I signal Lambskin to keep his mouth shut as he begins to relate past trades. We need to keep our dealings with the natives quiet. How many times do I have to tell him that? When we were building the hut it was the chief’s nephew who showed us the paths through the forest to the cedar trees. He taught us how to strip the bark of the Couramyn to make a fishing line, showed us what berries not to eat. Once, when our traps had caught nothing, the nephew gave us kangaroo tail. He thought he could take corn in return, said tobacco was not enough.
‘That corn does not belong to me,’ I explained.
The nephew went away and the chief, with complete understanding of men’s desires, sent her back.
‘Our berry grow there,’ she said, pointing to the cornfield.
‘Not any more,’ I said, but gave over five husks.
She was as naked as the new morning but walked with the grace of someone high up. There was a tiny bump on her shoulder, mottled in colour, as though she had been recently bruised.
‘Always ask and I will give you one or two corn,’ I said.
That is how the trade of corn began.
But my sights were set differently then. That view has gone. It’s Appin I’m aiming for now.
We walk through the trees. Captain Brooks’s land is bound by Brooks’s Creek to the south, Mullet Creek to the north. East his land edges the lake. The man has such good access to creek water that the farm he plans will no doubt prosper. Tomorrow I must harvest. No more days wasted. On Vince Byrne’s return from Kangaroo Ground I will get him to secure a cart to transport the corn to Appin. I will slaughter a pig and barrel it, to sweeten the deal with Brooks.
We trek on through the trees, guns in hand, but sight neither kangaroo nor opossum. As we pass the giant fig where I’ve stashed my fowling piece, I avert my eyes. We stop when we come to the Mullet Creek bend I favour most. Green moss runs over the roots of trees, like the trailing tresses of majesty. Light sprinkles down and the water sparkles. The place has the appearance of a peaceful idyll.
‘Gods of the forest,’ I say.
Vince squats, cups clear water into his mouth. ‘This is the place to be,’ he agrees.
Lambskin runs along the bank, spotting fish. I find some wood and whittle it into a spear, like the natives. All is harder with my sore hand but I don’t complain. I undress and wade into the water, waiting in stillness for my prey. Only bird chatter and the faint whirl of insects. Across from me, on the far bank, are two long rock ledges. One is the shape of a giant fish. As if once upon a time giant fish swam this creek and here lie the remains. Trailing the spear behind me, I float over to the ledge. It is the perfect place for fish to settle under. Striped fish swarm out when I stir the water up. I spy a flathead and spear it.
Lambskin builds a fire and we throw the fish on whole. I wash my muddied feet in a spring that trickles across the soft grass, and we sit down to eat. Natives appear at the top of the creek bend. Some splash in the water but they keep their distance. One young boy swims closer. He waves at us from the middle of the creek. He swims towards us, pretending to look for fish. When he is less than three feet from the bank he waves again, but when I rise he swims away.
I throw the remains of our meal in the creek, splash my arms and face, then fall back on the grass and look up at the sky through the branches of the tree.
‘This is the life,’ I say.
‘This is the life,’ Vince says, like it is me who is in charge.
Vince lies next to me. Lambskin follows suit. The three of us yawn like old men in need of napping. It’s as if the forest has put a spell on us. Now our hunger is abated, hunting is forgot. Dreaming is yearned for. Soon I feel the soft hand of sleep.
It’s night when we wake. The air is a wet cloth and the owls are spooking. We trek back along the creek and come out at the lake. Fires from the native camps flame all around the lake edge. Voices rise and fall, as if in anticipation of some night event.
Vince takes hold of my arm. ‘What there!’
Along the shore, shapes emerge from the darkness.
‘What ho!’ calls Lambskin.
We raise our guns.
Then I hear the voices. ‘Only women,’ I say.
We lower our guns and the women pass by. They don’t look at us. We are of no consequence to them. Their naked bodies shine in the moonlight. There are nine women in all and three children. I spy her, walking in the middle of the group, protected by the other women. She looks up at me as she passes, only her face is in shadow and I cannot make out her expression.
Vince and Lambskin traipse off along the path, back towards our hut.
I linger. Watching.
The women laugh.
Were I to hurry, I might catch them up. Perhaps say a word to her alone.
The women are disappearing into the forest. And then they are gone. Lost in the dark trees. An owl
Lola
1900
calling, boo-book, boo-book. Mary, Abe and me walk the dirt track through the forest we’ve yet to clear. In the starlit far, at the path end, is the long paddock. Cows huddle at the gate, dark shapes in blue light. The only sounds are our footsteps, the breeze through the tops of the trees, and small animals foraging. Before we begin the morning milking, when everything is caught between day and night, is the time I like best; even now, when it is June and cold, and we must wear coats and hats.
We come to where the trees grow tall and straight. Rope vines hang down and loop ferns that grow beneath. Mist bleeds from the trees and circles us like we are magic. A bird sings one low note and stops, spooked. Abe points to a stand of bangalay and we halt before it. From the gloom between the trunks comes a scratching sound. Could be a lyrebird but no lyrebird is visible.
‘It’s them,’ Abe says.
‘Oh lord,’ Mary whispers.
Chill on my neck and a prickling all over. We open our mouths and there drifts the morning mist. Oh my! This has happened before but always it surprises.
We hold hands, each of us trembling.
Once we heard laughing voices; another time it felt like we were floating.
We wait, but soon the scratching sound gets softer, and then is gone. Our breath is no longer brumous.
‘They keep coming,’ I say. ‘But why?’
‘Want something maybe,’ Abe says.
‘They never harm us,’ Mary says.
We stand there shivering and wondering.
‘We’ve got milking to do,’ I say, but do not move.
I am the eldest and prone to giving directions, having got into the habit from when I were young. This after we three suffered the loss of a parent, not once but twice, and before we lived with Aunty. It’s Mary that leaves first. She lets go my hand. Walks on ahead, straight-backed with a slight sway, like a princess going to get her crown and not a farmer about to herd her cows.
Bud comes running along the track. He got held up at the house sniffing out a mouse, now he bounds by Abe and me and then Mary. He slips under the paddock gate, scoots around the back of the cows, and barks at their heels. It’s still dark and the cows become one shadow as they stamp their hooves and bawl. The ground smells of piss and dung. Roosters crow, and kookaburras call and where it were quiet it is now noisy as hell.
I hurry to catch my sister up, half-sister if truth be known, just as Abe is my half-brother, but there is no half to how we are with each other. Mary untwists the wire that ties the gate to the post. We pull the gate open and the cows amble through, their bodies heaving. Our herd is twenty-one strong this year. All are the red Illawarra Shorthorn Mary’s Otto wanted. Otto died a year ago but Mary and me have stuck to the plan made when we three first came down here from the mountain. Build up the herd from one breed.
‘Get along there!’ I call, hitting the rump of Bess who likes to take it slow.
‘Get along there!’ Mary calls.
The cow named Trigger runs off the path into the forest. Abe bolts after her. Abe is wiry and stooped but with a fierce
ness that is bright and wise, not sour. Like an old man and a fit young one put together. He’s too tall for his age, which is why he stoops. He eats for two but the fat falls from him. I watch Abe pat the runaway cow back to the mob. He pats that cow like you would a kid. We look after our cows. Plenty about here thought Mary and me wouldn’t manage without a man. After Otto died, and with Mary a widow, ‘the plenty’ told us to move back to the mountain. We didn’t listen. Soon after, Aunty sent our brother Abe to live with us.
‘Abe needs a man’s job on a proper farm,’ she said to Mary and me. ‘I’m all right on my own.’
We disagreed but Aunty didn’t listen.
‘Remember it were me that taught you two girls how to shoot and ride,’ she said. ‘Just because I’m old, don’t mean I’m unable.’
Aunty is tougher than most, and has a tongue that will lash when needed if ever she is slighted. The thoughts of ‘the plenty’ never bothered her. Aunty’s friends are the creeks and forest and all who reside in them. And when we walk this way of a morning, through the darkest part of the track, it’s clear to me ‘the plenty’ don’t matter. For then our world seems nothing more than a painting and behind it lies another place; a between place, where our breath turns to mist and where the invisible make themselves felt in our very being.
‘Get along there!’ I call.
‘Get along there!’ calls Mary.
‘Whoah up!’ yells Abe.
We three are sat on stools in the milking shed, each in our stall squeezing cow teats and going at a good lick. The milking shed is open at either end, and also along one side, where the stalls are. Opposite the stalls, against the shed wall, are the hay bales and milk cans. The cows wait in the top yard, move through to be milked, then get liberated into the holding pen near the cottage. I pull on Trigger’s teats and milk tinkles on the side of the bucket. Trigger shifts her feet and munches hay. I listen for how fast Mary and Abe are milking. We’re having a race and the first to get their full bucket to the milk can and slap on the lid, wins. Last week I milked nine cows to Abe’s seven, three days in a row. Abe were off his game. Sullen. Not telling Mary nor me what were going on. After milking he’d disappear for hours on end even though there were chores to be done. According to Aunty, boys at fifteen are like that. Have things rattling around in their still-growing body that don’t get sorted in their head.
‘Manhood is a tough road,’ Aunty said when I told her my complaints. ‘Getting there needs careful handling.’
‘What about womanhood?’ I said. ‘That be a tougher road.’
I were thinking of my baby lost as she came from my womb. Born without a cry. That were a sin. Not her sin. One of God against me. My baby got tangled up with all that tied her to me and, at the moment she took her first breath, she were strangled. I were a tree torn out by the roots. Surely that be a tough road to womanhood. (And I’m not even speaking of how she came to conception because that were evil.)
Aunty jabbed the fire as I listed the woes of womanhood but didn’t change her position one bit. ‘Give Abe his breathing time,’ she said. ‘He’s had too much loss for a boy.’
Abe and me finish milking our cows at the same time. I snatch up the milk bucket and beat him to the can, get my milk poured in first and the lid back on. So far, Abe and me have won two rounds each, Mary none. But Mary is the tortoise and we two the hares, in personality and in action, and it’s often her that wins the match.
I pat Trigger out to the holding pen. Sunlight spreading on the low paddock. The middle paddock, still in shadow. Our black cat runs atop the middle paddock fence, crows swooping her. I hear the Farrell boys from across the field. All five of them are in their yard, cursing at cows. They’re all lively customers – there’s Niall, the eldest, he has the loudest voice; then Connor, second born and the one I like best because he will at least look at me when he talks; Padraig, never without a sarcastic comment; and the twins, Seamus and Donal, who in summer are partial to racing naked from the creek to their barn door. The Farrells are a robust family but they’ve got a lot of anger in them. Not only their cursing. Whenever I ride by their place there is always yelling and knuckle fighting. And they shoot off their guns at the sight of a snake. They are five boys and they are all scared of snakes.
I turn back to the milking shed that smells of hay and dung and milky dirt. Bess is already in my stall, chomping on hay from the feed box. She brings herself in there every day. No problem. She don’t like to be first of the mob and she don’t like to be last, she sticks to the middle somewhere. I figure she has worked out that the hay on top of the feed box is wet with dew or rain, and she likes her hay dry. If she goes first she gets wet hay, and if she goes last she gets the scraggly bits, so with the middle bit being best, she places herself in the middle. I wouldn’t put it beyond Bess to work that out. She’s a clever cow. Some people think cows are dumb animals but those people don’t know cows. Cows got more sense than they get credit for. And they got integrity. They work together. They know things turn out best that way.
I’m halfway through milking Bess when young Jewell comes running into our shed. She stops near me, holding her side because of the stitch, and breathing noisy and fast, as if she has run all the way from her home, which is three creeks west. She has her drawing sack in her hand.
‘What’s the hurry? We’re not even through milking yet,’ I say.
‘I hate the old man is what’s the hurry,’ she says.
Jewell lets out a sound, somewhere between a hiss and a howl. I’ve never heard the like.
‘I want to squash his face against the wall,’ she says.
‘Your old man is bigger than you so that won’t happen,’ Mary says, matter-of-factly.
‘He’s a fat old toad sat on the side of a dirty lagoon!’ Jewell squeals.
Her eyes water up and I know something is truly wrong because Jewell don’t cry. Not usually. We have that in common. I get up from Bess and lead Jewell over to sit on a hay bale. Abe comes too and we both coo at Jewell like we do at baby ducklings. Mary gets a cup from the shelf and scoops some milk from the bucket. She brings it to Jewell.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
‘He says I can’t come here no more and churn butter with you,’ Jewell says, drinking down the milk.
‘How are you to get your butter then?’ I ask.
‘I’m to go to Duncan’s dairy and help there.’
‘They don’t need help at Duncan’s,’ Mary says.
‘He has spoken to Mrs Duncan and she said if I want to I can come.’ Jewell spits her words out.
‘He don’t want you walking as far as here, is that the reason?’ I ask.
‘That’s not it,’ Jewell says, sulkily.
Abe sits beside her. ‘What then?’
‘You will hate hearing it,’ she says.
‘Let us be the judge of that,’ I say.
‘He says it was all right to come here when I was twelve, and when Otto was here to keep things in line, but now I’m fourteen I can’t work with no ignorant bastard girl like you, Lola, and with no half-castes like Mary and Abe.’
Where did all this come from?’ I ask.
‘His toad brain is where it come from,’ Jewell says.
My hands are shaking. I press them into my hips to hold them steady.
Someone else might cover such evil words but not Jewell. She’s a truth-teller.
There is a silence in the milking shed, even from the cows, who look back at us.
I’ve not heard this kind of filth talk since school days on the mountain where every day was a battle.
‘Your da has got a fever of the brain,’ I say to Jewell and go back to milking.
Abe and Mary do the same. I pull on Bess’s teats too hard and she kicks back with her front leg. I have to pat her belly and settle her down.
‘Lola, I told him he is the ignorant one – not you. You is good with your butter making, and you and Mary is both very intelligent with the cows.’
&nbs
p; ‘I’m intelligent with the cows,’ Abe calls out from his stall.
‘Yes you are, but Lola and Mary is older and know more,’ Jewell says. ‘I did admit you being a bastard, Lola, but I said you was a nice one.’ Jewell turns to Mary. ‘I told him you and Abe ain’t even half-castes, Mary, told him you is quadroon. He said back to me it makes no difference you both being quadroon because your skin tricks people into thinking you is both exotic and not two dirty blackfellas, and he said it don’t matter if you, Lola, is a nice bastard, because your blood is bastard-tainted and your mother was a dirty white whore.’
‘What’s got on his goat and turned him mean?’ I ask, pretending it don’t matter to me what her da said.
‘That’s not even the end of it,’ Jewell says. ‘He announces that I got to be with people who will educate me to be more ladylike. He says no other women, and certainly no ladies, would shoot guns. I told him that ain’t true, Mrs Farrell has a rifle to shoot snakes, and Mrs Duncan and her daughter Nelly do the same.’
‘I don’t know what world your da is living in, but it’s not the same one as me,’ I say.
‘I know it. Anyway, I told him, I don’t want to be no lady. Why should I be, when there are no ladies about Five Islands. And he said, there are ladies in Sydney. And I said, we don’t live in Sydney. And he said, maybe I’ll take you there. And I said, I won’t go. If I go there I’ll get the plague or the clap. He gave me a right old slap then and said my mouth is filthy. But Lola, the plague is in Sydney. The Mercury tells us that. When I say something that makes sense he always slaps me because he has no original thought in his fat old toad head.’
‘Something must have set him off,’ Mary says. ‘What do you think it were?’
Jewell looks to where the milked cows are jostling in the holding yard. Small birds ride atop the cows, picking insects from their coats. The morning sun is bright on the yard, shadows gone.
‘Jewell,’ I say. ‘Mary asked you a question.’
I sit back on the stool and try to catch Jewell’s eye. Her jaw is set tight. She has a lot of fight in her for a fourteen year old. All us motherless children grow up that way.
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