Now, like a pack of pariah dogs, these slinking youths wanted a part of his juicy sweet dream. Better give them some, Cooley; they’ll only roll you, anyway, and take the lot! Cooley thought he couldn’t fight even one of the Peters’, let alone both, and their cousin Lindsay would come in on the side, ready to king hit a bloke. But he felt vaguely bitter about the business.
‘I’ll give ya some for two cartons only.’ he said.
‘Hey, that’s too loverly, Cools! We ’avin’ Christmas ’ere,’ Big Johnny Peters grinned.
‘Git some gnummerai, koordah,’ called Morry to a departing Norris, then turned to a sullen Cooley.
‘Someone want to see ya, Cool Cat. Hey, you must be a solid man, or what?’ he said, to cheer him up.
A glint of life came into Cooley’s slitted yellow eyes. ‘’Oo wants to see me?’
‘As long as it ain’t the munadj,’ Shaughn grinned, while Johnny and Lindsay’s eyes shared the secret with the other two.
Cooley felt uneasy. He had never become really drunk before and he had a feeling he would that night. In fact, he had very rarely drunk beer: only once, just before Ben had gone away to Perth, had the two brothers bought half a carton from the Herron River Commercial Hotel and taken off down to the dam at night. That had been good, listening to the frogs and the night birds and the distant thump of a kangaroo across the yellow-stubbled paddock. The two brothers had spoken of brotherly things and recalled almost-forgotten stories from their own mob far away in a red-burnt land of pale green pools and purple mountains.
But this! All these dusky boys had been joined together by blood ties that had united them for thousands of years. He sometimes felt as alienated as the whitest man. So he felt uneasy, despite Morry’s wicked grin and Shaughn’s Wild cackle. He didn’t like jumping into places where he couldn’t see what might happen. That was like charging on a horse into the blackest part of the bush on a cloudy moonless night, he thought.
Johnny’s shrill whistle broke through his thoughts and he glanced up to see four Maidstone girls drifting over the railway line from the reserve.
He didn’t know any of the Maidstone people because he spent most of his time in the bush, alone or working on Packer’s farm. He stared at them with suddenly shy eyes as they wandered into the pool of yellow light that bathed the ute.
‘Well, look ’ere. That rough mob from ... wassa name of that place? London?’ one girl demanded.
‘What you doin’ ’ere, anyways?’ another asked.
‘Lookin’ for yoks,’ Lindsay cackled from the semi-darkness that he liked best.
‘Keep lookin’ then, Lindsay Pepper, ’cos/ wouldn’t go with you if ya shit was silver,’ cried one girl, who remembered Lindsay and his ways. She was the oldest and biggest of the girls, so Lindsay faded back into the darkness while the two cousins on the back muttered, ‘Tchoo, shame, girl,’ and, ‘Where Norris? ’E most probably ’avin’ a drink ’imself.’ Big Johnny hugged himself in silent laughter on the other side of the ute.
Cooley stared at the girl. He realised she was staring back at him and ducked his head. ‘Yeah, ’oo you starin’ at, bud? Want me to turn into a vampire for ya, do ya, mate?’ She demanded.
There might have been further trouble had not grinning Norris burst from the pub laden with cartons of stubbies and cans.
Norris was the local hero. Like all the Peters, he was tall, and he was strong and fit because he didn’t smoke and he drank very little. He was an amateur boxing champion and a good football player. He was Ben Cooley’s best mate and it was only bad luck that he had not been chosen to play for a city team as well; a broken finger had put him out of most of last season’s games, when Ben was picked.
He gave his easy smile. It was always easy because no one ever fought him. Even if they did, they couldn’t touch him.
‘Narali Jensen, what you splittin’ ya big ’ole for?’ he asked.
‘Ya want me to shout? I’ll shout,’ the girl cried. ‘Awooooo!’ Then she gave a cheerful cackle.
‘Look at these Herron boys, eh? They shit when ole Narali come along.’ But she was happy now that Norris was there.
‘Old is right. She got two kids already,’ muttered Morry, but his dark eyes shone at the girl’s humour.
‘Where are you goin’ with all that beer?’ one of the other girls asked.
‘Us boys ’avin’ a party. You comin’?’ said Shaughn, feeling it was now safe to talk without fear of getting bawled out by heavy Narali.
‘Yeah, why should we go with you, ya fuzzy-haired monkey?’ someone cried, starting an outburst of giggles.
‘Suit yaself. We only ask once, unna, Morry? Ya missin’ out on one good time, but.’
‘Yaaah! We’ll go pick up some of those pretty things cruisin’ round Collie,’ said Johnny, and he opened the door, while Norris dropped all but one carton in the back and jumped in the driver’s side, grinning over his shoulder.
‘Ya comin’ or stayin’, or what?’ asked Lindsay as he also jumped in the front.
Of course they came, giggling and whispering as they clambered into the back. The boys had known all along they would. It was a game they played among themselves, a type of courtship.
As they set off into the gloom, one girl with blonde streaky hair was rubbed against Cooley. She murmured, as shy as he was, ‘’Oo are you, budda? You from Perth?’
‘No, I’m from ’ere. ’Erron River.’
‘I never seen ya before.’
‘Naw. I keep to meself, see.’
From the other side of the rocking ute Morry called out as he ripped the top off a stubby, ‘Hey, Janine! ’E’s a wongi, Cools is. ’Is mob come from wa-ay up north, unna, Cools?’
‘That’s old Cool Cat Cooley ’ere, youse girls,’ said Shaughn, drinking. ‘This is Janine and Narali and their cousins Suzy Black-stone and Moira Bunyol.’
The girl next to Cooley seemed to move away slightly while she stared at the youth’s dark shape.
‘Truly,’ she breathed, ‘A wongi? I’d never of believed it.’
‘Dad’s white,’ he said, sensing he had lost her, even before he had begun to find her.
‘Still and all.’
‘’Ave a charge, Cool Cat,’ grinned Shaughn, who was on the way to getting drunk.
Cooley caught the thrown stubby expertly, as he would a football. He realised yet again he could never really be a part of these people. He was still a wongi even after eleven years in this bushy green-brown country that sometimes he could love like his own mother and in which at other times he could feel so alone—as though he were the last of his tribe.
‘Moira, ya little nephew is blue drunk, waitin’ out ’ere.’
‘What, Joey, ya mean? You boys want to ’ave more sense gettin’ ’im drunk at ’is age.’
‘It was ’is idea, any rate.’
‘Brother Clem’ll bloody kill youse when ’e finds out.’
‘’E don’t even drink any more. ’E’ll make you jump, anyways, Morry Quinn,’ Narali said.
‘Aaahh, no ’e won’t,’ Morry murmured. ‘Be ’is brother-in-law directly, look,’ and he wrapped an arm around plump Moira.
They arrived at the she-oaks where the four younger boys waited, nervous now. The darkness and all the spirits darkness holds had scared most of the drink out of them and they climbed aboard the ute gratefully. It hadn’t helped that Ricky Quinn had been telling ghost stories meant to scare the younger ones but in the event scaring them all.
‘What about one of you girls ’oppin’ in the front ’ere?’
‘Piss off, Johnny Peters,’ called Narali.
‘We wouldn’t want you in ’ere, anyway, that’s for sure. Put us off our drink, you would,’ whispered Lindsay.
‘What about puttin’ Norris off’is drivin’?’ said Johnny and there was a muted burst of lecherous laughter from the front.
‘It’s gettin’ too cramped up ’ere. I’ll get in the front,’ sighed Janine.
Then, everyone being
organised, they set off.
Cooley drank and stared at the bush rushing past him and listened to words rushing past him, whipped away by the wind.
There were two places where the Herron River Nyoongahs drank. One place was the sand quarry, but they didn’t go there much now because, about five years before, Joey’s older and only brother Percy had suffocated in a sand cave-in when he had been drunk on sweet sherry. The other place was the old railway bridge, about three kilometres from town.
To get there, the car had to be hidden in the bush then they had to walk about five hundred metres through prickle bushes and stunted banksia and a few big red gums. There was a small, quiet creek running between two almost sheer, low cliffs covered in suckers and jumbled grey rocks. A railway bridge and a tunnel in a hill further along had been built, but the railway line never came through here because the planned sawmill never eventuated. Instead, the trains ran through Maidstone so only these two lonely reminders were left, as well as a few rusty rails along the grassy embankment between them.
By the bridge was a sandy bank that lay, virginal white, upon the brown earth. Reeds grew thickly on the other side and sang a soft song of the creek as the wind moved among them. Bush and all the things of the bush towered around them. It was a place for quiet talks and jokes and good times. The Herron River mob never fought among themselves and rarely became involved in the family feuds that existed throughout the South-west. They were too far away and too peaceful to be worried about feuds. The police had not yet found this place and wouldn’t have cared if they had, since there was very little trouble at the camp.
It was a beautiful bridge, made of the big red-orange rocks from the area, with thick jar rah woodwork and two huge karri logs, brought up from Pemberton to support the trains that never came. No one saw it, though. Hardly anyone remembered it was there.
Cooley slipped and slithered upon the grassy bank and found a shadowy spot beneath the bridge. He began to roll a cigarette and wondered why he had ever come on this party. He had lost $30 to these boys’ greedy hands; most of them he hardly knew. He knew only Morry and Shaughn and, if he faced the truth, he didn’t really even know them. After school was over each day, all the Aborigines went off down the road and down the track into the bush, a dark, skylarking crowd, kept safe from the whites’ scorn by numbers and kinship. After school was when Cooley felt loneliness— walking home with his pale, screaming white brother and sisters.
He certainly didn’t know any of these girls, for he had hardly ever been into Maidstone and his father discouraged him from meeting any Aborigines and making friends with them. Once, when they first arrived, the Cooleys had gone to a football match in the town. Nat had gone straight to the bar to make a few mates there and Mrs Cooley showed admiring women her new little Sam. Ben disappeared somewhere and Cooley wandered over to watch the game and to play with some stones that his dreaming mind turned into soldiers. He had an old football that Ben had found on the dump and patched and pumped up. So at half-time some of the dark-skinned children who had been watching him with possum-shy eyes sidled up to him, while the oldest boy scratched a leg with a long toe and asked if he’d like a kick. He had been enjoying himself, showing even at that young age the skills he would keep when he was older. His thin face was split into a grin and his light yellow-brown eyes sparkled with joy. He learned the names of some of the others and made many friends. It was like being back home again; suddenly the world was not the cold unfriendly place it had become for him, so recently departed from the people he had understood and loved.
Then his father came from the bar, grabbed him by a scrawny shoulder and spun him around, saying angry words.
‘Keep away from this bloody mob, do you hear? They’re nothin’ but a mob of thievin’ mongrels; a load of bludgers these bastards are, and you’re keepin’ right away from them. If I catch you hangin’ around them again I’ll belt the bloody daylights out of you, all right?’
One bare foot had kicked the ball towards Cooley and in a forlorn dive, it had landed in his arms.
’See ya, mate,’ came a soft musical voice.
But he never had seen them again, except from a distance. He watched them grow up and get girl or boyfriends and sometimes disappear up to Perth or down to Albany. But only from a distance. There is beauty in a distant mountain, dancing in the heat haze on the edge of a plain, mauve and blue and pink. Dry desert mirages look like Paradise from a distance, but there is no such thing as distant friendship.
Someone turned on the wireless, and Kid Creole and his Mob of Coconuts brought sophistication even to those wilds. The Peters brothers searched for firewood so they could have a fire to keep warm and (who knew?) maybe roast a stolen and killed sheep later on for a feed.
‘Look at ole rubber-man Joey go, eh? Can ’e dance or can ’e dance, or what?’ one of the girls called out.
‘I’ll show ya ’ow us Garpeys dance,’ grinned Shaughn and he was on his feet swaying all over the ground.
Cooley felt someone slide down beside him and turned to see Morry’s dark shape, with the starlight glinting out of his dark eyes.
‘Be glad when Big Boy and Norris get this fire goin’,’ Morry murmured. ‘They say there’s an old woman down along this creek, ya know. If you ’ear someone call out to ya and ya turn around, well, then might be that ya die.’
‘Yeah?’ Cooley breathed.
‘Fuckin’ oath. Danny Jensen one time before turn around when that ole lady call ’im, and ya know? ’E could never talk again.’
‘’Ave a drink, Morry. Don’ scare me with these yams.’
‘Just tellin’ ya,’ Morry said, then grinned and leaned close to the thin, dark face of the half-caste. ‘Now, you don’t get drunk too much, ’cos I got a yorga lined up for ya, see.’
Cooley stiffened and turned to see if Morry was joking. He scratched his stomach nervously.
‘Aaah, get away, Morry. These womans is scared because of Mum bein’ from up north. I don’t know any wongi ways, ya know. I left there when I was five.’
‘Nah, you don’t worry about these black things ’ere, buddah. I got you a wadgula woman. She’ll be ’ere d’rectly.’
Cooley was apprehensive. There was no way he would tell Morry that he had never been with a girl before. He hadn’t even kissed one, so he was suddenly very nervous. He was reading a book in which the hero was in the darkened streets of Chinatown, being followed by three Chinese whom he suspected intended to kill him. At that moment, he felt just as the hero did; as though a pile of rocks was rolling around in his stomach.
‘’Oo you talkin’ about, Morry? Those white fellahs are my enemy. What if this girl is the sister to—oooh, shit, Morry, it better not be Carol King!’
Morry’s bubbling laugh echoed from under the bridge and the light from the newly awakened fire caught his pink tongue and snow-white teeth.
‘Cooley become a coldie, or what? You scared, Mr Cool Cat, unna? Don’t you worry, mate. This yorga I’m talkin’ about got no brothers, only sisters. You wait ’ere till I whistle. Don’t want them other boys to spoil ya own fun, unna?’
Then he was gone and Cooley sat there and drank two more stubbies to nerve himself for the coming adventure, then another two, until he felt drunk and relaxed. A lazy smile spread over his sharp face and his eyes half-closed. He joined in the talk around the campfire from his shadowed seat: jokes and ghost stories and camp stories. Stories about the old people.
The moon came up in the turbulent sky, round and full; full of a certain kind of beauty, like a pregnant woman. The shadows deepened. Cooley, staring into the wavering face of the fire, recalled other fires in other lands and softly began to sing a half-remembered children’s song that his mother often chanted.
‘Hey, listen to old Cools go! Is ’e Elvis Presley?’
‘Come on, Cools, give us a tune.’
The boys began a dance that they made up, stumbling on the sandy uneven ground of the beach by the creek, giggling and waving stu
bbie bottles in the air so the brown glass winked as red as rabbit eyes in the light of the fire. A sad yet beautiful corroboree from the new tribe the white men had made. But the girls were frightened that Cooley might be ‘singing’ them and, anyway, he forgot the rest of the words, so the song lapsed into silence. Then Johnny turned up the wireless and the white man’s words embedded themselves in the group like arrows of madness, and they danced more and more frantically.
More stories, more drink. Little Joey Bunyol crept off into the bushes to be sick and go to sleep. The other boys got down to the serious business of conning up individual girls.
Then Morry’s whistle penetrated Cooley’s fuzzy brain and the youth zigzagged over to the bridge.
‘Now, big Cools. She waitin’ up on the bridge there for your big ’ot thing,’ drunken Morry grinned lecherously. ‘Go to the other side so them boys don’t see ya. Specially that Lindsay, ’cos ’e got just ’is friend Mrs Palmer ...’
‘... And ’er five daughters,’ Cooley broke in, chuckling, so Morry stared at him and grinned even wider. ‘You right, Cool Cat. You charged up now. Man can do anything when ’e’s charged up. Now, take these stubbies so’s ya can ’ave a good party. Give ’er one for me, all right.’ A heavy hand pounded Cooley’s thin arm and, cackling, the youth went away, to disappear into Moira Bunyol’s black arms.
Cooley slowly straightened up and bumped his head on the jarrah top. Thinking this funny, he giggled to himself, then made his way through the bush, dropping a stubby now and then and having great difficulty in finding it each time. He climbed up onto the railway line where the ironstone and the few remaining rails caught pieces of the moon.
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