Too Much Lip
Page 32
Chapter Twenty-Three
Steve gave Pretty Mary a hand to climb out of the canoe and over the boulders into the XD. Heading back to the boat, he deviated in his path to stare at something odd, lying on the very edge of the clearing.
‘Check this out,’ he called.
Exasperated by yet more delay, Kerry went over and peered down into the kangaroo grass. What she found lying there was the skeleton of a bird: a frame of thin pale bones with a few black feathers half rotted into the soil around it. The bird’s small angular skull lay white against the ground and wedged onto the beak, she saw, was the much tinier skull of a brown snake, its curved fangs wedging the two halves of the beak tightly shut.
The hairs on the back of her neck tingled, and she shivered and looked away. Some things are just too bloody dangerous to toy with, even when they look like they’re dead and gone. That waark should’ve known better than to muck around with any mundoolun in its path. Shoulda just kept on going.
‘What the hell?’ said Steve, gazing around uneasily. ‘What is this place?’
‘Alas, poor Yorick,’ Kerry murmured, then louder, ‘it’s nothing. Just a crow.’
She picked up a stick, flicked the carcass into the thicker scrub. Kept on going, and didn’t look back.
~
Donny waited, the last to be ferried over from the island. As the others stood in the clearing, itching to get to the pub, Kerry wandered off for a leak. She squatted behind a soap tree, and the memory came to her of that first afternoon when Buckley had roared up in his ute. She fled from him that day, fearing discovery and arrest, but just look at things now. It was her at the river and Jim Buckley who was locked behind smooth steel doors. A disbelieving smile spread across her face as she stood up and buttoned her jeans. She laughs loudest who laughs last, and ain’t that the fucken truth.
‘Like riding a bicycle, alright,’ Uncle Richard was saying to Pretty Mary, puffing as he leaned on the oars. ‘Bloody hard work.’
‘See ya, cuz!’ Chris taunted Donny from the XD. ‘We’ll come back for ya tomorrow. Maybe.’
‘What?’ Donny had his hand to his ear, looking panicky.
‘Aw, don’t torment him,’ protested Kerry. ‘You mob go. I’ll grab him and bring him on the bike. Steve can borrow the XD to get to the gym, eh?’
‘No worries,’ agreed Ken. ‘So long’s he fills the tank. I’ll even have a beer for him while he’s at work.’ He caught Uncle Richard’s glance. ‘A light beer.’
‘Yer all heart, brother,’ Steve said ironically. ‘Ya choking me up.’
‘You know it, bunji.’ Ken winked.
On the island, Donny sat poking at the ground beneath the pine with a dry twig. He knew that much of life was about waiting, and he also knew that waiting, especially for the youngest son in a big family, was a skill worth cultivating. At the same time, he thought it was well within the bounds of possibility that the others might bugger off and leave him all alone on the island as a hilarious joke, very funny haha. Nobody to keep him company all night but the ghost of Elvis, and the ancestors he’d never even met; an idea that gave him the horrors. When Ken turned the key of the Falcon, Donny got to his feet and began collecting firewood to hide his fear. Then in great relief, he saw Kerry get in the canoe and head over to the island, rowing with more energy than skill.
‘Let’s head. There’s a party at the pub. Open bar.’
‘It feels weird to leave Elvis,’ Donny said, dragging on his jeans that had been drying beside the fire pit. ‘I can’t believe he’s not gonna be at home no more, it’s not as if—’
He was interrupted by a loud crack from above. Both Donny and Kerry flinched, then Donny let out a sharp yelp as a blur plummeted past, clipping his shoulder. By some instinct he snatched at the falling object and when he looked, he discovered that he was holding the red schoolbag.
‘Eh, fuck off!’ he cried, feeling the weight of it, his eyes wide with fright. ‘That coulda killed me!’
‘I reckon.’ Kerry breathed. The statue inside could have easily brained Donny. ‘Old Cracker Nunne’s still after his revenge, eh.’ They craned their necks to gaze upwards. The dead limb that the bag had hung from sagged now on a different angle, pointing at the clearing where it had earlier reached skywards.
‘Tree must have shifted a bit when the bank fell away,’ Kerry assessed. ‘We better make tracks before the whole bloody lot comes down.’ She turned to leave. The irony of having her skull split open by Granny’s tree on the very day they reclaimed her land would be too much to bear.
‘Thanks for catching my bag, Donny,’ the boy bit back, far more shaken than Kerry had realised. ‘Well done, neph. Can’t thank you enough for saving my stuff …’ His thin chest heaved and angry spots of colour appeared high on his cheeks.
Kerry squinted at him, taken aback. This lad, now. Getting proper cheeky. She suddenly laughed, wrinkling her nose, and hugging him to her. It was good to see some spirit returning to the boy. That whale on his arm must be doing him a power of good.
‘You’re right. Ya done real good to catch it, bud. Lucky there’s nothing to break,’ she took the bag and opened it in demonstration. ‘Brass ain’t gonna smash in a hurry. Or bits of quartz, or whatever this is.’ She showed him the ambiguous lump nestled inside.
Curious, Donny reached in to press a fingernail into its waxy surface. Took it out and sniffed it.
‘Ken reckoned the smell of it’d give a baby a nosebleed, but I don’t think it’s all that bad,’ Kerry added, turning to the canoe in dismay. ‘Shit. We’re gonna hafta drag this boat up off the river and hide it before we go. I hope ya feeling strong.’
‘Where’d this come from?’ Donny demanded sharply. Kerry turned back around. Her nephew stood very still; all colour had drained from his face.
‘Council. You know, that night when Grandad Chinky Joe visited me?’ Kerry told him. ‘The label said ochre, but Uncle Richard reckons it isn’t.’
Donny’s expression was feverish. Kerry peered at him.
‘What’s wrong?’
Donny opened and closed his mouth, twice. Kerry frowned at the thing he held, roughly the size and shape of a baby’s head. A horrible thought came to her.
‘You’re worrying me now, bub.’
Donny made an odd gurgling sound, unable to get the words out.
‘Come again?’ Kerry put a hand on the boy’s trembling back as he bent over. After a moment, she realised that her nephew was crying. ‘Slow down, bub, take a big breath.’
Donny sucked in a great lungful of air, and straightened up, came to the surface and breached. Looked at her with shining wet eyes and let fly the ten words that changed their lives forever.
‘It’s ambergris,’ he told her. ‘Whale vomit. Worth two hundred bucks a gram.’
He pushed the strange, pungent object towards her, and Kerry reached for it in wonder. Their hands met around the dark lump, which resembled not a stone, and not a heart, but something in between both those things. It rested there, smelling of the earth and the ocean, and of hope too, and as her fingers closed upon the ambergris it somehow felt to Kerry like she was holding an island.
Afterword
Too Much Lip is a work of fiction, and the specific locations of Patterson, Durrongo, Ava’s Island and Rivertown exist only in my imagination. But lest any readers assume this portrayal of Aboriginal lives is exaggerated, I would add that virtually every incidence of violence in these pages has occurred within my extended family at least once. The (very) few exceptions are drawn either from the historical record or from Aboriginal oral history. The epigraph refers to my great-grandmother Christina Copson who, as a Goorie woman in Wolvi in 1907, was arrested for shooting her attempted rapist (also Aboriginal). Christina later beat the charge against her in a Brisbane court, unapologetically stating that although she had shot her attacker in the hip, she had been aiming for
his heart and she was only sorry that she had not killed him.
First published 2018 by University of Queensland Press
PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia
uqp.com.au
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Copyright © Melissa Lucashenko 2018
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
Cover design by Laura Thomas
Cover images: Shark: Leonardo Gonzalez/Shutterstock images;
Map: freesoulproduction/Shutterstock images; Title text: OlenaP/Shutterstock images
Author photograph by LaVonne Bobongie Photography
Typeset in 12/16 pt Bembo Std by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane
The University of Queensland Press is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
The University of Queensland Press is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
ISBN 978 0 7022 5996 8 (pbk)
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