Coal Creek

by Miller, Alex

  Me and my dad stood watching it till it was done and I know something in my soul was chilled when that laugh come out of Ben. Ha-ha-ha. It was a laugh that come up out of Ben’s and his dad’s suffering for each other, father and son that they was. If you had known them as me and my dad knew them all those years you would have known this. That laugh changed Ben. We none of us never said nothing about it. That was it. Ben and his dad. We got them heavy bullocks loaded. That is what we did. And they bellowed and horned into each other up the ramp and they made that rail truck rattle with their anger and their humiliation at being boxed. They knew they was never going to roam in the great scrubs of the ranges no more. It was over for them and you heard it in their bawling. I have heard smart people say animals do not know death. But I have seen cattle pawing the ground and bellowing where the carcass of another beast has lain for years, just the bare patch of ground and the few scattered bones the dingoes have left. Them beasts know death all right and those old pikers smelled it in the air that night of Ben’s last beating at the Dobbin railhead yards. It was not that real evil laugh he give now out there at Coal Creek that night with Deeds sitting on his lap and having his child inside her. His eyes stayed soft. I seen that. That is why I smiled at him, like I was telling him his laugh did not convince me as it used to. I said, We will see how things go.

  . . .

  Being with Ben and Deeds out there at Coal Creek for the day and all through that evening of singing and playing the Hohner and drinking that rum and having our feast of ribs I seen how Ben was going to be a good dad and would never beat his child the way his own dad beat him. I seen him stroke her belly and close his eyes and play that mouth organ. No one can resist love. I knew that myself and I feared I would never know with Irie the happiness he had found with Deeds.

  I said, The constable has no cause now to go after you again, Ben. He is done with it. And if you would be done with it there will be no more cause for trouble between you. I was still standing in the doorway ready to get up on Mother and ride back to the police house through the night scrubs, which I liked to do more than anything on my own. Ben held the near-empty rum bottle out to me at the full stretch of his arm and he sung one of them songs he was always singing. I do not remember now which one it was. Something sad and about dying and going home. I never sung them songs myself so I do not have them in my mind. He said, Drink up, old mate, you got a long ride tonight on that brumby mare of yours. Deeds stroked his neck and kissed him where her fingers was, like she was putting a mark on him.

  I reached across and took the bottle and I drank and handed it back. I said, Mother is no brumby and you know it. He held the bottle up to the lamp flame then drank off the last quarter inch and he put the bottle down and he turned and looked at me and smiled. I don’t like that police shirt on you, Bobby. It don’t suit you. I said, Well that’s too bad for you, Ben Tobin. We all laughed and I turned around and went out and got up on Mother and I give a wild yell and cantered off across the clearing to the creek bank through the quarter moon. Mother knew what I was about and she gathered herself and give a great leap into the creek from the top of the bank and I let go another mighty yell. I never knew that mare to refuse. She had the courage and good judgment of ten of them stallions of Ben Tobin’s and he knew that. Muscles was just muscles that I could see, hard and tough like Ben but stiff in himself. I seen that stiffness in him and it did not suit me. I liked to get the better of them wild cows by cutting them in ways they did not expect. I could do that on Mother. I could do anything on that mare. I did not like to hear her called a brumby. I give another yell from the other side of the creek so Ben would hear me and know we had done it and had not come unstuck. I felt good leaving him with that. Like I had the last smart word. Which was something that did not happen very often with me and Ben. It was usually him coming out with some smart remark at the last. But I had the better of him that time. I rode on feeling pleased with myself.

  . . .

  After we come up out of Coal Creek, Mother planted herself on the bank and she spread her legs and give herself such a mighty shake I thought the gear was coming off her. When she was finished shaking she straightened up and tossed her head, rattling the bit and letting me know she was ready to move off. I set her over towards the moonlit skyline of that saddle where the last of Long Ridge comes down off Mount Esson and peters out in a stretch of poison bendee. Mother knew where we was heading and eased into the long striding walk she had, which was the easiest ride I had ever had on any horse. Mother was not a horse to stumble and she could weave her way through the brigalow at a flat-strap gallop when we needed to head some beast, which was usually an old cock-horned cow making her run with the knowledge of what was waiting for her in the yards. Once they had read the story them wild cattle was slippery, but Mother could outpace them and turn the fastest of them. I do not wish to exaggerate the ability of that horse, but I cannot help myself paying a tribute to her in this account whenever I see the chance to do it. I knocked back a lot of offers for her and that will tell you it was not just my opinion of her. They used to ask me, Why don’t you get a foal out of her while she is still young? But I did not like the idea of being without her for twelve months. There was a sweet little pure-blood Arab out at the Dawsons’ place and there was a time when I did think about putting her to him, but I never done nothing about it. Now it is too late for those thoughts. Mother went the same way I was going. We had each other and that was enough for me for the time I had her. I did not like to think of her over there at the Dawsons’ place and me riding some other plug. Mother was my friend as well as my horse. Breeding from her was not my idea. I do not think the life she had was poorer for it.

  The scrub never looks so pretty as it does with the moonlight through it. I was glad to be on my own. A family of roos watched us coming on and kept their eyes on us till we was gone by. I turned around and looked back at them and they was still watching us, the big old father and the three mothers and two youngsters. They would not have seen too many horsemen passing that way and I dare say me and Mother was as good as a circus for them. I was taking a shortcut I knew but I was in no hurry to get back to the police house. I was having some time on my own. Which is the best company I know and you are most likely to win all the arguments. I thought about Ben and Deeds and their child and their happiness and I knew it was something good and important to our lives, the three of us, and that it was an advance on what we’d had before. There are times when it is right for things to change. I would be a proud uncle to their child and would do honour to them all in the best ways I could. It stood as a good thing in my future and made me think. I knew already I loved them three and I wondered at how it come about that suddenly Ben, my friend, was three people and my love for all of them three.

  An hour’s riding and me and Mother come on to the open ground where the Old People had their stone arrangements in the days before us whitefellers was around. The scrub come to a sudden end and that wide open space was shining white in the light of the stars in front of us. The starlight was always brighter over that playground. I do not know why that was. But it was something that always impressed me whenever I seen it. It made you stand and puzzle at it, and it made you know there was a lot of things in the life of the scrub you did not understand or have no knowledge of, even though you and your dad before you had spent your entire lives in it. Or almost entire.

  Mother pulled up, her legs planted and her ears pointed at the shining space in front of us, her head up and a small trembling going through her. A horse has better eyes than a man and will see things a long way before a rider sees them. They speak to their rider with their ears. If Mother come to a stop it was always because she seen a reason for coming to a stop. She pulled up smartly one day when we was riding down a cattle pad to the water over by Coolan Creek when the hole was full and there was a mob gathered there. I waited with her till I saw what she was stopped for. A half minute later the biggest old-man king brown snake I ever see
n crossed the track right there in front of us, his skin glistening in the sun with them rainbow colours they gets when they are in their breeding prime. I said in a quiet voice as that snake went past in front of us, It is as well to give those fellers room. There is not a horse nor any man would survive long the bite of one of them king browns when they are in their season. Anyway, that snake went on his way peacefully. They are the most aggressive snakes I know and it is likely he would not have given way to us, for they do not slip aside for people nor horses like other snakes do. I have wondered since then if Mother had some kind of vision of the future for herself in that meeting. It was the bite of a king brown killed her eventually. But that day she seen that big snake long before I seen him and she give him the right of way. He might have said to her, I will see you another day, old horse. She was not so old, but nearly everyone always called things old in them days even when they was not old. It was a way of marking them as something worthwhile. Now old means nothing but old.

  Scrubber cattle had kicked over a lot of them stone patterns on the playgrounds, being curious of everything as they are, and had put them stones off their lines. But you could still see the patterns and arrangements in a general way. A dingo was starting up howling way back in the scrub behind us. That bitch probably had cubs and must have watched us going by like the roos had done but kept herself hid, then slipped in on our tracks and followed us some way. I do not know how them Old People treated that ground so the scrub never grew back on it and it shone the way it did, but they must have done something to it because it always stayed cleared. The secret for that was lost like a lot of things was lost. Them people from the coast think they know everything there is to know but I think we know less now than we did when my dad was a boy. That open ground did not shine the same in the day when the sun was on it, but only in the starlight. I sat a while looking over that sacred ground and I was aware I could know nothing of it. After a time I skirted around the rim and went on a hundred yards into the brigalow on the far side. I did not like to ride a horse across that open space.

  There was a small natural clearing beside what we used to call the red wall. I knew a good waterhole in behind the red wall and I filled my quart pot there and set it on a fire and I squatted beside the fire and fed sticks around the quart until my tea water boiled. I had set Mother loose but she was not interested in feeding. She stood close, her head in the smoke, which was something she liked to do. She always seemed to know when there was something in the air and she never strayed too far. After my drink of tea I lay down with my jacket under my head and smoked a cigarette and looked up at the stars through a gap in the brigalow sticks above me. The moon was travelled over towards Coal Creek by then and the sky was clear and black, the stars rotating around me. I lay looking up for a long time thinking of them stars and my troubles come into my thoughts and what was coming to us, and I cherished the peace of that place I was in. My mother laid her hand on me and give me that sad little smile of hers. She said even though I was not addressing her Saviour, she seen I was at my prayers for the people I cared for. You do not need to speak direct to the Lord, she said, He knows when you are praying to Him.

  There was an animal rattling among the dry ground litter off behind me towards the red wall. Mother raised her head and looked over that way. I always felt calm on my own in the scrub and I was in no hurry to get back to the police house. I liked to hear the animals doing their night business and not taking no notice of me. There was a peace in being there I could not have when I was in my bunk at my quarters. Each place has its own kind of peace and its own kind of trouble. And before I was done I was to know a place where no peace could ever exist for no one, except in death. But I will not speak of that here but will speak of it when the time comes to do so. I was thinking that night of being Uncle Bobby to Deeds and Ben’s kid and how I was to have a family again, and maybe me and Irie would be together in that family one day and it would be the five of us. And who knows, maybe me and Irie would make it six of us. I was not thinking on death.

  Someone was pushing at my shoulder and I woke out of my dream believing a stranger’s hand touched me. Mother was nudging me with her nose. I sat up and put my hand on her nose and she backed off. Okay, I told her, we’re going home now. I don’t need you to start pushing me around. I could not remember my dream, only that I was at the small end of a tunnel and could see no way of turning this way or that but just had to keep going, the tunnel getting tighter around me the further I went. I believe there was someone with me but I do not know who it was; they was to my left and little more than a shadow to me. If I said it was Irie was with me I would be making it up. But I would not be surprised if it was Irie all the same. That is who I wanted it to be. But I will not say so for sure as I do not wish to make things up but only to tell the truth of this as I know it. I do not like such dreams and I stood up and shook it off. The moon was gone well over now and glinted low down through the scrub. I must have slept an hour or more. The fire was out, one ember sending up a last curl of smoke in the stillness. I left it to smoulder to its end. I felt more tired than I had before I slept. It seemed like we was coming to the end of something and I could not know what the future of it was to be. I felt I was on my own now. Which did not add up, but it was how I felt all the same. That was the feeling in me and I could see no reason for it. I tightened the girth and got up on Mother and she followed the red wall on a loose rein and I dozed in the saddle. I forget what I was thinking. But it would not have been much.

  My father told me that red wall was one of them highways of the Old People when they come down to the great gatherings at the playgrounds. The rusty rock come up out of the ground at a leaning angle, as if some force under the ground was pushing it through, which I suppose it was. Every time we come by that way when I was a boy I expected to see the wall grown. In some places, at its highest, it was maybe eight or nine feet and in others it petered out entirely and went underground. I used to jump off my horse and measure myself against it to see if I had grown or the wall had grown. I said to my dad, How can it be a wall when it is underground? He said, That is what it is, Bobby. It is a wall. I did not ask again. From nothing the wall will suddenly come up again and appear and disappear along a line through the scrub for some miles, maybe ten, like it is looking to take a breath of fresh air or to see where it is going. Them islands of red stone crop up out of the ground in isolated places, but if you know the country you know they are part of the same wall of natural rock continuing along a line that you may follow if you wish to, or cut off to one side of. You can always take your bearings by them isolated outcrops of red stone. I do not know the name of the stone. It would be in one of Daniel’s books but I never felt like asking him. She goes underground and over the ground, and that is what I know. Which is what my dad meant. And I learned it from being there and without asking him nothing more. So he was right on both those counts. My dad was seldom wrong about things. He did not speak of things that he did not know himself. I never heard him speak of the Saviour as my mother did. I never did ask him directly, but I believe he had some private religion of his own. He respected my mother’s beliefs and never said nothing against them. If you asked him a question and he did not know the answer to it he would tell you to attend to your work and that is all the answer you would get from him. He bore a strong contempt for people who carried an opinion on every subject. Dad and Ben’s old man used to take their rum on the verandah of Chiller’s away from the chatter at the bar. Dad kept his greatest affection for my mother. A smile between them two would fill a book with meanings.

  Mother propped suddenly under me and I opened my eyes and looked around me. I said, What do you see, old girl? She stood her ground, letting me know she had seen something worth stopping for. It took me a while to pick it but then I seen the horse tracks across a patch of starlit dirt just out in front of us. I got down and had a close look at them and I knew it was old Finisher must have come that way. It was me put them shoe
s on him myself only days ago and I would know my own work anywhere. I did not think it would have been Daniel finding his bearings through the brigalow by the red wall but Finisher deciding on getting home the best way he could. Daniel would have been bushed by now over this way, I was confident of that. I followed Finisher’s tracks for some time until I seen where they struck off to the east, following a line that would cut the Mount Hay road after a mile or so. I did not go on there but angled off until I struck the wall again. I did not need the wall to know where I was but it was the way I chose to ride. I was sure Finisher would have got Daniel home to the police house. I would see in the morning if Daniel was going to admit he had been lost or would he keep quiet about it. I looked forward to testing him on it. Daniel always put himself up as a very upright man and made it clear he did not believe in lies. I heard him tell Irie more than once, Lies will get you nowhere in this world, young lady. When Daniel spoke to her in that tone Irie’s lovely face went ugly and closed up, her mouth set in a stiff line and her eyes kind of fixed with a look of disdain in them that would have made Daniel feel the chill if he had seen it, which he may have done. I could see Irie was going to be a strong woman to deal with when she was grown up. She was already strong but she kept her strength to herself. I had an idea she was a pretty good liar when she knew the truth was going to get her in trouble. Lies have their place in all our lives. Good lies and bad. We would see how Daniel was to go with this one, if he was to lie or maybe half lie by not telling us the whole story, which to me is worse than a full lie and speaks of a weakness in a man to know truth from lies. The man who deals in half-lies cannot be trusted when the pressure is on but will go the way that seems to him the easiest way to go. I seen it often. I enjoyed thinking about fronting Daniel on this. Irie would be watching her dad as closely as I would be and she and I would share our understanding of how things was going with one of them private looks we give each other. I did enjoy them private looks between me and Irie more than I can tell you. Words is not much use for the real things of our lives. We know inside us what we know.