by Steve Hawke
As the song comes to an end Dancer emerges from the house. Tich runs to him. ‘How is he, Dancer?’
‘He’s fine. He’s giving Micky cheek — back to normal.’ Dancer lowers himself onto a swag, finally letting go some of the tension of the day. ‘What was that Jimmy?’ he asks.
Jimmy and Dancer walk through the dark along the foot track. They stop at the edge of the clearing and watch the circle of men sitting around the fireplace, just like the night before. The men look solemn. Little Joe and Buster edge apart to make room for them, and Little Joe motions for them to sit. Jimmy keeps his head down, but inclines it towards Francis. ‘Sorry about the car.’
He lifts his head nervously but Francis is smiling broadly. ‘Don’t worry son, you did the right thing. We got it out before the tide got too high.’ Jimmy relaxes with relief as Francis chuckles, ‘I hear you had to let the girl drive though.’
Jimmy flushes, but he can see the funny side of it. ‘Yeah. Janey’s a better driver than me.’
‘You better get your dad onto that. And how’s the young feller? He all right now?’
Dancer answers this one. ‘Yeah, he’s okay. Maybe it’ll teach him a lesson.’
‘Not Buddy,’ Little Joe interjects with a soft laugh.
There’s a pause. Little Joe looks questioningly at Buster, who nods. Little Joe turns to Jimmy. ‘You heard the singing, didn’t you?’
Jimmy gulps. He’s been worrying that the law may require some terrible punishment for his trespass. He thinks for a moment of blurting out that he had no choice. But he just nods. Dancer puts a hand on his shoulder in a show of solidarity. Little Joe reaches out too and touches him lightly on the knee. ‘It’s all right Jimmy. No harm done. Now listen.
‘These old fellers were singing the rain songs, like we told you last night. But Manburr, he was talking back. He was telling them something’s wrong — since that bulldozer woke up his mate, Jiir.
‘That’s why Buster’s been crook. It’s spirit sickness. All the lawmen are worrying for the country. And for the rain.’
The circle falls silent. Dancer is wondering why they are telling them this, but is not game to ask. Jimmy has something on his mind too. His courage almost fails him, but a whisper in his heart tells him that he’s not supposed to keep this from the old men. He looks at the ground and clears his throat. ‘Jiir was talking to me today.’
His voice is soft and quavering, but in the silence they all hear him. Around the circle there is a turning of heads.
Buster quizzed him gently, but all Jimmy could say was that it was in a song. The men agreed that it was best if he just sang it, rather than try to explain it.
So now here he is, with his guitar, the men in a semicircle in front of him and, behind them, the rest of the family and the Garnet Bay mob. The verandah is full.
‘Go on Jimmy.’ Buster says it quietly, in a voice that somehow helps Jimmy pretend it is just the two of them. He is looking down, scared he will freeze up if he lets himself take in the crowd of watchers.
He begins to pick out the melody on his guitar. Some of the tension in his fingers and his guts leaks away as he is taken back to the moment on the bluff. He closes his eyes as he plays it through once more, letting himself hear that deep rumbling voice that he now believes was Jiir himself. He lets himself think of it as a duet, himself and the voice of Jiir. It makes his own voice more reedy than ever in his own mind, but it gives him the courage to sing.
I came from the north, gliding out of the sun
In the time long ago
Spiralling down on the wind, swooping down low
In the time long ago
And the rivers ran, for the very first time
In the time long ago
The saltwater people who live by the shore
My people, then and now, and evermore
They sing for me, dance for me, painted up bright
Through the hot day, through the long night
The thunder and lightning out on the bay
Manburr and me are making our play
Bringing sweet water, bringing the rain
Settling the dust, greening the plain
I came from the north, gliding out of the sun
In the time long ago
Spiralling down on the wind, swooping down low
In the time long ago
And the rivers ran, for the very first time
In the time long ago
When the sun comes in the wet time, the long grass shines bright
The frogs get to singing, rainbows of light
High in my tree fork, I watch the kids play
This country’s alive again, what more can I say
I live there near Broome town, watching over the land
Watching this new world that wants to expand
To grow like a cancer that eats at my soul
What can I do now to keep this land whole
He sings the final chorus, letting his voice trail off, leaving his fingers picking the melody once more.
His audience is hushed. Without thinking about it, Jimmy finds himself singing the refrain again and from behind, he hears Janey’s sweet, strong voice join in, lending power to his own.
It is a feeling he will remember long into the future.
Bella puts an arm around Tich and gives her a squeeze as the final notes drift away on the night air.
Jimmy opens his eyes. Buster is staring at him, but Jimmy cannot read the look in the old man’s eyes. He turns instead to face Little Joe, who smiles and shakes his head with what could almost be envy.
Buster turns to confer with some of the other old fellows in quiet tones.
Buddy was put to bed inside where Bella could watch over him. The crowd slowly thinned, with people slipping back to their beds and swags. Many gave Jimmy a nod, a handshake, or an arm around the shoulders — some sort of gesture of acknowledgement for his song that had touched them all. But no-one said more than a word or two. No-one was quite sure how to interpret what seemed to be a message from Jiir to this youngster.
The rest of the Jirroo kids were quiet too when they made their way to their swags. The bits and pieces of talk were more to do with reliving the drama of the beach than with Jimmy’s song.
Jimmy is lying back absorbing the ever so slow circling of the stars. He doesn’t want to sleep. He doesn’t want to think. He just wants to be alone with this feeling that he cannot describe. Finally he lets his eyes close.
‘You awake Jimmy?’ The soft question comes from Janey.
‘Yeah,’ he answers in a murmur.
‘Friends again?’
‘Sure.’ Jimmy smiles to himself, then rolls over and falls asleep.
13
BIG AL SWIVELS his high-backed chair away from the desk and props his feet up on a low table, staring at the old photo. A secret smile seems to hover at the corner of his father’s mouth.
He has come a long way since buying that first station. Everyone in the Kimberley regards him as a big shot. But in his own mind he has only just begun. He’s got this far by playing his cards close to his chest, and by having an eye for the main chance — moving quickly and, if necessary, ruthlessly. His plan for Eagle Beach is something different though. It is not like snaffling up another station — or even a pub. It means building something new, something grand, starting entirely from scratch.
The architect’s models in the next room have turned his dream into something more solid, but it’s not yet real. One day it will prove he is a real player, not just a bushie made good. He hasn’t got where he is without taking risks, but this is the biggest gamble of his life. Everything is on the line this time.
Big Al has had his eye on Eagle Beach since that day nearly thirty years ago when his father took him out there and gave him the shell pendant with its glinting diamond. Broome was a tiny place back then. The days of pearling were long gone, and the tourist boom was yet to arrive. It was later, after he had built up his string of stations
and acquired the Bay View that the idea of the resort came to him.
With discreet enquiries he had confirmed that the two shacks down there — Teoh Tom’s and the Jirroos’ — dated back to the free and easy days of squatters; neither of them had any sort of title or lease. The old Filipino was a nutter. He’d find a way to sort him out. As for the Jirroos, well, he could handle them too.
The Jirroo boys’ father, old Joe Black, used to do stints as a windmill man out in the station country. That’s how Big Al first met him. Joe was a quiet one; not a bad old cove, but not the sharpest card in the deck either. He’d thought Big Al was doing him a favour, buying the vacant block when he’d been going through a lean patch.
The deals with Andy over the truck and buying the block back were much the same by Big Al’s way of thinking. He reckoned he’d had the better of all his dealings with the Jirroos, and he didn’t see why this should change.
It had taken him longer than he first hoped to pull all the threads together for the Eagle Beach deal. All the foreshore was vacant crown land. He’d had to play it very carefully to line everything up without word leaking out. He hated forking out money to those city lawyers, but he had to admit, they’d done a good job. He got the option for a ninety-nine year lease without a murmur. Now, with credit from the bank approved, it was all systems go; just the final rubber stamps from the Planning Department and he was on his way.
He knew there’d be a handful of hippies and greenies ready to kick up a fuss, and he was ready for them too, with a public relations blitz when the time came. But he was a man in a hurry. It was October already, and he needed to get the foundations down before the Wet. He had a transportable ready to shift out there as a site office the moment the Planning Department forms came through. Get in first was his motto, and deal with the consequences later if you have to. That was why he’d jumped the gun and sent Mack out with the bulldozer.
He couldn’t believe his luck when Georgie jumped into his pocket that very same day — an inside man at the Department! His job as Aboriginal Liaison Officer wouldn’t hurt too, if the Jirroos did become a problem, or if anyone made a fuss about that sea eagle dreaming nonsense.
But the ins and outs of his grand plan are not at the front of Big Al’s mind as he contemplates the photograph. He’s had diamonds on the brain from the moment he saw Tich wearing Bella’s pendant. That had been pure chance. What really got him thinking though was the next morning when Janey had said, ‘It’s a family heirloom, Bella’s daddy gave it to her.’
He’d heard stories about Jim Jirroo disappearing during the war, but never paid them much attention. Now he’s wondering if it could be the key to a mystery that has puzzled him for thirty years — perhaps the key to a fortune beyond belief.
‘It’s a clue,’ his father had said of his piece. ‘I reckon there’s more clues, and I reckon they’re somewhere round here. Mebbe even the diamonds themselves.’
Back in the 1940s rumour put the value of the diamonds at well over a million pounds. What would that be worth today? Tens of millions of dollars at least, perhaps hundreds. The very idea made him shiver.
Jim Jirroo gave one piece to Bella. His own father gave him another. Whoever made one piece had made both. He turns back to his desk and joins the pieces together again. Seeing the weird engravings starting to make a picture, the shiver becomes a wild, excited tightness in his chest. ‘Hundreds of millions,’ he murmurs.
And whoever made these two had also made a third, the missing piece; they had all come from one shell. The third piece would complete the design. Where the hell was it?
The darkness is gathering over Roebuck Bay as Big Al comes to a decision. ‘Well Dad, what was rightfully yours, is rightfully mine.’
Big Al pulls up at the end of the Eagle Beach track. He makes his way cautiously up the footpath until he can see for sure that the shack is deserted.
If his father was right and there were more clues down here, the shack is the obvious place to start. It’s going to be knocked down before long anyway, but he wants to have a good look around without anyone peering over his shoulder.
He doesn’t even need the bolt cutters. The rusty old padlock is just for show; the bolt pulls out of the timber door frame with one good tug. Inside there’s not much to see by torchlight. It is one room, made of corrugated iron nailed to greying timber. Just the creaking tin roof and an old style earthen fireplace and chimney on one wall. The furnishings are just as sparse.
There’s nothing to pull apart, nothing that might conceal a hidden parcel. He examines the chimney closely, poking and tapping at it, but it seems solid. Possible, he thinks, but the only way to know would be to sledgehammer it.
He taps a foot against the floor of hard-packed red pindan. That’s possible too, but it’s not practical to dig it up tonight. He notices the crumbly residue of white ant workings on the central post, which is a length of snappy gum. He inspects it closely. It might well be hollow, but he can’t see a knothole or anything of the sort.
If there’s anything hidden here — clues, or even the diamonds themselves — he’s not going to find it tonight. But he has a feeling in his bones. He drives back into town, his mind ticking.
14
BUDDY TIES THE elastic firmly and then tests the action of his new shanghai. Andy has brought some beautiful springy forks of wattle back with him, and the kids have all made new ones.
‘Do I look like she did?’ he asks.
Andy slides out from under the truck on his little trolley, spanner in hand, and squats beside him. ‘Same grin Buddy boy. Exactly the same.’ Buddy can’t help it, he grins at his father, who laughs and ruffles his hair. ‘And she was full of beans like you, too. Always on for a laugh and a good time.’
Andy got back to town a couple of days after the kids returned from Garnet Bay. Buster must have said something to him about the incident with Georgie. Heart to heart talks are not really his style, but a couple of times when he and Buddy were on their own, like this Saturday morning, he’s talked about Buddy’s mum a bit — small, casual reminiscences, as if he did it all the time.
The first time, Buddy was shocked, for it had never happened before. Now he has cottoned on that this is his father’s way of letting him know that the subject is no longer completely taboo. He doesn’t push his luck. He keeps his questions casual, which seems to be the way Andy likes it. And little by little he is learning more. It feels good, like a hole that has always been inside him is slowly filling up.
But that is all he’ll get for now, because the other kids are calling him. They’re heading down to Eagle Beach for a Barefoot Kids session. With Jimmy’s Jiir song, they have two to work with now.
Buddy races ahead of the others, head down and pedalling hard. Coming round a bend he lifts his eyes and almost falls off his bike in shock. Standing there at the junction of the old track and the newly bulldozed road is a transportable building. A sign fixed next to its door reads in big, bold letters, ‘Garnet Investments, Eagle Beach Site Office.’
A great surge of rage sweeps through Buddy. He snatches up some stones from the gravel road, pulls out his new shanghai and takes aim. The stone thuds against the building’s door, leaving a pock mark. The second shot is a bullseye that clangs against the sign. He is just about to let fly with a third when a shout distracts him. The stone flies wide of its mark and smashes through a window.
The shout came from Michael Jordan. He looks at the shattered window almost gleefully as he and Pony run up. ‘You’ve done it now Jirroo. That’s Mr Steer’s property you’ve just vandalised.’ He closes in menacingly, with Pony a step behind. Outnumbered, Buddy cocks his shanghai at them.
Michael stops. ‘Just you dare, and see what happens,’ he growls.
The stalemate is broken by the arrival of the rest of the Jirroo kids. Michael smirks as they try to take it all in: the building, the broken window, the sign, the shanghai in Buddy’s hand. Dancer pushes through to stand beside Buddy.
; ‘What the hell’s going on Jawbone?’ Janey hisses. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Earning some pocket money Roo Girl,’ Michael taunts. ‘We’re doing odd jobs for Mr Steer, clearing up the site. This is his now, all of this.’
‘Says who! This is crown land. All he’s got is an application to develop it.’
‘What would you know?’
Buddy fires his shanghai into the ground, but the stone bounces up and hits Michael’s leg. Michael grabs the stone and throws it back at him.
Janey shouts, ‘He wasn’t aiming at you Michael.’
‘Oh yeah. Just like he wasn’t aiming at that window.’ Now it is Michael and Pony who are outnumbered, and they are relieved to hear the sound of a four-wheel drive approaching. ‘That’s your old man Pony, come on.’ As they start to back away, Michael bends to pick up more stones.
‘Don’t you dare,’ Janey hisses, pulling out her own shanghai.
‘You gonna stop me?’ Michael flicks a stone in her direction, then turns and runs.
It’s too much for Janey. She fires off a pebble at their retreating backs.
It was not aimed at Michael, Janey swears later. She was just so mad she was trying to let off steam. She fired it harder than she meant to, and Michael turned at just the wrong moment. But by then it was too late for excuses.
Horse arrived to the sound of Michael’s screams and the sight of him covered in blood. He hardly had time to take in the Jirroo kids or the shattered window as he bundled Michael into the car and roared off.
By the time the kids had ridden home and given their account of events, it was not long before the sound of a car and the slamming of its doors brought the Jirroos out of their houses. Michael, with one eye and half his head swathed in bandages, got in first, pointing at Buddy. ‘It was him that started it, smashing the window with his ging.’
‘It was your fault,’ Buddy retorts. ‘I was aiming at the sign, but you rushed in shouting your head off. You put me off.’