The Waterboys

by Peter Docker

  ‘You are dreaming now of him in you. The killer. You are afraid of him. You are afraid he will kill you...’ says Warroo-culla looking away.

  ‘Maybe he wants me to kill him,’ I say.

  ‘Why?’ he asks me.

  ‘To put him out of his misery,’ I say.

  ‘Is that why he wants to kill you?’ Uncle smiles back.

  I stare into my empty coffee cup, as if I’ll find the answers there.

  ‘Does he love you?’ Uncle asks as innocently as a child; then when he sees these words land: ‘Do you love him?’

  It was Uncle Birra-ga who told me that the spirit only dreams of love. That love is the dream. Maybe it was Uncle Warroo-culla speaking through him. Many mouths speak the same words when the message is the truth.

  Warroo-culla laughs and with a wave of his hand dismisses this conversation.

  ‘Sit,’ says Birra-ga.

  We all settle into the dust.

  ‘You don’t know who your father was,’ says Birra-ga.

  ‘A contractor for the Water Board,’ I offer.

  ‘What he was,’ says Warroo-culla.

  ‘A grog runner,’ says Birra-ga.

  ‘Grog dreaming is all around you,’ says Warroo-culla.

  I look away to the painting of the spirit figures floating on the cave wall. Are my dreams the sounds of my soul being rusted by the desolate spirits of the grog dreaming? Are the sins of the father visited on the sons?

  ‘There are many kinds of dreams, some of what is coming ... what has been ... some awake ... some in deep sleep...’ says Warroo-culla.

  ‘But you already know this,’ says Birra-ga. ‘You told The Sarge about your dream premonitions.’

  I’m breaking into a sweat.

  ‘You have something,’ says Warroo-culla matter-of-factly. ‘They want it too. The Water Board.’ Uncle Warroo-culla looks away. ‘They are already looking for you. And Mularabone,’ he says.

  ‘Mularabone?’

  ‘His presence is important. Strength.’

  ‘I haven’t got anything.’

  When Warroo-culla speaks his voice is calm and quiet. ‘Your dreams can be a pathway ... some pathways we can’t get any other way.’

  Before I can speak, Birra-ga puts an arm on my shoulder and squeezes me to silence.

  ‘We live in the time of new beginning. To begin again we need to go back.’

  ‘Back?’

  ‘To the beginning ... In the south ... For ceremony ... You and Mularabone have a part to play...’

  Uncle Warroo-culla leans down and extends his finger near my boot. There is a tiny jumping spider there that I hadn’t noticed. The spider jumps quickly to the proffered finger. The Countrymen smile.

  ‘Strong totem,’ says Uncle. ‘Spider. Weaver of past and present.’

  ‘My boy,’ begins Birra-ga, ‘our people do not share spider totem.’

  ‘But we can share the path she walks, the path she weaves,’ adds Warroo-culla.

  They both nod. The tiny spider leaps back to my boot.

  ‘To allow for change in this world, we must make changes in the other place,’ says Warroo-culla.

  ‘The other place?’ I hear myself say.

  I look to the old Countrymen, but they are both looking away, their eyes absorbed by the colossal paintings of spirit beings in the skyscape mural.

  We finish our smokes. We stub them out on the rock and Great-uncle collects the bumpers.

  Uncle Birra-ga touches me on the upper arm with his steel-rod fingers.

  ‘Remember this talk, my nephew,’ he says quietly. And he somehow makes ‘my sister’s grandson’ float around the word ‘nephew’ like an invisible halo. I’ve learned enough about Language to know about what is not being said. I’m still thinking about what I haven’t heard, what I don’t know, when the old Countrymen get up and walk off.

  I look down to the tiny spider. He takes a little step and then jumps again so fast that I lose him in the dry leaves by the fire. I stand up, still marvelling at the speed of that movement, and stride out for where Mularabone is hanging near the steps. As I reach him he starts to go up the ancient steps carved into the living rock without looking back at me. I match his pace and we go up fast. With each step my head throbs like I’m hungover as a bastard.

  Four: Can’t Remember

  We come up through a small opening in the rock and we’re on the surface. It takes me by surprise.

  ‘Still dark, bro,’ I say.

  ‘Not still, bro.’ Mularabone taps his fancy watch. ‘We slept all day.’

  I nod. Mularabone takes a reading. We start walking. It’s as simple as that. The most complex things of all can be broken down like that. Into simple actions. We steal a Water Board truck, get some water – and deliver it to the mob.

  Now we have a six hour walk ahead of us, at least. We have to cross the open country, through the low rocky hills, get past the Water Board compound, and into the refugee camp on the other side of the dam. We’ve gotta be in that refugee camp when the sun comes up and the Water Board troopers do their rounds.

  We walk.

  ‘What did Uncle Warroo-culla call you?’

  ‘Nephew. His sister’s grandson.’

  ‘Shit.’

  I grab Mularabone by the shoulders. ‘What does it mean?’

  Mularabone takes a big breath. He lets it out slowly.

  I shake him. ‘What?’

  ‘I dunno,’ he says and turns and goes.

  We walk.

  ‘They said we have to go back.’

  ‘Back where?’

  ‘To the beginning. In the south.’

  ‘South? What for?’

  ‘Kick-start ceremony.’

  We walk.

  ‘What do you know of the grog?’ I say.

  ‘The Dreaming?’

  I nod.

  ‘Revenge. Sexual jealousy. Hatred. A dark force that unites all dark forces.’

  ‘My father was a grog runner.’

  ‘You ever have a drink?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘You can’t remember any-fucking-thing.’

  I take a swing at Mularabone, and miss. Mularabone dances along in front of me like a ballet dancer.

  ‘You can’t even remember how to throw a punch!’ he says.

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘My cousin.’

  ‘First cousin?’

  ‘Second, or third, probly.’

  ‘That’s all right then.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Don’t think about it, bruz.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Don’t think about it.’

  ‘Uncle Warroo-culla knew my name.’

  ‘Proper inkata, him Uncle, maban.’

  We walk.

  I glance over my shoulder, suddenly not sure if I’m still in the cave; the sky behind us could be the painting, except for the massive floating spirit figures.

  ‘The uncles said nothing about the water gathering?’

  ‘They wanted to talk dreams.’

  ‘That figures.’

  ‘Whatever it is, you’re in it with me.’

  ‘They said that?’

  ‘And there’s someone looking for us. Water Board.’

  ‘The thick plottens. They tell you who?’

  ‘Maybe they don’t know.’

  ‘Course they know. They were probly expecting you to ask.’

  ‘They would’ve said.’

  ‘Ya gotta learn to ask the right questions.’

  ‘Well, you just left me.’

  ‘Did you tell them about that dream you told The Sarge?’

  ‘I thought you must’ve.’

  ‘Why did The Sarge believe you? That’s what I always wondered.’

  ‘It came true.’

  Mularabone shakes his head as though to rid himself of the memory the way a dog gets water from its coat, and walks on.

  ‘You got any h
erb, coorda?’ I ask.

  Mularabone looks at me, and smiles his wry smile. He shakes his head. ‘Ah, Djenga.’

  Of course, any stash he had would have been handed over to the uncles. Sharing Law. Sometimes you can look and see but just not notice what is really going on around you.

  We walk.

  Off to the north we see a family of wallabies. They stop eating, and look up to watch us pass. Their brown eyes are warm under the light of the Milky Way. Ahead of us is the rocky country we must pass through, to go down to the refugee camp on the other side.

  Dreaming 44: Back of the Ute

  The ute swerves sharply again and I jostle the body next to me in the back. The driver’s head turns for a second. It’s Jack! Jack’s pissed. Eyes shining, lips as red as sex, cheeks glowing with malice and laughter and alcohol. The man in the passenger side doesn’t turn around. But I recognise the back of his head as if it were my own: 44. My arms tighten around the child in my lap. The road snakes away behind us, the black-brown of the hill to the left, the black-black of nothing to the right, and far below us the blue-black of the sea.

  ‘Let’s go for two tyres over!’ Jack screams, and his laugh comes back to me in chunky wet globules like diseased spit in the wind.

  The vehicle beneath us accelerates. My stomach tightens and I feel the tyres go over, for a moment lost, and then yanked back to the road surface by strong hands on the steering wheel. Jack is laughing again. The child is still silent. My fear is as black as the night. The others in the back of the ute loll drunkenly and sway against each other like a kelp forest moving in the ocean current.

  As the tyres go out near the cliff edge, stones and gravel fly out into the drop. Even if the rushing night wasn’t tearing at my ears, I would never hear those stones hit.

  The vehicle begins to accelerate more, the back end swaying to match Jack’s casual wrists and dribbly mouth. I twist my head around to get my eyes forward and see the corner approaching. I know we can’t take the corner. We’re going too fast. I’m trying to breathe, trying to get my mind to work, as the fear rushes through me. My arms are around the child, as tight as tears, and he whimpers for the first time. The tips of Jack’s ears begin to glow red. My face cringes in slow motion like a punch-drunk boxer waiting to be finished off – and the ute leaves the road. Leaves the earth. I look back over the waving kelp bed of bodies in the tray of the ute to watch the road and the earth running away from us. Running like a dying man. There is a strange silence, slow-motion silence, somewhere the engine still revs, the tyres still spin in vain, and Jack, Jack with this lopsided confused smile. Which I can see because now I am above the ute looking down, watching it falling. Feeling it falling, and the moment I feel it falling I’m back in it, hunched over the child, falling through the sky, protecting the child with my body against all knowledge of gravity. Falling from terror into nothingness.

  There is a big jolt and we’re back on the road, the ute swerving this way and that on the winding coast road, which drops hundreds of metres to the ocean on the south side. The back of the ute is full of lolling bodies. I’m comforting the child, and Jack’s head is framed in the back window. 44 doesn’t look back. Jack still has his lopsided grin. He turns and yells back over his shoulder, ‘Let’s try for two wheels over!’

  Five: Metal Bees

  Mularabone touches me on the shoulder. I feel his strength.

  ‘You right, bruz?’

  I nod in the dark. Then stumble.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I think they’re onto us.’

  ‘You see something?’

  ‘Jack trying to kill me in a ute.’

  ‘We gotta keep going.’

  We reach the edge of the rocky country. Away to the south there is a vehicle driving. We hear it before we see it. The headlights cut into the darkness, forming a little cone of light, spearing its way through the desert night at speed, and throwing a dust cloud out behind it. It’s like the dust is causing the vehicular motion, not the other way around, as though the vehicle is consuming the desert. Mularabone and I stand and watch the vehicle heading doggedly towards the Water Board compound.

  ‘Friends of yours, bruz?’ Mularabone asks me.

  ‘Thought they were your mates, bruz.’

  We’re suddenly weary. We’ve got that weird underwater feeling; today was our first sleep for days, and like a drug, when you’ve had a little, and you really need it, it calls to you like a song in your bones. We’ve been driving and walking through this Country and we haven’t seen the sun for two days. This means we’re vulnerable. We’re once-removed from the realities of vehicles, and what they mean.

  Ahead of us, in the rocks, a shadow shifts, a shadow that doesn’t belong. Our bodies have already begun to move. We take three steps, maybe four, at full run, and we’re throwing our bodies down, instinctively searching for depressions in the earth to land in, as the air is torn apart from the machinegun fire. The earth behind us explodes in dust and rock splinters, the air alive from the angry metal bees. There is another burst of gunfire, the bullets cracking and splitting the air open above our heads. Our bodies are pressed into the earth, and we can’t get close enough, deep enough to our mother, in a desperate attempt to keep our bodies intact.

  I hear someone swearing. I look to Mularabone before realising that it’s my voice. The shooting stops. I stop. We don’t move a muscle. They obviously haven’t got night-vision gear, or we’d already be dead. They must be sloppy, or we’d never have seen it coming; even just a second or so of warning gives them away as amateurs. We’ve still got a chance of getting out of this. We glance at each other. A tiny nod. We start crawling backwards, away from the immediate threat. It’s not easy to see how close they are, or how many.

  The spotlight comes on. It is an intense beam of light to be inside of. Like the light has a texture, a weight, and we feel it heavy upon us. It perfectly encompasses both of us, in our silly little attempt to crawl away backwards. We look at each other, now bathed in brilliant whiteness. Mularabone tenses his body in mock-fear to take the piss out of me. I look down at my offending body, and then sheepishly back at Mularabone. I know I’m still afraid to die. 44 tells me every fucking night. From Mularabone, it is more like love. My brother still prepared to joke and we’re both about to die. We smile at each other, naughty schoolboys who know we’re gonna get the cane, but it’s still gonna be worth it.

  ‘Don’t move! Don’t move! Don’t move a fucking muscle!’

  The megaphone blares out as bizarrely in the desert night as the spotlight we’re lying in.

  Mularabone pushes himself up and gets to his feet in one motion. I follow him half a second later.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing, bruz?’ I ask. My voice comes out high and whiny.

  ‘I don’t wanna die lyin down, bruz.’

  I laugh. Shake my head as if to say ‘Crazy-fucken-Countrymen’. ‘What are you doin then?’ he asks me, looking at my standing-up-ness.

  ‘I don’t wanna die alone, bruz.’

  He laughs. Shakes his head at me as if to say ‘Crazy-fucken-Djenga’. ‘I said: don’t fucken move!’

  A burst of fire smashes into the earth just to our left.

  We don’t move now. We show them our empty hands. We both wish we had weapons. We’d know we’d probly be dead by now if we did have weapons but we still wish we had them; that’s men for ya.

  We hear their boots running towards us, maybe half a dozen. The light is in our eyes so we are blind to the night now. Into the circle of light, I see a rifle butt arcing towards me. I step in past it and smash into the trooper on the end of it. He goes down hard. There is another right behind him swinging at me from the other way. I duck deep and strike out for his torso, which appears in the light just in time to meet my fist. Something cracks me from behind and I’m going down hard. I’m hitting the earth and rifle butts and boots are raining down on me.

  Dreaming 44: Rotten Inside

  I’m sitting in the ba
ck of the paddy wagon, chained like a dog. Chained like a rodeo bull – because the ring feels like it goes through my nose. I can’t see the driver in the front. But the passenger in the front is 44. I’d recognise that dark crew cut on his big boofhead disappearing up under his black hunting cap anywhere.

  There is dappled light falling across my naked torso. I look down. Just above my left nipple is a big ripe pimple. It is almost as big as my nipple, the yellow pus mountain like my nipple, and the red inflamed area like my areola. I get both my hands up to it and start to squeeze. A sharp pain shoots through my left side and erupts through the point of the pimple as the skin breaks. The pus and blood dribble down my chest but the core of the pimple is a dry, hardened yellowish ball. It’s left a big hole in me. Inside I see there is another head, just below the surface. I squeeze again and another core comes out. The hole is a little bigger and there are more yellowish balls pushing at the opening. I tear my flesh until the hole is a little bigger and half a dozen or so hard pimple heads come out. I’m getting frantic now. I tear at the hole in me. It is big enough to put a football into, and the hard little off-yellow balls pour out, cascading into my lap, quickly piling up as high as my nipples as my body opens and the hard rotten pimple heads pour out.

  Six: Back of the Divvy Van

  The motion of the vehicle wakes me. The van rattles, slides and bumps its way along, way too fast for the quality of the road, throwing my body this way and that. We go over a big bump, sending hot pokers into my side. My strides are damp below the waist. I’ve pissed myself whilst unconscious. Not the first time. The smell of piss fills my nostrils.

  I hear a voice in the darkness: ‘You back with us, coorda?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘What the fuck were you doing, bruz?’

  ‘Didn’t want to die without a fight, bruz.’

  Mularabone chuckles in the darkness at my reply.

  ‘What the fuck were you doin, bruz?’ I croak out.

  ‘Didn’t want to mess up my hair, bruz.’

  I try to smile in the darkness but feel myself slipping down again. I keep thinking about The Sarge, and the war. Must be because we’re in custody of the Water Board. The Sarge always reckoned that the war was inevitable, may his soul find peace. He reckoned that failure could not abide success – and will always be driven to pull it down. The individual versus the group, said Mularabone. All I could think of was wet versus dry. Nah, said The Sarge, it’s just East versus West.