Cicada

by Moira McKinnon

  ‘Thank you.’ She tried to make her voice loud but he did not look back.

  She stood in front of the snake track, the red dirt seeping damp and hot into her sinking boots. She didn’t know what to do. She remembered. The sea. Somehow that made sense. She hurried to the crown of the hill. There was a dip and another rise and on that second rise a man sat, looking out over a narrow bay.

  Kathryn stopped. She had not expected something, someone, to be in her way. She should return to the hotel, but she could not return to walls that let in all the cackling chatter but held no answers, no clues. The police station—she could go and wait for the sergeant. She watched the figure, his red hair burnished with the last lights of the sun. There was something familiar about him. Kathryn took her boots off and walked in her stockinged feet.

  It wasn’t until she was beside him that she recognised him. He looked up at her but didn’t seem to be surprised by her presence. She went to sit by him.

  ‘Please.’ He unbuttoned his shirt.

  ‘I don’t care about my dress,’ Kathryn said, and realised this was more words than she had ever spoken to Trevor Bayliss in England.

  She sat holding the rosary beads in her hand. The tide was a long way out and the ocean floor was grey-streaked with streams of mud and dotted with black rocks and pebbles. Hermit crabs ran sideways across a thin white beach speckled with red rock and, further out, mud skippies flipped silvery in the blue sheen of the evening. There was no-one on the beach.

  Kathryn scanned the bay again, checking the shadows in the mangroves, for movement, for a form. She stifled a sob. ‘I received a telegraph with a message from Emily to come here to Broome town. A drover sent it.’

  Trevor didn’t reply.

  Kathryn was quiet, her lips moved a little and she twisted the rosary beads around her fingers.

  ‘Where is Emily?’

  Trevor raised his hands to his head and said nothing.

  Kathryn looked at the sea, so far away. She could only make out where the sky started by the white dots of the stars that were beginning to shine.

  ‘When will the ocean come back?’ she murmured.

  The arc of a fat yellow moon tipped above the darkness where the sea should be. There was a breeze behind them and a sudden sound of cicadas. Kathryn looked behind her. ‘What is that?’

  ‘Cicadas?’ Trevor turned to look at her. ‘They came early at the station, just before Emily left. An unseasonal rain woke them.’

  The moon rose, lopsided with the lower edge eaten away. It seemed to pause, bound to the earth by a hazy rope of light. The rope broke and part of the glowing thread fell to the earth and the other pulled into the moon.

  ‘Cicadas?’ Kathryn spoke softly.

  ‘Insects, beetles that sleep underground. When it rains, they tunnel their way up and are born into this world.’

  Trevor began to tell her the story, slowly at first. He told her everything he knew. The birth of the child. The killing of Jurulu. How he wished the drover had told them the women were there. He told her about the war and how it had followed him here, made him numb, and how the war ghosts disappeared and the Wandjina flew in the clouds. How he had tried to swim to Emily and the death of Juwurru Charcoal, who he considered his first and only teacher. What he had learnt of William’s death and how he thought it likely the women had killed Calhoon but he knew they would have done it in self-defence.

  The ocean lapped back towards them and the moonbeam was light and dark with the rise and fall of the waves. When the sun rose, the ocean had retreated again and the mud skippies were gold, the streams of mud like fiery lava and the hermit crabs on the little beach had shadows that made them look like giants.

  ‘I believe Wirritjil’s child is mine.’

  Kathryn closed her eyes and murmured a prayer, the rosary beads slipping through her fingers.

  ‘Do you condemn me?’ asked Trevor.

  ‘No, no,’ she let the jewelled beads pool in her palm and held them to her lips and whispered. ‘Jesus taught love and forgiveness and—’ she paused ‘—he kissed Mary Magdalene.’

  The sun was hot and it forced Trevor and Kathryn to look back to the town, to consider the day. As they came over the hill they saw Sergeant Perez coming from the direction of the Continental Hotel. They watched him go into the police station.

  Perez was perplexed by the judge’s sudden string of acquittals and minor moral lectures. It was after the midday break that Wirritjil was brought to the bench. There had been no rain for a day and despite the hot drying sun the air was steamy and the courtroom close and humid.

  Perez saw Trevor enter. He had expected him. He saw the woman and determined that she must be Emily Lidscombe’s sister. He immediately felt sorry for her and angry again at himself for not being able to save Emily. If only I had been a few minutes earlier. That was what he wanted to say to her, that was what he had wanted to say to Trevor. He had wanted to save her so much he felt in his heart that he loved her. He was not a bad man. He wanted to call that out to Trevor.

  The judge’s fingers tapped in a quick movement on his desk. ‘No translator. Is there representation?’

  Kathryn stepped forwards. ‘She pleads not guilty.’

  Perez’s mouth opened slightly and he closed it quickly.

  The judge leant over his papers. ‘She, Lady Lidscombe?’

  ‘Nyawama Wirritjil, speaker of Gidja tribe. This court has failed to provide a translator, Your Honour.’

  The judge looked at Sergeant Perez. Perez shook his head. The judge turned to Kathryn. ‘I am cognisant of that fact and the disadvantage it places on the accused. You have requested a review of the statement from the key witness?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Mr Jeferies.’

  Jeferies was sitting outside on a piece of grass that he vaguely realised was wet or muddy. The fear of dirty pants, though, was far from his mind. He counted Hail Marys on his fingers and hoped he would not be called. He froze when the constable appeared.

  In the courtroom they waited. The judge contemplated the accused. The woman was dirty, black, barefoot, and seemed recalcitrant. She looked, he thought, like a mistreated animal. He turned his gaze to Lady Lidscombe standing quietly in a light blue linen dress that came neatly to her ankles. Her small feet were clad in elegant calfskin boots. What vested interest could there be here, he thought, other than truth?

  Jeferies came into the courtroom stooped as if he held a great weight on his back. He moved in hesitant shuffling steps that made him seem old. He stood pale and shivering in the heat. ‘May I have a seat?’

  The clerk offered him a chair and he sat entwining his hands tightly to stop them trembling.

  Perez stood, preparing to read Jeferies’ statement once more. The judge put up his hand. ‘Mr Jeferies, I will not ask you to merely agree that your statement, as read previously by Sergeant Perez, is correct.’

  ‘Your Honour?’

  ‘That is easy, isn’t it—just to say yes.’

  Jeferies tried to steady his knotted hands but his skin was so moist the fingers slipped on one another, making squishing sounds as they came apart.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Recount the night of Mr John Calhoon’s murder.’

  Tom Jeferies was silent. His lips wouldn’t work. He couldn’t right then remember the words of his statement, yet he had recited it to himself night after night. The sweat dripped down and pooled under his chin. It collected in the palms of his hands, and trickled down the back of his shirt, from under his arms and the plumpness of his breasts to his belt.

  The room was silent and the fan whirred. People squirmed. The judge waited, drumming his index finger on the table. The court clerk glanced at the Bible that sat on the judge’s table and back to Jeferies. Jeferies stared at the ornate gold writing on the worn leather. He took a breath and looked up. ‘The white woman killed him.’

  There was a gasp in the room and silence again as the words tumbled out of Jeferies’ mouth faste
r than the courtroom clerk could take them down.

  ‘He wanted to do her. The gin. He shot at her then he gets her down, the black woman. Gets her trousers off, she was wearing trousers. That was true. Then the white woman she comes like a banshee out of nowhere and she plunges that there stick into his back. He rolls over. She picks up his gun and shoots him. John, he told me before, the gin was a killer, killed a baby and a black man and this white woman was under her spell, so I figure it would be good for the world if she was put away from everyone, so to speak.’ He looked around defiantly at the packed courtroom. ‘I was protecting everyone. I . . .’ He stopped as he saw Trevor.

  The judge waited but Jeferies said no more.

  ‘Truth protects.’ He turned to Kathryn. ‘Can you ask your defendant who the white woman was and where she might be?’

  Kathryn gathered herself. She did not know what to say. That Emily was in the sea with the turtle man?

  ‘The defendant last saw Emily Lidscombe walk into the ocean.’ Her voice began to crack. ‘It was, Your Honour, on Christmas Day.’

  Someone sniffed as if to stifle a sob.

  Sergeant Perez stood again, stating that he was present shortly after Lady Emily’s disappearance. He read his own account of the capture of the accused and the suspected accessory at a beach some miles north of Broome. He did not mention the shooting of Juwurru Charcoal, elder tribesman and justice of the Gidja people.

  Kathryn stood with her head bowed, letting words flow around her.

  The judge determined there was insufficient evidence to support the accusation of murder. He responded to the disbelief in the gallery by ensuring Wirritjil’s safety. He entrusted Sergeant Perez to take her back to her people.

  Perez’s face showed no sign of any emotion. He carefully, almost gently, unlocked the circle of iron from Wirritjil’s neck. He turned to the judge, bowed in a curt movement and said, ‘Your Honour.’

  He took Wirritjil by the shoulder, shepherding her. The crowd hissed. They did not believe she was innocent, and frowned and looked away from Tom Jeferies as though he had lied. Trevor pushed his way through. Perez took out his gun and held it low against Wirritjil’s back. Trevor saw his expression, the narrowed eyes, tight lips and the finger curled around the trigger. He stepped back.

  ‘Hell’s for yer, Perez.’

  Perez pushed Wirritjil into the police Model T Ford. She fell hard against the opposite door. He looked at her ugly, thin, wretched form. He despised her with an anger he could not fathom. She was a heathen and she had beaten him, but it was a small edge that the savages had. Perez felt his tongue working against the back of his teeth but his mouth was tight against his desire to shout at this woman, to swear at her, to shoot her. Hell for me, indeed. He kept his hands away from his gun, pushed them hard into his thighs. The judge was wrong. Bayliss was wrong. These barbarians should be shot from the front or the back. The civilised people would win in the end. They would win.

  On the road straggling groups, still sullen with their doused aggression, stood in the heat. The vehicle churned through patches of mud and the constable driving angled it to the solid parts of the road near the edge. They drove past the salt flats where they turned to scrub, to where the wooden sign reading broome was tacked onto a lone gum that seemed too small for the weight of it.

  ‘Stop,’ Perez called out. ‘Let her go here.’

  ‘It is too close to town,’ said the constable.

  Sergeant Perez held his breath and leant across Wirritjil. He opened the door of the moving car and pushed her out with his boot. Wirritjil stumbled and walked away, glancing back at Perez and the motorcar, and then began to run with both hands across her belly.

  Janarra called to her. He was breathless from running through the bush as he chased the car, dodging trees and anthills and jumping over logs. They headed towards the midden where members of the Gidja tribe had gathered for mourning. Wirritjil joined the other women, pasted herself with clay, coiled string, smeared in emu fat and red ochre, around her neck, cut her hair and her skin and cried out in grief. Others had taken the maban man to lay him on a burial platform high in the trees and were burning his karlumpum, the long spears carried by Janarra and the karrpakji, the clacking sticks scorched with the jaarinji of the green ant. Later his bones would be painted and he would be taken back to his country and the ceremonies would begin for his journey back to the dreamtime, the ngarrangkarni.

  18

  Janarra

  Each year in the lightning season, Wirritjil, Janarra and Ngamarru follow the stories of the white woman dreaming. Among the tools and grasses on Wirritjil’s belt is a small leather pouch made from the hide of the kangaroo killed by a short spear thrown by a maban man before the first rains of the Yuwinji. In the pouch there is a lock of white hair. When the wind blows where it shouldn’t, or a bird’s call is different or a green ant wanders alone, she knows the juarriny is warning them and they stay still and listen to the land.

  They visit the caves where the Walangkernany sometimes rests and they travel across the plain to the pool high on the range of the wallaby foot. They burn fires with little smoke using branches of the kunjiny tree and they suck nectar from the bottom of tubes of yellow flowers. Under the moon that is fat they tell stories of the dreamtime and stories that make them laugh about what happened in the day.

  In the ancient gorge on the Fitzroy River, ngamarriny, the jaarinji of Ngamarru, the white cockatoo, welcomes them, flying in a great curve with the yellow feathers on his head raised. They camp on the ledge and paint themselves in ash, ochre and clay, and sing and dance. They laugh at the lovesick moon being bitten by the stars and becoming skinny again.

  South of the Oscar Range they welcome the rain and watch the birds come sailing through the changing clouds. On the flat pindan before the coast they cross the flooding river on a raft of driftwood and Janarra stands tall, holding his strong spears, looking out for eyes and nostrils above the mud, the flick of a scaly tail, for they all fear the jaws of the saltwater crocodile, the janpawurrum.

  By the ocean they light a fire on the midden and the flames leap high and the storms come racing black and purple across the green ocean. They swim through the surf and when they dive deep they see the shadow of the turtle man and the woman behind his shield, playing in the deep greens and blues that change with the time of the sun and the colour of the sky. The great turtle visits them on the shore between the tides and they hide their spears and listen to the song.

  Sometimes as they cross the tracks they see Aboriginal prisoners chained together, using shovels to widen the roads that link the east to the west and the north to the south. The police sit on horses or sometimes in motorcars that have no roofs. They carry guns and whips. Mules pull carts of gravel that the prisoners spread to cover the wheel-clogging mud of the wet season. Wirritjil makes Janarra and Ngamarru hide in the grass and they stare at the motorcars and hold their noses for the smell.

  Near the towns and the roads they rub black ash on Ngamarru’s honey-coloured skin. They do the same when the police and the agents of AO Neville come to Cicada Springs hunting for coloured children. Kathryn hides Ngamarru in a kitchen cupboard or pushes him under the Prussian blue chair with its fading velvet borders that hang all the way to the ground.

  In later years, when the station started to make money, Trevor took Wirritjil, Janarra and Ngamarru to the coast in his motorcar. Janarra grew wild on the firewater in the towns, for as he grew older he realised he nursed an anger in his heart. The drink was all that stopped him throwing his spear hard and fast into the hearts of white men. For a while he stayed with the men of his kind at the ends of dark littered streets or in open spaces surrounded by circles of rum and beer bottles. He laughed with them, joined in their drunkenness and their fights. When he could no longer bear their haunting listless eyes and the crawl of his skin when he woke in the morning he ran back to the bush.

  Under the ripple of blue leaves as the bark of the cabbage gum turns
vivid white before the rains, Jangala Janarra teaches Jagada Ngamarru, his uncle, all he knows and all that his uncle’s mother, Nyawama Wirritjil, and his grandfather and grandson Juwurru Charcoal had taught him.

  ‘This,’ he says to Ngamarru, as he sings the bird call, ‘is teriitterriit telling everyone that the plums are ripe and that rain, he’ll come soon. If you don’t listen hard enough the tiyirannpe will tell you quick, them big cheeky black birds with fire in their tails.’

  He looks at the moon and thinks of Juwurru Charcoal’s words and he knows they are true. The before and the after they come together and there just is.

  Glossary

  Aboriginal languages are oral tradition and have only in the last few decades been put into writing. The spelling of some words will differ slightly according to source.

  Key

  a Australian general

  g Gidja

  j Jaru

  u Aboriginal general use in Kimberley

  w Walmajarri

  acacia (a): shrub-like plants, generally prickly, thin-leaved, many types

  bacca (a): tobacco

  Bardi (u): west Kimberley coastal language group, from the peninsula north of Broome

  bendee gum (a): small tree with rough bark found on the edges of waterways and often bent in the direction of the flow of the water

  billy (a): metal can usually with a metal handle to boil or cook food over a campfire

  binykan (g): sweet lerp, a sugary-tasting waxy secretion made by insects on some gum species

  brumby (a): wild horse of mixed breed

  Bunuba (u): central Kimberley language group, from around and north of Fitzroy Crossing

  cobber (a): friend

  dilly bag (u): bag woven from fibres, often of pandanus palms, to carry food and implements

  djinganarriny (g): child spirit

  drover (a): person who assists moving cattle from one place to another, often over long distances, usually contracted for a specific drive

  double gee (a): prickle with three rigid spines