I got into his room and it was dark with only a bit of light shining through the cobwebby, dusty, flyspotted window panes. Acky was in a shirty mood that day, and he grabs me shoulder and yanks it around so me neck fair gets twisted. I could smell the beer on him, so I reckons, ‘Look out, Jesse, this bloke’s as drunk as Johnny’s old man.’ I was buggered if I was going to get caned by him in such a temper, ’cos I reckoned he’d half-kill me. I was scared—so I done a silly thing.
I sticks me hand in me pockets and says, ‘If you hit me, I’m gonna get my old man onto you when he comes ’ome next week.’
Well, that gets him as wild as a dog in a cat’s home. He pulls me about and drags me hands out and tries to lay six across them. The thing is, only one of them hit me hand and, since me fist was clenched, it only hit me knuckles but it still felt like me fingers was cut off.
Another hit me face and fair near took me eye out, and the rest got me around the shoulders, and when he’d finished he chucked me out the door.
Me arm was numb right up to me elbow and the mark on me face starts to hurt like the time Mickey Redgum, a stockman on a station where the old man was working one time, sent his stockwhip across me face accidentally. I had to bite back the tears: it would never do for a Nyoongah to cry in front of our number one enemies, by whom I mean our loving white brothers. But when I got to Johnny I couldn’t keep the tears back. He wouldn’t tell, and besides he was me mate.
When he saw me hand and face, he up and goes for the head’s office before I can say ‘struth’ and, by the time I can get after him, it’s too late. I hear a cry, then Acky yelling out something about ringing up Johnny’s dad and Johnny shouting out that he can do what he likes but no one is going to push his little cobber around. Then Acky tells him not to come back to school, and Johnny says he won’t come back for a million quid.
So Johnny was expelled. But he didn’t care.
That night me life was changed. I aren’t no scholar and I don’t know any big words, but I guess after that night I was never really a kid any more.
I was lying in me bag and newspaper bed, watching the lightning flash like spears across the black sky. I loved the rain pelting onto the tin roof of our home-made house, though when it came through the cracks in the rusty walls and all the old nailholes in the roof, it wasn’t so good.
Suddenly, I hears a thudding on me window that’s not hail, so I up and opens it and in hops Johnny, looking like the bunyip coming up out of a muddy creek. I says, surprised like, ‘What’s up, Johnny mate?’
And he says, in a dull voice, ‘I killed me dad and you’ve gotta help me.’
Now Johnny never lied, and anyhow, what sort of a galah would swim through all that mud to bull to a kid? Not Johnny Blue, I can tell you. So 1 asks him what he wants me to do and he tells me.
What happened was, after he got home from school after the stoush with Acky, the silly old coot had rung up like he said he would. Johnny’s dad was angrier than a wounded grizzly and told the boy all sorts of things, like he had to quit fighting, to stop going around with the Nyoongahs, and that he was going to belt Johnny good for being such a fool. Then he pulls off his belt and starts to lay into him, but Johnny’s mum steps in. Now old man Blue was in a cruel, wild mood, so he pushes Missus Blue out of the way and lashes her across the face with his belt.
Then Johnny went mad, because, you see, he loved his mum. He grabbed the bread knife and stuck it into his Dad’s fat belly. Johnny stuck old man Blue so full of holes he was looking like a sieve, then he took off, because he didn’t want to go to jail. So he came to our place, to his only mate—to me.
And he’d worked out a bit of a plan, and it was a pretty smart idea.
He reckoned they’d be looking for him pretty soon, and they’d know, with the river in flood, he couldn’t swim over, and the bridge was fifteen miles down. But us Nyoongahs had made a raft out of old four-gallon kerosene drums and hits of wood, and his plan was that we both cross over then I would bring the raft back and tie it up again and hop into bed, and don’t know about anything. See, if he just took the raft they’d know straight away that he’d got over. But this way, they’d spend all day tomorrow looking on this side and by then he’d be up in East Perth with his Mum’s family, and they’d hide him until maybe he could go over east or something.
Well I got out of bed and into me trousers and we went off down to where the raft was. The river was all white foam, and brown, and green; and rushing and twisting like a giant koodgeeda, dashing itself against rocks and snags. It was the only way Johnny could hide from the fuzz, else I wouldn’t have even gone near it, let alone try and cross it. But Johnny was the only bloke I’d have done it for, no sweat.
So we got on and pushed off from the bank with the two poles, then we’re off like a flaming rodeo steer, bucking and tossing, pigrooting and rearing. But we was getting across.
We was in the middle when it happened.
I was using the pole to keep the raft off a dirty big boulder, sticking its head above the water like a water spirit. Suddenly the pole broke and the raft rammed full pelt into the rock, smashing into a thousand pieces.
Well, I wouldn’t know how many pieces, really. All I know is that there was water instead of wood under me feet, and I was being dragged along like a bleeding racing car driver. I never been so fast in me life.
I couldn’t swim, and I reckoned I was done. Not a nice way to croak, thinks I, so I yell for nothing in particular. Then I feel a strong arm under me and Johnny soothing me down. He used his body to protect mine, so it was him that bumped into most of the rocks and snags, but I didn’t realise that at the time. Only a horrid roaring in me ears and brain, and being tossed along by the Quarra’s green-brown hands.
Then we hit the bank. I felt Johnny give me an almighty push, and that’s all I remember, until morning came and there I was lying flat as a tack among the reeds, like a drowned possum.
Johnny was gone and at first I thought he’d got away, but not for long. Actually, they found him before they found me. When morning came and they found me and the raft missing too, they drove down the river and over the bridge and started to come up the other side, and they found his body wrapped around a tree about half a mile down river.
Well that was the end of Johnny Blue, the Abos’ mate.
He was kind to us, he fought our battles, he made us laugh and stopped our crying, he made toys for us and shared what little he had in life with us. And for all those things I admired him.
But most of all I admired him because he really did treat us as equals, not just people to be kind to.
You see he was a strong swimmer, he could have made it to the opposite bank alone.
I was only a skinny little Nyoongah, a quarter-caste, a nothing. But to him I was a person and an equal and his mate, and he gave his life for me.
SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING
THEY burst into the service station just before closing time.
The leader is tall and stooped, thin and black and very worried. A faint moustache clings to his upper lip, desperate to prove he is older than he is.
He cries dramatically, ‘Don’t nobody move, else I’ll shoot ya!’
Mouth very pink in his darkness. As dark as a drooping, dying flower. His neat, straight, black hair caresses his clean, gay-flowered shirt, sitting lumpily on his shoulders. Flared jeans and muddy stockman boots. So different from his shabby dirty companion by the door.
The old man, greasy and white, fat and frightened, hears him.
The tall boy’s gun points unerringly at the fat white man, who stares in shocked silence at the two dancing shadows and the swinging guns.
‘Orright, ole man. Give us ya monies, quick way!’ the leader shouts nervously. He is scared and uncertain of the plan his younger cousin has suggested only minutes before. ‘Next place we’ll ’old up, Elvis,’ Perry had grinned from the back seat. Driving along on the grey ribbon of road, leading them to tomorrow’s life—if they
got there.
There is fear as well as anger in the old man’s pale eyes so the boy feels powerful. This is his big chance to become someone. All his life he has been kicked into the dust of his dirty existence and made to eat the leftovers. But now he is in control.
Going to be rich and famous.
‘ ’Urry up, Elvis. Stop clownin’ around. Ya want the munadj to come, or what?’ hisses the second youngster by the door. He is small and dark, with a deadpan face and blank brown eyes. There is a hardness about him as his lips draw back in a vicious snarl. He caresses his shotgun in knobbly brown hands as his eyes flicker warily around the room. His heavy black mane curls back from his forehead and cascades down over his shoulders.
He huddles into his flapping old greatcoat and sneers at the old man. A silver-painted skull grins from the ragged black T-shirt stretching across his wide chest. Flat brown feet are planted on the dusty floor. No boots for him.
Both youths wear blue denim caps. But Perry’s is faded and patched, like his denim trousers.
The only new thing about the boy is the shotgun.
‘Now, don’t try nothin’ smart, ole man, else Wolf ’ere will blow out ya guts, understand?’ Elvis says, confident again.
He knows where he stands now. Just a scared old mechanic here. Useless rusted nuts and bolts. A half-naked car, looking ugly in the garage.
Elvis strides over to the till and wrenches it open.
Perry glides softly over to the cool drink vendor and puts two cans in his coat pockets. Grins slowly at his older cousin who is lifting out handfuls of money. It flashes and tinkles in the naked glare of the yellow, swinging light. He is lucky, for the man hasn’t been to the bank all week so all the takings nestle there. A smile lights up gangling Elvis’s flat face. A happy gleam shines in his worried eyes, for a brief second.
‘Come on, fuck ya, Elvis. What, ya growin’ the bloody stuff, or somphin’?’
Elvis swings around grinning to join his anxious companion, and it is then that he sees the girl squeezed into a cobwebby space between the two shelves holding odd parts of engines. She is slim and small with long brown hair. Her round blue eyes are full of fear.
Elvis jabs a blunt finger at her. ‘She’s comin’ with us, just so’s ya don’t tell the p’lice too soon,’ and he drags her roughly from her hiding place.
The old man awakens from his stupor.
‘Leave her alone, you little black larrikin!’
He grabs a spanner. But the smaller youth is beside him in a second. Smash the shotgun butt across the white-grey face. Slam him down to the floor. Mad eyes alight with a viciousness that shakes his small body.
‘Ya know ’oo I am, old man? Perry bloody Dogler, and I’ll fuckin’ shoot ya straight out if ya try anythin’.’
Send a foot crashing into the fat man’s side while the man stares up, bleeding and groaning on the ground like a rabbit in the grip of a cruel trap.
The whole of the south-west knows about Perry Dogler by now. He has been roaming around the countryside for two months: robbing stores, stealing cars, causing terror. One farmer cornered him in the woolshed, stealing a sheep for food. The angry little Nyoongah stabbed him in the stomach three times. He beat a storekeeper senseless in one of his hold-ups just because the man was too slow in obeyiing instructions. Oh, yes, there is reason to fear Perry Dogler.
Now the youth stands over the shocked man, ready to blow his brains out and take his daughter away, to harm her at his pleasure.
Elvis touches his cousin gently on the shoulder, whispering softly, ‘Leave ’im, Wolf. ’E’s nothin’ to us boys ’ere. We rich, look. Got monies—and a woman.’
Wolf kicks the man again. He turns away and shrugs.
‘Yeah. I’ll kill the cunt next time. S’pose the demons come too soon, ’e won’t never see ’is girl again.’ And golden eyes glare down at the silent, beaten man.
Run out of the garage. Leap into the battered old Ford, tattooed in many colours. The boys huddle in their coat of many colours, like Joseph. But none of them would be emperors.
The girl is shoved into a corner and hot, musky bodies press beside her. She shakes with fright and her agonised eyes watch as the lonely service station that is her life vanishes into the blackness of the bush. Half an hour ago she was getting ready for the big night out in her isolated life, preparing to go to the disco held in the town every Saturday night and meet her few friends in the warm atmosphere of the hall. That is another world away now.
Only a set of violent black skid marks and a sobbing old man remain to show that the boys have been.
There is another youth. A white boy, the driver. His eyes sweep over the silent girl.
‘What yer bring her for, Elvis, yer simple nigger? We’ll be in enough trouble without her, too,’ the thin driver shouts in a raspy voice, over the noise of the escaping car.
‘Shut ya ’ole, Willy. You was too gutless to come in, even,’ snarls Perry from where he sulks, still feeling angry. He growls at his cousin, ‘What ya stop me for, Elvis, from gettin’ that white bastard? ’E’d of killed ya with that spanner, true as God.’
Elvis wraps an arm around Wolf. His face loses its worried look and collapses into its happy-go-lucky lines now they have, once again, successfully pulled off an escapade—with lots of money this time. He grins, ‘Cos I’ll tell ya why, ya little black wolf. Munadj would ’ave ripped open ya big black lovely ’ole, then. They’d ’ang ya up, down in Central, an’ split ya right apart.’
Willy sneers at the road.
‘Jesus, don’t tell me our hero went berserk again. One day yer might shoot yerself, with luck.’
Perry stiffens but Elvis’s hand pushes him back into the seat, as he asks, ‘’Ere, koordah, what about them cans ya got?’
So he pulls out two cans and gives one to his lanky cousin lolling happily against the door, the flourbag full of money at his feet.
‘Hey, what about me, Perry? Don’t I score?’ Willy drones nasally.
‘Ya want a drink, get it yaself, shithead,’ snarls Perry.
‘’Ere y’are, Willy, share mine,’ Elvis says.
He hands over his can. His worried eyes glance into his cousin’s hot cruel gaze.
‘Fuckin’ ’ell, Elvis, ya love that white bloke, or what? Ya give ’im everything,’ Perry spits.
‘Say I love a man again, Perry, and I’ll kill ya, straight out, cousin or no cousin. Try them jokes when you been in jail,’ Elvis says quietly, then looks out the window.
Perry grunts and glances down at the girl beside him. She looks at him with fearful eyes, then at her feet.
But Elvis is rich. He can’t stay angry for long. He grabs Wolf around the shoulders and punches him softly.
They smile a secret smile.
‘Hey, look ’ere, Willy, koordah. Us mob are really rich now,’ Elvis sparkles.
‘Yeah.’ Willy grunts unenthusiastically.
The car’s insides roll as it lurches around a wet slippery corner. It groans and clanks and bangs like an old man coughing his life out in jerky harsh gasps.
Empty beer bottles and cans and a wine flagon. Old rags and screwed-up cigarette cartons and an old shoe. A bottle of water and a length of hose for stealing petrol. Used-up things from the used-up boys.
Perry finishes his drink and leans across the girl to wind down the window. She cringes away from that muscular arm, pushing herself into the hard, unyielding seat. He stares at her again and a little smile flutters across his solemn lips. But the wind, rushing into the car, wipes it away, and he is hard and cold, like the red Coca-Cola can bouncing across the road. It rolls into the bush. Something else successfully stolen, gone and forgotten.
Willy drives. The cousins laugh and joke about their latest victory. The girl is alone.
She is only about seventeen. She cannot bring herself to look at her laughing dark captors, so she stares unseeing at her purple, crumpled lap. She wonders how her father is. Thinking of him, she lets a tear slip out of he
r eye and roll down her pale cheek. Catch it with the tip of her tongue and hold the other tears back. Must not let these thieving and vicious people see her cry and so gain satisfaction from their power.
The rain covers the dark world with a soft mist. In front of the probing spotlights, writhing forms of rain men leap in the joy of being free. Tears roll down the window when they look inside at all the trapped, lonely people.
Willy’s white, thin, finger flicks on the radio. Tinny music darts madly and loudly around the car’s stuffy cold interior.
Willy leers at the girl in the rear vision mirror that is dirty and spotted like his pasty face. There is lust in the cold black depths of eyes set too close together, separated only by a pointed nose. He looks a little like a rat.
Outside in the night, trees, ghostly white or shadowy dark, stamp out a wild dance, throwing their heaving bodies into strange and beautiful shapes. Perhaps imprisoned in each one is an Aboriginal soul, moaning to be let out to float up to the sky. Every one of them is an ancestor of cruel Perry Dogler and laughing Elvis Pinnell. But they do not know these two, who wear white man’s clothes and use white man’s weapons and dream white man’s dreams.
‘Hey, Willy. This time tomorrow we’ll be out of the state, unna?’ Elvis says. ‘Soon’s we get to Melbourne I’m going to drink a brewery dry, boy, an’ that’s no lie.’ He chuckles softly to himself.
‘I’m buyin’ one big knife; sharp as all buggeries. With a golden ’andle, same way as we seen in that film,’ Perry mutters.
His slender fingers gently stroke the cold, gleaming barrel of his gun as he slumps back in the seat and purses his lips in thought.
‘Roll us a smoke, Elvis,’ Willy grates as he spins the battered vehicle around a comer. Perry is pushed against the girl. She is enveloped in his warmth and muskiness before she tries to move away. The boy’s gun, that smashed her father’s face open like a watermelon, presses into her soft thigh. Hard and truthful, it reminds the girl of what this boy is. As unfeeling as the shotgun he uses so callously.
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