The Waterboys

by Peter Docker

  44 pumps another round into the chamber.

  ‘You wanna try for one of my backgrounds?’ I ask in a clear voice.

  The light comes right up to reveal that we are standing on a vast sand painting. We are now both naked. I am standing in the centre of a group of concentric blue circles. 44 is standing on yellow ochre circles.

  I walk straight up to him, following a line of white dots. Without clothes, 44 has spindly legs, and a big soft gut that hangs off the front of his body like a giant white kangaroo tick that has sucked all the goodness out of him.

  44 reaches out with both hands to get me by the throat. The look on his face reminds me of Molloy in the river of blood, who wanted to kill someone before he died. Anyone.

  I look into his eyes. I search for something. Anything.

  I find nothing.

  His fingers clamp onto my throat. I look down to see that my face and chest have healed, and the shotgun wounds are gone.

  I reach into 44. I shove my hand straight through his breastbone, push aside his heart, or whatever that slime-covered thing is taking up that space, and grab him firmly by the backbone. His eyes go wide, and his fingers increase their grip.

  I start to shake his spine. Once I start to shake I can’t stop. The shaking gets hold of me like the rhythm of a dance that I knew once, and now have to remember. I stamp out a few steps. I shake.

  The pressure from my throat melts away. I look 44 deep in the eye, and I shake him until his arms fall off, and then his legs, and then the flesh and bones from his torso, until finally, it is just him looking at me longingly for one last time out of those dead eyes.

  I shake. I shake. Until I am just holding onto a spinal cord. I keep shaking, and the spine comes apart, and the bones pile up at my feet. I look down and they are already dry and white. I open my hand to let the last two vertebrae fall. Then I stamp on the bones with my dance, and crush them into dust.

  Thirty-nine: The Waterboys

  Water pushes against my eyeballs. Way up on the surface I can see my body floating languidly, surrounded by a phosphorous glow at my extremities. My body: broken, but still good. I notice my fingers play with the water, the way a lover might lazily allow his fingers to play over his partner’s sex, in the bliss of a post-coital cloud. I lazily kick my fins, and propel myself unhurriedly upwards towards the light, and that relaxed, floating body of mine.

  I feel the soft sand at my back, and the weight of the blanket on me. Mularabone stirs beside me. The Dreamer sits up. I haul myself up to sitting, and look to the Dreamer. He has that same look in his eye that Aunty Ouraka had when she awoke to see Nayia-Nayia and I looking deep into each other, across the fire. His eyes seem to say: Well, now that we got that out of the way...

  He gives me a tiny nod, and gets up and leaves the cave. The two fullas who dropped the chopper step in and sit. They both have pannikins of steaming soup, which get handed to us.

  We drink our soup and look out of the cave. There’s a pile of sand just outside. Obviously someone had to put out a fire by piling sand on top of it. Probly to hide the heat signature from the Water Board troopers looking for us. I look to the two Nyoongar warriors. They are watching us. Mularabone applies himself to the soup. The soup is full of vegetables and local herbs. As we sup, we can feel it going into our bodies. I can discern each vein and capillary in my body, and feel the warmth of the soup as it travels down to nourish my extremities. I always feel the cold in my fingers and toes, and now it’s the opposite feeling, with those outer edges of myself warming first, and spreading back inwards to my core. I feel so light that I could float away, and so heavy that I could melt down into the sand.

  I look out. In my dream, the sun was just coming up over the pile of sand that once was 44. Here, the sun is setting. We have slept through the bright sunlight with the Dreamer right here between us.

  We get to the bottom of our pannikins. I have barely swallowed the last mouthful when the pannikin is whisked away by the young warriors. They stand over us with an air of expectation. Mularabone and I exchange a look.

  ‘They’ll be waiting,’ says one of the young fullas, and they both step out of the cave. I notice that they are not carrying their automatic weapons.

  ‘We better not keep them waiting,’ says Mularabone with a grin.

  We get to our feet like old men who have been sitting for days. But once we are up, we feel good. We feel really good. The young fullas start to move off, and we follow.

  ‘Who will be waiting?’ I ask out aloud to no one in particular, and no one in our little group feels the need to answer.

  We pick our way along the path threading the rocky, lightly treed ridge. Thirty metres below us on the left, is the dark water of the Darbal Yaragan. In those depths rests the pride of the Royal Navy from three hundred years ago, and one attack helicopter upside down on the poop deck of the larger of the two man-o’-wars. A bit further along, we follow our guides as they turn to the right, and go into the trees. As the ground slopes away to the low flat area down near the water, we start to hear the singing.

  There are a lot of voices singing over clapsticks in low, subdued tones. In only a few metres of travel, the trees begin to open out. Below us, on the open ground, there are maybe ten thousand people, maybe double that number. There are a few grass trees on fire, sending thick, sweet smoke skyward, and lighting the whole scene with flickering oranges and yellows.

  Everywhere there are men and women wearing different paint-ups. Down near the water, there are a group of men adorned with pelican feathers, stamping out a dance right on the beach. They flow this way and that; the distinctive pelican head movements of the men shine through, as they hunt in the dance, and ride the wind currents expertly to survey their world of air and water.

  As we start to move through the press of humanity, following our young guides, everyone begins to fall silent. They stop what they are doing, and watch Mularabone and me as we go down to where the main fires are. One of the young warriors gives us a hand signal as we walk. Mularabone and I take off our shirts and drop them casually, without interrupting our walk. The big mob parts ahead of us, and then closes around us as we move through. Finally we come to a rest near where the elders are sitting in proximity to two large fires. We see the Dreamer from the cave, sitting in a group of senior men. The Dreamer gives us a big smile. We stop. The silence of tens of thousands of people who have been given no cue beats down on us even louder than the silence of empty bush, or the silence of a clean river. This silence is a stillness that suddenly comes over all of us at once. I allow myself to sink to my knees, and Mularabone follows suit. I drop my eyes to the earth in front of me so that the senior men know that I submit to them. Submit to the Country.

  Another old man stands by the fire. He has a distinctive storm-like paint-up over the shining ridges of scar that wind around his abdomen in a tight spiral. When he speaks, he effortlessly lifts his voice so that he touches the ear of all present without shouting or straining. His voice gives him away as the direct descendent of the old Birdiya of Beeliar.

  ‘The Waterboys have come!’

  The cheering and thunderous applause breaks over us. It is a great joy – but a heavy joy that beats down on us like the weight of a child too heavy to be carried, and there is a long way to go.

  I have to work hard to get air into my lungs. I glance over at Mularabone. Like me, he has tears streaming from his eyes. They run down our cheeks and into the river sand. They plant themselves deep. That heaviness goes, and we start to laugh. The laugh comes easy. The Birdiya, grabs our laugh, and runs with it. It flows outward like a wave in this vast river of people. We are still on our knees, and laughing for pure joy. Around us, the bush and the river shakes with the laughter of ten or twenty thousand people. The bush is laughing with us, the river is laughing with us, and the earth laughs with our joy. The Birdiya comes over to us and, with a hand on our shoulders, motions for us to stand. We come to our feet and the crowd roars, and then falls
silent.

  The Birdiya smiles, almost as if he is embarrassed. His palms open out.

  ‘As you can see, we have been waiting for you.’

  The Birdiya pulls us each into an embrace where he rubs his chest on ours, so that our spirits can touch. This Birdiya can trace his ancestry all the way back to the river. His spirit is like the river itself, part of something much bigger.

  The Birdiya turns very slowly and looks back to the main fire, where he came from. A man slowly stands. Like all the men at that fire, he is covered from head to toe in red ochre, and is wearing only a naga.

  The Birdiya looks back to me, and smiles – as if he is daring me to look with my heart, and not just my eyes. My eyes go back to the standing man. His paint-up leaves no flesh uncovered. Painted up with red ochre, a white man is barely discernable from a black man. It is the way he holds himself. Reminds me of someone. Then I get it. The man is Greer.

  I look back to the Old Man, and his eyes, and his smile, say – ‘Yeees.’

  ‘We brought you here for the dance,’ the Old Man says to me.

  I look to my brother.

  ‘I can’t dance.’

  ‘You’re a man.’

  There is no time for me to protest. We are surrounded by young fullas who start applying ochre to our torsos. As they rub on the ochre, and make certain designs, they start to sing. This song is picked up by the senior men, and then the entire gathering, thousands upon thousands of voices, join in, and sing the ochre on to us. The song laps at us like a great ocean. We feel the sand of our beaches start to get moved around. We know we are part of this endless exchange between the land and the sea.

  I look to the Birdiya.

  What dance? I implore with my eyes.

  The Birdiya is faraway in the song.

  The painters step back, and their song dies away. Mularabone and I look down to see the designs painted on my body. There are marks on the red ochre that I have only seen before in dreams within dreams. I am excited now, but frightened too. With great privilege comes responsibility.

  The Birdiya raises his hands, and a hush comes down on the huge gathering. The Birdiya speaks in Language. The words are living things that he does not create, but harnesses them from the night around us; he makes meaning with them, and then sets them free to roam out over the heads of the multitude. Looking into the mob around me, I notice that there are Djenga all through the crowd, painted up, and indistinguishable from our Countryman brothers. There are murmurs in the crowd like sporadic bushfires starting up, and then the Old Man turns his countenance on us.

  He looks deep into me, and pronounces: ‘Fremantle – Wobbegong!’

  There is a noise from the huge mob, somewhere between a cheer and a growl.

  He looks into Mularabone, and pronounces: ‘Conway – Holy Water!’

  The Birdiya then begins to dance out a step.

  Clapsticks and kylis quickly join in, and all around us we can feel the stamping dance take hold of the people. We can feel it because it is taking hold of us. For a moment there is a rush of confusion in my mind. Then I just accept where I am. I was born to be here.

  A song is begun by the senior men at the main fire, and in moments, thousands upon thousands of throats join in. The whole place rings with this song.

  ‘Remember!’ the Birdiya calls out to us. His joy is like a living thing, shining out through his eyes and swirling all around him.

  ‘Remember! Remember, Fremantle! Remember, Conway!’

  And then the song starts to come at us – up through our feet, as they stamp out this pattern on the river sand. I get the flush of water-heat crawling up my spine, and crackling around behind my ears. I feel sure my head must explode into flames at any moment. My feet stamp out the rhythm. My shoulders start to sway in a specific pattern. The remembering that the Birdiya is talking about does not need any thought processes. It’s not a memory that lives in the mind, but in the muscle memory, in the flesh, the water itself. And in the spirit.

  I reach out to my brother Mularabone, and touch him on the shoulder. I invoke our connection forged in shared dream memories. I feel the heat travel down my arm. I give this heat to him, this power, this child. His body drinks the heat in like a hunger that he always knew would be satiated. We stamp down to the water. A huge handful of grass tree sap goes into the fire and a roar of sparks lights us up, before the thick, sweet smoke engulfs us. With our extremities we are feeling for the presence of our great benefactor whose river home sustains us all. It is the Waakul who gave this dance to Fremantle and the old Beeliar Birdiya for them to celebrate.

  We dance it out. I play Fremantle with his mad Wobbegong shoulders, and Mularabone plays me, with my light step and faraway eyes.

  The dance holds us in a pattern, and then we whirl back upon ourselves, and break the pattern with another stamping set. The thousands of dancers all cry out as one, and my own throat open at precisely the right moment with precisely the right sound. The smoke flows through our bodies as we dance, and remember. Dance and remember. The earth beneath me vibrates and hums like the living instrument that it is. The smoke has me. The song has me. The dance. The clapsticks. The people. The Country.

  My feet sink into the sand up to my knees with each stamp, and the thick smoke swirls around me closely like a blanket – and everyone around me starts to lose their shape – as I am thrust through the walls to another place.

  It feels like a victory, this jumping – I am that little jumping spider, and after I step off, and before I land, there is this triumphant life in between.

  Ghost of History: Smoke and Water Dreams

  I move again. My feet and shoulders still have the memory of that dance by the river flowing through me like a torrent. Now my movement is just a shuffle. It’s only a small fire but that old smoke is following me. Maybe the smoke also has the memory of that dance by the river. There is no wind to speak of. It’s my third move, and still that smoke homes in on my face and eyes, remorseless and relentless as that rocket that shot down the chopper into the deep water where the warships lie quietly on the bottom.

  I look through the smoke to Bright Eyes. He’s quiet now. But my head and heart are full of his words and songs. We followed the water under the ground all day, and he taught me how to read the signs in my blood as surely as he showed me those emu tracks in the sand. As if he’s heard my thoughts, Bright Eyes looks up and straight back at me with the smoke still swirling around my face. His face softens a little. Maybe this smoke that won’t leave me alone is amusing to him.

  The stars above me sing of endless possibilities. They tell me that I can shine. They tell me that light can be seen aeons after the processes that made the light have faded from existence. They are a reflection of the water story I’ve been immersed in all day. This story is fundamental to our existence. Accepting this is what others might call faith – but it is a simple act of recognition. It is something Fremantle said to me on that first day that we set foot on this Country.

  ‘Maybe these people know something.’

  I decide to embrace the smoke. Maybe the story in the smoke will speak to me. It has before. I open my eyes and they stream salty tears as the smoke bites. I open my mouth and let the smoke all the way in through my nose and throat. It sets me off in a coughing fit. I cough and cough, until the cough itself becomes like another kind of smoke, and the cough that this smoke sets off is a laugh. I laugh with my burning throat and weeping eyes – until I start coughing again, and then finally fall silent.

  I sit. With my silence, the smoke leaves me, and trickles away gently, straight up into the night sky. I look up, following the smoke stream, and watch it lazily dissipate into the stars.

  At my back is a huge blue-grey rock set into the side of the hill where we are camped. That rock makes me feel secure, too.

  Bright Eyes throws some more wood onto the flames, and lies down. I rock back into the little nest I have made for myself.

  I go straight to this dream. I a
m sucked down into it like it is a powerful undertow in huge surf. I am standing on top of the big rock behind my sleeping body. The world does not seem very different. I am painted up like I’m still back at the big Wobbegong corroboree at the Darbal Yaragan. I can see right across the Country that Bright Eyes and I have traversed. I can see across the red-dirt Country, with the string of rock holes we’ve been following, brimming with life-giving water that hums through my secret veins, over the hills, down past the wetlands, and swamps, right down the river to the very opening to the sea where Fremantle and I first arrived, and went sprawling into the drink.

  All along the river, I can hear the children playing. I can hear them laughing and calling out to each other in their games. The sound of these children is the pure sound of joy. Our joys. Our treasures. It is a hot day along the river, and the adults relax in the shade, groom each other, or sleep.

  It is to the river mouth that my third eye is drawn. There are two tall ships retracing our earlier pathway. With the wind blowing in from the west, they are belting in towards the river mouth at full sail. Man-o’-wars. They’re big. Colossal warships that speak of the wealth and the terrible power of the Empire. The lead ship looks about seventeen hundred and fifty tonnes, with eighty-four guns, and at least eighty-four Royal Marines on board. To the rear of that is a two and a half thousand tonne monster, with one hundred guns, and one hundred Royal Marines on deck. They plough on towards the river mouth, and are increasing in speed. I get a feeling of grim satisfaction as I see that their course must run them onto the reef guarding the entrance to the river. At this speed the first ship will go onto the reef, and the second will smash into the wreck.

  I’m bracing for the crunch of the hit, for the limestone reef to tear into the hull of the first warship, putting a little bend into my knees, as if I was on board myself. But nothing happens. The great warships bear into the mighty Darbal Yaragan as if the reef was not there. They are taking in sail, but still moving very briskly as they fly up the river like great birds of prey.