As yet, he had no idea what the best of him was.
His father hung around for a week to settle him in. Together they cleaned the place up and restored a garden that was eaten out by rabbits and overgrown with weeds. Mostly the purpose of his father’s staying was to keep an eye on Barlow, to make sure that he did not fall back into his old ways. The day before his departure, he told Barlow he was doing him a favour when he searched through his bags and packs and supplies. Finding a stash of vials and syringes in a silver tin, he made Barlow smash them in front of him with a hammer.
It was not that Barlow did not want to be clean, but he had found no surer way to relieve the back pain that plagued him, that came upon him without warning and lasted for days.
By habit and by design, Barlow’s mind was nothing if not expansive. He was open to alternatives. He sought them out, and before he left the city for his new posting he met a supple woman from India with a red dot on her forehead who was gathering recruits in an opium den. After Barlow described the particular pain he was in, the woman taught him a series of stretches. Before they fell asleep like a couple of cats on large cushions, they practised the postures together and she assured him they would bring him relief, immediately and in the future.
Barlow took up the routine with enthusiasm but when he demonstrated the series to his father one evening, he was surprised to find that his father became infuriated. He said, Son, it is undignified for a man to be bending and stretching in that way, and dressed in his pyjamas. If you have to do it, for God’s sake do it in private.
When his father finally left Barlow to his own devices at the station hut, Barlow again took up the routine. He performed it every day as the sun came up and again as the sun went down. If he felt any twinge of pain in between these times, he stretched himself out on the table in the station hut and swung his arms over his head and dangled there until he felt each vertebra lifting and the slow relief of it.
After a week or two Barlow’s mind was clear and his body felt good. The crowded feeling of the city left him and he found within himself an unoccupied space. It was something he had never known. He turned his attention to methodical tasks and with his full focus he ordered and sorted the hut and delved into the files he had inherited from the former police sergeant.
The post had not been filled for almost a year and the files were layered with dust and crawling with mites. Barlow was unperturbed. He cleaned each file and read it, examining each criminal’s headshot in detail and recording each face to memory so he would know them if he saw them, perhaps even on a dark night.
In one of those files Barlow found my mother.
She was the only woman in his files and aside from that her aliases intrigued him: Jessie Hunt also known as Bell also known as Payne. She had appeared in court on many charges of horse-rustling, under many different names. He lingered over her file longer than anybody else’s, staring at her image, unclipping it from the file, reading and rereading her history and the sergeant’s notes. He was disappointed that she no longer had to report to the station every month since her marriage to Fitzgerald Henry. But why was the file still there?
He examined her photograph with his magnifying glass and used the information in front of him to sketch a timeline of her life.
Jessie, he said, Jessie, Jessie, Jessie, as if his words alone would conjure her.
BY THE TIME she was fourteen her name was being chanted by crowds under the Big Top of Mingling Bros Circus. She was the Amazing Miss Jessie. Every night it was the same: Mirkus, the ringmaster, announcing her, Jessie running into the ring, the crowds yelling out, Miss Jessie! Miss Jessie! as she launched herself on to the podium. Josephine/Joseph tying her to the Wheel of Fortune, a Caped Man cartwheeling in from the side, drawing his knife and aiming at her while Josephine/Joseph set the wheel spinning.
The Caped Man, knife in hand, would dash around the ring, brandishing his blade in the air as Josephine/Joseph gave chase. When they lassoed him he would not stop running. He would slice the rope with his knife and throw the tail end of it into the crowd, who would be hissing. Josephine/Joseph would run back to the podium to spin the wheel. Then it was like this, always the same: the flung knife, the cackle, the bloodcurdling scream and the crowd whispering, Did he get her?
He never did.
Josephine/Joseph would untie her and she would cartwheel to a horse; still dizzy from spinning, she would jump neatly onto the horse’s back and flip herself into a handstand for a whole lap of the ring.
One night, after the show, as the crowd spilt out of the circus tent, a waif ran beneath the stalls, through the streams of light and dust and columns of shadows. He ran until he reached the end of the row and then, peering under the tent and seeing no one on guard, sprinted to the stables.
When Jessie reached for a clump of hay to feed her horse she grabbed a fistful of the boy’s shirt instead. She did not let go of it until she had pulled him right out of the feeder.
He was one of the filthiest creatures she had ever seen. Skinny legs and skinny arms and his head too big for his small shoulders.
Who do you belong to? she said.
When the boy said nothing she thought him mute. But he was not mute, he was mesmerised. Here was the Amazing Miss Jessie, the star of the show. He had seen her on all the posters.
At last he said, Miss Jessie. And then he bowed.
Where is your mother?
I don’t have a mother, he said. I grew on a tree.
You’re not a fruit, she said. Of course you have a mother.
I don’t, said the boy. And that was the truth of it.
What’s your name then, kid?
My name is Bandy Arrow.
She laughed. Who named you?
I named myself. I’m a performer, just like you.
Jessie walked him out of the stable and into the light to take a good look at him.
A performer? What can you do?
I can show you my round-offs and turns, he said.
Jessie watched as he launched his small body into motion. Blond hair like a flame, flame over feet, around and around he went and he did not stop until she told him to.
That was it. She was fourteen and he was seven and Bandy Arrow became my mother’s pet, her sparrow. When the troupe travelled from town to town they sat together on the back pole wagon. Their legs hung over the edge, way off the ground. It was their job to watch for horses that strayed from the procession. From the back of the wagon their view was wide and when a horse swayed out into open country, they would launch off the wagon and chase it down, pounding the ground with their bare feet, feeling the grass against their bare legs, without a care between them.
SERGEANT ANDREW BARLOW thought of himself as a Man of Science. It was more than just his fondness for scientific props, vials and test tubes or his various experiments in preparing opium. For him, it alleviated the pressure that was in him. It was the inherent discipline of it, the formulas, and he regarded it as another man might regard his religion. Barlow believed in gravity. Gravity helped him make sense of things. Every night as the sky opened up he knew it was gravity that was keeping the planets in orbit. And the days that he felt as though he might just float off the earth, he reminded himself of the fact of gravity. It consoled him.
Riding through Fitz’s forest, it was gravitational forces that Barlow had in mind. From his study of Newton’s Principia, Barlow knew well enough the pull that large planetary bodies had on each other. But until now, it had not concerned him what force humans, in their distance or closeness, might exert on each other.
He was thinking of my mother.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of bellowing. He caught up to Jack Brown and they rode on the track side by side, listening out.
The sound was disorienting until they found the source, a cow with its head caught in Fitz’s barbed-wire fence. They swung down from their horses and Barlow pulled a small pair of pliers from his saddlebag.
Jack Brown l
ooked surprised at Barlow’s initiative and he held the cow’s head while Barlow cut the wire from around it, and then they both stood back as the cow scrambled to its feet and took off down the track.
They rode out into Fitz’s paddock, Barlow wondering how all of it—himself, Jack Brown, Jessie, a bellowing cow—could fit into an ordered universe of perfect pull and perfect force.
But arriving at Fitz’s, Barlow was reminded of the catch in Newton’s theorem, his deus ex machina. It looked to him as though some furious hand had swept in and in one violent blow crushed the house.
With Jack Brown’s help, Barlow raked through the house, examined every surface. There were footprints leading in and out and Barlow concluded that a day or so after the fire the place had likely been ransacked, and if there were ever bodies to be found there, they had been carted away with the kitchen sink.
Life in the valley was grim. The place was full of desperate men and thieves. By Jack Brown’s telling, many of them were ex-soldiers who had been given plots of land, but they were not farmers and they did not know the land or how to survive it.
In terms of finding Fitz or Jessie there was little for Barlow to go on. The only way he knew how to approach the investigation was scientifically and methodically. He would begin by visiting every hut in the valley. He would piece together a trail. He could not guess, yet, what would be at the end of it.
It was Jack Brown’s idea that they ride to the postmaster’s hut, as the postmaster was the only person in the valley who knew what places were inhabited and what places were not. Arriving there, Barlow talked the postmaster through the fire and the disappearance of Jessie and Fitz. The postmaster seemed inspired and he began to make an elaborate drawing of individual huts. He had even begun to draw rooftops and chimneys when Barlow said, Thank you for your artistry, sir, but an x on the page will do well enough to mark a hut.
But Sergeant, said the postmaster, I am trying to show you that these are the huts I have delivered to and these are the huts I have not—the ones that in all my time have never received a letter or a telegram. And, sir, you can imagine what kind of man that is. Not used to visitors, I would say. But the huts with the chimneys are the ones that I have seen lately blowing smoke. So you know there is something live in there and will perhaps be cautious and prepared in approaching the others that may not.
May not what? said Barlow, confused by the postmaster’s explanation.
Have anything live in there, sir. The winter always claims some.
And whose work is it to find them, or bury them?
Well, sir, said the postmaster, unless they’re receiving mail it’s not my work to do. Perhaps it’s yours, Sergeant.
Barlow paced in front of the postmaster’s desk while he finished the drawing.
When it was done, Barlow presented it to Jack Brown, who had been watering the horses. It’s a work of art, said Barlow, only I have no notion where to begin.
Jack Brown smoothed it out across the horse’s saddle. Not bad, he said. The man is particular. For a start you can tell north by that ridge of the mountains. Over there are marked the plots given away to the ex-soldiers. But you see the river is over here. If you want to visit them all you’ll need to ride more or less in a circle. So, Sergeant, it won’t matter what direction you set off in first.
Jack Brown mounted his horse.
Where are you going, Jack Brown?
I’ve done what I can, Sergeant. I reported the crime, I took you to it, I delivered you here. Now the fact of it is that my boss has gone and he’s left me unpaid and idleness does not suit me. I need to find another employer.
Barlow began to panic. He needed Jack Brown. He knew he could not negotiate the valley without him and he knew there would be nothing more derided or endangered than a cop alone. Or, he guessed, a black man. So at least they had that in common.
How black are you, Jack Brown? asked Barlow.
Jack Brown turned on his horse to face him. Are you asking me what caste I am, Sergeant?
What I mean to say, Jack Brown, and I hope this doesn’t cause a man offence, is are you black enough to be my tracker?
Jack Brown laughed. What are you offering, Sergeant?
Room and a wage.
What’s the wage?
What does a man expect? Six or seven quid a week?
I’ll ride to the first hut with you, Sergeant. And I’ll consider it.
They had not reached the first hut when Jack Brown said, Sergeant, for seven quid a week I won’t get you lost. For nine, I’ll track anything with feet.
WITH THE GREAT War came the Great Suspicion. It rolled into Mingling Bros Circus of the World like a dense fog that clung to its stalls. Suddenly, there were no more crowds jostling to get in and those that did turn up came less to admire the performers and more to determine if the performers were not the enemy themselves.
The word was out—Miss Spangellotti and Mirkus were German. Patriotism in cities and country towns meant there was no place that would welcome them.
Regardless, the troupe moved from town to town in the hope there was somewhere that had not caught on to the spirit of the time. They tried novel things to bring audiences in, changing into their costumes by the side of the road and marching into towns with an elephant in the lead to create a grand procession. But most often by the time they reached the town their costumes were dusty and as they marched down the main street people eyeballed them from behind shopfronts or curtained windows. Some sent their children out to throw rocks.
It didn’t take long before the performers, including my mother, were missing their cues. No amount of putting on a brave face or coloured sequins could make up for their hearts no longer being in it.
The night a man in the audience threw a dead possum at Mirkus it happened to be the most well-timed stunt of the evening. The dead possum hit Mirkus’s shoulder and slid down his velvet jacket, landing at his feet.
Mingling Bros was over. Mirkus and Miss Spangellotti called in the troupe: the Indian Cyclists, Josephine/Joseph, Maximus and Minimus, the Russian Dancers, the Spanish Acrobats and Señor Donata. And, of course, my mother.
That’s it, my friends, said Mirkus. Let’s lickety-split. Let’s blow the whistle. Take your costumes and your horses. And for goodness’sake, take care of yourselves. The people are going mad and I fear this is just the beginning.
Everyone in the circus had a partner except Jessie, and it was evident again in their departing. Maximus and Minimus. The cyclists. Josephine/Joseph and Señor Donata. Jessie realised that she was the only one who would ride off alone. She thought of Bandy Arrow, her pet, her sparrow, who had disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared. No one in the circus ever spoke of him and she wondered if, in her loneliness, she had not conjured him then as she would like to conjure him now, an imagined and perfect friend.
After the demise of Mingling Bros, Jessie turned her hand to all kinds of things, and mostly they were other people’s things and other people’s horses. There was an industry in it, selling horses to the army for the war. Broken-in horses were in hot demand and my mother knew where to find them.
She was swift and efficient and, thanks to her circus days, she could pull off many disguises. She appeared in Parramatta Court half a dozen times with different aliases—Jessie Hunt, Jessie Bell, Jessie Payne—but the evidence was usually already gone, being shipped across the seas.
Until it wasn’t.
She was twenty-one years old when she was finally convicted.
By then she was a seasoned and well-regarded horse thief and when the crime was too effortless she would raise the stakes for her own amusement. It was when she swiped two chickens after stealing a horse that she was captured.
When she snatched the chickens from their coop, they were sleeping. With one hand she held both chickens upside down by their feet, and with the other she twisted their necks to kill them. But things did not go so well in the dark: one of the chickens began to flap its wings and she dropped it an
d it made a fearful racket. Unfortunately for Jessie, the owner of the chickens and the horse was listening out—lately his chickens had been preyed on by a fox. When he heard the sound of their distress he tiptoed out into the night with his rifle tucked under his chin. He was surprised to see not a fox but my mother coming out of the pen. He waited until she tried to mount the horse again, this time with two chickens under her arms, and then he stepped out of the dark and pressed the gun against her back and said, Lady, you’re a goner.
The man directed her, at gunpoint, to the police station. There was no one around in the middle of the night so he sat there with the gun at her back until morning. And then he stood over her, satisfied, as policemen pushed her fingers into a bed of ink and took her fingerprints. By the time the two policemen got her into a holding cell she had smeared them both with blue ink. She kicked and punched them and spat out insults.
We’ve got a wild one here, they said.
Before my mother faced the judge she did her best to make herself look neat. But even with her hair pinned up in braids, when she stood before the judge she could feel his judging eyes upon her and knew that he saw her every imperfection, inside and out.
For the judge there was nothing to consider. My mother had been caught in the act. He tallied up her sentence: twelve months for the horse, three months for each chicken and six months for the assault of the police officers, which he assured the court was lenient.
He said, In giving this sentence, it is my hope that this young woman might grow virtue, like a virtuous child in her womb, and the law will claim its paternity.
HER PHYSICAL ENERGY was almost spent but her mind was a flurry of memory and her memories were ceaseless. She sat down on a rock and squeezed her throbbing head as, one after another, the memories rose up. And as if there were pincers in her head, she would try to snatch a memory as it rose, to determine if that was the fate-altering moment when things could have been different.
The Burial Page 9