Barefoot Kids

by Steve Hawke

  Sticking to the thickest bush he can find, Buddy circles away towards the shack to collect some gear. But as he gets closer he hears noises. Crouching down low, he wonders if the police have driven down here ahead of him.

  Reaching the peak of a scrub-covered dune that overlooks the rear of the shack he inches forward on his belly. He pushes some grass aside and his eyes go wide.

  Big Al is prowling around the old water tank they rehearse in. He prods at it. He pushes to see if it will roll aside, but the tussocky weeds that have grown up around it hold it in place. He pulls a wad of paper from his back pocket and unfolds it.

  Buddy immediately recognises Tich’s drawings. And if Big Al is thinking tanks, he has got almost as far as they have with working it out!

  Big Al kicks at the old timbers by the tank in frustration and stalks off up the footpath. Buddy works his way stealthily through the bush, until he is back at his vantage point.

  He can’t hear the words, but he can hear the angry edge to Big Al’s voice as he barks orders at Horse. Before long, both cars are heading back towards town. Buddy listens until the sound of their engines disappears completely, while he works out his plan.

  He knows he may not have long. He moves towards the pile of Teoh Tom’s gear which by some miracle has survived the fire. From here he can see what Harry was talking about. A few metres from where he stuck the incense in the ground, the dry grass has caught fire. A gust of wind must have taken a piece of hot ash from the glowing sticks. The blackened earth shows the fire’s path, straight towards the site office.

  Buddy grabs a length of rope from Tom’s gear. He listens again to make sure there are no vehicles approaching, then heads to the well.

  A rusty shackle is set into the housing around the well. He ties the rope to the shackle and gives it a couple of sharp tugs, to test both the rope and the shackle. They seem okay, and there is no time to hesitate.

  Buddy lowers himself into the well. His feet hit the water and he pauses to listen once more. He can hear nothing, but already the bush sounds are muffled. If someone comes while he is down here, he is going to have some explaining to do. Best to get on with it.

  The well is barely a metre across, and lined with smooth rocks. It is difficult work, hanging on to the rope with one hand while using the other hand to try to work his way methodically around the cool, slippery, stone surface. He doesn’t know what he is looking for, he just hopes he will recognise it when he comes across it.

  Now he hangs on to the rope with both hands, starting to tire, feeling with his toes as far as he can reach. Nothing.

  Taking a deep breath, Buddy drops down under the water to the silty bottom, probing the deepest section of the wall. When he tries to kick off from the bottom, the silt gives way under his feet, and he has to push up against the side walls until he breaks the surface, lungs bursting. He can feel the gritty mud swirling around him.

  Again and again he dives to the bottom until shivering with cold, bitterly disappointed, he is forced to admit that there is nothing there. Or at least nothing he can find.

  It is harder than he expected to haul himself out. There is a moment of panic, until he discovers that he can wedge his feet against one side of the well and his shoulders against the other, and work himself up.

  He pulls himself over the lip and flops onto the ground, dripping wet and covered in mud and slime. It is so good to feel the sun on his skin.

  But only for a minute. He unties the rope, not wanting to leave any sign of his efforts or any clues for Big Al. He scavenges some more gear from Teoh Tom’s pile — an old piece of canvas, a threadbare blanket, waterproof matches, two handlines and some repulsive looking smoked fish. He also picks up the last of the chillies and a handful of the dry crab claws Tom decorated his hut with. Then he sets off at a jog for the canoe.

  Up the Three Mile Creek, deep into the mangroves, Buddy finds the side branch he is looking for and noses up it until he can get the canoe no further.

  He pushes on through the mud to the place he has in mind. It is an old fireplace, no more than a couple of blackened stones in a tiny clearing just above the high tide mark. There is no evidence of Tom having been here recently, but Buddy figures it is more than likely one of his dinner camps.

  He has realised he is not going to find Tom if Tom does not want to be found. If that turns out to be the case he will head back tomorrow and face the music. Hopefully under Andy’s protection, though he has started to worry about that. He has begun to wonder what Andy will think of him running away like this, no doubt leaving even more trouble back at Jirroo Corner.

  But that is for tomorrow, he reminds himself.

  He spends the rest of the afternoon roaming the mangroves, on foot and by canoe. Every now and then, when he finds a faint foot trail or some other likely looking sign, he takes one of the crab claws and pokes it into the ground, nipper pointing skywards, then carefully spikes a dried chilli on to the end of the claw.

  Chilli crab. He and Tom often joked about whose was best, Tom’s or Mimi Bella’s. If Tom is here, Buddy has no doubt he will find one or more of them. It is the only way he can think of to say, ‘I am here. I am looking for you.’ He just hopes Tom will take it the right way.

  When the sun starts to get low in the sky he heads back to the old fireplace. He builds a small fire, and when it is nearly dark — too dark, he hopes, for searching eyes — he sets a match to it. No-one he knows of has a better nose than Teoh Tom. He will smell the smoke.

  28

  ‘WHAT YOU WANT boy?’

  Though he has been waiting and hoping for it, the crackly voice startles Buddy. He has not been there long by his small fire, but it is fully dark now. He has been slapping away at mosquitoes, praying that this does not all go horribly wrong.

  Teoh Tom sidles closer, so he is just visible on the fringes of the firelight.

  For all his planning, Buddy has not thought until this moment what he might say. ‘Are you okay?’ is all he can think of.

  ‘What you reckon?’

  ‘You’ve seen what he’s done hey? There’s nothing left.’

  ‘Good thing. Can’t live there now. All the spirits loose — now that bones come up.’ Tom peers to see what Buddy has brought with him. ‘You got tucker?’

  ‘Only this bit of dried fish. I took it from your place. I was going to catch some fresh, but I didn’t get round to it. Want some?’

  Tom rubs his hands and gives Buddy a crooked smile. ‘You better come my camp boy. Got that canoe? Otherwise you gonna get wet.’

  They put out the fire and head down to the canoe, Tom moving like a cat in the darkness and Buddy stumbling after him. Tom takes the paddle. To Buddy’s surprise they head back towards the creek mouth. But well before they reach it Tom guides the canoe into what appears to be a clump of mangroves growing like a small island in the middle of the creek.

  ‘You the first one,’ Tom tells him.

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘Only Tom know this place. Nobody else ever come ’ere. Look.’

  With the moon starting to rise, Buddy can just make out a pair of pandanus palms, and at their feet a bamboo pipe driven into a patch of moist earth, with another one leading from it to a plastic bowl set into the ground. Tom dips a small pannikin into the bowl and offers it to Buddy, who looks dubious.

  ‘Suit yourself boy.’ Tom drinks it down and smacks his lips. ‘Fresh one. Sweetest spring in Broome town, right here middle of the salt water.’ Tom cackles as Buddy dips the pannikin and takes a drink. The water is indeed beautifully cool and clean.

  ‘Hungry?’

  ‘Old man, we’ve got to talk.’

  ‘Hungry?’

  Buddy nods.

  ‘Eat first. Then talk. Mebbe.’

  Tom produces a tiny gas cooker. ‘No fire here. Somebody might see smoke. Then no more secret place for me.’ He quickly gets a small pot heating, and soon passes it to Buddy. ‘Fish ’n’ rice. Breakfast for me tomorrow. But you can ’ave ’im
.’

  Buddy hadn’t realised how hungry he was until he starts eating. He hoes into it, while Tom retreats to sit on a low branch. The silence is broken unexpectedly when Tom speaks in a low voice.

  ‘Old Buster got them bones now, hey. That’s one good thing.’

  Buddy looks up sharply. ‘You know whose bones they are?’

  Tom looks away. ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Buster hasn’t got them. Big Al has.’

  Tom springs to his feet and backs away to the edge of the tiny island, eyes wide in alarm. ‘Whooorrrooo! I bin go back there last night. I see that hole. I thought you lot been take ’em.’

  ‘He beat us to it. He dug them up the same night Mack broke his leg, after you ran off.’

  ‘What for!’

  ‘You tell me old man.’

  ‘No, no. Can’t say. Can’t talk about all that business. Too much trouble. All around, everywhere, trouble and secrets. Bad power comin’ out.’ Tom has become wildly agitated. ‘He got a bad power. Just like ’is father.’

  ‘Who? Big Al? What’s his father got to do with it?’

  ‘He kill my brother. Kill ’im. Jirroo too. Kill ’im. Tom too, might be.’

  ‘Big Al’s father killed your brother?’

  ‘Can’t say, can’t say.’ Tom curls himself into a tight ball.

  ‘Tom, you can’t stop now,’ Buddy pleads. ‘Buster’s worrying. Mimi hasn’t stopped crying. She knew it was her father. You’ve got to tell me.’

  Tom croons in a low sing-song. ‘Poor Bella, poor little girl. Lost her daddy. Lost her daddy. I’m sorry little girl, so sorry.’

  The ‘sorrys’ become a low murmur. Buddy is frozen. ‘Only Tom to dig his grave. Only Tom to sing a song.’ Tom is looking at Buddy now. But it feels like he is looking right through him, to his memories. ‘Billy Steer, he’s the one. Skinny one, not like his boy now. But cold eyes, just the same. I couldn’t say nothin’. He kill my brother. He kill Jirroo. I say anythin’, he kill me.

  ‘All the secrets comin’ out now, look like. But I can’t tell you boy. This story don’t belong to you. If I got to give it up, I give it up to Buster. Buster and Bella. You tell ’em, I’ll give ’em the story.’

  A breeze shivers the trees. Buddy feels out of his depth. He is unsure what he has unleashed. ‘I’ll tell them,’ he says in a whisper.

  Tom has fallen silent, still curled in on himself. The only thing Buddy can think to do is go and sit beside the old man. Gradually Tom uncoils himself, but he is still hunched and tense, when eventually he starts talking again. ‘It was them diamonds Buddy boy. Billy Steer been so greedy for them diamonds, it made ’im mad. And madman’s got a power. Bad power. I reckon his boy got that same kind of mad. Might be he got that same kind of power too.’

  ‘Can I ask you something else?’

  Buddy takes Tom’s silence for agreement.

  ‘I looked down your well today.’

  ‘That’s not askin’ something.’

  ‘Did you move them somewhere else?’

  ‘Don’t make riddles boy. What you talkin’ ’bout?’

  ‘The diamonds.’

  Tom twitches nervously.

  Buddy is desperate to stop Tom from losing it again. Hesitantly, slowing down when he senses Tom getting too upset, he explains how Tich connected the dots once they had the pendant from the grave, and how they figure it is a message that the diamonds are — or were — hidden in his well.

  When he has finished explaining he looks at Teoh Tom, but the old man is staring at the moon.

  ‘Too many things it’s more better I forget I ever know ’em. But them diamonds, I never know where they be. When I bury Jirroo, I finish with that diamond business once and for all. Nothin’ in my well. Not now. Not ever. That’s sure an’ certain.’

  ‘Big Al doesn’t know that.’

  ‘What you talkin’ ’bout now?’

  Buddy tells Tom about seeing Big Al at the shack, prowling around the tank. ‘He’s worked out nearly as much as we did. That’s what we thought at first, a tank. What if he figures out it’s a well too? He’ll think the same as me. He might come looking for you.’

  ‘Might be he was more closer than you know.’ Buddy waits and watches. Tom stares at the moon, then turns to him.

  ‘I don’t want to tell you boy. I can feel danger comin’. But all them stories, all them secrets, they startin’ to spill out now. Must be too late to stop ’em. An’ more better if you work ’im out before Steer.’

  ‘Work what out?’

  ‘Jirroo got his own well.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Where you sit bangin’ your drum there. What else that tank be for? It dry up though. Somebody been cover ’im up, long time back.’

  Buddy stares at Tom, slack jawed. He can’t quite comprehend the thought that all those times he has sat on the old timber platform with his drums, he might have been sitting on top of the diamonds. And he nearly got himself drowned searching for them up at Garnet Bay!

  Buddy tried to talk the old man into coming with him to the shack, to see if they could get at the old well under the timbers. But Tom would not have a bar of it. The old fellow had settled down a bit, but he had done enough talking and remembering for the night it seemed. He told Buddy it was time for him to go home.

  As they paddled back down towards the creek mouth they heard noises up towards Tom’s camp. They crept ashore. From the fringe of the mangroves they saw Big Al working by moonlight, using a crowbar to pry the stones of the well wall loose, one by one.

  Tom signalled Buddy back to the canoe and silently manoeuvred it into the creek and paddled away. Once he figured they were well out of earshot, Buddy chortled that Big Al was wasting his time. But Tom was in no laughing mood. ‘You get ’ome boy, I’ll take you quick way.’ After that, he said no more.

  They paddled back upstream and along a side branch, and then walked for ten minutes. Buddy had no idea of his bearings, until the trail Tom was following dipped around a corner, and suddenly they were on the outskirts of town, near the turning for the Eagle Beach road.

  ‘Remember boy, tell Buster I’ll come an give ’im an’ Bella that story.’ Tom gave him a gentle push, and a warning. ‘You be careful. It’s all bubblin’ up now.’ Buddy turned to say something, but the old man was gone.

  ‘Bubbling up is right,’ he murmurs.

  As he walks through the silent streets Buddy tries to think it all through. But there are so many different things racing through his head there is no way they will fall into any sort of order in his mind. The strongest beat is the thought that the diamonds are almost within reach.

  He remembers back to the bedroom at Garnet Bay, when he boasted to Micky that he would find them one day, not believing himself for a moment. He tries to think what they could do if he finds them, but it is too big to imagine. Anything. Anything at all, is the answer. But will they let him? Will he get the chance?

  First things first though, he thinks. I’ve got to give Buster the message from Teoh Tom. But what if the cops get me before I see Nyami? I’ve got to tell him myself. It’s not the sort of thing I can tell someone to pass on. It’s too big for that.

  He can’t answer all the questions. He can’t make a plan. As he nears Jirroo Corner he decides he will just have to play it by ear; see who is there, and what is going on.

  At least there are no cop cars. Then he realises that there are no other cars either. Everything seems quiet. There are no lights, no sounds from Janey’s house. He tiptoes across to his place. A light is on, but no-one is there either.

  Where is everybody?

  Then the realisation hits. They must be out looking for him.

  He crosses the yard to Micky and Bella’s house. There’s a light on in Mimi’s bedroom, but he can hear the sound of her soft snoring. Then he hears another noise. It sounds like Jimmy, talking in his sleep. He peers in at a window and sees the four of them — Dancer, Janey, Jimmy and Tich — on the floor of Bella’s living room.
r />   He grins, an idea forming in his mind.

  29

  DANCER LIES ON his back staring up at the fan. In the dim glow of the light seeping under Mimi Bella’s door, he watches it turn languidly, spider webs trailing. He tries to ignore Jimmy’s muttering. The others have drifted off at last, but he feels like sleep is a million miles away as yet again he turns the events of the day over in his mind.

  When Buddy did his runner, Harry had hustled the Welfare woman into his car and set off after him. Janey had darted a look at him, then covered for Buddy, insisting they had no idea where he might have gone, and that they had not been ‘up to anything,’ closeted in the bedroom all that time. ‘He’s just freaked out because of the coppers and Welfare, Auntie. He’ll come back.’

  Dancer could tell that Mary was suspicious, but Janey kept up her line. As soon as Mary hit the phone to summon Col, Janey hustled them out into the yard. ‘What’s going on?’ he’d hissed at her. ‘This is no time for messing around.’

  ‘You remember what Nyami Buster said to me, after I got Mimi’s shell back? Sometimes you just have to trust that feeling in your guts. I’ve got that feeling now. I don’t know if it’s right or not, but I’ve got it. And it’s telling me we should keep our mouths shut.’

  ‘The police are chasing him Janey!’

  ‘I know. And he’s going to have to face them, whether they catch him first or we find him. Listen Dancer, I’ll take the rap if it all goes wrong, but please, don’t say anything.’

  It was a mad day. Harry showed up again, much less friendly than earlier in the day. He said he had better things to do than keep looking for that troublemaker, and warned them it would be better for Buddy if he showed up at the station of his own initiative, the sooner the better.

  Ally left messages at the roadhouses where Andy might stop in on his way back, telling him to call home. The four of them were grounded under Bella’s supervision, with dire threats of the consequences if they left the yard, as the adults headed out in search of Buddy.