The Flyer

by Marjorie Jones

  “You gathered all that from just looking at her?” He frowned.

  “Not exactly. But I’m fairly certain I’m right. I’ll know more after I’ve examined her. Now, please, do as I ask.”

  A tear formed in the corner of the young man’s eyes, then fell over his defined cheekbone, drawing a path through the paint he wore so proudly. He told the women what she asked, and then joined with them when they formed a human wall nearby.

  After what seemed like hours, Jayla had completed her miscarried pregnancy and, in essence, delivered a babe small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. Helen wrapped the remains in a square of gauze and laid the bundle next to Jayla, who had finally fallen asleep with the help of a dose of morphine.

  There was nothing easy about losing a baby. Not for the mother, and not for any physician with a soul. Helen’s chest burned, and tears threatened to pour out like rain. Wiping the tears back before they could fall, she sniffed. She could cry her personal anguish later. When she was alone.

  For now, she had work to do.

  By early afternoon, Jayla had been bathed and wrapped in a light sheet at Helen’s insistence to keep as much dust and dirt away from her as possible, and Helen had found Paul in another campsite.

  Seeing him brought a slew of questions to the front of her mind. How would Jayla’s husband take the news that his first child had died before it had even been born? Did men suffer as greatly as women at such a loss? If Kadin were any measure, the answer was definitely yes. Would

  Paul be a fine father? Would he grieve at the loss of an unborn child?

  Did he even want children? Of course, he was much older than she. Perhaps he’d decided years ago not to have a family.

  As if she’d spoken aloud, he raised his face in her direction. His frown answered all of her questions in an instant. Rising, he tucked on his hat and crossed to her. “I heard what happened. Rotten luck, that is. Are you jake?”

  “Of course. This is part of my job, isn’t it?” she snapped. She didn’t mean to, but he’d caught her off guard. Most people would have asked about the mother of the dead child. Yet for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to understand, Paul seemed more concerned about her.

  She didn’t want that kind of attention. Not from him. Not from anyone. She was here to help these people, and help them she would. The sooner she learned that emotion had no place in her work, or her life, the better off she would be.

  A herd of children chose that moment to accost Paul, rummaging through his pockets until they withdrew pieces of candy he’d obviously stashed there just for them. Her unspoken questions had been answered. He adored children, and they adored him in return.

  Helen made a mental note to check everyone’s teeth before she left, but smiled despite the rather serious implication of introducing such a diet to a child unaccustomed to it. When the children ran back to the river, she scanned the banks on both sides. “Now that the emergency is taken care of, I’m not sure where to begin.”

  “That’s an easy one. Begin with the elders and work your way down. You don’t have to see everyone today. The gathering will last for several weeks. We’ll be back.”

  “Do many of them speak English?”

  “A few. Most of those here have resisted moving to the reservation. They like the old ways better.”

  Helen turned to the sound of a deep, richly accented voice. A man approached from the forest. Black as night, he was one of the few Aborigines she’d seen who wore clothing similar to Paul’s—khaki britches and a matching shirt with sturdy boots covered in red dust. His hair was shorter than most of the others, but still long by society’s standards. He wore none of the paint on his face that the others did.

  “In fact, you’re witnessing a fairly rare event,” Paul continued. “The clans seldom meet like this anymore, especially in this part of the world. A good measure of the young people you see here now have traveled from the cities to get here. Only the oldies keep the old ways.”

  “That’s too bad,” Helen sighed, unable to take her gaze from the gentle man who came to a stop next to Paul, slapping him on the back with a friendly hand.

  “It is. But then, progress comes, and there is little we can do about it.”

  “Progress isn’t always a bad thing, mate. When did you get here, Dju?”

  “Last night. I’ve been hunting with a few of the others, or I would have found you sooner. Aren’t you going to introduce me to your woman?”

  Helen flushed. “I’m not—”

  “She’s one of those progress things you were just harping on about. Dr. Helen Stanwood, meet Djuru.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m sorry if I seem to be staring, but you look so very familiar, and yet I know we can’t possibly have met before.” She paused. “I’ve got it. You look just like Blue. Is he a relative?”

  Paul crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows at Djuru. “Have you seen your father yet?”

  Blue turned at the sound of his name.

  Djuru had come home.

  Initially, his heart leapt in his old chest, coming to rest in the back of his throat. He thought he’d been prepared for this moment. The dream had come many times over the past season, sometimes lucid and clear while he slept, and sometimes in the Dreaming when he received messages from the Ancestors. He’d known his son would return, but was any parent truly ready to see their child grown into a man?

  He was taller now than when he’d left. His shoulders were more squared and firm with heavy muscles. Despite the lack of mud on his flesh, and the whitefellas’ strides he wore loose on his hips, he looked good. He’d been missed.

  Still, the bitterness of a bad parting rose like a serpent in his belly. Slapping his hands together to rid them of sand, Blue stood. If only he could reject the pain like so many grains of sand. Perhaps it would have been better if his son had stayed in the whitefellas’ world. He had made a place for himself there, despite his history and the color of his skin. He was a teacher now, working in a school that helped the Aborigines who chose to live in the cities. It was noble work, and Djuru had been raised with the knowledge and wisdom of the Dreaming. It was important to share the stories with the young members of their race.

  All of this made perfect sense to Blue, yet he couldn’t help feeling rejected by his son’s abject refusal to live the old way.

  While Blue crossed the beach, Djuru’s smile widened and he nodded. Blue followed his son’s gaze to the white woman at his side.

  The woman doctor would face challenges, but she would have to face them on her own. As though she’d heard him, she fastened her gaze on him. Her cheeks blushed in the dappled shade, and he smiled. “You are pretty when you smile. You should smile more often,” Blue commented, finally reaching the small group. “The first time I saw you, you were too sad for one so pretty.”

  “I remember,” she replied, her head cocked to one side. “You speak in riddles, don’t you?”

  “Not riddles. Observations.” Gifts from the Dreaming.

  “Blue, how many clans have arrived so far?” Paul crossed his arms lazily over his chest, hiding a wince that Blue suspected none but he could see. His shoulder still bothered him, but he wouldn’t let anyone, especially the woman, know it. Such pride could be a harmful thing.

  “Almost all of them. Djuru’s bride arrived this morning.”

  Djuru groaned. “Father, you know I’m not going to marry her. Why do you insist upon calling her that?”

  “You will marry her.” How many times must he explain the process to his son? It was this same argument that had driven Djuru away in the first place, to the whitefellas’ world. He had fallen in love with one who could never be his.

  “You can believe whatever you like, but I’m not going to marry some girl you’ve picked out for me a hundred bloody years ago. It’s not fair to her, and it’s not fair to me.”

  “It is done.”

  Helen cleared her throat. All eyes turned on her, and she blanched
beneath the onslaught. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but shouldn’t I get back to work? Is there a place where the elderly or the infirm might be?”

  “I’ll take her,” Djuru offered, a bit too quickly.

  “We’ll finish this later, son. There is no escaping it.”

  5

  You’ll have to pardon my father,” Djuru sighed while he escorted Helen across the campsite. “He refuses to understand that the world has changed.”

  Helen transferred her bag from one hand to the other, the weight of it pulling on her shoulder. “It’s hard to believe the world has changed at all when one comes here. I’ve seen your father in Port Hedland, so I’m sure he must be familiar with the ways of things.”

  “Oh, he’s aware. Too aware, most of the time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He is a mystic. A medicine man? I don’t know what you’d call him. Witch doctor, perhaps. He’s always been able to see things, to tell the future by looking at a sunrise, a sunset, a rock, or a tree. It’s strange, but he’s rarely wrong. I think he’s making up a story about my supposed marriage to Nanara just so I’ll go through with it.”

  “You don’t like Nanara?” Helen couldn’t help the frown that pulled at her lips. Djuru looked far less opposed to the girl as he did to marriage in general. She’d found the same to be true among most men.

  “Like her? Sure, I like her. We grew up together. But that has nothing to do with the fact our oldies decided we’d be married before either of us were even born.”

  Helen gasped. “You must be joking. An arranged marriage? I didn’t think such a thing existed anymore.”

  “Oh, it exists.”

  “Obviously, some of you don’t like it.”

  Djuru’s expression fell. “Some of us. Those of us who don’t like the old ways, leave.”

  “Like you.”

  “Too right. I’ve been living in Sydney for almost five years, since I was something like seventeen years old.”

  “You left because you wouldn’t marry Nanara?”

  “It’s not important.” Djuru waved one hand and squinted into the sun.

  “It certainly seems important.”

  “You’re a bit on the nosy side, aren’t you?” He smiled, removing most of the sting from his words.

  Despite the good-natured tone of his voice, however, her stomach clenched. “I don’t mean to be. I was just curious. All of this is quite foreign to someone in my position, you see.” She paused. “So, the tribes still practice arranged marriages. I didn’t know that.”

  “And polygamy. You’ll be pleased to know that Nanara is only the first of several girls I should marry before long, I reckon. The elders have it all worked out, like some mathematical conundrum. This clan marries that clan. The other clan bears the children who will marry that clan over there. It’s a bloody mess, is what it is.”

  “It’s surreal.”

  Paul suddenly appeared at her side, taking the bag from her and hoisting it over his shoulder. She hadn’t expected him to come with her, and a tiny spark of something hot and molten raced from her shoulder, where he’d barely brushed her, to the pit of her stomach. “Not so surreal. It’s been like this for thousands of years. A boy meets a girl, marries her, they have babies. Simple.”

  “Sure, simple for you, mate. You don’t have a swarm of oldies planning out which ones, and how many, now do you?”

  Paul laughed. The sound was warm and friendly, despite the obvious seriousness of his friend’s situation. When they arrived in a shaded glen a few feet away from the water’s edge, Paul sobered. “Your next patient, I reckon.” He pointed to an old woman sitting beneath a tree, her left eye swollen shut.

  Helen had already seen her and approached carefully. “I’m Dr. Stanwood. May I have a look at your eye?”

  Djuru knelt beside the woman. “Call her mother.

  Everyone does. Every women here is your mother, and every older man, your father. Those in your age group would be more like cousins, but you get the idea. She’s an elder. You could call her grandmother, if you like, as well.”

  “Mother,” Helen whispered, more to herself than anyone.

  Her would-be patient lifted a crippled hand and brushed several flies away from her injury. She mumbled something Helen couldn’t understand, piercing Djuru with a lethal stare.

  “She says you can look, but she’s old and has no desire for you to treat her. She hopes the infection will take her to visit the Ancestors soon, and wishes her husband had left her behind at their last encampment.”

  “It’s a simple infection to treat. Hardly life threatening. Can you explain that to her, please? Once the infection has cleared, she may feel better about things.”

  Djuru translated, and the woman sighed. She would allow the treatment, even though she wasn’t happy about it. Helen opened her bag and withdrew a vial of antibiotics, a syringe, and a roll of gauze. “Who is her husband?”

  “A man named Thomas Becky, if I’m not mistaken, but it’s been a while. If he’s passed, she’d be married to one of his brothers.”

  “Thomas is still alive and well. Should I get him?” Paul asked.

  “Yes, please. I’ll need to show him how to drain the infection for the next few days.”

  “I’ll fetch her daughter then. Thomas would have no part of that.” Paul jogged to a group of young women, naked above the waist, who sat in a circle around a small fire while they ground something with stone mortars and pestles.

  Now that Helen had had the opportunity to see more of the encampment, the entire scene seemed almost prehistoric. If it weren’t for the fact many of the younger Aborigines, like Djuru, spoke perfect English and wore modern clothing, she would have thought she’d stepped back in time. Primitive tools and weaponry surrounded her everywhere she looked. In a clearing to her left, a gathering of men practiced with spears. Most of them were naked, or close to it.

  She forced her attention back to the old woman. “Will you tell her this might sting a bit?”

  Djuru spoke in his odd language, and the woman tensed. Without giving her time to refuse, Helen plunged the antibiotic syringe into the muscles of the woman’s fleshy, bare upper arm. The woman cried and swatted Helen’s hands away.

  Just then, a young girl knelt and tossed long, neatly braided black hair out of her face. She was exotically beautiful, with wide, expressive features and eyes that reminded Helen of the ocean at night. Helen turned to Djuru, intending to ask him to translate for her, but he’d vanished. Scanning the area, she found him among the men with the spears. He glanced over his shoulder, then quickly averted his gaze.

  The girl tapped her on the shoulder. “I’m Nanara. Paul said you needed me?”

  Helen grinned. So that’s why Djuru had run off as if the hounds of hell were chasing him. As far as he was concerned, they were. “I’m Dr. Stanwood. Helen. This is your mother?”

  Nanara nodded. “One of them. I’ve been meaning to come by and see you. I’d hoped you could give me something for her eyes.”

  “Come and see me? You live in Port Hedland?”

  “Not quite that far, but my employer was going to bring me with him on his next trip. I’m a Jillaroo on the Castle-Winters Station outside of Marble Bar. So, is there something you can do for her?”

  Helen taught Nanara how to wash her mother’s eye with clean water, apply an ointment, and wrap the gauze snugly around her mother’s head.

  “You have a nice touch for this sort of thing, Nanara,” Helen commented.

  “Thanks, ma’am. I suppose I’ve had a fair bit of practice. When the jacks need tending, they all seem to come to me.” She shrugged, her long hair brushing her shoulders.

  “Have you ever considered nursing?” When Nanara pulled the wrap too tightly, Helen added, “Not quite like that. Loosen it just a little … that’s right.”

  “Nursing? Do you think I could? Being a blackfella and all? I don’t know of many whitefellas who would want me to do anything like that.�
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  “I suppose you have a point. But in a settlement out here in the bush, I can’t imagine anyone caring too much. I could really use the help.”

  “I’ll have to give it some thought.”

  “Please, do. And I could definitely use your help for the rest of the day here, in any case.”

  “I’d be happy to.”

  When they finished wrapping Nanara’s mother’s infected eye, Helen and her lovely new assistant moved on to a little boy with an infected gash on his leg, and several others with minor injuries. At some point, a line had formed, and her patients came to her, more out of curiosity than injury, she surmised. As the hours passed, she met more people than she could ever hope to remember. Finally, the line dwindled, and all that remained was a girl, no more than fourteen years old, who stood with a tiny baby in her arms. Not nearly as dark as her mother, the infant had been covered in some kind of substance Helen couldn’t identify. “Do you need my help?”

  The young mother nodded. “She cries. All the bleed in’ time.”

  “Well, she’s a baby.”

  “She cries a lot”

  Nanara stood quietly, placing a few items into Helen’s medical bag and picking up the sack of waste. “I’ll just burn this for you, Helen.”

  “Thank you so much, Nanara. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along.”

  The native girl smiled and hurried to take care of her self-assigned chore.

  Something rustled to Helen’s left. Almost at the same time, she caught a glimpse of Paul from the corner of her eye. He paused, then leaned against a tree, obviously affording her patient a measure of privacy. He had such a knack for knowing what to do and when to do it. It was instinctual for him, she realized. Too bad she’d been born with such poor instincts herself. There was no helping it, however, so she turned her gaze back to the young girl and her child. Helen patted the ground beside her and waited for the girl to sit.

  “Being a mother is a hard job,” she offered.