by Peter Docker
For a moment there are ghosts in the back of the van. I don’t know if I can really see them or not. It is true that whitefullas, Djenga, really do look like ghosts. White spirits. If they are there, they bend over me, fiddling with the metal restraining device. If they aren’t there, then there’s nothin to worry about.
Mularabone and I roll against each other as the van bumps and jumps along the track.
‘If they were gonna kill us, we’d be dead by now,’ comments Mularabone.
‘This is what the uncles were talking about. Someone looking for us.’
‘We don’t need the Moth to tell us the Water Board is after us – we took their bloody trucks.’
‘Nah, but it is connected.’
‘I hope so.’
‘Why?’
‘Otherwise they’re just gonna fuck us up.’
‘They are very thingy about their trucks.’
‘Thingy?’
‘Yep.’
We both know we’re just talking to keep our shit together.
I breathe the piss smell in deeply through my nostrils to keep myself alert. I’m trying to think about the smoke that Uncle Warroo-culla was blowing out. I’m trying to bring the tiny spider into my heart.
Dreaming 44: The Pub in the Middle of Nowhere
I arrive at the Pub in the Middle of Nowhere and it’s hot and dusty and the bar is full of big men. Big arms, big guts, big mouths, big blue singlets, big stubbies, big boots, big lumberjack shirts. Fucken big bastards.
I go up to the bar and they begin to crowd me and I know that very soon I’ll have to fight. Fight my way out. By the time I get to the bar, there are men crowding right in on me, touching me on all sides. I really feel like a cold beer but I see now that a drink is out of the question. There is the sound of a can being popped open by someone else. I’m tonguing for a beer. Needing that coldness. Wanting the bubbles. Desperate for the tang on my tastebuds and the blurry buzz in my brain. A thick blue haze of cigarette smoke hangs in the air.
I snap my fist into the man right in front of me. My fist buries itself into him up to my wrist, his skull crushing like a thick-shelled empty egg. I push him off my fist and three men immediately take his place. They leer at me. I punch them down.
Blam! Blam! Blam!
Over the heads of these men I see three black men sitting quietly in the corner. They wear huge white ten-gallon hats. They sit calmly, appearing to take no notice or interest in the action at the bar.
Three more big men turn up. Big white men. They leer. I punch. They leer. I punch. I punch. I punch. The big white men are three deep lining up to attack me and three-deep on the floor with smashed faces and crushed eggshell skulls and I push off the wall of men, and run for the street, grabbing a rifle as I go.
I never get to fire my weapon. I drop my rifle, seemingly unbidden, and it thuds softly into the dust at my feet. They have me. Holding me down. Metal barrels pressed hard against my back and head. Something else is pressed in at my neck, something cold, something metal, something that makes me hold my head at a strange angle and organise my body differently, in a tightened, twisted way. When I attempt any movement it is strange and robotic.
I climb into the back of a grey ute. I’m moving slowly, like I’m in a trance. Like I don’t exist. The ute takes off.
Now they have me. I know what is required of me.
I’m just waiting for it. Waiting in the back of the ute.
There are four or five Djenga sitting around me. They all have rifles pointed at my stomach. The night rushes past the ute like a symphony orchestra on ice skates, their instruments muffled, and out of tune.
Seven: The Tank
The vehicle has come to a halt. There’s artificial light spewing in through the barred windows at the side. I look down to see Mularabone sleeping. His face is bruised and swollen, and there’s blood seeping from a cut under his shirt. I lean in and gently shake him. He doesn’t move but his eyes open. He looks at me.
‘Are we there yet?’
The back door starts to rattle from the outside.
‘Put em in the fucken tank,’ a voice says.
Mularabone and I start to get up, the chains at our wrists and ankles rattle on the metal floor. The back door opens.
‘C’mon girls, time to get out!’
Mularabone and I climb out. Mularabone falls down. I grab him and haul him to his feet. We’re inside the Water Board compound. The place is lit up with permanent ML lights strung on poles. They are powered by the glowing and humming solar storage unit swathed in barbed wire. Just beyond the perimeter is the dam and the expanse of water that the Water Board is protecting. We are so close to the water that I can smell the sweetness.
The Water Board troopers train their weapons on us. But they’re standing back a bit. A couple of them have black eyes and face cuts, the legacy of the arrest. I smile at them, gripping a length of the chain that joins our wrists and ankles, willing one of them to get close enough for me to give it to him. I’ve been in custody for less than three hours and I’m already thinking like a lifer, no care for my own person, desperate to do any damage I can to my captors. The Water Board troopers are mostly Eastern Staters. You can tell em at a glance. Djenga, of course, same look in their eye, same set to their mouth. And the hate. The hate that closes off their auras, leaving only greyish smudges all around them. It’s stained them. Stained them as a people, and stained them individually. You didn’t see that look on Djenga when I was a child.
They hate me more than Mularabone. Cause I’m white like them. I’m the living proof that they are wrong. So they hate me. And I hate them back. They have no respect for the Law of this Country. They lack the courage to be real men. To face the Law. The Law of this Country can’t be beaten with slick lawyers. Can’t be bribed off. Can’t be tricked by rewriting history. I hate them because of that look in their eyes. I hate that look. I hate them because they are the stupid followers of orders. And I hate myself for hating them. No good can come of hate. I know it in my head but not in my heart. Not in my body. Not in my wild eyes crawling over their features like drunken flies, not in my white knuckles holding the bunched up chain, desperate for an opening. Where is the Law in locking up the water? In locking us up? Shuffling the refugees in and out of their goals and work gangs? Maybe it’s that look in their pale eyes that set me to thinking about killing. My memories of fighting them are still so clean, like the stars on a cloudless night. They’ve got the same look in their eyes as me. They’d love me to try to attack them, just so they could shoot me down. They return my smile with gusto, especially the little dark-eyed fulla with the deep cut on his left eye.
The troopers prod us with their weapons. We pick up our chains, and walk splayfooted, with turkey necks, to the big metal door being opened in front of us. I get to the doorway first. I hesitate. A nightstick cracks into the back of my knees and I fall down. Mularabone doesn’t even get a chance to protest before a nightstick smashes into him as well.
Mularabone and I are sprawling in the dust like a couple of barramundi just hauled out of the river. They roll us with their boots until we’re inside in the darkness, and then the big metal door slams behind us.
Dreaming 44: Campfire Execution
I’m lounging by my built-up campfire. My back is cold from the frosty morning but my face and chest are hot from the fire. I’m naked. I look up to see her standing there, on a little white sandhill across from the fire. She is still naked. Our fucking is still vibrating in my body. She is looking at me intensely. Her eyes want to hold mine. My eyes want to roam all over her body, drinking in her curves, as though I can claim some ownership with my looking. As she starts to move down towards me, I see the ancient breech-loading pistol in her left hand. She holds it casually, as though it means nothing, like it’s a handbag or a purse containing no money. She gets closer and the red fire flickers on her chocolate flesh. I look back to her eyes, but she seems distant, like she wants or needs nothing from me now. She
arcs around the fire and out of the circle of red light, coming around behind me. I can’t see her. But somehow I see her feet placing themselves one after the other in the white sand. Somehow I see the huge and ancient pistol, already fully cocked, tracking towards me, flowing up and down with the movement of her hips. I’m sitting by the fire and I can see the huge pistol approaching me, I can see it without looking. I look back to where she was when I first saw her on the white sand dune. 44 is standing there. I see him but he is like a shadow too, or a ghost – there and yet not there. I know it’s him because the firelight flares on the thick lenses of his glasses. The ancient pistol floats up to the very top of my head, and that finger that was only moments before playing across my body and making me moan, pulls the brass trigger.
Eight: Swimming in the Tank
The tank interior is light now. We sit up with our backs to the metal door. There’s a shaft of light that spills in from a corresponding opening in the roof. That glowing corridor almost splits the red dust floor space in half and marches up the far wall. It’s still early but the illumination already appears to have a texture, a rich kaleidoscope of heat and danger. The DOz is well over us now. The depleted ozone always makes me think of the vampire legends. Maybe they are legends from our future and not our past? In another hour, one minute exposed to that light would be your last.
There are dozens of blokes in here. All chained at wrist and ankle. All desperate men. On one side of the tank is a mob of Djenga, and on the other, all Countrymen. Separated perfectly by the shaft of light. In this makeshift jail the new divisions brought by the Water Board are being played out in deadly earnest. Why do people fall for it? People are so easy to manipulate, The Sarge would say, may his soul find peace. Maybe they have no choice? The Water Board uses the prisoners as their worker bees, to build their roads, dig their minerals, maintain their dams and catchments, cultivate their crops. And if they can’t or won’t play the game here on the chain, then they get moved to the underground jail, a whole other level of hell.
I gingerly run my fingers over the top of my head. I half expect there to be a big jagged hole where the ancient flintlock pistol shot went in at point-blank range. Under my dusty hair, my skull is smooth. 44 is using everything close to me to attack me, even my desire for the woman from Uncle’s cave. I tried to tell the uncles. I feel like I’ve been run over by a forty-tonne water tanker. I think if I look down I’ll see the bruises on my chest from the thirty-six wheels that went over me. I look down. There is just me. No bruises. Just me, chained like a dog.
Mularabone is stirring too. We’re inside a huge disused metal tank. One hundred years ago, this was a water storage facility. The roof has been hacked open, which is how the sunlight is creeping over to us.
The other inmates are starting to notice us now. This big Djenga fulla and five or six of his mates amble over in our direction. They’re all tough-looking bastards, covered in scars and tattoos. Across from the Djenga inmates, divided by the light, the mob of Countrymen are also taking a keen interest in us. As the Djenga get closer, Mularabone touches me on the upper arm. We haul ourselves up to our feet without a word. The group of rednecks stops about three metres from us. The big redneck leader, a blood nut in blue overalls, who looks like he was born in this tank, steps out from his gang.
‘You’re mine, bitch!’
I have this bemused expression on my face, like I don’t know he’s talking to me, or I don’t speak his language. I focus on his mouth as he speaks. His lips are pink and thick, like medium rare rump steaks banging together; it wouldn’t surprise me if small droplets of blood flew out with his speech. He takes another step towards me. This time I match him with a step. I’m over it now. His mates behind him might kick the shit out of me, but I’m gonna shove this spare chain in my hands down his throat until he gags on the metal, and spit on him as he’s choking to death. I’m locked eyes with him now, no backing down. Out of the corner of my eye I see that the Countrymen have moved closer as well. Blood Nut is trying to figure his next move.
‘I said, you’re mine, bitch!’ he repeats.
‘I heard,’ I confide with a smile.
One of the Countrymen steps out from his mob. He and Mularabone exchange hand signals. The rednecks barely notice, but all the Countrymen do.
‘You talkin to a brother, Mitch.’
Mitch the Blood Nut looks over to the voice.
‘No,’ he replies, ‘I’m talkin to him,’ and he jabs his finger at me.
I’m poker-faced – but Mitch the Blood Nut is starting to get under my skin.
Don’t jab your fucken fingerbone at me.
Out to my left the expressions on the faces of the desert brothers don’t change, like their faces are carved from rock.
‘You talkin to a brother, Mitch,’ that fulla repeats, his voice low and even.
I know that voice. The recognition gives me confidence. Mitch the Blood Nut looks back to me. His eyes burn into me and his hands hanging at his side begin to twitch involuntarily. He takes another very deliberate step towards me. The other rednecks behind follow suit, their big boots stirring tiny clouds of red dust in the golden morning sun. But Mitch the Blood Nut and his cohorts don’t even get time to blink. The brothers’ expressions don’t change. Their feet don’t walk. But in a flash they are all toe-to-toe with the Djenga, eyeball to eyeball, blocking the path to Mularabone and I.
Mitch the Blood Nut goes slack-mouthed, the medium rare steaks flapping like wet doonas on a clothesline. The brothers stare hard. The rednecks stare hard. If there’s gonna be a go now, it’s gonna be big. Big, fast, and furious; there’s plenty of old scores to settle. Mitch the Blood Nut shakes them off. Backs down. He goes to turn away.
Phum! The brothers are back where they were standing before. No one’s feet have moved. No little red dust clouds in the diffused angry morning sun. No tracks.
Mitch slack-jaws again. He’s never seen Countrymen throw images of themselves across a space before. I’ve never seen it done en masse.
The brothers move in to us now. They light a fire under their smiles. They shake our hands proper way. Young James, the leader of the brothers, comes and hugs us fiercely. He was in the cadre with Mularabone and I and The Sarge. We laughed at death together. We move back over to their spot in the tank. Mularabone is talking in Language to them. The rednecks watch us go.
We sit in the dust and Mularabone reaches into his side pocket and takes out his ngumari. Slack of the troopers. They should’ve searched us. The brothers slap him on the back and laugh. We each roll a thin one and light up. I look across to Mitch the Blood Nut who is still staring at me, a hungry cat watching the mouse walking away.
I give him a smile: Any time, fucker!
I can read Mitch’s thought from here: Who do you think you are? What colour are you? Whose side are you on?
I look around me, the only white face in this tight mob of desert fullas. I’ve spent my life asking these questions, and reading it in others around me.
Ya can’t always get what ya want, I’m thinking as I smoke, and feel a wry, unrealised smile creep into my face.
I catch something out of the corner of my eye and glance down to my right shoulder. There is a huntsman spider perched on my shirt. She has both her front legs up, hanging on with the other six, and is standing up in a challenge stance.
I look at her. I don’t move. I can feel her taking me in with her many eyes, feeling my mood and texture through her feet, trying to read my intentions. I stare back. She suddenly jumps off me without warning, freefalling for a moment, and then floating down as if she has an invisible parachute. She hits the ground running and takes off, heading under some rotting wooden crates lying on the tank floor. Only then do I feel the silky-secret touch of her web brush my face. She spun a web as she dropped, that’s how she controlled her speed. What a piece of beauty, wrapped up in that single action. She wasn’t afraid of me. I was afraid of her. And that dismount; huntsmen don’t build webs but
hunt in the open – but she could spin one to abseil off me like Water Board Special Forces going down a building with their ropes and carabiners.
I look up to see that Mularabone and a few of the other desert lads are looking at me. I wonder what they saw? Wha’d they reckon?
From the other end of the tank there is suddenly a big commotion as the steel doors are opened and Water Board troopers in full riot gear start pouring in.
‘Here he comes,’ I say.
‘Who?’ asks Mularabone.
‘Jack. Fresh from my ute dream.’
‘Is he the one looking for us?’
‘I doubt it. Jack would be battling to find himself.’
When a dozen of them have formed an open-ended perimeter, Jack steps in. He isn’t in riot gear, but wearing the dress uniform for Water Board officers. Apart from his enclosed helmet, he resembles a bona fide member of the original Rum Corps of New South Wales.
I turn to Mularabone. ‘Nice entrance.’
‘Didn’t know ya could still get away with jodhpurs, bruz.’
The group around us laugh.
Jack turns to the sound and marches towards us.
‘Uh-oh! Look out!’ says one of the brothers.
More laughter.
Jack strides towards us with renewed purpose. He is just about to get to the end of where his troopers are, when a low voice sings out, ‘Watch out, brother.’
The sound of the voice chases Jack across the sand and latches onto his flesh like a word spoken-hummed through a didj.