Brother Wayne’s chance came the following week when he and Brother Brian were sent down to the camp to find an absconded inmate. At the western side of the mission, a track led to the beach where the supply boat moored when it came in; the camp was situated further down and around the bend where a freshwater creek flowed into the sea. Brother Brian hated being dragged away from his triple ledger for something as mundane as chasing up a kid who probably wouldn’t be there anyway, and he griped and whinged all the way down the track to the beach.
‘And why couldn’t that lazy cow Sister Annunciata do this?’ he moaned to Brother Wayne who just nodded and kept walking. ‘Or that Sister Clavier? She needs to burn a bit of fat off that lard arse of hers.’
Brother Wayne eyed the abundant cheeks bouncing around in the seat of the trousers in front of him and looked away in disgust.
The beach was empty, which was nothing unusual at that time of morning, but the tide was quite high which meant a strong current was racing through. Suddenly he made up his mind to do it then and there and no-one was more astonished than Brother Wayne himself. He had only meant to knock Brother Brian to the sand and grab his glasses and hurl them into the waves. So it was with some surprise that Brother Wayne watched Brother Brian land blindly in the foaming water, lose his footing and bob away rapidly on the rip. He watched until the little dot that was Brother Brian’s head reached the bore* where the other two islands met, where it disappeared in a flurry of choppy waves.
*A bore occurs when there is a meeting of different currents (usually around islands but sometimes in deltas where the river meets the incoming tide). There is a lot of disturbance in the water and sometimes a difference in the depth of the water on either side of the flurry.
There wasn’t a lot to tell the stunned Father Macredie except that Brother Brian had fallen into the water and got carried away. And that was the end of it. He had spoken the truth and his conscience was clear.
But curiosity had gotten the better of old Tarrti and she went down to the spot to check things out for herself. She read the tracks and the story in the sand and knew better than most what had really happened. But like Brother Wayne, she didn’t like Brother Brian and was really good at keeping secrets too.
Pwomiga
Things had settled down a bit since the death of old Jerrekepai, and his nine wives had been duly passed on down to his brother Pwomiga* who was now the envied husband of fifteen wives and father of their thirty-three kids. This included the six wives and nine children of Perraka†, another brother who had died from eating a dodgy oyster a few years earlier.
*Death Adder
†Useless Hunter
But Pwomiga didn’t share the other men’s enthusiasm and since Jerrekepai’s recent death and that of Perraka he had been silently cursing their decision to endow him with their human chattels. And it wasn’t because these hand-me-down wives and their offspring were particularly unsavoury or troublesome – in fact some of them were quite charming – but because he simply had never wanted the burden of wives and children to distract him from his job of speaking to spirits and bringing rain. He had specifically asked Jerrekepai, Perraka and their other two brothers Kumwarrni*, with four wives and sixteen kids, and Jerrengkerritirrti†, with three wives and no kids, not to do this to him. But these four brothers had harboured a grudge against Pwomiga because up until her last gasp Pwomiga had always been their mother’s little favourite, and this would be their final way of getting back at him.
*Ugly Face
†Ghost
Since the death of their father Jerrekepai, twelve-year-old Taringa (Ignatius) and Terika (Ephraim) had been living at the bush camp with their mothers. Messages had been sent from the mission for the boys to return but they had been ignored and the two boys continued to play with their mates down the swamp where they knew they weren’t allowed to go.
Their favourite game was called mopatiti†. Taringa and Terika would dress up in their mothers’ flour bag dresses and pretend they were two nuns who had been washed up on the shore in a shipwreck and forced to marry two men from the swamp camp. That was fine until a party of men returning from hunting caught two of the older boys giving it to Taringa and Terika up the arse. All four were soundly flogged and taken back to the camp to their mothers who gave them a good flogging as well.
Pwomiga, a handsome but slightly built man, lived alone away from the bush camp where he could perform his business without too much distraction. The six wives and their kids that had been left to Pwomiga by Perraka had always been left to their own devices at the bush camp, and the only visitors to his hut were those who brought him food or those who required his services, and that was the way he liked it. But all that was about to change.
Pinyama and her sister Kwarikwaringa, having been embroiled in a particularly messy dispute over another four women’s husband, decided that if they wanted to avoid serious injury a change of scenery might be a wise decision. Packing their tungas* they headed for Pwomiga’s place with Taringa and Terika in tow. But Pwomiga, who was part way through preparing a love spell for a man who desired the grandmother of one of his wives, was not happy. Trying desperately not to lose concentration, he continued with his preparations and ignored them. This was fine as far as the sisters were concerned and, sending the boys off for more firewood, examined their new home. It was spacious enough although more leafy branches over the front would ensure they could both sit outside when it was raining. And Pwomiga would have to build himself another lean-to a bit further away as they’d heard from one of the other wives that he was a chronic snorer. They hung up their tungas and settled down on Pwomiga’s wallaby skins for a little snooze.
*bark baskets
The two boys returned with their firewood and Pwomiga, who had given up working on his spell, eyed them off in their flour bag dresses. He’d heard stories about these two boys and the sight of them mincing around left no doubt in his mind that the rumours were true. They had inherited the beautiful fine features and small statures of their mothers and not the grizzled lantern-jawed face that Jerrekepai’s other sons and some of his unfortunate daughters had ended up with. They stared brazenly back at Pwomiga, something else that they’d gotten from their mothers as well.
‘Why aren’t you wearing any clothes?’ asked Taringa, the younger of the two, as they eyed off his well-formed genitalia.
Pwomiga blushed to the roots of his hair, although it wasn’t noticeable under his black skin. He uncrossed his legs and stood up to leave. He could feel their eyes boring into his arse cheeks as he stalked off with all the dignity that he could muster.
Two days later Pwomiga returned to find all his inherited wives and kids and their dogs at his camp site busily munching on the remains of a wallaby. His hut had been enlarged, and two more had been erected nearby. A small one, which he rightfully supposed was his, had been placed a good distance from the others. On examination he found his wallaby skin and belongings had been neatly placed there, along with a bailer shell of water with a stick insect swimming serenely around its perimeter. A bunch of kids went racing past, the smallest lagging behind and screaming at the top of her lungs, while another group ripped branches off trees and chased each other with them. Somewhere else a baby wailed while two women argued over whose turn it was to feed it. He could feel something mushy under his left foot and looked down. Some kid had taken a crap right in front of his hut.
It was probably at that point that murderous intent began to replace sensible reasoning in Pwomiga’s mind. He returned to the main camp fire where some of the wives were sitting gossiping and quietly sat down and closed his eyes. After what they considered to be a respectful pause with nothing forthcoming from Pwomiga, they went back to their nattering taking no more notice of him except for Taringa and Terika who were eyeing his private parts off again.
In the early hours of the morning he finally rose
from his place by the fire. He listened carefully but all he could hear were the sounds of sleeping women and children, interspersed with the odd cough and fart. A few of the dogs were awake but it wasn’t them that he was concerned about. He wet his finger and held it in the air to see which way the breeze was blowing. Kicking the fire back into life he selected a long blazing stick and then calmly proceeded to each hut. He stuck the blazing stick onto the dry bark which momentarily smouldered before catching fire. He then calmly turned and walked off into the night.
Thanks to the women and children’s natural instinct for self-preservation, and the dogs who barked furiously when the huts went up in flames the casualties were few. Terrekalani*copped the worst of the damage. She had one side of her hair singed off when a burning piece of bark fell on her as she lay sleeping at the back of the hut. She always slept at the door after that, even if it meant she was the one who was going to get wet when it rained, and her hair was always strangely stunted on that side, but looking on the bright side she was easy to spot in the distance when they went hunting.
*Turtle
A few days later Pwomiga turned up at the bush camp acting like nothing happened. He wanted to speak to Kumwarrni about going with him to get ochre. His eyes flickered over to the motley group who, having prudently vacated his camp so he could have it all to himself, glared back at him with their singed eyebrows and tufts of missing hair. It was their turn to be unhappy but no-one dared say anything in case he went off his head again. If he wasn’t such a big medicine man they might have considered organising an accident for him like they did with their late husband and brother-in-law Perraka.
It was like they were cursed or something. None of the wives, or children for that matter, knew what to say when Jerrengkerritirrti proudly announced himself to be the replacement husband for Pwomiga whom the old blokes had decided wasn’t fit to be a husband for anyone. Jerrengkerritirrti’s three existing wives were the only ones who seemed happy with the decision because now they had fifteen others with whom to share their husband’s voracious sexual appetite with. He was insatiable and many a shocked hour had been spent talking about and listening to stories of his prowess. It was enough to make you want to run away to the mission. The new wives looked at each other in despair; his name didn’t mean Ugly Face for nothing and the thought of what awaited them was enough to put them off the crab and bream they’d caught that morning to eat. At least his one testicle hadn’t produced any results over the years with his first wives and the new batch were thankful for the fact that they wouldn’t be bringing any more ugly faces like his into the world.
Despite his bad looks, poor Jerrengkerritirrti was really a kind and gentle man. And so it was with some sadness that he watched Pinyama and Kwarikwaringa take their flour bag dresses from their two sons, Taringa and Terika, put them on and set off to the mission, dragging their protesting sons behind them. And even though he was urged by the other men to get his spears and chase the wayward women back to his camp where they belonged, he let them go. Because, like the unsuspecting wallaby that discovers there’s no escaping once it finds itself in the jaws of the crocodile, so too would the sisters find out that those who get ensnared by the mission don’t get out of it in one piece either.
The Immaculate Misconception
None of the nuns quite knew what to say as they looked at the newborn baby cradled in Mary Magdalene’s arms. The baby, a chubby-cheeked little girl, had been born two days previously in the beach camp and bore a striking resemblance to her mother, except for one thing: the baby was very pale and Mary Magdalene, who was now referred to as Wuninga because she was living back at the camp, was very black. Wuninga had lived her entire fifteen years at the camp and the mission except for the regular forays out bush with her family, so that meant that any one of the white men living at the mission was a possible candidate for paternity. That’s if you didn’t count his Most Fecund the Bishop, and his two minders who had visited twice in the last year.
Sister Annunciata wasted no time in reporting the situation to Father Macredie who paled visibly with the news.
‘Oh God!’ he groaned, as his shaking hands reached for his valium.
It had been a brisk walk to the beach camp where Father Macredie and Sister Annunciata had spent the last hour unsuccessfully trying to cajole and then bribe the girl into revealing what they weren’t sure they wanted to hear anyway. But she was a stubborn one alright, and try as they might they weren’t getting any answers. A large number of the bush mob had also gathered to watch the goings-on and throw in their two cents’ worth.
‘Might be none of your business,’ ventured old Tarrti amidst murmurs of assent from the crowd.
She, among many others, had always failed to understand the church’s angst about sex and their morbid interest in the sexual practices of others. Next thing they’d be asking who she slept with.
‘Might be his business after all,’ snorted someone else.
The inference was not lost on Father Macredie who blushed furiously at such a blasphemous thought. His mind had on the rare occasion drifted perilously close to the formulation of lustful thoughts over certain bush women. But thankfully his fear of God was stronger than his sexual desire and thus far temptation had been avoided.
‘Well, if it’s alright for Mary of Nazareth to have an Immaculate Conception, why can’t I?’ asked the indignant Wuninga, as she sat suckling little Puntaninga*.
*Rainbow
Everyone knew that Wuninga was well versed in the scriptures thanks to Sister Benedicta’s efforts to lure her into the convent after the disappointment with the wanton Sara. So there’d be no pulling of any wool over this girl’s eyes. There was an uncomfortable silence as Father Macredie looked at his feet. The tic under Sister Annunciata’s left eye began to twitch alarmingly. It looked like it was going to be another long day.
‘But you have to try to understand that Mary was special. God decided that Mary was to be born free from sin so she could have a virgin birth for his only begotten son,’ explained Sister Annunciata in her most conciliatory tone.
‘How do you know this isn’t a virgin birth for his only begotten daughter?’ asked Wuninga’s mother sarcastically.
‘For the last time, tell me who the father is or you’ll go to hell!’ screeched Sister whose patience had finally reached its end.
Puntaninga who had been peacefully slumbering at her mother’s breast startled awake and, after an enormous belch, projectile-vomited onto Wuninga. She started wailing pitifully while the poor girl attempted to pacify her infant daughter by jiggling her up and down. This only succeeded in making both ends evacuate their contents onto the now irate Wuninga, who then dumped the still purging and wailing child into her mother’s lap and stalked off to the sea to wash the shit and vomit from her body.
While all this was happening, little Puntaninga’s father was busily harvesting trepang a few hundred miles further down the coast at a place known to him and his crew as Mani Mani. A Macarresse prau* owner and captain from Barrang Lompo†, Bapa Upa‡ had paid many visits to the shores of the bush mob, although the mission mob would have you believe otherwise. No, the Maccassans have never been here, they’d say, apart from the bush mob we were the first. But the bush mob knew better than to argue with the mission mob who thought they knew everything.
*Indonesian boat
†A village on the island of Celebes in Indonesia
‡Luck
And as always happens with the Maccassan/bush mob children, as Puntaninga grew, so the colour of her skin darkened until in the end she looked just like all the other bush mob kids, and the mission mob who were so quick to jump to their guilt-fuelled conclusions ended up still being none the wiser.
As he and Sister Annunciata marched back to the mission Father Macredie silently cursed the bush mob in general and Mary Magdalene in particular. For him, this incident
would forever stick in his mind as the Immaculate Misconception. If they wanted to believe Mary Magdalene was a virgin then let them, he’d done all he could.
The Sound of Music
There were a million things for Father Macredie to worry about. And this day was no exception as he remembered the concert with Brother Neil’s brass band that evening. It had suddenly crept up on him despite the reminder that he’d posted in his diary. Thankfully he had enough valium left to get him through the nightmare and tide him through until more arrived on the next boat.
The boys were an interesting sight as they assumed their positions with an air of professional detachment. Their assorted uniforms were the cast-offs from other brass bands, with frayed edges and odd buttons. But no-one seemed to take too much notice as the boys warmed up and waited for Brother Neil to take the conductor’s stand. He didn’t look any better as he strutted to the podium in a uniform whose previous owner must have been three times the girth of the rangy Brother Neil and a good deal shorter, as evidenced by the bunched waist and wide expanse of leg that showed above his bony ankles and short white socks.
The opening bars of ‘God Save the Queen’ were recognisable but after that it was anyone’s guess what they were playing. The cacophony reached staggering crescendos as song after song was murdered. On arrival Father Macredie, who had popped a few pills in readiness, headed straight for the back row and was thankful for such foresight. Those in the front rows winced in pain and the blast from Ezekiel’s tuba made their hair stand on end and their teeth rattle in their heads. Duke Ellington would have turned in his grave had he recognised the boys’ rendition of ‘Cooties Song’. And Seth’s solo of ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ on his bent trumpet would have brought tears of anguish to the eyes of poor old Johann Sebastian Bach.
Every Secret Thing Page 3