Coal Creek

by Miller, Alex

  The water come to the boil and I tossed in some tea and lifted the billy off the fire with a piece of bent iron rod Ben kept there for that purpose. That rod was a gearstick from an old Willys Overland. There was no one else like Irie had ever been in my life out there at Mount Hay nor in the scrubs with my dad all them years. Being invited to eat with her family was a kindness of Esme’s, but I knew I was not family and never would be fit to think of Irie as I did think of her. Not in the eyes of Esme and Daniel Collins. And I did not know how I might keep her with me if they was to leave the town. I carried the billy inside and I sat at the table and poured tea into a tin mug and I drank from the mug. There was a bitterness in the tea that made my teeth squeak. Ben must have mixed in some ground-up cumby cumby leaves with the tea for his stomach pains. I wished he had not done that.

  SEVEN

  I brought my right hand slowly out from under the blanket and reached to touch the thing that was hovering close to my left eye. There was a small tremble in the thing. As my hand got close to the thing it drew back. So I drew my hand back. The thing moved down again to an inch off my eye so that it was fuzzy. I did not know what it was and I wondered if I was having one of my dazes. But I knew I was not. My sight come clear and I seen she was standing over me, one foot each side of me at around my waist. She was sighting down Ben’s .22 that he kept by the door, the point of the barrel near touching my eyeball. I could see her finger curled around the trigger. I knew that gun to be old and somewhat light-triggered. It had seen a lot of use and had belonged to Ben’s grandfather. I could feel the bullet going into my eye and out the back of my skull into my rolled-up jacket that I had put under my head when I lay down. I thought it was a pity to make a hole in that jacket.

  Behind her the doorway was a soft grey crossed with a pink streak of early dawn. Looking at the dawn a strange feeling come over me then of drifting, like I was floating a foot above the floor but seeing myself from far off and knowing I was going over into a blessed and caring place where none of my troubles would follow me. I had no fear but a quiet kind of happiness.

  Her voice come down to me. Who’re you? And I knew she was a Murri by the sound of her. I said, I am Bobby Blue. I did not want this conversation with her but wanted to stay floating and going over into the place of peace and beauty that was waiting for me beyond the dawn—that is how it seemed, beyond the dawn. Them words was in my mind and I liked to hear them. I knew a man might wait a lifetime to hear them words. I had no regret at leaving this life or any of the things in this life, but just a small regret for Irie. And this surprised me, that it was not a bigger regret but was a sound some way off. That I could feel things so differently just because I had the eye of death looking at me. My hopes for Irie belonged to some other place that was not of the new world beyond the dawn. It was not me I felt sorrow for, it was Irie to be left behind. I had no concern for my own sorrows.

  Her voice come down to me again. What the hell you smilin at? I got this rifle pointed at your eye and you smilin. You got no reason to smile, boy. You don’t look like the Bobby Blue he been telling me about. The point of that rifle just wavering no more than a fraction, like the eye of the barrel was inspecting me for the exact spot.

  Well I am him, I said. I am lying down and I do not look as I do when I am standing up, which is how Ben would have described me to you. My horse is out there in the small yard and Ben will know it is me as soon as he sees that mare of mine. The girl shifted her weight and I felt the touch of her spur through my shirt where the blanket was half off me. I said, Your spur is getting into my side. She did not shift her boot away from my side but pressed it in harder. If you move I’ll shoot your eye, she said. I said, I am not moving. Why don’t you ask Ben? She sniffed. Ben aint here. I said, Well you and me are in a fix then. She said, It is you in the fix, not me. I said, What is your name? She said, That is nothing to you. Ben will be here soon enough. He is following the tracks of that feller who ate the other tin of pineapple chunks you left on the table. I said, I ate both those tins. Is that so? she said, being sarcastic. We crossed them tracks out there in the scrub and Ben seen there is two of you hanging about here and he gone to get that other one. That feller better watch out.

  You are Deeds, I said. If I am not Bobby Blue how do I know that? She said, I don’t care how you know it. Keep still or you are dead and then you’ll know nothin. I did not think she was going to shoot me now, but only by an accident of pressing on that fine trigger a small bit more than she was already pressing on it. The land beyond the dawn was going away fast. I said, I seen you once before.

  I heard Ben laughing outside and the stamp and snorting of horses. You had better let me up, I said. Ben come in at the door. He was carrying the bags from the packhorse. He dumped them on the table. You can shoot him now if you want to, Deeds. He laughed some more and come over and looked down at me. What you doing lying down there, Bobby Blue? I suddenly wanted to live again and I valued my life and I knew I loved Irie and would love her forever and I feared that rifle more than I ever feared anything I could think of, that it might go off without that girl Deeds meaning to kill me now that she was paying attention to Ben. I put up my hand and pushed that barrel to one side and I got to my feet. Ben said, This is Deeds. Me and Deeds are going to have a baby, Bobby. If it’s a boy we’re going to call him Bobby. You will be Uncle Bobby.

  Deeds was tall and thin and was wearing a wide-brimmed bull-shooter hat with no bash and them flared American Lee Rider jeans that people got off the soldiers who had stayed behind. Her shirt was one of them fancy black and white things Hoy’s used to sell and her jacket was paired with the jeans. She had one of her front teeth missing. The left one. The gap did no harm to how she looked and it suited her in a way I cannot describe. I do not know where she got the jacket and the jeans from. I would like to have had them myself. She was a pretty smart-looking girl. I had seen her when Ben was getting himself arrested by Daniel that first time. I had probably also seen her in Mount Hay, hanging about giggling with a bunch of other kids out the front of Hoy’s store. I would say she was no more than sixteen. If she was that. I am not good with ages and dates and I may be out on that one. She kept hold of the rifle but did not point it at me. She said to Ben, You get that other one? Oh, that old boy’s gone, Ben said. With any luck he broke his neck going over that breakaway on the creek bank. I never seen so much scuffing and charging about the place as I seen out there where he was trying to catch his horse. I wish I could have been there to see him tripping over them bendee roots. I said, The constable did not come inside here, Ben. I know that, Ben said. We’ll have a feed. I could eat half a bullock. I said, I will eat the other half. Deeds went over and stood the pea rifle by the door in its place. That was a single-shot rifle. A one-chancer is what I always thought of it.

  Ben and Deeds was about the same height, only he was a lot thicker in the chest than she was, and not nearly so pretty. She was not so dark as Rosie on account of her father being a whitefeller. I was a good two inches taller than the pair of them, but not so thick in the body as Ben. I was not so thick around as Ben, and I liked being the way I was. No one never called Ben Tobin pretty. You could see he had been knocked about a bit. I was glad to see him. I do not know how I would have been with him if Daniel had still been there. And worse still if Daniel had come inside the place and slept on the floor like I did. I was glad I had kept him out and none of that happened to upset things between me and Ben. Seeing Ben and Deeds together laughing and touching each other I knew things had changed between me and Ben from the way they had been before we quit the scrubs. It was in me to tell them about my feelings for Irie. But I knew I would not speak of it. There was a time I would have spoken out to Ben whatever come into my thoughts. That was one change. There might have been others. I am not saying we had become strangers to each other, I never did lose my love for him, but only that things was different now and I respected that and nothing was said of it.

  Ben said, Where’s t
hat water you’re boiling up, Bobby? I’m dying of thirst waiting for that drink of tea. I went out and got some sticks together and lit a fire in the galley. Ben had a pile of split sandalwood beside the galley and I put some on and watched it spitting and cracking, sending up the best smell there is anywhere this side of that last dawn. Ben come out and put some fresh ribs on the steel plate and he stood and poked at them with that old gear lever and smoked his cigarette. He said, Old Dawson killed a heifer. We stood watching the ribs grilling. He said, That constable of yours not hiding out somewhere round about is he? I said, He is either drowned or bushed or at home with his missus by now.

  . . .

  When the evening come on we lit the kerosene lamp and Ben got out a half-bottle of rum he had there and we drank and he played on that old Hohner harmonica of his. Ben always liked to play that old mouth organ and sing a few words here and there of the songs. They was always sad songs about cowboys dying or losing their sweethearts or dreaming of their mothers or getting hanged or something like that. I liked to hear them but I never sung them myself. Deeds picked up the horse’s head he was carving and showed it to me. Ben said, That is the third one I tried. Deeds didn’t like the others and told me to get it right. Deeds is a fussy girl. It is going to be the head of the little feller’s rocking horse. I said, And suppose the little feller is a girl? In that case, Ben said, we will still call her Bobby. Bobby is as good a name for a girl as it is for a boy. I had not thought of that before but I seen there was truth in it. Ben always had the answer.

  Deeds giggled and said, I could have shot you dead as a rabbit, Bobby Blue. I said, I would not have minded one little bit, Deeds. Do you know that? She said to Ben, I had the barrel nearly in his eye and he was smilin at me as if I was ticklin him. Ben left off his playing long enough to say, That is Bobby Blue, Deeds. You cannot frighten Bobby Blue with a gun. He winked at me and went back to playing his Hohner, his eyes nearly closed, his right hand reaching for the rum bottle. Deeds got up and went around and sat on his knees and leaned her head on his shoulder, and he freed his left arm and put it around her and held her to him. I had never thought to see Ben looking so tender in his mind and I was pleased to see it, but also I was just a little sad knowing he was not the old Ben I had known pretty much all my life but was a man with new concerns. I would say for sure he was the happiest I ever seen him.

  He stopped playing again and said, When you going to get yourself a family, Bobby? I said, When I am ready. Deeds said, You got someone in mind? I stood up and went outside and peed against the trunk of the bauhinia tree and I heard them laughing and the notes of that Hohner went silent.

  A quarter moon was up and Mother was looking across at me from the yard. She give a low rumble in her throat and tossed her head. Okay, I said. We’re going home right now. There is no need to get impatient. I stood out in the night hearing Ben’s harmonica starting up again and getting into the feel of it. I always thought the sound of the harmonica was sweeter when it is heard from a distance away. There is a mystery in it then. I thought of our days and nights together in the scrubs all them years when we was boys and young men. I went back inside again and got my gear and went out and put the saddle on Mother and led her up to the front door. I went inside and Ben said, I see you fixed the hole by the door. I said, It was something to do.

  He tried out a couple of notes on the Hohner, then he took it out of his mouth and uncurled his arm from around Deeds and he turned around and grinned at me. He looked handsome in the soft yellow light of the kerosene lamp. Being handsome is in a man’s eyes. And being ugly is in his eyes too. Ben could look both. He smiled when he seen me looking at him with the gentleness of my thought. He said, I got a nice little surprise in my bag for that constable of yours. I will give it to him for Christmas. But first I am going to let him sweat a while. You seen him sweating, Bobby? I did not feel too comfortable with this and wanted to get going. It was the first Ben had said of it. I said, I do not think he is sweating, Ben. I think for him it is over between you two and is settled. Ben said quietly, Is that what you think? I don’t think you think that, Bobby. That constable of yours put me in Stuart without no reason and I owe the fool something for that. You don’t think I should pay my debts, Bobby Blue? I tell you what, he said, I do not pay false debts, like that Auntie Rosie of Deeds’ here.

  Deeds cut in and said, You beat her boy Orlando real bad that time and she is only paying you what she owes you by making trouble for you now. Rosie’s is not a false debt, she said. It is a real debt. I told you to go and talk to her and tell her you would pay off what you owed and to let her know Orlando can come back home and you will not be a trouble to him. She lost her son through you and she’s never going to forget it. You know them Old People. They got to get even too. You know that, Ben Tobin. You’ll have trouble from Auntie Rosie so long as she’s alive to give you trouble unless you go and see her and square your debt with her. I know for sure she put one of them Old Murri curses on you and it will stay on you till she’s done with you. That’s what she done.

  I was impressed to hear Deeds giving it to Ben straight and I seen the girl had a strong mind and a will to do things the way she saw fit and I began to admire her for that. Ben just smiled and went back to playing his mouth organ, sweet and low and sad. But he listened to what Deeds said, his hand stroking her arm, from the round peak of her shoulder to her elbow and back up again, his eyes half closed. You would not know what he was thinking, whether to square things with Rosie or despise her curse and let her see it was not going to work. Which was the old Ben. I seen him listen and say nothing to interrupt Deeds but play that mouth organ real soft so it sounded like it was coming from a long way off and was a tune for her words only. She stroked his stubbly cheek and kissed him and she said softly, You are a strange man, Ben Tobin. There is no one knows you. She turned to me. Aint that right, Bobby Blue?

  When Deeds was done he opened his eyes and he looked at me and said, I had no criminal record before your constable Daniel Collins put me in Stuart, Bobby. Now I have a record and people in Mount Hay think of me as a criminal and would be happy if they never seen me again. That’s right, aint it? I said nothing to this, but I remembered Ben did not mind one bit going to Stuart and was now seeing things differently to suit himself. He said, All that is on his side and there is nothing on my side. Me and you been together since we was pups. You ever seen me walk away from it when I was called to something? And he give that evil laugh he had. But I looked at him and smiled, for I heard in the way he laughed it was just to show me he was still the man he had been and had not given in to nothing. I did not believe it. When it was real that laugh was hard and menacing and it said more than if Ben said in words he was going to enjoy giving his enemy a hiding.

  I heard that laugh of Ben’s plenty of times. I do not know how to write it. Ha-ha-ha, like he was saying it and not laughing it, his eyes going starey and spiky without no sign of amusement in them. It was the opposite of a real laugh. I know when he discovered how to do it. I could not do it myself and I would not try to. It come from the hardness in him that his old man put there when we was boys. The laugh first come out of Ben at the last beating his father give him before he died. I remember it as if it was yesterday. We was railing a big mob of old piker bullocks up at the Dobbin yards. It was getting dark and the rain had set in, which we had not been expecting. We was all wet and tired and hungry and was pushing to get the last yard onto them rail trucks and them old bullocks was wise to us and was giving us a hard time of it. I do not know what Ben done to bring on his father’s rage but me and my dad suddenly heard his fierce yelling and we seen he was beating at Ben. Ben’s dad was old by then and did not have the strength to knock Ben down. And Ben was already grown into the full strength of a man. Ben was standing in the rain taking the beating, and it was not long before his old man ran out of breath and had a fit of coughing. Ben’s dad clung to Ben’s shirt, coughing and wheezing and spitting up his lungs like he was done f
or. Ben stood straight and firm and let the old man struggle, the blood running down Ben’s face, his hat knocked off and the rain streaking him with the dirt of the yards, his long hair all matted and stitched to his skin. Ben looked like the devil in that evening light. And he was smiling, his teeth white. Ben never once in his life raised his hand to his dad but took the beatings from him like something in him told him they was what was owed him. Ben’s dad was hanging off him coughing and shaking, and he soon went to his knees, his hands clawing at Ben’s moleskins. Ben stood there straight and still. I remember he was not looking down at his dad but was looking out over that last yard of wild old bullocks we had brought in from the scrubs and had not trucked yet. Ben did not help his father to rise and he did not step away from him. Then suddenly he give this terrible laugh. His old dad was hunched down on the ground, his hands hanging to Ben’s moleskins, and he was weeping, his shoulders shaking with his weakness and his despair at something bigger than the beatings he give his son which he was not able to settle with himself. He died of cancer that year. He was just skin and bone when I seen him the last time, his eyes sunk back in his head and his cheeks showing the shape of the bones clear as anything. He looked scared. When I was a boy I never thought nothing would ever scare Ben’s dad. Now I seen he was scared of his own death. The smell of him made me sick. That was not more than five months after the beating in the Dobbin yards.