‘Listen, Willy, we’ll buy a whole carton of tailors, now. I’m gunna drown meself in tailors, I reckon. Stuff rallies, unna?’ Elvis says as he rolls them all smokes.
Perry’s eyes, vacant of all feeling, take in the girl.
‘Ya wanna smoke, ’oney?’ he asks quietly.
From the front, Willy’s dry cackling mingles with the raucous music from the radio. Just a noise to hide the silence from these boys. In silence there is time for thought and these three have no time at all.
‘Perry, do yer fancy that woman, do yer? A little bitch for a crazy wolf, eh? Where yer going to set up kennel?’
‘Shut ya ’ole, Willy, ya white cunt, or I’ll stuff me gun up it,’ Wolf yells, and the girl is sickened by his violence.
‘As long as it’s not ya big black gun.’ Elvis says genially, trying to break the tense atmosphere. Perry’s face breaks into a strained smile as he quietens down again. He always does when Elvis cracks a joke.
Suddenly Elvis hisses, ‘Car comin’, Perry,’ ‘Slide onto the floor,’ he growls at the girl, tense and worried but trying to sound tough. But he is not the dangerous one, she knows.
‘Sit where yer are an’ don’t try nothin’, woman, else ya guts’ll mess up Willy’s car an’ ’e wouldn’t like that at all.’
Perry points his gun at the girl’s stomach and she stares in mute horror at his black unfeeling face and golden eyes.
She wonders dimly if she will be dead in the next minute. Everything has to be a dream and she will wake up all right in the morning and go to church.
She looks into Wolfs eyes and thinks she sees a silent plea, asking her not to make him pull the trigger and send noise and pellets bursting through her purple dress.
The car creeps up beside them with a rustling whispering noise. Headlights bathe the wrecked, ragged, interior, and the four bodies with a soft yellow-white light. Some little children wave to her from the back seat. She almost weeps when she thinks how close to safety she is.
The car leaps past. Oily blackness grins grimly in at her again.
‘’Ow much further till this ’ut, Willy? I forgot where it is,’ Elvis asks as he untangles himself from the clinking bottles on the floor. Yet he never will be rid of the empty bottles and discarded rubbish that litter his life.
‘Nearly there, Elvis. But there’s something wrong with this engine.’
‘Yaaaaaahh!’ spits Perry. ‘Just like a bloody wadgula’s car. No bloody good at all.’
A kangaroo hops across the road. Such a delicate, exquisitely formed animal. Perfect in all its movements. Surely a queen of the bush.
The girl wishes she was out there with the kangaroo. Two soft bodies fading into the mysterious peace of the lonely bush.
But she is here. Wedged between the boy who almost murdered her father tonight and the car door that can do nothing for her.
She screams silently and bites her lip to stop her tears.
The moon is happy, running and leaping through the clouds, just as the carload of boys is happy, running and leaping through the bush. But the moon lives forever.
Blue smoke from the cigarettes mingle with the music from the radio and Elvis’s rolling laughter. All joining together in a close, safe world.
Willy spins off the highway onto a rutted track. It sprawls on the yellow-black sandy soil like a prostitute. Bare and stripped of all her virtues in the form of gracious trees and small, flowering bush plants. Lying back, waiting to be raped by the rain that tears into her, or being felt by sensuous shadows in the warm sunshine.
They arrive at a small stone house, part of which has fallen down. It is hidden in the swirling green mists of the bush, only reached by twisting, dubious paths.
Elvis leaps out of the still moving car and his cousin leaps on top of him. They laugh and shout in the mud and rain. Wrestle like two wiry, sinewy mongrel dogs. That is all they are really— mongrels. They belong to no race, spawned by lust. Elvis’s father never saw his son, nor does he want to know that he exists. Even Elvis’s name is a dream. A deserted, skinny woman named him after a dashing singer whom she fantasised as his father.
‘Hooo-eee! We ’ome and safe forever, look! Easy as winkin’, unna, Wolf?’ cried Elvis. The two Nyoongahs do a wild dance of joy. Their own corroboree to thank their God for making them rich. Like the trees, they fling their bodies around in gratitude and send their youthful laughter up to the lonely sky so far away.
The moon comes out of hiding to see what there is to laugh about on the ugly earth. She sees it is just two of her disinherited sons glowing, temporarily, in false grandeur. So she hurries back into the cloud bank and the world is black once more.
The cousins cling together, punching each other gently and laughing softly.
‘’ow much we get, cousin?’ grins Wolf.
‘A lot, any rate.’
‘Plenty o’ fun for us boys now, unna, Elvis?’
‘Yeah, Wolf, brother. Ya just watch! Jenny Narlier’ll be all over me now I got monies.’
Over by the car, Willy watches impassively as the Nyoongahs celebrate. He gets out of the car and opens the girl’s door.
Gentle rain wets her bare legs coldly and wets Willy’s long tangled hair.
His thin fingers roll a thin smoke.
She looks up at him then glances warily over at the merry Aborigines.
A match rasps and flares into brief life. The boy flicks it away, dead. Just as he will flick her away when he has finished with her.
‘Yer should of gone out tonight, sweetheart. Listen, when Elvis Pinnell and Perry Dogler start something, they never stop.’
Black eyes stare out from his drained face. He is the oldest and cleverest of the three. He is the most dangerous.
When Elvis grabbed her in the store, her dress was tom, laying bare part of one breast. The smooth mound, like the moon, burrows into the cloth. But while the moon provokes meditation, she provokes only lust.
‘Yeah. Elvis is not too bad—for an Abo. But that mean little Wolf. He’s mental, you know. I really would hate to be you tonight, sweetie.’
He looks down at her before she covers her nakedness.
‘Of course I’ll do me best to protect you.’
She can read neither hate nor compassion upon his pale, pinched, pimply face—just nothing.
‘I don’t know how I got mixed up with them; money, probably. I’ve been in trouble before. That’s how come I know Elvis. But nothing like this. Listen, Elvis broke outta jail. Now he’s wanted everywhere, I reckon, for stealing cars and such. He doesn’t care what he does; what’s he got to lose? But the Wolf? Well, he murdered a man up in Perth—in cold blood. Jesus, the pigs will kill him when they catch him, then throw the remains in jail for life. There’s nothing more dangerous than a dangerous boong on the run, believe me. Yer saw him tonight, trying to get me into a fight. Yer just watch out for them.’
He puts an arm around her and squeezes her. Cold, clumsy fingers slither down her dress and probe at her breasts.
‘Just stick close to me, yer unnerstand, sweetheart. We don’t want those two around,’ he breathes.
It has begun. The girl has been expecting it at any time. Yet she cannot scream or run or plead.
She sits, frozen, and lets the crooked fingers crawl all over her breasts and legs and thighs as he lifts her purple dress off her lap.
Thin white spiders becoming fat from her innocence.
‘Hey, look ’ere, Wolf. Willy tryin’ to con up our yorga ’ere.’
Willy stands back. The girl is safe for the moment.
She slides away and whimpers to herself. What does it matter, anyway? White boy or black boy, or all three, will rape her soon enough—and maybe even kill her, in this lonely, deserted house.
‘What ya reckon, cous? Big ’andsome Willy, or ’oo?’ laughs Perry, coming up behind Elvis. He is happy, standing in the chuckling silver rain—his rain—getting wet. Tomorrow he will be in a new life and able to start all over again. Even
his eyes sparkle in delight as he clings to Elvis’s shoulder and laughs helplessly.
He looks beautiful, as he must have been as a child long ago, before reality strangled the love in his heart and the laughter of his eyes.
Willy explodes as his manliness is shattered by the Nyoongahs’ bubbling laughter.
‘Yeah, laugh away, yer simple crazy nigger! All yer can do is laugh. Yer can’t drive cars without smashing them up—and yer mates; that’s why I’m here. Yer can’t even fight unless you’ve got a knife or picket or broken bottle, yer gutless wonder.’
Perry’s laughter cuts off suddenly. He springs forward, hard and cruel in the headlights of the car and in this second he could kill Willy as easily as he killed his last white man.
‘I’ll give ya broken bottle, ya white cunt!’ he shrieks as his skin goes yellow in rage.
Then Elvis has a tight hold of him, glaring at Willy, who glowers back.
Elvis is rarely angry, but when he is everyone takes notice. He is angry now. ‘Settle down, Perry, an’ get ya fuckin’ temper under control. Geeze, ya always fightin’, youse two! What, we ’aven’t got enough problems without fightin’ goin’ on too?’ he shouts.
‘Ya deaf or what, Elvis? Ya didn’t ’ear what that white cunt said about me smashin’ the ute, when Johnny and Malcolm was ’urt?’ Perry snarls, and he struggles to get free and crush this white boy with his too truthful words.
Thin Willy clenches his fists. For a month the fight has been building up. Now the time is right. He will smash the dark youth to the ground. Squash him under his boot as he would a redback spider.
Perry gives up trying to struggle from the older, stronger boy’s grip. He goes limp against Elvis’s panting chest and glares viciously into Willy’s sneering eyes. Willy gleams triumphantly back at him because he knows he has touched a weak spot in the boy’s angry soul.
John and Mal Pinnell were two other cousins in the gang before Willy came. One night, while escaping from the police, Perry spun off the road into a tree. Johnny was badly battered around and Mal (poor gangly big-eyed Mal, who couldn’t do anything much, except tell jokes and make people happy) had permanent brain damage.
‘Piss off, Willy, and get this car fixed up, orright? We gotta get across the Nullarbor tomorrow, an’ that battery’s flat an’ them tyres too bald,’ Elvis says.
‘Where’s my money, Elvis? I’m not going without my money.’
Elvis’s round, worried eyes become wooden. He lets go of Wolf, holding his hands high in the air and staring into Willy’s suddenly frightened face with quiet, deadly eyes.
‘What, ya don’t trust me, Willy? Yer old koordah from Fremantle’?’
Willy senses little Wolf closing up behind him, a piece of rusty pipe in his clenched hand, shaking for vengeance.
‘I don’t trust yer cousin Elvis, if it comes to that. I don’t know him like I know you.’
‘Hey, listen, budda, us Nyoongahs stick together, like this.’ He crosses his fingers.
‘Any rate, ya stupid git, ’ow ya reckon we goin’ to get out of ’ere without yaself drivin’? Fly, or what?’ Wolf snarls.
‘All right.’ Willy is resigned, and besides he no longer feels safe with Perry just behind. ‘Give us some money in case I can’t nick this stuff,’ he shrugs.
Evis’s fingers dig into the lumpy heavy flourbag. Pull out a pile of crumpled notes.
Willy smiles as he takes the notes.
‘’Ere y’are, koordah. Oughta do ya for a bit. Buy some beer if ya can, or gabba. We’ll ’ave one big party, when ya come back, unna, Wolf?’
He smiles, happy that once more he has made peace in his gang. It was better when there were just the four cousins. All Nyoongahs together, sharing laughter and jokes and admiring girls every day and night.
But Willy is cleverer than all four of them put together. It is his plan to go over east, out of Western Australia. Even overseas to New Guinea, or New Zealand. Besides, no one would stop a white boy driving his own car and there would be less chance of them being picked up.
All this time, the slim white girl has been ignored.
Now Wolf steps forward to drag her from the dubious safety of the car so that she, too, is wet and cold. One of them.
‘We’ll take the woman, but. Just so’s ya come back with th’ car,’ snaps Wolf.
His temper bums behind his sombre eyes while his teeth are a white slash across his dark face. Just like the Milky Way slashing across the sky, showing where his God has trodden in glory, even before white man was thought of. That is how old his people are. Timeless and never dying, like the land they are buried under. Then their bones became the trees and dancing rivers and folding mountains and their souls became the stars. They float to the end of time, yet are the beginning.
Except now his God is the steel and wooden shotgun he points at the girl. He worships it with his whole hating spirit.
Willy slides onto the faded vinyl seat. Takes one last look at the girl before the car coughs into unsteady life in the mournful twilight. It jerks back down the track.
There are just the girl, the Nyoongahs, the night and the rain.
‘Orright, ’oney, ya’ll be looked after by us two real good, unna, Wolf?’ Elvis winks and the Wolf laughs cruelly.
‘Please. Don’t hurt me,’ the girl whispers, speaking for the first time. She gazes beseechingly up into the boy’s flat faces.
‘Why don’t you let me go now?’ Just a whisper. Sick with fear.
Suddenly everything that has happened that night descends on her. The robbery, the destruction of her father, and so of herself. He loved her and is all the family she has. To see him battered onto the ground has horrified her.
Now she has experienced the horror of frigid white fingers all over her solitary body, and soon, black ones—like the night creeping coldly over a sunny happy day that will never happen again.
She has tried to be brave but now her courage breaks. It melts, drippping down her face in hot tears.
‘Oh, please let me go. You don’t want me any more, and I want to go home.’ She sobs and stares at the muddy ground. No help there.
A gentle arm steals around her cringing body and soft words are spoken.
‘It’s goin’ to rain harder d’rectly an’ ya don’t wanna get wet an’ die of cold, unna? Any rate ya’d only get lost in the bush, look,’ Wolf says. ‘Dry ya tears, girl, we aren’t goin’ to ’urt ya.’
Wet eyes gaze into shadowy eyes, surprised at this sign of gentleness from the boy who has shown only uncontrolled anger up to now.
Elvis has loped up the shaky wooden steps, oblivious of her tears. A light flicks on.
‘Electricity an’ all!’ He grins back at them.
The house is like the two boys. Long dirty strands of lichen and creepers, like hair, falling down its sides. Blank dusty eyes hide everything from everyone.
All around in the grey muddy earth, old rags and pieces of car lie where they have fallen.
No mansion for the outcasts. Only a house that, like their race, is being pulled down into the rubble. Once it was a fine proud house; now it is a mere skeleton of its former beauty.
Two rooms are left standing. The bigger one is where the three runaways live. The smaller room is where they sleep, on three formless beds of grey blankets and rags.
From out of the ragged nests the ragged fledglings are born.
From the bare tin ceiling a dusty fly-spotted eye swings in meticulous arcs, surveying its kingdom and its subjects.
Shapeless armchairs sprawl all over the floor. A sofa slumped against the damp-stained wall vomits out its insides from a dozen different places. A picture of a deep brown surfer on the peak of a huge curling green wave clings desperately to the wall with yellow sticky-taped fingers.
And over all these, the shadows creep out of the comers where the spiders and dead flies are towards the lonely girl. But they scurry back if she or the Wolf turns.
‘Siddown somewheres, youse two, an�
� I’ll make a cuppa tea,’ says Elvis’s hoarse voice.
‘No beer, unna, Elvis, cous. Beer makes us wild fellahs.’
‘Makes you wild, ya little street fighter. Only makes me sleep,’ grins Elvis. They cackle together.
‘’Ow much we get, Elvis?’ Wolf asks once again. To drink the sweet essence of glory that is so rare for him.
‘Dunno, find out d’rectly,’ the big Aboriginal shrugs.
Elvis slouches over to the other side of the room and begins stoking up the old wood stove. He softly sings a pop song, twitching his lithe body in rhythm.
Wolf drops down onto the other end of the sofa so the girl cringes away. She is still unsure and still a prisoner of these two. She is an attractive girl and they are boys with nothing more to lose. So she huddles into the lumpy softness of the sofa.
Her anxious eyes flicker over towards the boy and he is staring at her with his deadpan eyes. Gloomy, like a cemetery. All the bones of his failures are buried under them.
‘Don’t be scared, ’oney. I told ya we wouldn’t ’urt ya. You our passport, look. With you an’ Willy sittin’ in the front and us two ’idden in the back we got no worries. Munadj wouldn’t stop wadgulas—only Nyoongahs, see,’ he smiles, to comfort her.
‘You beat up my father, a defenceless old man,’ she cries, temporarily forgetting her fear. ‘The white boy was right. You are a dirty fighter.’
Wolfs smile fades. His eyes flare in anger, so the girl is afraid again.
‘Willy?’ Wolf shouts, while Elvis turns anxiously from the stove. ‘Willy fuckin’ Jones? Listen, ya simple bitch, Willy Jones got no brains at all! ’E was goin’ to rape ya, like that.’ Fingers make a circle into which he jabs his thumb. He glares at the girl, who is shocked at his crudity. ‘Don’t talk to me about Willy Jones, the big white poofter. What, ya didn’t see ’im tonight?’
He stands up abruptly.
For a long time he stands there, looking at no one, then turns and snarls at the girl—but without the anger he had for Willy.
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