Sammy stares, cold yet defeated, at Piglet.
Go on. You going to be trouble, are you? Eagerly said by the thin young constable with the agate eyes and pale lips pulled back in a slitty grin.
Sammy gets into the back of the car.
Piglet stands, bloody yet victorious, while the police sergeant admonishes him then sends him home to bed: and maybe that is because of his size, or his colour, or the fact that his father seemed to own half the state and is well known in high circles. Whatever, the policemen sends him home. Tonight is Piglet’s big night.
In the car, the sergeant glares at Sammy beside him.
The driver sneers; Look at him, sarge. The crazy boong.
They all think they’re David Sands or Hector Thompson.
But they’re just baboons, eh, sarge? Every one of ’em. Their mums are baboons, anyway.
Yeah, too right. Are you a baboon, dickhead? Perhaps he’d like a couple of rounds with me, or you, Donald. Would you like that, matey?
Perhaps he doesn’t understand English, sarge. Say it again in nigger talk.
The sergeant pokes Sam in the stomach while they laugh. Their laughter mingles with the roar of the waves on the shore. Both are so real in Sammy Saydlaw’s life; only he has tried to forget the laughter that ties him down in chains so he can never really rise but will sink beneath the waves forever.
Ron wakes up late the next day, feeling sick. His eye is swollen purple and yellow, while his stomach and head hurt. Nearly everyone has gone and the old house smells weary, used up and hopeless. He staggers out onto the oily back porch into the warm sun where cicadas are singing a hymn (or perhaps it is just a dirty song).
Jesus! Oh, Jesus Christ!
Ron sits down groggily, and holds his head in his hands.
He won’t help you, man. What you want is a cigarette.
Ron looks over into the weeds and sees Colin the oracle, Colin the great surfer, Colin the drunk, sprawled among the dandelioned rubbish. Colin groans to his feet and lets his thin body zigzag dizzily up to the steps. He offers a half-empty flagon of hot red wine to Ron, who shakes his head. They roll shaky cigarettes.
Some night, eh, man? I mean, Piglet really got heavy on you, didn’t he?
Where’s Linda?
Linda? Oh, your girl! Yeah man, she went to the beach for a swim, I think.
Where’s everyone else, then? What about Bev and Sammy—and Piglet?
Wow, man, where’ve you been? Sam got picked up by the pigs last night. Bev’s trying to bail him out today. Nothing new around here.
I’m going into town for a walk.
Right. See you when I see you if I see you, Ron, man.
Yeah.
The road is hot and dusty and it is a long way into town, it seems. Still stoned from last night, Ron idly picks some dandelions and makes a chain to put around his neck. He puts a yellow dandelion behind his mongrel’s ear, but the dog promptly sits down and scratches it out, so it lies forgotten on the hot grey road.
In town he remembers the last time he and Linda came, and decides to buy her a Violet Crumble bar. He stands alone in the cold shop, with his drooping dying necklace around his skinny neck, with his ugly black eye and smashed lip. All the people’s suspicious stares crush him into the dry boards. He buys her one, bright beauty caught in his weblike fingers.
Ron goes reluctantly to the stern, red-faced, brick police station. The sly constable stares scornfully at him.
Saydlaw’s gone, chum. This dopey sheila bailed him out. Course, Beverley Owens would screw anyone.
Back he goes to the sagging house in the untidy bush.
Linda is sitting in the shade of the jacaranda tree, floating on a sea of soft, dead, purple flowers. She does not look at Ron when he squats beside her.
Hi sweetheart, what’s the beach like?
Where’ve you been?
Her face is thin again, with hard eyes. All that morning she has lain on the beach, thinking. She has decided it is time to go. She will go up to the house and break it off. She is good at doing that.
The tentative smile that has begun to form on Ron’s battered lips disappears. He looks down at the shadows grovelling on the rocky ground at his feet.
I went to see Sammy. He was in—
Sammy! Sammy! All the bloody time it’s Sammy. Well, do you know where you and Sammy can go?
Linda.
Softly spoken, shy of her rage. He notices her flowered beach bag lying tiredly beside her.
Hey, sweetheart, where are you going?
Then he remembers the present he bought her and drags it out, sticky in its bright purple wrapper.
Look, I bought you a Violet Crumble.
Stick it up your bum! I’m sure anything’ll fit up there now!
She shouts, knocking the chocolate from the boy’s placating hand. It spins gaily through the air and falls in the dust, where, after a cautious wait, the mongrel sniffs it, then eats it, warily, watching for a kick.
Listen, you hopeless bastard, Big Boy came around today and I’m leaving you just as soon as he comes back to get me. So you and little black Sambo can be very happy together.
Linda, did you believe that crap Piglet said?
You were in jail. Everyone says so, not just Big Boy.
Ron draws circles in the sand with a crooked brown finger, then rubs them out again. He doesn’t look at Linda.
Yeah, I was in jail for burglary. I broke into a supermarket and got a load of food. But that’s all past now.
The time in jail when he was eighteen was a time he could not forget. He had been as lonely as a seagull circling high in an empty sky. They had sliced off all his hair and tom off his beachcomber clothes and ripped off his necklace with the gleaming white dugong tooth hanging from it.
He would sit in the comer of the exercise yard and his yearning eyes would gaze at the cruel blue sky where the clouds floated so free above him, fat and sleek like basking seals. His nostrils would twitch at the smell of salt that the Fremantle Doctor brought on its windy breath each afternoon. The smell of the sea he loved and needed, as a heroin addict needs the fine white powder.
It was because of this need that he made friends with Sammy, whose calm green eyes and gentle smile accompanied his deep lilting voice, as he told tales of surfing feats and huge curling waves and lovely white beaches that Ron Doorie in all his wanderings, could only dream of. They had welded themselves a special friendship; the thin brown white and the tall, quiet black boy. When Ron’s cellmate left, they arranged to have Sammy transferred to his cell. The talks of wild coasts and images of leaping waves and bucking surfers helped feather the blows that each harsh new day brought when the walls, grim and hard, threw back the waves that crashed in their dreams. The touches and caresses the two traded were part of killing loneliness and a way to feed the hunger of their souls aching for sunny, water-drenched freedom again.
And that’s where you learned to love your fellow-man. And I mean love, baby.
Ron glanced at Linda with subdued eyes.
Piglet’s bad vibes, honey. Don’t hang around him any more.
Don’t tell me what to do, Doorie, you fucking nigger-lover!
She slaps him three times across his shocked face just as Piglet’s Rover squeals to a confident stop.
Coming, Linda, gorgeous? We have to hurry if we want to make it to that hotel tonight.
He grins coldly at Ron, who watches the girl get into the car.
Then they are gone.
Ron leaves without saying goodbye to anyone. He and his dog drive down to the waiting beach.
No one is there.
Only Sammy Saydlaw, staring out at the meandering grey merpeople.
Ron unhooks his board and idly begins to wax it, with a sterile imitation of the love he once had for the board that has been more than a board; an escape from his troubles, he had thought.
Sammy wanders over to him, but before he can say anything, Ron spears him with angry words.
&n
bsp; Just where the fuck were you last night when I needed you?
Sammy replies softly, a shattered black silhouette against the glassy ocean. I was in jail, Ron.
I know that! If you had come at Piglet when he was fighting me, we might have got somewhere. Now Linda’s left me, and where were you?. In bloody jail. Christ!
Hey, Ron, take it easy.
He sits down and puts a gentle arm around Ron’s slumped shoulders.
Come on, Ron. We’ve both had hassles just lately.
Ron’s brown skin cringes from the arm as though it is a snake to be feared and not a comforting crutch to lean upon, as it has been in days gone by.
He shrugs the chocolate-coloured arm off abruptly and leaps to his feet. He snarls down at the shocked Aboriginal.
Don’t touch me, you black nigger bastard ... It’s all your fault Linda left me. Just go away from me—I don’t want to know you, see? No one wants to know you, you boong poofter. You’re out of class, man, understand? You think anyone cares you’re top surfer? You’re fucking black jail meat, baby.
He grabs his surfboard and stamps down the falling-away cliff. Behind him, stunned Sammy lets a tear slide down his dark cheek. Then more tears come and obscure the magnificent view of his ocean. He sits there alone before dragging his dreamless body to thumb a lift from the snaking highway, back to his people—who are waiting.
Ron walks a long way until he comes by chance to Linda’s reef, where they had such good times. Now everything is as empty as the phlegmatic blue sky, while anger and bewilderment throb dully in his vacant mind like the thudding of far-distant surf.
He sits his dejected body on a scabrous rock that sticks into him derisively. His miserable eyes gaze out over the sea that is as grey as a dead man’s dreams. Nothing seems real any more.
It is high tide and the sea roars like a dragon. The dragon dances while the shells sigh and the birds cry. The dragon howls for blood and spits out spray. Love can die, friendship can die, even dreams die—but the blue-purple-green dragon will always be there, dancing on everyone’s grave, alive as the sun.
Suddenly he grabs the calm green board that has taken him to truth and fantasy and made him someone important so many times. He smashes it against the monster heads of the rocks. Once, twice, thrice, then it snaps into ragged halves—useless. The boy gulps in salty air, and pants hopelessly, while the mongrel puppy leaps around him, uncomprehending and the sun looks down imperiously from the blue sky.
FISH AND CHIPS
SOMETIMES I can close my eyes and pretend I’m right away, all alone in the heaving clouds, up in the air, where there is peace and quiet and the warm sun lying beside me like my girlfriend, kissing me before it goes to bed. Everything will be soft and red-yellow-purple, like everything good spilling across the sky. I will be right in the middle of it, playing with the wind and telling all my secrets (that I couldn’t tell anyone, not even Mum) to the moon and stars.
Then Auntie Nira starts fighting with Mum or Uncle William, and I’m back home again.
Mostly, there are sixteen of us living at home. We’re all Whittys together: there is no hope for us if we don’t stick together. Mum was an Erwell, but she is one of our people now.
Gwendoline came home after running away and Dad gave her a proper hiding. Her legs were black and blue and all swelled up. She was crying too much for me. I went to watch TV until it was my turn to get belted.
Darryl and Louis have just come in, really pleased with themselves because they broke into a house and found $500. Tomorrow we’ll have a wicked feed-up, and for that I’m glad, because I haven’t eaten properly for a good three weeks. They found out Dad had come back to Mum, so they took away her Social Service monies, and we’ve been doing a real starve ’cos Dad don’t spend his dole cheque on anyone except himself.
Darryl tells how a big dog made Louis shout when it come for him. Darryl reckons Louis was swinging in that tree like a little monkey. Uncle William busts himself laughing at that. Louis is Uncle William’s kid. He is only about nine, but he smokes like a chimney and when he is drunk he wants to fight everyone, even Dad or Clancy, who are both over six foot. I tell you, that little Louis can make you laugh. Now Darryl’s learning him how to break into shops and steal cars. He’s pretty good, too, because he is so small and black that no one sees him.
All Uncle William does is laugh all day. Even when Auntie Nira broke a bottle over his head last night, he just laughed. He’s mad, I reckon. I would have made Auntie Nira jump. She bosses us kids around and cheeks Mum, when Dad’s not here. Jimmy said he’d take a machete to her one of these days, but I don’t think he ever would. He just likes to hear himself talk. He’s in Fremantle now, and I really miss him. He might not have been able to fight, but he was a solid dancer: his legs were rubber and his body was elastic, so Mum said. You should hear his impersonations of Elvis Presley and Humphrey Bogart.
But he assaulted a policeman who took him up into a back alley to belt him around.
Peter and Coran are huddled over by the window. They aren’t talking or laughing, or nothing. They’re on the run from work release. There is always a Whitty on the run; it’s how life goes. Coran’s going to dye his hair black so he’ll have a better chance of escape. His hair’s all pure blonde and long and beautiful, like a moonbeam or the sunlight creeping through the trees. He was so proud of his blonde hair that is like a crown, really, I suppose, because we’re black all over. Now he has to give his crown away, since there aren’t too many blonde Nyoongahs running around and he’s too easy to spot. Those coppers are going to make Corry piss blood, they told me and Darryl.
Peter’s just skinny and dirty and scared. Peter is Uncle William’s other kid, my older cousin. He’s the same age as Jimmy and they’re good mates. When Jimmy was taken away, Peter went all to pieces. He thought he’d be the big man and help Coran steal a car. They were rolling it down the hill when Coran saw the munadj coming up the other way. So he jumped out and left Peter holding onto the passenger door. What the police van saw was a driverless car shoot past with a skinny bag of bones fluttering in the breeze like a flag at half-mast. Funny? We laughed for weeks, about that. Even now, if someone asks how Peter’s stolen cars are, everyone busts a gut laughing.
But they still got caught.
They’re out now, for a while, though. Coran stares at his feet and broods, while Peter doesn’t even play cards; that’s how scared he is. He mightn’t read too good—none of us can, except the older ones—but he can do anything with a pack of cards. He’s the best card cheat I know, except for Clancy. Clancy learned in jail when he had nothing better to do, then he came out and taught Peter, who never had anything to do. Coran and Peter only had another month to go, but they got itchy feet. Now they sit by the window all day, waiting for the police to come.
Dad’s a Thursday Islander, a big bloke and a boxer once. He can still fight, but only when he gets wild. Then everyone had better look out. Uncle Joey was a good fighter too, until he got killed by a featherfoot. Last night those girls played a spirit game and brought him back. I was thinking of ghosts all night and when a sheet flapped out on the line, I nearly turned white for good. After that, I got into bed with Clancy.
Sally thinks she’s really important because she has been all the way through school and has a job typing. But she won’t give us any money; she doesn’t want to own us now. She lives in a flat by herself, and is having a baby by a white bloke. Do you think he cares? He’s gone away up north and he won’t be back, either. Sally will be back, though. She can’t stay away from home forever. No one can.
Gloria’s got two babies, and she’s only seventeen.
She’s Uncle William’s only daughter (at least, until he and Auntie Nira get together and stop fighting). Her man is in Fremantle, right now, for stealing cars. He’s good to Glory and hardly ever beats her around. When he gets out he’s going to get a job as a mechanic and settle down in a house; just the two of them, and the babies. That’s his dream.
Those little babies are fun and we all love them, especially Clancy. He can hold one in each hand, right up in the air, so they look like little brown bees buzzing around a black flower. Clancy makes them laugh every time and when they do, a slow smile will drift over his own quiet face.
He was put on parole six months ago, after doing time for killing one of those Moores. The Moores are enemies of ours from some fight long ago. Anyway, it was the Moores who killed Uncle Joey and burned out Cousin Paulie’s stomach so he died, too. One night, in town, the Moore boys came picking Clancy and Coran and some other cousins of ours. Poooohh, boy! Clancy went wild and started throwing pool balls and smashing into those Moores with pool cues. I was only ten, so Clancy shoved me under a pool table. But I saw that fight.
Coran belted into two blokes and laid them both out. One of my cousins got a busted head from a pool cue. Then Clancy grabbed hold of big Gary Moore and threw him halfway across the room. He kicked him again and again until blood spurted out of that boy’s mouth. Then Clancy grabbed a bottle and smashed it over Gary Moore’s head and jabbed it in his stomach. Blood was running out of Gary Moore’s head like a river, and I saw my first dead man. You, see, Paulie had been Clancy’s best cousin and he was upset when Paulie was killed. Gary Moore was one of those blokes who shoved newspaper in Paulie’s open stomach, then poured kero in him and burned him up.
Clancy was in jail for five years. Now he’s grown up, with short hair and long sideburns. He told me, when he came out, ‘Artie, don’t you ever go to jail, boy. Let them white blokes rub you in the dirt, spit on you, shit on you even. But you keep right out of jail. It’s a bad place in there, brother.’
Clancy’s big like Dad, and doesn’t talk much. No one knows what he’s thinking or what he’s going to do, so he’s the most dangerous of us Whittys. On his face you can’t see whether he is smiling or frowning, or what.
Our neighbours don’t want to know us, really. Mum tries to keep the house clean, and us too. We have a bath every night but, as Darryl jokes, we never get any whiter. But it’s not really a joke. No matter what we do to become like white, we’re still black, and that’s what it’s all about. We can’t even have a fight or have our relations around without all our neighbours minding our business.
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