a Trevor Bayliss. They were searching for an Aboriginal woman and a white woman. Bayliss has been seen down the river bed and at the camps. We are trying to find him.’

  The sergeant stood. His clothes were neat and despite the humidity kept the lines of a careful pressing. He twirled the upswing of his moustache. ‘Do you know much about him?’

  ‘He and Calhoon weren’t getting on.’

  ‘Indeed. And Bayliss has disappeared. The answer, my friend, is most often simple and always the one which characterises human behaviour at its worst. Using those guiding principles, the story is Trevor Bayliss and the Aboriginal woman have something going on. They got into trouble somehow, needed to get rid of Calhoon.’

  Linklater frowned. ‘And Lady Lidscombe?’

  ‘Dead I would think, and the pair is probably responsible for that Aboriginal murder at Cicada. You know of it, don’t you?’

  ‘We don’t follow up all Aboriginal murders.’

  ‘This one seems connected.’

  ‘Connected?’

  ‘Jesus, Linklater. Black man murdered at homestead. White woman kidnapped. Same place. Calhoon was scared. He talked about it at the inn, about the black woman. Tha
t she had murdered before. What I don’t understand is the silence. We need to track the black woman. Warn the stations. We have nothing on Bayliss, so for the moment we are after the gin for murder, Bayliss for questioning.’

  ‘Sir, that may scare the pastoralists. End up in more shooting.’

  ‘Constable Linklater—’ Perez put his palms face down on the desk ‘—this woman has killed possibly her own kind, definitely our kind, and she is out there maybe with fire weapons. If we are lucky, Lady Lidscombe remains a hostage and is not a pile of bones left over from some ridiculous vaudeville ceremony.’

  Perez walked over to a metal-pressed box sitting on a wooden filing cabinet. He ran his hands slowly along the edges. ‘Lady Lidscombe has been gone for well over a month, apparently, yet no-one has visited Cicada Springs station?’

  ‘No-one here knew. To my knowledge her husband has said nothing. Cicada Springs is outside our jurisdiction.’

  ‘Outside your jurisdiction!’ Perez flicked open the lid of the box, straightened and faced Linklater. ‘This is a white woman. It has to be sorted out quickly. This country does not need another Aboriginal uprising. Remember Jandamarra? Seven he killed, some had families. Children left without the guiding hands of their fathers.’

  Perez took a brown envelope from inside the box. It had a circle cut in the middle showing the centre of a gramophone record. ‘Ride to Halls Creek, pick up a constable from that—’ he stared straight into Linklater’s eyes ‘—“jurisdiction”. Bring back Mr William Lidscombe. Tell him it is on His Majesty’s order.’

  Perez watched Linklater leave, his figure framed by the door growing smaller as he moved into the haze of the day. Perez returned to the metal box and lifted out a gramophone, put it carefully on the desk and attached a trumpet-shaped speaker. He cranked the handle on the side and as the haunting violin of a Bach sonata filled the room he crouched by a bucket of water, dipped in a clean white handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face.

  William sat on the kitchen floor with his back against the wall. His left thigh was swollen and red and blood oozed from the entry point of the spear. He had sawed through the shaft with a bread knife and cut the tip from above his knee. He gripped the frayed wood with pliers and, clenching his teeth against the pain, he pulled, but the spear did not budge.

  He must cut his leg open to get it out. He needed to gather courage; instead he had allowed himself to dream, to spend hours pretending Emily was stroking his face with one hand, a cool gentle touch, and in her other she had a towel soaked in water that she held to his lips.

  He had finished his rations of water. The cups lay sideways on the floor where he had thrown them. His thirst returned and he knew he had to go to the creek. He took his rifle and picked up two buckets. It was no longer just the pain, for his swollen leg would no longer bend at the knee and he could not move his foot, it was as though it was not his own and served only to burden the rest of his body with weight and agony. He walked moving his left leg from the hip in a wide arc.

  At the creek, he lay with his speared leg across his good leg so that the remaining shaft of the spear just touched the sand of the creek bed. The water flowed over his body. Above, the stippled branches of the river gums made clean lines against the blue sky. He felt a sudden solace in the starkness of the bush and the coolness of the water and, without thinking, he thanked God. ‘Heaven, here in this little creek bed.’

  He laughed then stopped, for it hurt. He fought against the desire simply to close his eyes and sleep. He felt his leg slipping and the splintered shaft sinking into the sand, pushing at an angle inside his flesh and gradually pinning him to the creek bed. He wrenched his leg free and ran, screaming, swinging the buckets, not caring that the water sloshed to the ground.

  In the house he moved sideways down the hallway, inching his right foot forwards and dragging his left leg behind. He gritted his teeth against the searing pain as he fetched letters and the notebooks of his poetry. Back in the kitchen he put the paper under kindling wood and made a fire in the stove. He poured what was left of the water from the buckets into a billy.

  A black butcherbird stood at the kitchen door. William picked up a piece of wood and threw it. The bird skipped out of the way, settled, and then abruptly flew a few feet away. He balanced on one foot and fixed his red-circled eyes on William. William picked up another piece of wood. His fingers were white, trembling with the tension of his grip. He closed his eyes and took a long even breath. When he looked again the bird had disappeared.

  He dropped the wood and moved quickly. He took the boning knife from its hook on the wall and sliced away the remnants of his trousers. He dipped the knife into the boiling water in the billy and held it high. The edge glinted. He ran the point along the pale skin of his thigh and gazed at the red line and the blood that seeped from it.

  Then it began, a whistling gasp in his chest turned into a deep rattle and he could not stop the coughs that came, tossing over each other until he spat the curd-like lumps from his lungs and windpipe. He fell back, exhausted, and the knife clattered to the ground.

  He slept fitfully through the one night and another, sucking the remainder of the water from the billy. He woke with his lips parched and sticking together. A fly crawled across the floor onto the wound and he felt it nibble at the point where the spear pierced his skin. It was joined by another. He took the boning knife and struck at the frayed wood again, but it was stained with blood and his skin and muscles were torn and he was no longer sure what was wood and what was flesh.

  He longed for the interminable thirst to be quenched.

  ‘I will drink,’ he whispered, ‘and then I will cut my leg off.’ He laughed with relief at his determination. ‘Yes, I will.’

  He found three canvas bags in the store room and waited until the cool of the evening. The three-quarter moon was already bright. He lay on his right side and pushed himself forwards with his elbow. He stopped and started again. At the creek he drank long and slow. A dingo came, snarling and sniffing, edging back and forth. William pulled a branch from a tree and waved it, snarling back. The dingo sat on his haunches, the moonlight gleaming in his eyes. William slung stones towards it, grunting with the effort. The dingo sloped away but stopped at a clump of tea tree and lay down with his head on his paws, almost hidden but for the shine of his eyes.

  William stretched across the stream, positioning the canvas bag so that the flow of water would go easily into its small opening. He heard voices upstream and saw a thin plume of smoke coiling through the sky. There was a crack of a stick by the side of the stream. He blinked and focused. Hazy shapes of a woman and a boy disappeared into the bush.

  ‘Help!’ he called out.

  They were gone.

  ‘Damn it.’

  He grasped onto the trunk of a slender gum bent over the stream gum and hauled himself up. He hopped a few steps and fell. He dragged himself and the three bags over the stony ground and scratchy lawn to the kitchen. He slammed the door shut and let his body fall and his consciousness melt away.

  He dreamt of himself and Emily picking fruit from the trees on the estate. It was summer and butterflies fluttered with blue and white wings.

  ‘You are my butterfly,’ said Lady Josephina. Her goldtinted hair shone in the sun.

  The Earl took a blood-red apple from Emily’s pail and handed it to William. ‘Here is your name, take it to your heart, Lord William Bayliss.’

  Emily clapped as he bit into the apple then laughed as the dry dying fruit rasped on his tongue.

  The thirst came back. He sweated. The light from the moon was feeble in the stone-walled room. He felt cold. Shapeless monsters with bleeding sores on their bodies and feathers around their heads came and went. A pack of dingoes with human faces loped into the kitchen, urinated on the walls and left. The damned black ghost kept swinging on the tree, reflected in the window, even in the shadow behind the door.

  He slashed at his leg. He hacked at his leg. It bled black bl
ood. The pus oozed. The spear stayed.

  In the morning he was exhausted, exhausted of fear and thirst. He had spilt the water, or drunk it. There was none left. He tried licking at the salty sweat at the side of his mouth and on his shoulders.

  The kitchen door opened. William grabbed his gun. There were no bullets. He had sprayed them at the monsters and the black ghosts. The walls and windows were full of holes.

  A thin, scraggly black hand pushed a tin into the room and retreated like a gnarly snake.

  He pointed the gun at the tin.

  A wrinkled face appeared at the door close to the ground. ‘Mister.’ The hungry gin tipped the tin with her hand. ‘Kurrngam.’

  He heard the water slosh.

  The woman shuffled, crouching, into the room. ‘Bacca?’

  William nodded.

  She held the tin to his lips and he drank. She put it by his side and made her way to the cupboards.

  12

  Fire

  ‘Yuwinji. ’im come.’

  The clouds came layered, rolling big and purple. Fires sparked by lightning blazed, sometimes low and unhurried across the grasses, sometimes in furious gulps, eating spinifex and leaping into the trees, sizzling and sparking with the oil of the leaves.

  For several days Wirritjil and Emily travelled westwards in the scrub between the river and the rough pindan track that went to Broome and Derby. They hid when carts and horses passed. A Dodge car chugged by, a box with bug eyes, its narrow wheels crawling over the rocks, a small tray on the back full of boxes and the occupants shadowy and straight behind the glass. Wirritjil dived to the ground, crawling away as quickly as she could.

  Emily walked, hardly feeling the ground, not noticing the sky. What had happened seemed incomprehensible then terrifying; a world was fading from her reach. Wirritjil came up beside her and steered her away from the road.

  Emily grasped at Wirritjil’s belt. ‘I killed a man.’

  Wirritjil nodded and looked back to the road.