Crow Country

by Kate Constable

  She couldn’t face slinking into the kitchen, filled and overflowing with the strong laughter of the women. They would probably despise her, too. Sadie slid down the wall of the hallway and sat on the threadbare carpet.

  Lily’s uncle was Jimmy Raven; she was sure of it. And her auntie, Jimmy’s wife, who’d seen him in a dream and searched for his body – what was her name?

  ‘Netta,’ whispered Sadie. ‘It was Netta.’

  Jimmy was the clever man, and something had been stolen from him. Gerald must have taken something from his body. His wallet? A key? It must be valuable, if the crows were so determined that it should be found. A watch, a ring, a medal? A paper with a secret? A will? A map? Sadie’s head spun with possibilities.

  After what seemed a long time, the door opened and Walter poked his head out. ‘She wants you to come in again,’ he said. Sadie scrambled up, and Walter laid his hand on her sleeve. ‘You gotta understand – whitefellas have done lots of bad things in Auntie’s life. It’s hard for her to trust – someone like you.’

  ‘But I’m not a bad person.’

  ‘No one thinks they’re a bad person,’ said Walter. ‘I’ll bet even Gerald Mortlock didn’t think he was a bad person. Just be careful with Auntie, that’s all.’

  Sadie edged into the darkened bedroom. Auntie Lily beckoned her close to the bed and grabbed her hand, as if to stop her from running away.

  ‘Walter told me the crows talk to you. That true?’

  Sadie nodded.

  ‘And you seen my uncle?’ Auntie’s voice was stern.

  Sadie lowered her eyes. ‘Yes.’

  ‘In a dream?’

  Sadie hesitated. ‘A kind of dream, I suppose. His name was Jimmy Raven. He got in a fight with – with another man. And his wife’s name was Netta.’

  Auntie Lily took in a long breath, and nodded. There was silence in the dim room. Sadie could hardly see Walter standing in the shadows.

  ‘You got some blackfella blood in you?’ Auntie Lily asked suddenly.

  Sadie was startled. ‘No.’ Then, uncertainly, ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know much about Dad’s family. I don’t know.’

  ‘Huh,’ said Auntie Lily.

  There was a pause. At last the old lady said, ‘You seen Crow’s messengers. You seen my uncle. Walter says you can keep secrets. That right? Can you be trusted, Sadie Hazzard?’

  Sadie felt a stab of guilt as she remembered how she’d betrayed Waa’s place to Lachie. But she’d never do something like that again. She whispered, ‘Yes. You can trust me.’

  Auntie Lily shifted slightly on her pillows. Slowly, softly, she said, ‘A clever man got special things, sacred, secret. He keeps them wrapped up, keeps them safe. No one allowed to see, no one allowed to touch. My Auntie Netta, she never could find out what happened to my uncle’s special things. Maybe someone steal them, use the powers.’ She shook her head. ‘Bad luck from that.’

  ‘It’s breaking the Law,’ said Sadie.

  ‘That’s right. That’s right.’

  ‘You think that’s what the crows want us to find? Your uncle’s special things?’

  ‘Find his special things. Find his body, bury him proper. Take him back to his own country.’ Auntie Lily shrugged. ‘I dunno what the spirits want. You the ones who talk to the crows, eh, you the ones they talk to.’ She dropped back suddenly against her pillows, and fluttered her hand to dismiss them. ‘I’m tired now.’

  ‘Auntie?’ said Walter. ‘Can’t you tell us what they are, the secret special things? Only it’s going to make it hard to look for them, if we don’t know what they are.’

  Auntie shook her head, her eyes closed. ‘Maybe them crows, they tell you. Maybe you have another dream. Maybe you see my uncle again, watch him good. Maybe that man who killed him, he take them away. You watch and see.’

  ‘Thank you, Auntie,’ said Walter. ‘Thanks for talking to us.’

  ‘Thanks, Auntie,’ Sadie managed to say. She sidled to the door.

  Walter lingered by the bed. ‘And if we do find them, should we bring them to you?’

  Auntie Lily’s eyes snapped open. ‘Don’t you kids go poking at them secret things,’ she said sharply. ‘Not for you to look at. You bring them straight to me, wrapped up good. Not for me to look at, neither. But I know the right person to give them to. You bring them to me.’

  ‘We promise,’ said Walter. He backed out of the room and joined Sadie in the hallway, closing the door softly behind them. He muttered, ‘Only we’re never gonna find them. How can we find them when we don’t even know what they are?’

  Sadie caught his arm. ‘But we can – maybe I can. Didn’t you hear what she said? I can find out. I can go back to 1933, back to that night. It’s the only way.’

  Walter considered. ‘But you can’t decide to go back, can you? You can’t click your fingers and go. Every other time you kind of fell into it; you didn’t control it.’

  Sadie’s face fell. ‘Yeah,’ she said slowly. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘I reckon the Mortlocks have got them,’ Walter said, low and fierce.

  Sadie stared at him. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s why they had bad luck. Gerald Mortlock died, didn’t he? And his dam dried up, and their creek, and they’ve got no money, and Lachie’s a dickhead, and his dad’s a dickhead too.’

  Sadie couldn’t help giggling. Then she said softly, ‘But the Hazzards had bad luck, too . . . Clarry and Sadie died as well . . .’

  Walter shook his head. ‘I reckon Gerald Mortlock stole them off Jimmy that night. It makes sense, doesn’t it?’

  Sadie gasped, and clutched Walter’s arm. ‘Craig said the other day that he had some Aboriginal bits and pieces lying around—’

  They stared at each other.

  ‘They got them in that big old house,’ Walter said, ‘hidden away somewhere.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  Walter drew himself upright. ‘Easy. Go and take them back.’

  They had to wait a week, until Saturday, when Craig and Amanda and Lachie would all be at the football. Bethany had gone back to university; Walter heard Lachie telling someone in the corridor at school. Not so long ago, Sadie would have envied Bethany that long trip back to the city, but not now.

  ‘You guys not coming?’ Ellie raised her eyebrows. ‘Again? Not interested in the triumphant march of the Magpies into the finals? You realise if we beat Donald today, Boort will actually be in the semis next week?’

  Walter shrugged and stared at the carpet.

  ‘We’ve got stuff to do,’ said Sadie. ‘We need to work on that project.’

  David put his arm round Ellie. ‘They’ll be all right. Leave them to it, eh?’

  ‘We don’t have much time,’ warned Sadie, as the door shut behind Ellie and David. ‘The game’ll be over in a couple of hours.’

  Walter slung a backpack over his shoulder. ‘Better get moving.’

  Sadie locked the door and dropped the key into her pocket, and they set off, heading inland, across the railway tracks, away from the town and the Little Lake, toward the Invergarry homestead.

  ‘Any crows talk to you this week?’ said Walter. ‘They give you any more clues?’

  Sadie shook her head. Walter began to whistle between his teeth, a monotonous insect whine like a miniature trail bike.

  ‘Stop it,’ said Sadie.

  Walter stopped.

  After a pause, Sadie said, ‘Are you nervous?’

  ‘Nah,’ said Walter. He jammed his fists into his pockets. He was walking so fast Sadie could hardly keep up.

  ‘What’s in the bag?’ she panted.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Walter. ‘Yet.’

  Sadie had a few moments of panic when she thought they’d taken the wrong road. She’d checked the map, but had forgotten to bring it with her. She was scared, even if Walter wasn’t. Breaking into other people’s houses wasn’t the way she normally spent a Saturday afternoon . . . Maybe it would be a good thing if they were
lost. Then they could go home, or go and watch the footy after all, have a sausage in bread and cheer on the Magpies.

  She was almost disappointed when they reached the gate, with its crooked sign announcing Invergarry, and a battered milk can for a mailbox.

  They stood by the side of the road, staring at the sign.

  ‘What if they’re home?’ said Sadie. ‘What if they haven’t gone to the game after all?’

  Walter shrugged. ‘Say you’ve come to visit Lachie.’ He looked at her sideways. ‘You guys are kind of friendly.’

  Sadie was stung. ‘Not now. Not since they yelled at us. Not since they wiped their boots on the stones. Not since they shot the crows.’ Listing the Mortlocks’ crimes fired her resolve, and she grabbed the top of the gate and clambered over. ‘Come on.’

  Walter landed with a thud beside her. A deeply rutted dirt track unspooled from the gate, stretching between flat paddocks dotted with grey sheep.

  ‘Pretty long driveway, hey,’ said Walter after fifteen minutes.

  Sadie quickened her pace. Surely they must come to the house soon; they couldn’t have missed it. But the track seemed to go on forever, a salmon-coloured ribbon winding through the scrubby grass.

  At last they came over a shallow rise, and the homestead was revealed on the crest of the next hill: a square, grey box, surrounded by lawns and flowering shrubs, a splash of lush green in the midst of yellow-grey paddocks. A small dam nearby was ringed with eucalypts, their trunks gnarled and twisted, their frayed crowns whispering in the breeze. A flock of cockatoos wheeled across the winter blue, their wings dazzling white in the sun, and dis- appeared over the horizon.

  It was so beautiful. And the Mortlocks owned it all, further than the eye could see. Maybe if this was her backyard, she’d want to protect it, too.

  Walter scanned the area outside the house. ‘No cars,’ he said. ‘No one home.’

  He broke into a trot as he set off down the gentle slope, his bag swaying on his back.

  The garden was surrounded by a low stone wall with a wooden gate. Walter lifted the latch.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Sadie.

  ‘Gotta check no one’s home.’ He marched up to the front door and buzzed.

  Sadie’s heart hammered as they waited in the silence; but no one came.

  ‘Okay,’ said Walter. ‘Now we go round the back.’

  They flitted around the side of the house. Walter peered through the glass in the kitchen door. ‘Can’t see anyone.’ He moved from one window to the next, trying each sash in turn. At last he gave Sadie a thumbs-up. He’d managed to shift one up a few centimetres. ‘Gimme that box; I need something to stand on.’

  ‘This is burgling,’ said Sadie. But she fetched the box.

  ‘Not if they leave the window open.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s right,’ said Sadie doubtfully.

  Walter climbed onto the box and gave the window a good shove. With a creak of protest, it slid up. Walter pulled himself onto the sill and wriggled inside. There was a loud thump and some swearing.

  Sadie hugged her hands beneath her armpits and glanced around anxiously until Walter’s curly head reappeared.

  ‘Easy,’ he said. ‘I’ll open the back door for you.’

  A minute later, Sadie tiptoed into the Mortlocks’ kitchen. It was vast and old and lined with crooked cupboards. A long wooden table ran down the middle of the room, heaped with papers and fruit bowls and a pair of shoes that someone hadn’t finished cleaning. Little rooms led off in all directions – a walk-in pantry; a funny little room with a sink and haphazard shelves stacked with crockery; a space crowded with boots and hats and coats and umbrellas; a glassed-in verandah. Everything was still and musty and cold, but scrupulously clean. Pictures hung on faded wallpaper. Shabby roses on the carpet had been almost trodden away. The canvas backing showed along the centre of the hallway.

  ‘Where do you reckon we ought to look?’ Walter’s voice was hushed.

  ‘How should I know?’ Sadie shivered. Though the house was empty, she felt as if a crowd of ghosts were watching her. She walked down the hall, peering through doorways. The first room held a TV, leather couches, trophies on the mantelpiece, school photos of Bethany with her two blonde pony-tails, and Lachie, freckle-faced and hair sticking out. Sadie ducked out of the room, feeling embarrassed.

  In the next room, a sewing machine sat on a bench under the window, neatly folded bolts of fabric were arranged on shelves, and a naked dressmaker’s dummy stood by the door.

  ‘Nothing there,’ said Sadie in a hushed voice. Her toes curled inside her shoes. The longer they stayed there, the deeper they crept into the house, the more convinced she was that this was a mistake.

  Walter called softly from further down the hall- way. ‘In here.’

  He’d found a room with a huge fireplace and a pool table, overhung with fringed lights. The room was as dark and hushed as a church, the walls lined with sepia photographs in heavy wooden frames.

  There was a photo of two soldiers posing stiffly in uniform. There was a bridal couple, the man’s face half-hidden by a moustache, the bride in a froth of creamy lace, clutching her bouquet under her chin and looking scared. A family group stared solemnly at the camera, the baby just a blur where he’d wriggled at the wrong moment. A gold-edged diploma from the Tonic Sol-Fa School of Vocal Music, for Felicity Mortlock. A medal with a letter signed by George V, thanking Edwin Mortlock for dying for the Empire. A medal for George Mortlock, elaborately framed and mounted – For Acts of Gallantry and Devotion to Duty Under Fire. A map of Invergarry, showing the dams and the homestead and the Boort road – Lake Invergarry was shaded in blue. It was the history of a family, generation after generation, ranged on the walls.

  But the room didn’t tell the whole truth. Sadie knew that. Beneath the proud photos and the certificates lay shame, and stories never told. Where was Gerald Mortlock? Where was the Raven family, who’d lived and died here, too? And beneath that lay yet another layer of history, deep and still as rock, alive as the land itself . . .

  Walter breathed, ‘Here.’

  Sadie joined him before a glass case in a corner of the room. Two stuffed wallabies gazed mutely, mis- erably, back at them. A set of labelled rocks. A piece of coral ringed with cowry shells. The bleached skull of a bird. A pipe and a black silk tobacco pouch.

  Sadie whispered, ‘Those belonged to Mr Mortlock . . . Gerald Mortlock, I mean.’

  Walter pointed with a shaking hand.

  Right at the back of the cabinet, almost invisible in the shadows, was a pile of bones.

  A shock like an electric jolt ran through Sadie’s body. Without intending to, she groped for Walter’s hand, and he gripped hers, both of them mute with horror.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Lachie stood in the doorway, his fair hair tousled, his blue eyes blazing. He snapped on the lights, and Sadie and Walter flinched from the sudden glare.

  Sadie faltered, ‘We were just – looking.’

  ‘How did you get in here?’ Lachie stalked forward. Sadie shrank back, but Walter stood his ground.

  ‘The back door was open,’ he said defiantly. ‘Go and look, it’s open.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s open now,’ said Lachie. ‘But I didn’t leave it open. I locked it up myself. Came back to get my footy boots and I find a couple of dirty little thieves have broken in.’

  ‘We’re not thieves,’ said Sadie. Her tongue felt thick inside her mouth.

  ‘Liar,’ said Lachie.

  Sadie saw his eyes flick to Walter’s hand clutching hers. She gripped Walter’s hand even tighter and stared back at Lachie.

  ‘We didn’t touch nothing,’ said Walter.

  ‘Because I got here in time to stop you clearing the place out,’ said Lachie. ‘You think the police are going to believe you?’

  Walter caught his breath. He muttered, ‘No need for that, mate.’

  ‘I’m not your mate, mate.’

  �
�You think this is going to make you look tough?’ said Sadie, shrilly. ‘You think your dad’ll be impressed? You think Nank and Hammer and Troy and Jules will think you’re a hero? Me and Walter aren’t exactly armed robbers.’

  Lachie blinked, then recovered. ‘Doesn’t matter. You’re still criminals.’

  Sadie flung out a finger to point behind her. ‘Where did those bones come from?’

  Lachie screwed up his face. ‘I dunno. A kangaroo or something. Who cares?’ He took another step forward. ‘You better start thinking about what you’re going to tell Brad Ringrose down at the police station. Better think about calling your lawyer, mate.’

  Quick as the flash of a lizard’s tongue, Walter moved. He shot round the other side of the pool table and darted for the door, yanking Sadie with him. Lachie dived sideways and grabbed at Sadie’s jacket, but with a desperate wrench she wriggled free and pelted down the hallway after Walter. Lachie hurtled after them. Sadie and Walter skidded across the linoleum floor of the kitchen and flung themselves at the open door, at the square of cool air, at freedom.

  'Run, run!’ yelled Walter. He let go of Sadie’s hand and they raced across the yard. A dog began to bark wildly; they veered away from the sound, away from the farm buildings, sprinting in the opposite direction from the way they’d come, weaving between the gum trees and across the paddock.

  Sadie’s heart drummed in her ears, a stitch burned her side. She looked back. ‘He’s not following us!’

  Walter slowed down, glanced over his shoulder. ‘Oh, yes, he is.’

  And then Sadie heard it too: the whine of the trail bike.

  ‘Split up!’ Walter shouted, but they kept running side by side, racing across the hill. A wire fence loomed ahead and Sadie slid to a halt – what if it was electric? But there were no warning signs, and Walter was already scrambling through.

  ‘This’ll slow him down,’ he panted, and Sadie nodded, tangled in the wire; she had no breath to reply. She wriggled through to the other side, and then they were off again, running until it seemed their lungs would burst.

  Behind them, the angry buzz of the trail bike rose and fell. Sadie’s frantic gaze swept the horizon. Where were they running to? Deeper and deeper into Invergarry, deeper into Lachie’s territory? She wished she could remember the map. Her breath tore in her chest.