‘Any rate, ya ole man shoulda used ’is brains. ’E was goin’ to kill Elvis, but, with that spanner. What, ya want me to kiss ’im, or shake ’is ’and, or what?’
He moves over to his cousin for comfort and calm. The girl can hear them talking softly, then comes a low gentle chuckle. All is at peace once more.
She can see that these two love each other dearly. Their blood is mixed together and they share the hard knocks, so their troubles do not seem so bad. She understands now why Perry beat her father. She realises how easy it would have been for the angry boy to shoot him. He has already killed once, according to the cynical Willy. So she understands and is almost able to forgive.
But she is still afraid of her strange little captor whose moods are as erratic as the forked lightning spat out of the sky during a thunderstorm—and often just as violent. Not like his cousin, who is older and quieter, happy with his stolen money. There is a restlessness in Perry Dogler’s soul that wrenches him left and right, like a rudderless boat in a storm.
The two Nyoongahs come over with stale bread and jam and cups of tea. To her frightened eyes they seem to circle around her with hungry stares. They glide silently, like crows or vultures, she thinks, waiting until she dies with her courage. Then they will fly in and claw out her virginity with thoughtless talons.
‘’Ere’s our tea then,’ Wolf smiles quietly at her.
He hands the girl a cup. She mutters, ‘Thank you’, and stares deep into the boy’s dark face. Suddenly she sees him properly for the first time that night.
Youth, sorrow, uncertainty.
A feeling begins to emerge from her muddled mind; a lessening of her fears.
‘Might as well ’ave a feed too, ’oney, cos we won’t be stoppin’ for breakfast,’ Wolf says.
‘Across the Nullarbor, eh, Perry? Dunno why we never thought of that.’
‘We was too busy doin’ this ’ere.’ Wolf makes seductive love to an imaginary woman as the two laugh.
‘Hey, look ’ere, you watch them girls come runnin’ when they ’ear us two in town. The big EP and Wolf’ere. You know what EP stands for? Elephant Piss. Ya know why? Cos that’s ’ow my big cous makes love—long and slow, unna, Elvis?’ and he smiles at the girl, giving a cheeky wink.
The cousins laugh, hugging each other in happiness. They are so different from the unruly violent pair who held up the store that night. They look so young and cheerful that the girl involuntarily smiles too. A small strained smile, but Wolf sees it. His round eyes widen in feigned surprise and he nudges Elvis.
‘Hey Elvis, she can smile. True’s God, I nearly died when I seen ’er. No, true, I thought ’er face ’ad cracked in two.’
Then the two roll around on the dirty floor, punching each other, just as they did as little boys on the mission down home, howling with unbounded joy at being alive.
Always laughing with their pink mouths.
The girl stares down into her cup, smiling properly. And she is beautiful.
The rain drives steely grey stakes into the quivering body of the earth that sweats watery mud. Finally it can no longer keep back its agony and its screams thunder across the whole sky. It is heard even above the noise of the deluge drumming down upon the roof. The trees moan for mercy and shake their wet heads wildly as their gleaming bodies squirm. But there is no forgiveness from the black oppressive sky.
The only light is the one globe hanging, dead and dull yellow, in the boys’ hideout.
The house stands, stolid and alone. Noah’s ark on the sea. Except that only the sinners are saved and only Ham’s children survive.
The Universe is so black; so cold; so evil, with all the spinning galaxies hidden by the heaving billowing bile spewed up across the sky.
Amidst all the noise, everything from the rolling growling clouds to the drooping light is waiting tensely for something to happen. For this is just the night for a happening.
‘Well, I’m goin’ to count our money out, then ’ave a sleep till Willy comes back,’ Elvis says. He flops into an old faded armchair with his lumpy bag of power and life and every good thing.
The girl glances furtively towards the Wolf. He is once again staring at her, but this time she looks back at him. Her honest blue-grey eyes sweep over his tortured face and caress his soul, so his eyes flicker away and then back again.
‘Why do they call you Wolf?’ she asks, hushed and hesitant. But she has nothing to fear, for Wolf welcomes a chance to talk to her.
‘Might be ’cos of me name, Dogler. Wolfs like a dog, unna?’
‘Willy Jones told me you killed a man,’ she whispers.
In the armchair, Elvis watches to see how his cousin will react to this taboo subject.
Slowly, Wolf’s dark eyes swivel from the safety of the vacant fireplace into which he had been gazing.
Tugs off his denim cap. Black hair falls about his hurt, yet angry face.
Twists the cap around in his nervous hands as he remembers.
‘Willy, eh? Big mouth, little brain, they reckon. ’Course I killed a man. It was easy, too; just like this.’ He snaps his fingers. The sound seems louder than the rain, even louder than the thunder.
He gives a savage snarl and crashes his knobbly fist down on the sofa. ‘Yeah, fuckin’ detective. The simple cunt thought he’d found just another boong to beat up, but I bashed the shits out of’im with an iron bar. I wisht I’d killed ’is mate too, but I never,’ Perry shouts, and the girl is afraid of the hate she has unleashed.
‘I give ’im this, an’ this, an’ this!’ he howls and smashes his fist again and again into the worn-out cloth to pummel away the memory of the dead white face.
He leaps up. ‘Oh, Jesus bloody Christ!’
He stands by himself, shivering like a cornered kangaroo, reliving the episode. When he had been dragged from the noisy joy of the poolroom up into the sinister silent alley, when, pushed against the wall by the man’s big hand and goaded by the flat, cruel laughter and mocking voice, he had suddenly gone berserk. He picked up the first thing he found, slammed the iron bar into the surprised detective’s face. Across the stomach. Across the head. Across the neck. Heard the triumphant sound of cracking white bones. From the man’s head and mouth and nose oozed bubbling, bright red blood—and something else. He left him lying there like a broken egg. Then ran. Ran! Out of the alley. Smashed the bar through the detective’s car where the other two waited and escaped in the confusion.
He swings around, and his anger is gone. There is just a cold quiet calm now, like the flat grey sea before a cyclone comes.
‘That’s whaffor they call me the Wolf. But it’s a good name, unna, cos it all belongs to me, an’ is all I got left.’
He sits down beside her again. She wants to crawl away from this violent youth. Yet when she looks deep into his eyes, she can see another part of him that no one has ever discovered. And when white society finishes throwing spiteful stones into the pond, when he can get away for a little while and let the pool become still, there is a reflection that is a most precious thing.
He looks at her and pushes his hair back from his face. Such fine, black, thick hair.
‘What ya reckon, ’oney? Am I dangerous?’ he says softly.
‘I—I don’t—know.’
She wants to say, ‘No. No, of course not. You’re beautiful.’ But that would only be half-true, and people who say half things are only half people. She so much wants to be a whole person with Perry Dogler, the first boy she has ever really known in her lonely life, for he has a power and magic that draw her to him.
‘Jesus, Perry, it’s cold. I wisht we ’ad a proper fire ’ere. Freeze an Eskimo’s balls off, this weather would,’ Elvis mutters from the chair.
He laughs softly at his joke, trying to bring his cousin back to him.
‘It’ll be good when we get outa ’ere, Wolf. Look ’ere, we’ll go to Kellerberrin an’ pick up Jenny, then take off over east. Drop the wadgula girl off at Ceduna an’ be gone, unna.’
�
��Yeah,’ Wolf says uncertainly. He looks at the girl beside him, catching her beseeching stare before she turns away. Into his own deep eyes puzzlement drifts slowly. He studies his brown feet, chewing on his bottom lip, thoughtfully.
‘Yeah,’ he mutters again.
Then his eyes look up and he smiles at her reassuringly.
‘Hey, ’oney, ya wanna listen to some music?’
‘’E just wants to show ya ’is radio ’e pinched, look,’ Elvis grins. ‘Keep away from ’im, ’oney, ’e’s the biggest thief out, ya know.’
‘It’s more better than anythin’ you ever stole, any rate,’ Wolf retorts.
‘Why steal at all?’ the girl wants to know.
Elvis stares at her and giggles nervously. Dark Perry gazes at her. He tries to express something, but cannot. He shrugs his powerful shoulders and gives a half-smile. ‘Dunno, really.’
He would like to tell her how once everyone shared everything and no one was poor. How could anyone be poor with the silver songs of birds raining down from the cool leaves, and honeyed flowers for jewels, and diamond-eyed children with hearts of gold? Now their hearts are stone and they are cracking up, with moss dragging them down into gentle destruction. He would like to tell her how the white man stole his soul and filled the empty husk with white man’s thoughts and hate instead of the love of his people. He would have told her how they stole him away from his mother when he was only young and adopted him to an ugly white brick mother called a reformatory. There he learned a new type of kinship. He could have told her all these things because she understands him, as no one has done for a long time. She has peered behind the curtain of his eyes and seen his scarred, distorted soul. It is more hurtful and terrible than anything she knows. His pain becomes her pain. She forgets her fright as his desolation swamps over her.
But he doesn’t know how to tell her.
‘Ya know what, ’oney?’ he says. ‘I dunno ya name yet. We can’t keep on callin’ ya ‘’’oney‘’ all the time.’
‘It’s Melanie.’
‘Melanie, unna?’
He rolls the name around between his purple lips. When he speaks her name it is the same as his—a part of him that he can call his own.
‘Well, ’ang on, Melanie, an’ I’ll get me radio. Wake this place up a bit, ya reckon?’
‘Yes,’ she smiles.
He slouches into the next room and emerges with a large, expensive, brand-new radio and a happy grin.
Turns it on so the music bounces around the room. The spiders cannot catch this noise, so there is joy in the icy stale house.
‘Come on ’ere an’ dance, Melanie,’ Wolf beckons.
She comes. Rises out of the chair to become a woman. She feels the power she has as she watches the happy brown youth. She created him from a heap of broken hopes and shattered laughter and rubbish. He is all her own, shaped from her hands and peacefulness. And her friends who, even now, dance to the same old tunes of the Saturday night disco; what would they say to her now? What could they, with their empty lives, tell her now? So she dances with her creation in the small dirty room, watched only by a dubious Elvis as he counts out the money.
They fling their lithe young bodies around the wooden floor in a gentle dance. And Melanie is no longer lonely.
Elvis watches impassively as a smile rises over Perry’s round face like the rosy dawn spreading over the yellow morning sky. But this time the harsh sun will not rise to turn the sky white and chase the shadows away. There is just the boy and his moon, floating above him forever.
The song on the radio finishes.
They fall onto the sofa, smiling, then stare into each other’s eyes. This time the boy’s elusive eyes don’t look away. They gaze into her, discovering her, the only real object in the room.
Wolf reaches out an arm.
His fingers gently rub against her smooth cheek where only a while before fearful tears have fallen.
‘Funny, unna? Never been with a wadgula woman before. Just to talk to, I mean. Not a real brainy one, same as you, any rate,’ he says softly. ‘I bet ya been all th’ way through school.’
That to him is everything. A person who can read and write and add up and who knows all sorts of things. A person with a good education always gets the best things in life, he has noticed.
He left school when he was ten, but this doesn’t mean he is without education. Give him a pack of cards and he can turn it from fifty-two squares of paper into a living being. Make the cards whirl in a blur between agile brown fingers. The boy’s mind becomes the cards’ mind. If he wants four aces in a row, he gets four aces in a row. His fingers will mysteriously find any card he wants and he can tell what a card is without turning it over.
Or... try and fight him and his enemies soon find out what he knows about brawling. And many girls have found out what he knows about love.
But ask him to read his newspaper clippings about his and Elvis’s exploits, and he can only do so with difficulty. Even though he is almost eighteen years old.
‘Yes, I did, Perry. I hope to go to university some day. Why don’t you get a job and settle down, Perry? If you gave yourself up, then after a few years you would be set free. Surely it’s better than always running and fighting,’ Melanie says.
From the dusty armchair Elvis looks up. Anxious eyes always give his face a hurt expression.
He laughs now, uneasily. He hopes his laughter will pull his cousin away from the white girl who is splitting the boy’s kinship apart.
‘Ya got no problems there, ’oney. Us boys ’ere’ll escape, quickways. Won’t be no one ’oo can touch us then.’
‘Just let ’em try, is all!’ snarls Wolf, sudden rage gripping him again.
He leaps up from the sofa. Stares out of the window again, at the dark amoeba-like mass, jiggling jimble-jamble. Earth and sky, stark reality and misty fantasy jumbled together to form a storm.
He turns around with his strange smile on his wooden face. Not really a proper smile. Look at the girl and shrug.
Melanie watches him wrestle his anger under control. He wants to be so perfect for the gentle white girl.
He has never really cared much for girls. Painted faces. Shrill, nagging voices. Giggling to annoy him. Crawling all over him, trying like the police to capture him. The police take away his freedom; the girls take away his soul. But his soul is all he has, so he belts the girls and makes them cry.
But this girl is different. He watched her from the side of his eyes, in the store, in the car, in the house. He has seen a girl just becoming a woman. Lonely as he is lonely. Their loneliness joined together would form a friendship. Then perhaps love.
That is what he needs most of all—love. To be able to lie beside her and feel her warm white body pulsating, full of life and kindness. Pumping her serenity into his wild brown body. Then he will have no need for anger any more.
‘Ya cold, Melanie? ’Ang on an’ I’ll get ya a blanket.’
Glide into the bedroom and get his own blanket.
Drape it over her.
Sit down beside the girl who has become his whole life. He only wants Melanie to admire him and not fear him ever again.
‘I’m sorry I ’it ya ole dad, Melanie. I truly am.’
He has never said ‘sorry’ to anyone in his life. No one has said ‘sorry’ to him, either. The girl understands what an effort it is for him to apologise. She squeezes his shoulder affectionately.
‘I understand, Wolf. I believe you.’
‘Wanna read some comics, Melanie? Real beaut, some of them are.’
‘All right, we’ll read some comics,’ Melanie smiles.
She gave up reading comics a long time ago. But they are his comics. It makes him happy to share the adventures in them with her.
Snuggle up close to him. A dark little shadow speaking words as soft as shadows. Yet what is a shadow when the sun goes down?
‘When’s Willy comin’ back? It must be almost mornin’ now. We gotta get away bef
ore it gets too light,’ Elvis says, but he sadly knows that the girl has trapped his cousin and nothing will be the same.
‘Aaah, that stupid white bugger’s lost, most likely,’ Wolf growls from the chair. But he is quiet and happy. He has no anger in his eyes or in his heart.
Elvis, however, is worried about his cousin. He wishes he has not taken the girl hostage now. She has been nothing but trouble. Starting the fight with Willy that could have ended in disaster, then making Perry angry all the time. And now stealing Perry away from him. Elvis wishes there was just him and Wolf—as it always has been.
Softly, disconsolately, hum a pop song. The negroes all have their spirituals and blues to keep them united. Elvis only has a white man’s canned song to sing.
He finishes his slow counting.
‘Jesus, Perry! ’ow much ya reckon we got?’
‘Dunno,’ grins the Wolf.
‘Nineteen ’undred dollars. Nineteen fuckin’ ’undred, eh?’ Elvis breathes.
‘Hooooooo—eeeeeee!!’ shouts Perry.
Leaps onto his laughing cousin. They wrestle on the floor, then jump up and waltz, howling with mirth, around the dusty creaking floor. Dance for joy, while the window ledges of dead flies applaud.
The girl watches.
The boys stop in the middle of the room, gasping for breath. They cling to each other and smile into each other’s faces.
‘We won’t never ’ave to steal after this, unna, Wolf? Watch all them boys lookin’ up at us from now on. We bloody real crims now, eh, Perry? We the main actors, or ’oo? ‘‘’’Oo’s this comin’ down the street? Oh, it’s them two number one crims, EP and the Wolf.‘’ That’s what they’ll say.’ Elvis laughs again.
The girl realises for the first time that Elvis has a gold earring in his ear. It is shaped like a bell, but no one can hear the music. It is as inconspicuous as its owner.
‘Yeah, first thing I’m goin’ to get is a telescopic rifle,’ and the Wolf smiles a secret smile.
To own a gun is the last step in his initiation. Then he can own the world. And even when at last he dies, his name will live on like the trees and the rocks and the stars. That will be his soul, but it will be more famous than any of his ancestors.
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