The Waterboys

by Peter Docker

  ‘We’ve got to get to the place.’

  It is Bright Eyes in my ear. We take off at a trot along the river – but further up the bank from the rampaging water. The smoke closes in around us. Twice, we hear the sounds of English voices calling out from the river. The smoke blurs direction. But our running direction is sure. We break into single file behind Bright Eyes. This is his Country. He stretches us out, and I lean into my run. I was born for this run. The burns all down my back and behind my ears ache with each step I take.

  Ahead of us, there is cannon fire, and the pops of small arms. It starts sporadically, and then it sounds as if every weapon is being fired at once, as the cacophony builds, and then drops away to nothing. There is one lone cannon shot. Wobbegong is dancing.

  No one speaks. We just run. Behind us, out past the smoking carnage and the stillness of Wadjemup, the sun is dropping below the horizon. My breathing feels good. The smoke begins to thin. We run. There is another massive exchange of fire from up ahead, and then quiet.

  When we eventually burst through the smoke, we are just before the place. The smoke clears quickly because the wind has suddenly swung around, and is blowing back out to sea. I draw level with Bright Eyes.

  ‘Gonna spit em out now,’ he says.

  I look to the river. The terrific flow has stopped completely. Whatever it was that travelled up the river so fast, pulling the massive amount of high water with it, must be way up the river by now. I know what went under the boat. We all do. I look ahead. Around the corner, where the spit would be when the water level is normal, I can see the Challenger. She is run aground, and completely on fire. The two massive English warships are out in the swollen body of the river. Two boatloads of marines are rowing steadily towards the burning Challenger. The Challenger appears empty. And the fire is very uniform.

  But now the river water is really changing. All around us, the setting sun blasts the smoke with bright pink, and then I see Wobbegong. He is in a little rowboat with two Countrymen, and is rowing across the river, from the other side – towards us. He is using the changing current, and has started a long way upriver. Behind the rowboat, there is a mess of rope in the water. I can see other ropes tied to the shore further along. He’s putting the finishing touches onto some improvised net barrier system. Wobbegong feeds the rope out the back of the rowboat as the Countrymen struggle to keep the craft on course in the changing current of the swollen river.

  We pick up our pace. He might need us. And suddenly the river is really roaring back out to sea. Looking down river is like looking down a hill. This water is going out faster than it came in. The marines in the longboats have no chance against it. They struggle with their oars. I can hear the coxswain shouting at them.

  Wobbegong looks like he is going to make it. He has judged the flow right. He is setting a massive net across the river. Big net for big fish. Big lure for big fish. The two fullas rowing are going like mad.

  We take off for the place where he must land. The huge warships are now caught in the current. But they’ve seen Wobbegong. Two shots go off. Range-finding rounds. One smashes into the bank, and the other cracks a massive jarrah tree on the shore. They fire two more. They have the range, but the current is grabbing at those man-o’-wars like they are toys. The splashes are forty feet upstream from Wobbegong. We run until we get to the spot. The whole ship opens up, and we throw ourselves into the mud. There are spouts everywhere, and Wobbegong is thrown into the water. Now the warships are close enough for us to see the marines taking aim with their muskets. Wobbegong is swimming. He is swimming with the rope. The Englishmen are firing at both of us. I am running into the swirling river water. Wobbegong reaches the edge, and passes the rope to me. I hand it to Bright Eyes, and instantly the whole team pulls on it, to get it as tight as possible, and then he secures it to the broken jarrah stump as if he’s been a lumper all his life. Wobbegong is lifting himself from the water when two rifle balls smash into him. He lurches forward, into my arms, and we fall in a heap. We slop around in the mud and the blood. I look down to brother Wobbegong. Two big chunky red holes punctuate his carpet shark paint-up. I hold him, propped up in my lap. The water plays all around us.

  Out in the dropping river, the massive warships hit the ropes.

  ‘It’ll never hold,’ I mutter, overwhelmed by the sheer size of the man-o’-wars.

  ‘Doesn’t need long,’ Wobbegong says, and points upriver with his lips.

  In the river there are two longboats. In the fading light we can see the boats piled high with powder kegs. A big nulla-nulla to stun big fish. The rope out in front of us starts to go taut, as the colossal warships get caught in the massive rope barrier, and the river roars back out to sea. The rope stretches. The drifting longboats look like they will hit the warships dead-centre. We hold our breath.

  Then the longboats bump into the warships. The fuses burn down. It is a dance. The explosions rip the night apart. We are all flung back. I land hard on my burns, and yelp with pain, still cradling Wobbegong. The rope is gone. The warships are dragged under the water as if sucked down, their guts torn out by the blasts. There are no screams or shouts. One moment the boats are on the river. Then sinking. Then gone. Finish.

  The water drops at breakneck speed. The night comes down.

  Wobbegong feels cold in my arms.

  ‘Let me go into the water.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Let me go out to sea, Holy Water. That’s where I belong.’

  I lean down and kiss Wobbegong on the forehead. His skin is leathery.

  I open my arms, and push Wobbegong out into the current. My beautiful brothers just behind me see his carpet shark tail flip, as he turns and goes back to the deep.

  Wobbegong has gone back out to sea to hunt.

  Forty: Two Brothers

  I squeeze my eyes tightly against the invasion of smoke. My feet stamp out the last of the dance, and there is a big cry from the other dancers all around me. The music and singing stops, and people drift away to more peripheral fires, and smaller family groups down by the edge of the bilya.

  I feel spent from the stamping dance, and from the constant jumping and landing, and the dream country in between.

  Mularabone is right beside me. We go up to where the main fire is, and sit in the soft, cool river sand to feel the flames heat our faces. Greer comes over and sits behind me.

  All the hair is singed off the back of my head in a half-circle pattern, and there are straight-line burns running down either side of my spinal column, with another half-circle down below the small of my back. Greer has some herbs, which he has ground up in a piti. He takes the pungent concoction and applies it to my burns. The sting goes away almost instantly, as I feel the open wounds sucking at the offered healing. I notice that there is another old fulla sitting behind Mularabone, and rubbing the salve into his burns. Mularabone gives me a lopsided grin. I reach out, and we hold hands like schoolboy friends from another time.

  ‘I can feel that old water now, my brother,’ he whispers.

  I nod. I remember that heat transfer in that sacred dance. Them old men never stop thinking. As if he hears my thought, the Birdiya moves over and sits very close to us. He touches us both on the upper arm and beams at us.

  ‘You wanna see the Eastern States?’

  My eyes tell him that I do.

  ‘You come!’

  We all get up and follow him. He picks his way through the mob, who are now all starting to cook fish. The aroma of fish being cooked floats around us. The Birdiya walks straight at the rocky cliffs at the edge of the bush, near where we slept, and where 44 and I met on the sand painting. As we get close to the rock face, I notice a small opening, only half our height, and into this hidey-hole we go, one at a time. As soon as we get inside, there is room to stand upright again. My eyes don’t get a chance to adjust to the dimness before the Birdiya hits a switch, and a line of green tactical lights marks out a pathway on the floor, like in the corporate jet
s of the Water Board.

  Only a short way into the tunnel, the Birdiya makes a sharp left turn. I follow him, and quickly find myself in a large chamber. Mularabone and Greer are close behind me.

  The Birdiya hits a button and a huge control panel flips out of the wall.

  This reminds me of the first time that I met Uncle Birraga.

  ‘You wanna see Melbourne?’ the Birdiya asks with a mischievous grin.

  I find myself shrugging: ‘How?’

  His fingers fly across the keyboard, and a large screen drops down.

  ‘Satellite!’ he announces with a flourish. ‘We got satellite!’

  And he laughs as if he has told the funniest joke of all time. The screen drops down, and is barely in place before the snow-dust crystallises into an image. We’re looking at a satellite image of a streetscape. It’s as clear as if we were flying over in a Water Board attack helicopter. It’s daytime there.

  ‘When was this taken?’

  ‘Earlier today.’

  ‘What am I looking at?’

  ‘Fitzroy Street, St Kilda.’

  The streets are deserted. No people. No vehicles. Grey dust coats everything. The edge of the bay that we can see has an oily, sickly-looking surface.

  Greer steps up to me, and puts an arm around my shoulders, like I am his son.

  ‘The Old Man likes to look at this place. It is the beginning of a big Dreaming for us.’

  ‘Us?’ I hear myself ask with a faraway voice.

  Greer’s proximity to me is having an effect. I don’t feel strange, though. His spirit is familiar to me, because of The Sarge. He wants me to think about the nature of brothers and brotherhood.

  ‘Conway, you must not think about what separates people – Countrymen and Djenga, white spirits – but what unites us, what is our common ground. We need this “Us” thinking now, more than ever.’

  ‘What Dreaming?’

  ‘Grog.’

  The word goes into me like a barbed spear. I remember that night after The Sarge ... And watching the footy with me mates.

  ‘The Water Board troopers made me drink,’ I stammer out, and my voice does not seem to be joined to my throat at all.

  ‘It’s all right, my nephew.’

  The memory of that grog sends a shiver through my body.

  ‘That grog ended up making us stronger,’ Greer says. ‘Uniting us. When it first came across, it began to destroy us. Us; the Djenga. We had no Law base to fight it from. The Mob didn’t suffer. They didn’t need it. Then we realised how it worked. There are malevolent spirits in this Country, too. This balance is the way of things. The spirit in the grog releases them, and unites them into one destructive force. So the old people decided to start putting Djenga through certain Law – to give us the strength base to fight them spirits from. Old Fremantle saw this coming.’

  ‘Some of my old people used to drink there,’ chimes in the Birdiya, and indicates the place on the screen with a nod of his head.

  ‘Then the Djenga brought it back here. Once you have that first sip – grog’s got you. Grog will destroy you. Grog will destroy your children and their children – forever! So we fight. Kill them grog runners. Burn em. Smash em. Nyoongar Law now. Nyoongar Boodjar. We can’t have that grog release evil into the Boodjar. We are the Boodjar. Strong Country now.’

  ‘Can I see more?’ I say.

  The Birdiya hits the controls and the image pulls back so that we are looking from a greater height at the vast waterless wasteland. But even in that dried-out Country there are two small green dots where the Country looks healthy.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Boonwurrung,’ says the Old Man with a grin.

  ‘And that other one?’

  ‘Wurundjeri.’

  I’m starting to get it.

  ‘People always bin livin here,’ the Old Man says.

  I feel tired. All in. Bone tired. Mularabone likes to say that beauty is only skin deep – but ugly goes right to the bone. This is tired that goes right to the bone.

  Without a word, Greer turns and walks deeper into the cave.

  Mularabone follows. He takes a few steps, then turns back to me. ‘Whatchawaitin for, bruz? A royal invitation?’

  I follow, and can only manage a weak smile. We turn down into a small tunnel, where we have to duck our heads. I brush the wall with my shoulder, and the limestone is cool and dry. A little way in we come to another cavern. There are camp beds set up everywhere. I go to the nearest cot and sit down. The beds are low to the sandy floor, and with my knees high, and the tiredness all over me like a rash, my head hangs between my knees. Greer sits next to me. Mularabone sits on the cot closest.

  ‘Big day tomorrow,’ comments Greer.

  ‘What big day?’ asks Mularabone.

  ‘Jack.’

  A silence comes upon us three, sitting in that cave on those low beds. I look at the sandy floor of the cavern. The green light overhead flickers for a moment.

  ‘It’s not over,’ I say.

  I look to the others. They are all resigned to this fact.

  ‘Greer, you know, there are a lot people who haven’t told me their names. Titles, or whatever, but...’

  ‘For your protection.’

  ‘Thanks, Uncle,’ I say, and his strong hand squeezes my thigh.

  ‘You are coming at the history from our side.’

  ‘When you first came north for us, you didn’t take us,’ says Mularabone.

  ‘Jack had us,’ I say.

  ‘You weren’t ready,’ says Greer.

  We sit there lost in our thoughts. I am standing on the shore looking out, watching the water being sucked out to fill out a big swell coming. I wait. Greer breaks the silence.

  ‘In the grog dreaming ... there are two brothers...’

  Flying Dream: Spirit Dreams of Love

  I feel light. I have no weight. There is a tiny but familiar voice calling to me from far away. The voice calls on me to fly, fly, fly. I lift myself up and out of my body – but despite my lightness, my feet are still anchored to the river sand.

  I glance down at Mularabone. His body is there – but he is gone somewhere else. His empty body glows from within, and blue circles radiate on his brown flesh like a blue-ringed octopus that feels threatened.

  I half expect to see the spirit of The Sarge bearing down on me with his gleaming blade. But there is nothing. No one. Just me standing above Mularabone’s body with its glowing blue rings.

  The faraway voice is gentle but insistent – and calls to me over and over. I step up onto my camp bed and spread my arms like an eagle. I allow myself to fall into the spirit-air so that I can find an air current, and ride it. But nothing happens. I fall straight to the sand, and my body and face hit the earth, forcing a grunt from my near-see-through body. I’ve gotta get outside.

  I follow the low-roofed tunnel back to the control room with the satellite screens. Two warriors are slouched in the corner with automatic weapons in their laps. They sleep peacefully, their breathing slow, deep, and measured. I continue until I get to the small opening, and step out into the eerie light.

  Out to my left, there are three figures standing in a thicket of bush. They watch me but I can’t make out who they are. The sky has a bluish tinge to it, the same blue as the glowing rings on Mularabone’s sleeping body. The sand is light brown, and has designs marked out on it in reds and greens. I walk down towards the Darbal Yaragan. The low glow of quietened-down fires is all around. I see a boulder that I never noticed before, and climb up onto it. It was putting my arms out, I decide, that was wrong. I’m not a bird. I focus myself and drop forward off the boulder. I have no relationship with gravity – and yet still I fall straight down. This time, I don’t hit the sand, but hover just millimetres above it.

  I think I hear giggling from the bushes but I don’t look up. I’ve gotta get up into the air. I arch my neck and head back and take off, and this time I start to gain altitude. But my arch is too tight, and I go
right over in a loop-the-loop, and this time smack into the sand! Now the laughing from the bushes is definitely not imagined. It tickles at my extremities like hairy little spiders running across my spirit-flesh – and I laugh, too, in spite of myself. There’s nothing funnier than someone trying too hard, especially if they cause themselves a little bit of pain as they do it.

  Then I hear the tiny voice again. It is Nayia-Nayia calling from across the other side, a distance vast and unmeasurable. My face has a secret smile that shines out of my multiple eyes so that my head has a glowing halo of joy. I gather my eight legs beneath me – and launch myself straight up into the bluish night.

  Up here it’s cool and sweet. The stars gather around me and I allow my hands to drift out and lightly brush them as I fly past. The burns on my back and skull glow like the stars themselves, and those playful stars recognise me as their brother, and call out their good wishes as I rush past. Down below, the Darbal Yaragan is a child’s painting, plastered across the fresh canvas of the Boodjar.

  She calls again. Out of my throat comes a long-forgotten song, a gift given to me long ago, in another time, and another tongue.

  And there, way out past the horizon I can make out a tiny glowing speck that must be Nayia-Nayia – hurtling towards me. As the song dribbles from my heart, I speed up, and we lock onto each other like missiles. My hair flows out behind me like a single thread of web, and the spirit atmosphere buffets my naked soul, as we hurtle towards each other on our unstoppable trajectories.

  Our eyes lock onto each other, into each other, drinking in each other’s spirit-flesh as the distance between us closes at an incredible rate. Then there is that moment, and I know we both feel it – a tiny moment of hesitation before the impact. What flashes through our hearts is unknowable. Is there trepidation of the impact, or just the age-old desire to draw the moment of love contact out – to draw it out ... forever?