by Julie Janson
‘I am in my rights to drive the lot of you off! Go on, go back to yer garbage dump, get outa my sight.’ Hubert swaggered over to his truck and got in.
The old ladies gathered up Aaron and brought him to Jane’s caravan.
‘Will he shoot you with his gun? He shoots dogs. I saw him try to kill a dingo’, Aaron said.
‘Dat Boss, he can’t stop us. It’s okay, just a joke. Don’t be frighten, Jane look after you. She tough one, your mum’, said David.
Aaron hung onto David, and then Jane put out her arms and took hold of her little boy. She soothed him.
‘You want some banana custard for sweets?’
Jane watched the big house and saw Edie come out onto the veranda for a smoke. She stared at David with a vicious hatred.
‘We need you, David’, Jane begged.
I not goin anywhere. Eh, Aunty?’
Jane was in shock and could barely speak. She was at the drowning point of life.
‘You could apologise’, she whispered.
‘Narr, dat not goin to happen, you know dat. Dat whip. Can’t take that. He will forget bout dis, no worries. I got a job here. I stay alright.’
Late that night, Aaron heard Jane crying in her bed. She wept uncontrollably, sobbed and gulped for air, ashamed to cry in front of Aaron, her soaked pillow bunched up in her fist. She was a sad pathetic wretch; she hugged her child and they slept in each other’s arms.
Jane felt responsible for David standing up, but it was his own choice, his own road. She was proud of him.
Jane thought about it. She was what? ‘A bit Aboriginal, a drop of blood’. What part of you is actually Aboriginal? Who was she? What on earth was she doing? The men’s fight over her was awful. She was an idiot to let it go so far. She was about to throw away everything. Somehow, she felt liberated. David had stood up to Hubert, and so had she. She had a voice and would use it.
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Weeks later, the wind blew up black clouds, howling. Aaron cuddled up beside Jane in the bed, she read him a story. She could hear the rev of the Boss’s truck and the Lanniwah men – had they been drinking?
‘That Boss can’t drive for shit’, Sammy yelled in the dark.
Hubert was crashing gears, going too fast on the corrugations.
‘Hey, look out!’ another voice yelled.
Jane listened to the night, the smell of fear in her armpits. She sat up, alert. Listen! What truck is it? Hubert’s. Going too fast. He must have a skin-full, thought Jane. He was about half a kilometre away, wrecking the gears. The truckload of men sounded very drunk. I bet he’s got a truckload of blackfellas; must be coming back from the rodeo.
Jane could hear Hubert singing a country and western song: ‘Trumby was a ringer, and a bloody good one at that. His skin was black but his heart was white, and that’s what matters most’ Jane could picture him driving, scratching his mosquito bites, smoking Marlboro, drunk on booze bought at the Crocodile Hotel.
Jane and Aaron crawled up to look out the window. ‘What’s happening, Mummy?’
She imagined Hubert squinting in the dark. Hubert’s voice, his deep tobacco-ravaged bark, in her mind. ‘The buffalo can break yer bull bar. They get real wild when you shoot the buggers. Put a couple of bullets in em.’
The headlights got closer. Jane’s heart beat fast. Something awful would happen. Or maybe they were just happy drunks – yes having a great time, lucky things. Jane listened intently as the truck pulled up outside her caravan. It was so quiet. Hubert didn’t get out; he would be brooding, picking scabs.
‘Come on, you mob. We better walk’, Sammy called out.
Hubert was growling like an animal.
‘Stupid Wunungah bastard. You gin-tailer!’ a man yelled.
Jane slipped down under the window to hide, Aaron beside her. She heard the truck door open, peeped through the window and saw Hubert get out of the truck cabin, his fists raised.
‘Alright, youse fellas, who called me that? I never touched that girl. She lied. Who drank all me Fourex. Was that you? Get off me truck, you can walk! David, you think you’re too smart – a teaching assistant! What would you know?’
‘You too weak, old man Boss. Let’s walk, eh?’ David said.
The Lanniwah men climbed off the back of the cattle truck; they were light on their feet.
‘I’ll have youse one by one. Ungrateful black bastards. I drive yer into town and you bloody abuse me all the way. I bring all your food out, look after your pensions’, yelled Hubert.
Jane could see David standing tall. His fists raised. He seemed suddenly wanting to be free of the unending humiliation, the Boss and his aggressive bullying. She guessed that David’s manhood demanded that he stand up for once.
‘Boss, we don’ wanna fight. You too drunk’, said David.
Some of the Lanniwah men scattered, they ran through the bush like disappearing rabbits. David was still there beside the truck with Sammy and Old Burnie.
‘Walk away from him. Leave him! Don’t fight him’, Sammy said.
Hubert staggered towards David and slammed a heavy fist in the young man’s face. Jane jumped and shivered. Aaron began to cry. There was a sound of punches thumping in the quiet. A crack and groan; someone else was crying; it sounded like Sammy. Jane was transfixed, her heart thumping.
She could see Hubert swaying from side to side, he was punch drunk or just drunk. He threw another heavy punch at David but it missed. Hubert’s shirt was open; his chest heaved in the light, he was sweating and it dribbled down his face. His tongue poked out like a Maori warrior. Was he ill? Jane pictured herself getting between them, stopping the fight but she couldn’t move. Such stupid men – why were they trying to kill each other?
‘Come on, you blackfellas, is that all you got? Fight you black bastard! Too full of gin piss? Come on, fight!’ yelled Hubert. David’s voice was low and urgent, then there was the sound of brutal punches and cracking bone, grunting, then there was silence. Jane peeked out. She could see shadowy heads down. Shadowy men. The Lanniwah man standing with fists over a slumped body of Hubert.
‘I maybe kill ’im, that Boss.’
There was a sudden quiet and Aaron froze next to Jane.
‘That’s David’s voice. I didn’t know he had the guts. I reckon he hit Hubert’, Jane whispered. There was the sound of a dingo, a night bird, then no sound.
‘What’s happening, Mummy?’ Aaron whimpered.
‘He had it coming.’ Jane stepped out into the night. ‘Oh hell.’ She whispered to Aaron, ‘Don’t worry, sweetie; just silly men fighting. You stay inside.’
‘No, I want to come. I’m scared!’ Aaron said.
‘Okay, you bring the first aid box. It’s under the sink!’
Aaron carried the box with the importance of an ambulance man. Hubert was unconscious on the dirt with Old Burnie and Sammy standing over him with terror on their faces. She saw blood on David’s shirt. He was rubbing his knuckles. She looked at David and he looked away. Jane bent down to feel for a pulse on Hubert’s wrist. His arm was at a strange angle. She looked at again at David, his eyes in a panic.
She touched him on the shoulder. ‘It’s okay, David, be calm’, she said.
‘He hit me first. He punched me.’ He rubbed his jaw.
Jane examined the limb. It looked broken, crooked. Hubert was knocked out, his face puffed with blood and cuts.
‘Doesn’t look good. Someone will have to drive him to hospital. Get Edie’.
‘I’ll get her’, David said.
‘No, don’t. Run. For God’s sake, don’t just stand there. We’ll look after him. He hit his head. Oh God, just pray he’s not going to die.’
The Lanniwah men ran into the night as dogs howled and a dark wind whistled through the trees. Jane called after David:
‘Don’t tell anyone you hit him!’
Jane gently tilted Hubert’s body into recovery position and told Aaron to take the torch and run to get Edie. However, the little boy was terri
fied, so Jane grabbed a towel from her caravan and placed it under Hubert’s head. She took Aaron’s hand and ran with him.
The lights in the Boss’s house were all ablaze. The dogs on chains howled and barked; it was a cacophony of noise. Edie tore down the steps and assumed control of the situation. In no time, she was driving into the night towards the next cattle station with Hubert on the back seat.
At that precise moment, Jane felt relieved that Hubert was on his way to town. She was miserable and realised that it was a terrible thing to have happened – what about poor Hubert? What if David was up for murder. David might face banishment from his country or life in prison; it would kill him. You couldn’t beat up a station manager and get away with it. It’d be a miracle if someone didn’t try to shoot David. It might even be Edie, she was capable of it – no one touched her man and got away with it. Stand by your man. Jane cried large hot tears; Aaron sat with her until he fell asleep. She swallowed some aspirin with milk and begged the night to end. She was frightened for David but somehow she admired him. He wasn’t a coward. He stood up for himself; he would be a strong man with his people respecting him, and stories would be repeated about this night.
A few hours later, Jane was asleep. A pebble clattered against her window. David stood outside. She went into the darkness and with intense emotion they embraced.
‘I want to say goodbye for you; maybe gone long time’, said David.
‘You have to get away now, before policemans come.’
‘I’m not scared, not like wild fella. I can face ’em up.’ He held out his hand to her.
‘No, you have to run. Just go now, please! You wouldn’t get justice.’
‘I want lotta thing in my life, good job. I not just a fella to sit down alla time. You my woman now’, he said.
‘Yes’.
David clenched his teeth, to keep them from chattering. He had wanted to face the Wunungah for a long time.
‘I sick of that Boss business, alla time make us feel bad. I getting education now, all I want. Then for all kids we learn ’em up. I don’t wanna run alla time.’
He turned and walked towards the waiting cattle truck. Burnie would take him away and bring back the truck. She watched his back and felt bereft. David stopped and lit a cigarette. She stood waiting, longing for a kiss, watching as he moved into the shadows. She stood for a long time as the vehicle disappeared amongst the shadows of gum trees.
David would stay put at a secret location until things calmed down. The men told Jane that all the Lanniwah were pleased that the Boss had got his due, that one of their men had stood up to him. He most probably deserved the payback after what he had handed out over ten years.
‘We sick of it, working for nothin’; sick of being warned off our country’, said Burnie.
Jane thought that after things died down, if Hubert was okay, then David would end up in Darwin and go to the Department of Education, or he would front up to the Katherine area office, bold as can be. She imagined him asking for a transfer and going back to college. She wanted him safe.
Was it possible to reverse the action, press a rewind button on the cassette player, and replay what had happened? Where was her intuition? She wasn’t sure that she hadn’t had a hand in David getting away; he needed to avoid the onslaught of recriminations about their affair. She should never have given in to temptation. No one would respect her. She thought that she might feel better now – abandonment felt somehow normal. She had learned that behaviour. Would it feel better when everything she loved disappeared? Did she want the feeling of betrayal? If every man left then she would be normal. Was desertion a state that felt good, leaving just her and her child? Alone.
She remembered that moment in time when she had lent across the divide and touched David’s hand, their eyes meeting, him flustered and unsure, squeezing her fingers, an unmistakable invitation.
In a strange way, she also had compassion for Hubert. He was a flawed man, a terrible man, but some kind of victim too. Jane wished he would just pack up his truck with his wife, kids and guns and drive home to Queensland or wherever he belonged with all the other rednecks, rapists, rodeo riders and raving xenophobic loons.
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The next day, there was a hush in the school. Young girls gathered around Shirley. They whispered and peered out the windows. They wrote notes to each other, giggled, and tore them up. Mayda asked why David hadn’t turned up for work.
‘Maybe he’s had to go off on ceremony business. They won’t tell us; maybe he will come back’, said Jane. The children knew where he had gone: the rumours about the fight were pulsating through the camp.
‘That Boss he gunna die for sure’, said Mayda.
Burnie motioned to Jane to talk outside the school. The windows swarmed with children trying to lip-read. Apparently, Edie drove Hubert to the next station late at night, and in the morning, the station manager had flown them to Katherine hospital. Hubert had a fractured skull and broken limbs. It wasn’t good; he was really sick. No one talked about who was in the fight. All the fellas were too drunk, no one remembered. Sure, they couldn’t remember a thing.
Some days later, Edie drove back down the road; she saw Gertie and the children running to welcome her. Jane shook Edie’s hand. The children cuddled their mother and clung to her like limpets, but Edie took no time in summoning Old Pelican and some of the young men to her front gate. She shifted in a white plastic chair with a rifle laid across her lap. This was a very angry English woman. She stared at the men, and then motioned to Old Pelican to sit down on the ground. The others sat near him and Jane stood at a distance straining to hear the conversation.
‘So Boss fella, he’s in the hospital, broken head, broken knuckles, fractured collar bone, broken arm, smashed teeth. Who killem him?’ said Edie, as she fingered the rifle. Burnie stared at the ground and moved a stick in circles. Edie looked at each of them, or at the top of their heads, because they would not look up. Only Old Pelican stared at her with a smile. Jane drew breath, the red heeler walked by and growled.
‘How about you, Sammy? You look up to David, don’t you? Did David do this? Where is he? You believe in God, Sammy, you study to be missionary, you fella won’t tell a lie? Wouldn’t want to go to hell? Dat place where you burnem?’ said Edie.
Sammy cringed and Burnie looked at the headman. Old Pelican nodded.
‘Big fight, no fella mean hurtem him’, said Old Pelican.
‘I saw it Edie, no one was to blame. It was a fight. Hubert was drunk too’, said Jane.
‘If I want a school teacher’s opinion, I’ll find one with some sense, one who is not prejudiced in favour of certain people’, Edie said.
‘I was only saying …’
‘Nothing. I don’t care what you think you saw!’
‘Okay.’
‘That right? Burnie, you are the big edumacated man now, aren’t you? You think we don’t know about those letters to the gubberment? Land rights be damned. Too smart, that’s what the Boss says, he doesn’t like flash blackfellas’.
‘It was drunk fight, sorry’, said Burnie.
‘Policemans coming, you know dat? You better watch out’, she threatened as the men walked off.
Hubert came back to Harrison carrying his plaster casts with pride. His children decorated them with flowers. He settled down on his veranda to survey his kingdom, but kept his rifle by his wicker chair. Jane saw the rifle sticking out near his feet and remembered Harry and his terrible behaviour. Could Hubert shoot someone? Maybe he was a murderer of Aboriginal people like his grandfather. She skirted around the house, avoiding him and Edie.
David had left Jane and the school in the lurch. There was no other teaching assistant with any training at Harrison. Jane had to appoint one of the mothers to help at the school, but it was Margie and she was illiterate. Jane sighed at the thought that this lovely young man, his brown lustrous eyes and velvet lashes, his sweet smile was no longer in her daily presence. It was all too bad.
She carried on; she was strong, and the school was great.
Some weeks later, no police officer had arrived. Jane walked to Edie’s gate. She gave Jane a message from the School of the Air radio. It was from Brian in Katherine. He said that David was in the town lock-up. Jane’s mouth twitched. Edie stared at it with fascination. She was smiling. It gave some kind of relief to Jane’s anxiety; at least she knew where he was, but he was in gaol, where the isolation killed so many young Aboriginal men.
Reverend Wiltshire heard about David’s incarceration and insisted that he drive with Jane into town. She left Aaron with Edie.
‘It’s school business; we can’t manage without a trained teaching assistant.’
‘We asked them to charge him for assault. He’ll get a year in prison, see how he likes that’, said Edie. She stood on the road and watched Reverend Wiltshire get into Jane’s vehicle, she spat as they passed.
At two in the morning, after a gruelling silent drive, they stood on the step outside the police station. The grey paddy wagon with its steel mesh door stood alongside. I will do this useful thing, she thought. I will not be scared or cowered in front of these men.
It was a square red-brick and aluminium building with an old stone and concrete cell block out the back, a remnant of ‘pioneer days’ where it held Chinamen, Afghans and Aboriginals. Black iron bars, etched graffiti, it looked like something out of a Gestapo interrogation centre. Jane peeped into the cells. There were no glass windows for possible breaking. Nothing to cut your way out, or cut your throat. No rusted metal ring high up in the wall, suitable to tie a piece of ripped blanket attached to a neck.
‘We should wait until morning.’ Jane shook her head and knocked on the metal door of the station. Through the window, a thin blue light shone. The door opened. She looked inside. Pairs of football socks were pinned in a line to a wall.
‘Yes, what can we do for you?’ A hammering in her chest. The officer was so young, so gormless. So suspicious. But he was trained for this job. He would listen and she would be very polite.
‘You have an Aboriginal prisoner.’