The Waterboys

by Peter Docker

  From across the other side of the fire, Uncle Warroo-culla speaks up.

  ‘You are afraid of the troopers, Nephew.’

  The electricity and the drugs and the smell of grog fill my mind like wild dogs, jaws and teeth dripping with eager saliva.

  ‘You have your dreams now.’ Uncle Warroo-culla is looking right in on me so that I feel small, like my body is hollow and my vantage point is way down in this hollow body, so that I have to strain my eyes and arch my spine backwards to look up through the opaque eye sockets of my own skull, to meet his gaze. ‘You are dreaming your own story now. Searching for it in the heart of your spirit,’ he says.

  Mularabone is very still. Young James and Mort look outwards, their weapons bracketing their bodies like punctuation.

  ‘Where you are going there is great danger,’ says Warroo-culla. ‘The dam?’

  ‘Below the dam. Not far from where the truck is hidden,’ says Warroo-culla.

  ‘After you deal with the dam,’ adds Birra-ga.

  ‘Ambush?’ I say.

  I am really struggling to stay in this exchange. My mind wants to sink into the blurry safety of self-pity. This is a hangover from the grog. I bite down on the inside of my lip to keep myself bright with the pain.

  ‘Not the ambush you are thinking of. This is a strong place. A danger place for you. Because of the grog.’

  ‘Grog dreaming?’

  ‘Yuwai,’ Uncle nods. ‘You will need Mularabone.’

  ‘Why don’t we get the water from somewhere else?’

  Uncle Warroo-culla looks at me as if I’ve understood nothing.

  ‘We need the water from that place. You need it.’

  I get the feeling there is more coming, so I wait.

  ‘Water from that place to heal you.’

  I look to my thinnie, which has gone out.

  ‘You know the grog dreaming is a story of two brothers...’ says Uncle.

  I wait. But Uncle is looking away. He has said his piece.

  Every moment in time encapsulates every other moment. My dreams are teaching me this. Each past. Each future. Each future for that moment. This is the nature of being. I knew about my connection with water from my maternal grandfather and uncle, but I’d put it away, or allowed it to be pushed aside to make room for other stuff barging its way in.

  ‘What about Nayia?’

  ‘Nayia-Nayia. The Chosen One,’ says Uncle Warroo-culla.

  I try to find Mularabone’s eyes but he’s concentrating on the fire.

  ‘The Chosen One? What happened to “Angel From Above?”’ I say.

  ‘Interpretation,’ says Mularabone with a shrug.

  I look to Uncle Birra-ga. His eyes are fiery but somehow faraway for a moment – but then he focuses on me with a suddenness that makes me want to pull away. But I don’t. I open up my heart and pour it back at Uncle through my eyes – meeting him head-on with all my spirit.

  ‘Nayia chose to swim through the Sick Mother for you.’

  ‘The Sick Mother?’ My voice is calm and strong.

  ‘They stored nuclear waste in those rock holes a hundred and fifty years ago,’ says Mularabone.

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘It was the Eastern States mob. It was stored underground just over on their side of the border. We didn’t know what they were up to.’

  ‘Under the water?’

  Mularabone nods. ‘Yuwai.’

  ‘Are they compromised?’

  ‘We think they might be. Uncle’s father wouldn’t drink water from there. The story was that it made everyone sick, made them die.’

  ‘But the inmates are drinking it,’ I stammer out.

  Radiation sickness. Blackness. Slackness. Sleepless. Senseless. Shortage. Shortfall. Rainfall. Walk tall.

  ‘It was the only way out,’ Mularabone says with a shrug, patting me on the shoulder.

  What starts to creep into me now is a smile. Nothing like old Stirling’s killer snarl. From down where I was trying to look out my eye sockets before, comes a wave of unexpected joy.

  Nayia and I are bound together forever. She volunteered to save me. To swim to her certain death to save me. And by saving me, condemning me to certain death. But I’d been in the mine jail for days. I was already fucked. And the death will be slow and painful and sickly, not the brave, heroic, flashy kind. I remember the strange sickly appearance of all those Djenga prisoners in that old mine, shivering by inadequate fake fires.

  ‘Is Nayia my reward, or my punishment?’ I ask.

  The Countrymen all laugh.

  ‘Aaaaah,’ says Uncle Warroo-culla with a dismissive wave of his hand, causing them all to laugh again.

  I laugh too. The romantic aspirations of young men are always funny. Even my own. Love reduces us all to fools. I like the sound of my own laughter. We are all born to die. And I’m definitely dying. We all are. That’s a laugh.

  Eighteen: The Smoky Man

  We all laugh for a long time. Then the laughter dies down. Like the fire. No one feeding it wood now. That old laughter dries up like an ancient riverbed strewn with huge boulders.

  The old uncles nod and get to their feet. Young James and Mortimer are away and moving, the weapons held at casual readiness.

  I look at Mularabone. He gives me a little giggle. I return it. Then we get up and skip away in the opposite direction.

  We’ve only walked a few paces when Mularabone sings out, ‘If ya get blisters and wanna stop – just let me know!’

  I laugh but my fingers tell him to fuck off. My body is still weak from my subterranean captivity but I know I can walk. Djenga can walk too: if ya can’t do it walking, it ain’t worth doing!

  ‘What did Uncle say?’ I ask.

  ‘He was saying that once the dam is gone, the lower river region can recover,’ Mularabone says.

  ‘He spoke for a long time.’

  ‘The place where he was born is now under water. He is worried for that Country.’

  We walk for a long time. We’re heading back to the dam. We’ll have to get the truck to cart some water for the meeting of the Law bosses. The water covering Uncle Warroo-culla’s country is another matter. There’s Jack and the whole Water Board compound protecting that dam. But we’ll know what to do. It will come to us when it comes. I wish I could keep my thoughts all on one line.

  Then Mularabone’s head goes up, and he is completely still for a moment, before he takes off like a madman. This bungarra goes running this way and that with Mularabone in pursuit. Finally the lizard goes racing up a stunted desert oak with Mularabone hard on his heels. I run up to the other side of the tree to flank him. Then Mularabone dances in, as though all the moves are rehearsed, nulla-nulla out in one graceful movement, and thud! Thud! Thud! He whacks that old goanna. Mularabone smiles. He sings a thank-you prayer to that bungarra spirit.

  We don’t stop walking. We’re following a snaky tree line. It’s hot. Really hot. I glance over at Mularabone. The heat and pace don’t bother him. I’m thinking about the dam. About the water. I remember the strong song in my blood from the dried riverbed beyond where we stashed the truck. Something tugs at my memory from that strong old water song, a feeling that I can’t quite get hold of. That feeling of recognition, like seeing Molloy the killer handing out bread to the Nyoongars in the dream of Fremantle at Garungup.

  Mularabone takes off again with the bungarra hanging from his belt. My eyes go up and out. Way out to the shimmering east there is a movement of grey on the red-dust horizon. Running out towards the barely perceptible movement – Mularabone’s right hand flashes an instruction to me, a pumped flat pushdown movement away from his body. I fall back to the shade under the thin trees and lie down on the warm earth. In this landscape we suddenly do not exist. The desert is so big and we are so small.

  Mularabone throws himself down and pulls off his backpack. He takes out a gadget, unfolds the dish-shaped aerial and places the little unit on the ground. He hits a button and a control panel lights up. Mul
arabone keys in a sequence and then flattens himself on the earth like some reptile soaking up the heat from the ground to give him more energy. He’s masking our infra-red signature. Another of his own devices. He’s a bloody genius in the boffin room.

  I lie in the little hollow between two grass trees. I can hear a little rhythmic tapping. At first I think it is some sound generated by Mularabone’s little black box. I look over and see a chunky brown beetle in the shade of a fallen branch. The beetle is clicking against the wood, maybe burrowing into it.

  I lie on that earth and listen. The vehicle out on the horizon causes vibrations. Mularabone must have felt them before he saw it. It’s way too far off, even for his keen eyesight. The Country is alive with vibrations. With music. Anything that interrupts the song is out of place. Discernibly different. It changes something and that is what is felt. The whole Country is a living, breathing instrument, like an orchestra with infinite musical devices in play, which all connect and react to each other. This is what Mularabone calls the oneness. Mularabone can’t find water but he is the most creative military matériel technician I’ve ever come across. And in combat he is the best. He excels. Has saved my arse so many times I can’t count. I always wondered why he wanted to. I always wondered whether I was really worth saving. I’m drifting off. The heat. I look up and Mularabone is coming back over to me.

  ‘We’ll go for another hour, then rest up,’ he says.

  I can’t even open my mouth to say, ‘Why don’t we rest here?’ before he is off again. Mularabone is the real soldier out of the two of us. In another hour the tree line has petered out and we move into real open country. There is only a click or so to cover before we come to the sunken rocky canyon area where we’ll rest up. This rock formation doesn’t rise up but sinks away into a valley you can’t really see until you are right on top of it. Down we go and it is cool. The floor is river sand and the walls are high and tight. Down in the bottom of the canyon there is a flat shady area. We sit. Mularabone comes over to me. His hand signals ‘water’ and his eyes ask me the question. With my lips I point to the far end of our little area. Mularabone wanders down there. As he gets close he sees the tiniest spot of dampness in the river sand just behind the two big boulders. He crouches behind them and digs. He fills up two cups and brings them back and sits next to me, offering me a cup and holding one for himself.

  ‘We’ll sleep when we get there,’ he says.

  ‘When’s that?’

  ‘Tonight, maybe.’

  I nod. Those ‘maybes’ used to worry me. But not anymore. Not trying to get anywhere. Not anymore. I am somewhere. On a road that I can’t see. Going to a place to steal water we already own and take it to a place that I can’t talk about. To meet Countrymen I don’t know. Speaking in languages I’ve never heard before. This is the way of things. Even getting the water is not the main thing any more.

  I take out my makings and roll two thinnies. I hand one to Mularabone.

  ‘You will get strong, bruz,’ he says.

  I light Mularabone’s thinnie and mine. We smoke.

  As I blow out my smoke it appears to cling to me, as if the mass of tiny particles rising from the tip of my thinnie can read my thoughts. I’m sitting in a little cloud of Conway-shaped smoke, swirling and flowing with my movements, and totally keeping my shape. I take in more air and try to exhale my smoke forcefully away from me but it makes no difference, it just clings more and more. Soon I can’t see Mularabone. Can’t see him through the smoke. I can still hear the clicking. Mularabone has joined the beetle, and is tapping a small rock on a twig, and gently intoning an ancient rhyme.

  The smoke begins solidifying into some kind of grit on my eyelids and I have to close them or be swamped by the growing mountain of grey powder. I close my eyes. Squeeze them against the accumulating smoky powder, squeeze them hard, and then relax them into the mellow darkness coming. I close them and slip away. I want to go. From what Uncle has said to me, I am happy to go into this dream, to face what I have to face, to learn what I need to learn from old Captain Fremantle.

  Waking Dream Memory: Wrong Place

  The smoke starts to clear. I look down to see that I’m still holding a cigarette. It’s a defence force–issue thinnie. The sun has gone down. I see the other glowing tip in the darkness and follow it up to young Jack’s face. We’re leaning up against the vehicle. We can hear our father in the van behind us. He is drunk and shouting at invisible people. Shouting abuse and threats. Jack catches me looking and turns to glare at me.

  He’s nothing like me, his features dark and his body thick. I start to wonder who his mother is. How my father came to be Jack’s father. How I knew nothing of his existence until a few hours ago. I look away.

  The van and vehicle are parked exactly where they were when I first met Mularabone. My throat and chest feel sore. I don’t even smoke. This is my first one. I always thought Mularabone started me smoking. But he doesn’t smoke yet. And he’s not here. Jack sneaked the smokes from our father. We couldn’t stay in the van any longer. And we might not be safe out here if he remembers we are here.

  ‘What was your mum like?’ Jack asks in the darkness.

  My head snaps around to look at him again. He is younger but only by a year. I can see he really fancies himself. I take a drag on my def-thin and try to act as tough as I can. I hardly know which way is up. My mother is dead. My father was unfaithful to her and me. I have a brother I didn’t know about. My father has little or no love for me. My head is spinning from the nicotine and all my extremities appear to have advanced pins and needles. Jack is still looking at me intently. I finish my def-thin and stub it out with all the manliness I can muster. I walk down to the front of the vehicle and open the door. I lean in and carefully open the glove compartment. I lift the gloves and feel for the weapon.

  Nothing.

  My body stops, suddenly unsure.

  ‘Looking for this?’

  I turn to see Jack holding the big pistol.

  ‘Give it here.’

  ‘It’s mine.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘He taught me how to use it.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  Jack drops the magazine out the bottom, cocks the weapon to get the round out of the spout, reverses it, and in three quick moves, quickly disassembles the weapon, placing pieces on the vehicle. He then reinserts the spare round into the magazine, and quickly reassembles the weapon. His sure, quick movements betray many hours of practice. Finally, he slams the magazine back in with a flourish, cocks the weapon, and points it at my head.

  ‘Bang! Bang! You’re dead.’

  I hold Jack’s killer gaze. I can see something moving in his eye, something wriggling like a mosquito larva being born from an egg in the dark pool of his iris. He holds it for just a moment too long, and then lowers the weapon, slips on the safety, and smiles.

  ‘She musta been still young,’ he says with a snarl.

  That snarl slashes at me like a homemade shiv. I launch myself at Jack but he slams the pistol into my guts and I drop. He was waiting for me to do that. Goading me to do it. He’s definitely his father’s son. I look up to see him walking away, laughing. He has the pistol in one hand and a bottle of clear grog in the other. I don’t wanna be here. I don’t remember any of this. I’m not asking for this.

  With Jack, my father got what he always wanted – an apprentice, an accomplice, an open vessel to pour the dark treacle of his soul into.

  I lie where I fell. No point getting up. I hear Jack moving around above me but I don’t move. This is the message from the possum, Jack himself. I hear the plish-plish of the burning liquor in the bottle as it travels up and back to his lips. I lay there feeling the vague new warmth of the burgeoning bruise on my abdomen.

  After a long time, there is finally silence. No breathing, no scratching, no smoking, no drinking noises from above. There is just this formless music playing, somewhere off in the distance. I move my head off the gravel. Some of
the small round gravel stones stick in the indents in my face that they have made, and I have to brush them off like hard little burrow-less kangaroo ticks that have sucked my poison blood and been turned to stone.

  I look down and I am lying on the grave, the mound of bright new dirt rising from the earth. The dust is hard and dry in my nostrils and throat. Six feet down is the body of my mother. The earth is pressing in on her, and now my weight too.

  She loved me. She just made the mistake of loving him as well.

  My tears sting my eyes as they wash the smoke grit onto her grave. Into her grave. Into her. My stomach is cramping from all the body-wracking sobs. My head is dull with the ache of those heavy tears. My eyes are grenade holes in a bombed out winter moonscape. I feel a noise and look up. Uncle Warroo-culla is there. Passively watching me. There and yet not there.

  I pull myself up onto my haunches. I wipe tears and snot away with my sleeve. My stomach is churning like big surf on rocks. I’m a whale swimming in the open sea, feeling those first black pangs of desire to beach myself – hurl myself onto the land where I know I cannot survive. I stand up and stagger back towards the lights from the van. Uncle is gone. He fades away, or maybe I walk right through him. The generator is a dull thud against the low hills. It feels like that thudding is right inside my head. Between my ears. It’s like that water pressure that wouldn’t stop. No respite. No rest for the wicked.

  I come up to Jack slumped on the front tyre of the def-for vehicle. The grog in his bottle is nearly gone. There are half a dozen butts on the ground next to him. He must’ve lifted a whole packet. He has the big pistol in his lap.

  ‘He made me,’ Jack slur-blurts out.

  ‘What?’ I stop and look down at him.

  I’m looking hard at him. I’m trying to sort through his syllables to decipher his meaning. It’s like I’m struggling to understand my own language.

  ‘But I would’ve done it anyway!’ spits Jack.

  I bend down and snatch the pistol from Jack’s ashed-on lap. He tries to grab it back off me and I smash the weapon into his face. Jack falls back against the front tyre, bleeding from a gash in his forehead.