The Valley

by Hawke, Steve;

  ‘Three days a week.’

  ‘Nurse?’

  ‘I wish. I nearly was. But my badge says Community Health Worker.’

  There is a silence. Dancer is about to push himself out of his chair, when he finds himself asking, ‘What do you know about Grandpa’s country down from Bullfrog Hole?’

  The look she throws at him is sharp, inquisitive. ‘What’s Uncle Wajarri up to? Horses, Bullfrog Hole?’

  ‘Is that his bush name? Wajarri?’

  ‘Yeah. It means boab nut, Bunuba way.’

  ‘He wants to take me and Riley down there. His true country, he said. He reckons we’re the last of the line for it.’

  ‘What’s he told you about it?’

  ‘Bugger all really. He reckons more better to give us the story when we’re down there.’

  ‘Bugger all, hey. He likes his secrets does Two Bob. Debbil debbil country, that’s what the old aunties called it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t really know, Dancer. Olden days stuff.’

  ‘Oi! Rosa!’ The call comes from a woman up near the office.

  ‘What now?’ she yells back.

  ‘Telephone.’

  ‘Who now?’

  ‘What his name. That ’countant feller, for money side.’

  ‘Ok, tell him I’m coming.’

  She is already up out of her chair. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to take this. Hope he hangs on long enough for me to get up there. It’s good to have a yarn, Robert Rider – that’s how I think of you, you know. Let’s do it again soon.’ Then she is off at a jog towards the office.

  37

  Rosa makes cuppas and ushers them out the back of the office to sit under a shade cloth. She makes them squirm a bit, and earn her backing. Dancer has to work hard at times to suppress a smile, especially when Rosa catches his eye with a twinkle in hers.

  Two Bob starts off with a spiel about getting the horse plant and gear sorted, and using an expedition to the Bullfrog Hole country as a test run for next year. She points out that they could do all that horse stuff around here; why Bullfrog Hole, and all the expense of the horse float and the hassles of trucking them down to the furthest corner of the station?

  He talks up a storm about all the cattle he knows are down there south of the boundary, and how they can’t get in there without horses. They’ll still be there next year won’t they, she asks. She knows he wants to look all those back country bullamon in the eye, she tells him, but we’ve got to be practical about this. Two Bob is struggling to hide his distress. Out of the corner of his eye Dancer catches Andy also hiding a smile.

  ‘Hey Wajarri,’ Rosa says. This time there is a softness in her tone. Two Bob looks up. ‘It’s all right. Dancer told me about your true country trip. I’m cool with it.’

  She still drives a bargain though, once they get down to tintacks. If anyone asks, this is a CDEP back-to-country project, nothing to do with the station. CDEP’s the only bucket that’s got any money at all in it. Tim and Jimmy are his for the next fortnight as their top-up job, they’ll like that better than the garden work, that’s for sure. Yes, Stan can give them a hand as required. She thinks the CDEP account will be able to cover fuel, but she’ll have to check.

  She’s going to be away for the next week on a training course, but they can spend up to seven hundred and fifty on the Elders account for essential gear. Just don’t get silly about it, and anything over that has to wait until she gets back.

  ‘Thank you, Rosa. Thank you. Seven hundred an’ fifty. Not a penny more. Promise.’

  Dancer can see the hope surging in the old man.

  ‘It’s a good thing, Uncle. I hope,’ Rosa says. ‘Just don’t forget, when it’s finished, you and Andy have to sit down with me and give me a plan. I’m not going to lose this station.’

  38

  Dancer tips his chair back to look up into the boab tree. A bowerbird hops from one branch to another, its beady eye fixed on him.

  Dad’ll be on the road again by now. He should make Broome by lunchtime.

  There’d been an awkwardness to their parting yesterday. He’d helped his father pack the truck, then climbed up as Andy turned the key and let the engine warm up. They sat in silence until Andy gave the pedal a gentle nudge, and the revs signalled that the truck was ready to roll. They turned to look at each other.

  ‘Take care of yourself while I’m gone, Dancer.’ Andy cocked his fist, leaned across, and gave Dancer a shoulder punch so gentle it might have been a caress.

  He had no matching gesture. He stared at the floor of the cab. ‘You too, Dad. Say hi to Buddy.’ Standing on the running board he looked back in at his father, and found a smile from somewhere. He walked in the truck’s wake as Andy eased it down to the road, and headed west. Before it disappeared round a bend Andy gave a blast on the air horn. From the scrub beyond, a startled eagle rose above the trees. Dancer watched it take flight.

  Gliding through the valley, the wedgetail is my friend Winding like a river …

  He didn’t sing the last phrase.

  The bowerbird alights briefly a few yards from him. He knows birds can’t grin, but that’s what it seems to do before flying away.

  Why were we so uptight saying goodbye?

  Dancer has no real answer for his question, except a sense that he and Andy are both feeling things move. In ways they don’t understand.

  He has woken today with a sense of anticipation. A nervous anticipation to be sure. But also a sense that all the fragments of information and new knowledge and unfamiliar emotions of the last couple of weeks might be starting to gel into something. He senses more than hears a tread.

  ‘Hey, Grandpa! Billy’s just about cold. You sleep in?’

  ‘I never sleep in. Just gettin’ some gear sorted.’ He gently places a pile in Dancer’s lap. A neatly folded checked shirt that Dancer recognises as the one Two Bob was wearing at the funeral; a silver buckled belt of woven leather, dubbinned to a gleam; his own boots, freshly polished, and resting on them a pair of spurs.

  Two Bob busies himself with pouring tea as he says, ‘You won’t really be needin’ the spurs, I’m guessin’, but I figured you might as well look the part, seein’ as you’re gunna give me a hand gettin’ these horses in.’

  Dancer has never done the cowboy look favoured by Andy, but he can’t help feeling a bit of a swagger as he climbs into the passenger seat of the Hilux. He is wearing the same old jeans, but the flash shirt and belt and shiny boots feel good. The spurs are a step too far though; he’s not even sure how to strap them on. Two Bob gives him a wink. Tim is waiting for them down at the yards. He runs an approving eye over Dancer, and says Jimmy will join them tomorrow.

  What is left of the Highlands horse herd is skittish, but they know Two Bob and his sugar cubes, and a mob is easily lured into the night paddock adjacent to the yards. Once the night paddock gate is closed and they realise they are confined, they begin to mill and stir. Two Bob and Tim spend an hour walking amongst them, with quietly soothing words and noises.

  Two Bob reckons that is enough with the horses for day one. They head up to the garage, and with Stan work out exactly what patching up the horse float needs. Then there is a thorough inspection of the old saddle room to assess the gear. Two Bob is all business. It is as if he has shed twenty years as he steps back into this familiar world, and inhales the rich smells of horseflesh and leather.

  They make it up to the office in time to call Elders. Rosa watches with amusement as Dancer performs the role of telephone intermediary for Two Bob and Stan, scribbling down prices, relaying questions back and forth about size and type of D rings, and other arcane matters of which he clearly has little understanding.

  ‘Seven hundred and fifty,’ she reminds Two Bob, when they are finished.

  ‘Seven hundred an’ fifty,’ he repeats like a mantra.

  ‘I’m off in the morning. I’ve lined up meetings with the Shire and the funding mob while I’m in Derby,’ she tells them.
‘I’ll try and get some breathing room on these bills.’

  It feels like maths class that evening as Two Bob works out the best way to spend his allowance, with Dancer doing the calculations. In the end Two Bob decides to put off a new tyre for the float, and hope that Stan can make do with the existing ones. ‘We could get by without the horse nuts,’ he muses, ‘but they’ll make life a whole lot easier. If we finish up needin’ a new tyre you’ll just have to sweet-talk Rosa.’

  ‘Me?!’

  Two Bob chuckles. ‘You’re her new favourite nephew.’

  After the dawn cuppa under the boab Dancer and Two Bob jump into the Hilux and head down to the night paddock, leaving Riley still in bed.

  ‘The float’ll take a dozen,’ Two Bob says as they pull up at the gate and cast their eyes over the quietly milling mob. ‘But we’ll only take eight I reckon. Two each, and two packhorses.’

  ‘Doesn’t that make ten?’ Dancer asks.

  ‘Riley won’t get on a horse. He’ll walk.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Don’t worry, he can walk all day that young feller. An’ fast. We’ll only be pokin’ along on the horses. See any you fancy in this mob?’

  Dancer is the fourth cog in the wheel as they work the horses in the days that follow. The others have the job very much in hand. They narrow the candidates down to a dozen, all reshod and becoming reaccustomed to the feel of a rider on their backs. He picks his pair – the quietest two – and survives his few hours on horseback better than he thought he might. He is more use as an offsider to Stan, as they get the horse float in shape.

  One of the pair chosen as packhorses is skittish at first, but responds to the gentle persuasions of Two Bob and Tim. The intricate business of getting the saddles and straps in place goes smoothly enough, as does securing the load of carefully balanced saddlebags, swags and gear. A slow loop around the horse paddock and nearby country is completed with no dramas. And so the first of the three benchmarks Two Bob has set for them to complete before Andy’s return is ticked off.

  The initial attempt at getting the horses used to the float does not go so well. They have to take them to where the float sits behind the garage shed. The unfamiliar surroundings put the horses on edge, and the crowd of kids watching noisily doesn’t help. Every one of them shies away from the ramp at least once. The big bay gelding Two Bob has earmarked for Andy causes a flurry of excitement when he rears high, and has Jimmy at the end of the lead struggling to hold his feet, bringing whoops from the kids.

  The next day it is still not smooth, but they do get the full dozen loaded. Two recalcitrants are nothing but trouble on board, rearing in their stalls, and unsettling the others. The pair are unloaded. Their dozen has been trimmed to ten. These are left in their stalls for a couple of hours, with horse nuts and much petting and praise, before they are led off and returned to the night paddock.

  ‘Not bad, not too bad,’ is Two Bob’s assessment. With benchmark number two achieved, he declares tomorrow a holiday, before they gear up for the third test.

  39

  With Two Bob busy, cooking duties back at the house have fallen to Riley. This means two or three random tins with a spoon of blachan sauce heated up in a single saucepan, and grilled toast with bread straight from the freezer. One evening when Riley is distracted by some excitement in the gameshow on TV, the toast and the orange spaghetti and Irish stew mix are all burnt. Two Bob and Riley eat theirs without comment. Dancer grits his teeth and tries, but can’t force it down, and has to open another tin and make his own supper.

  The evenings have a different feel. There is no escaping the obvious: Riley has calmed down now that Andy is not there. And a calmer Riley makes for an easier atmosphere. Dancer comes to realise that the more tense Riley is the louder the TV volume gets, as if it might drown out whatever is agitating his soul. As the days pass the volume seems to go down a notch each night.

  Two Bob spends the evenings at the kitchen table with a saddler’s needle and twine and dubbin, repairing bridles and hobbles. Or out on the verandah preparing the larger items – the saddles and packs. Once Dancer has done the washing up he gives Two Bob a hand, or wanders out to contemplate the boab tree in the moonlight and listen to the night birds, or plonks down on the sofa for a while to see what Riley is watching. One night all of a sudden the man boy of few words asks him, ‘You like Phantom?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Phantom. Ghost who walks. He narrugu for me an’ Two Bob. Kit Walker.’

  ‘You mean the comic?’

  ‘Yuw.’

  ‘Dunno. Never read one.’

  ‘What! You don’t know Phantom!’

  ‘Nuh.’

  ‘Here.’ Riley is thrusting a comic book at him. ‘Read him.’

  ‘Ok, when I go to bed.’

  ‘No, no. Read him now.’

  Dancer starts to flick through the comic in a cursory fashion.

  ‘No. Out loud.’

  It is not until that moment that Dancer realises Riley can’t read. He leans in, hanging on every word. Then Two Bob pulls his chair up behind the sofa to watch and listen as well. It evokes dim memories of Mimi Bella reading him bedtime stories, but he does not recall being as entranced as these two. When he is finished Riley has an enormous smile. He springs and turns to kneel on the sofa, facing backwards, and gives Two Bob a high five.

  ‘Us Walkers have got a thing about the Phantom,’ a shamefaced Two Bob explains. ‘Goes back to when I was a kid.’

  ‘You had Phantom comics here then?’

  ‘Just one. I used to humbug my father to read it to me.’

  It is not until later that Dancer thinks of the obvious question. Two Bob’s father could read, but he can’t?

  The next night he wanders back in from the boab, his head full of the strange resonances of the coucal’s call, the sinking, echoing cadences that feel like they are trying to draw a song from him. Riley thrusts a sketchpad at him, exclaiming, ‘Phantom Meets His Narrugu!’ Song thoughts vanish. If last night was odd, this is surreal. Riley has drawn a Phantom cartoon, complete with speech balloons that are all blank. As Dancer works his way through it, Riley points to each balloon, speaking the words he has imagined.

  Dancer loves the intricacy and energy of the drawings. The Phantom stepping off a plane; standing resolute and tall in the back of a Hilux, hands on the rail, with Riley beside him, hair blowing in the wind; sharing a cup of tea with Two Bob under the boab tree. Riley hauling in a barramundi under the Phantom’s approving gaze. A gang of baddies descends, and there is a mad fight sequence of bam-kapow panels. The final scenes of Riley triumphant, standing with a foot on the back of his prone, black-clad adversary, before a manly handshake with the Phantom, and the two of them striding off towards the horizon.

  40

  ‘You can drive?’ Two Bob asks, the morning of their day off.

  ‘I’ve got no licence. Too young.’

  ‘Not much traffic policeman out here, Dancer. You can drive?’

  ‘Not real good, but yeah.’

  Two Bob tosses him the car keys. ‘Me an’ Riley go bush every weekend. But I’m a bit buggered today, too much work this week. Why don’t you take him fishin’.’

  Up here in the high country the rivers seem to slim down. Dancer could almost cast his handline to the far bank with a slightly bigger sinker and a good release. But the waterhole is long; to the north he can just make out the sandbar where it starts, to the south it disappears around a distant bend. The water is a deep dark green. On the other side the bank is mostly thickets of pandanus palms. But here where he is sitting the sand shelves gently down to the water, shaded thickly by river figs that tower above and reach out over it. Just down to his right a magnificent paperbark leans towards the centre of the hole. Its lower branches, pocked with dried streamers of flood debris, almost kiss the water’s surface.

  He soon realises that his cousin is no fisherman. Too eager, Riley is prone to give the line a mighty jerk at the firs
t touch, before the bream can actually take the bait. He does manage to get a couple to Dancer’s five. There’s more than enough for lunch.

  Dancer guts the fish, builds the fire, and puts them on to cook. He can sense a pent-up excitement in Riley, who is singing quietly to himself, and hopping from foot to foot; but he’s started to work out that it’s better to just ride with Riley’s moods and whims and see where they lead than to ask questions or seek understanding.

  ‘Ever caught a barra?’ he asks idly.

  ‘You been see. In Phantom Meets His Narrugu. Big one!’ Riley extends his hands to show just how big. He keeps a straight face, but there is something about his manner that suggests a joke.

  ‘Come on. I mean proper way.’

  ‘Proper way! Ol’ man barramundi too clever for Riley!’ Riley cackles and all of a sudden bursts into a sprint that finishes with a cartwheel in the sand and an improbably athletic standing somersault that has him land at Dancer’s feet. He collapses in the sand, seizes Dancer’s foot, and pulls it into his stomach. ‘Boom!’ he pretends to have been kicked, rolls and springs to his feet. ‘Robbidy Bob, Robbidy Bob!’ he sings, as he runs down to the bank and leaps into the water.

  Dancer wakes, sits up, shaking the sand out of his hair. The fire is still smoking in a half-hearted sort of way, a couple of charred bream skeletons showing amongst the ashes. A small breeze ripples the surface of the waterhole. The dried leaves floating on its surface dance. Riley is nowhere to be seen.

  Dancer goes for a little wander to clear his head, savouring the beauty of this place, then sits back down in his fishing spot and lazes the midafternoon away catching another half-dozen. Then he hears Riley’s call. And again, closer. Riley bursts into the clearing. ‘I been walkin’. Sorry, I been walkin’. I forgot. Sorry. Come on. We’ll be late. Come on.’

  ‘Late for what?’

  ‘You’ll see. You’ll see.’