by Miller, Alex
. . .
Tip did not bark when I rode out from the timber but come across from under the tank stand and greeted me and Mother down at the yards. I took the gear off Mother and give her a rub down with the saddle cloth and I took her out a scoop of oats and turned her off into the horse paddock. The other horses come up to see if they might get something of what she was getting and Mother laid back her ears and sooled them off.
I went over to my quarters and took off my clothes and got myself under my blanket. I could not sleep but lay there feeling like the blood was draining out of my body. My strength and my hopes for things running out of me. A kind of exhaustion took me over and I felt like I weighed half a ton, the springs of that cot sagging under the pressure of my body. I never felt like that before. I could not sleep with the thoughts that was going around in my head like lightning flickering in the ranges, and I cannot tell you now what them thoughts was. They was not my thoughts but was the thoughts of something I did not understand. Lying there it was like I was spinning inside and had no strength left to stop the spinning. I knew it was a loneliness that was come on me. I never felt that out in the scrubs. Tip come tap-tapping her claws onto my narrow verandah and she laid her head on her paws and looked in at me, them beautiful eyes of hers glinting in the darkness with the kindness in her. I told her, I do not feel too good. But I cannot tell you why, old girl, I said. She listened to me the way a dog will listen to you, her eyebrows and ears twitching, signalling her feelings. It may be true that dogs have no thoughts. But there is no arguing against a dog having feelings. Which is another matter. My dad would not have had an opinion on it.
When the rooster woke me from my sleep with his flapping and crowing it was already full daylight, the heat coming through them thin fibro walls of my quarters. I sat up, my dreams slipping out of my mind and going to wherever they go to when we have done with them. Tip was gone off the verandah and I knew Irie would have already been out to feed the chooks, which was her first chore of the day before she got ready for school. Irie did not usually look in at me, because I was always up and about the place before she was, but I wondered if she might have just peeked around my door this morning. I had an uneasy feeling in me and I could not shake it. I got up and put on my moleskins and shirt and I pulled on my boots and pushed my hat on and I went out off the verandah and walked over to the police house.
Esme was at the stove frying eggs, and Irie and Miriam was sitting at the table eating their cereal. The three of them looked at me as I come through the flywire door. Miriam give Irie a squinty look, pouting and being her usual discontented self. It was always surprising to me that Irie was never cross with that sister of hers but always looked after her and was careful with her feelings. I would not have had Irie’s patience for it. I seen Miriam give Irie a hit with her hand once, real hard and mean, and a look of pain went across Irie’s face but she did nothing in return. I heard kids say Irie seen herself as her sister’s champion down at the school too. That is the way it was between them two, the older child looking after the younger child. It is not always so and was not so with me and Charley. Esme smiled at me and said, Good morning, sleepy head, and she dished up my breakfast and told me to sit down and eat my corned beef and eggs while the eggs was still hot. Cold eggs are not good for your digestion, she said.
I seen Esme was not going to say nothing to me about how she had been wrong to carry on about Rosie’s accusations the way she did, but was going to act to me as if all that never happened. The truth is the truth. If we say it or not we all know it. I was disappointed in her with this and I wondered if she still believed we was friends. She had not asked me to read to her for a while and I had noticed that. I thanked her for the breakfast and I said, Who is painting the cupboards? Esme said, Do you like the colour? The kitchen cupboard doors was all open and there was a smell of paint. The cans and china plates and other stuff that had been in the cupboards was laid out on the bench tops. The cupboards was half painted a hard blue. It was bluer than any sky I ever seen. They had been a dull old scratched-up green before. I said I liked the colour well enough. Irie laughed at me saying this. Bobby means he hates it, Mum, she said and she looked across at me and we both looked at each other with one of them looks that says to each other what we are not saying to no one else. A rush of feeling went through me when I seen that look in her eyes and my stomach turned over. I had to take a drink of tea to get my breakfast out of the way. There was no one else could ever do that to me the way Irie could do it. I felt my face colouring up and hoped Esme would not notice. Irie was laughing, seeing the effect she was having on me, and Miriam was looking pure hatred at me. I did not care about Miriam. Mum’s going to paint the walls bright green when she’s finished with the cupboards, Irie said. I seen she was in a mood to have some fun.
Esme come over and sat down with her own breakfast. She took a drink of tea and looked around the kitchen as if everything was calm in her world and just the way she liked it to be. Esme was happy being the boss of her world. Well, she said, things needed freshening up in here and I could see your father was never going to get around to doing it. It sounded to me like she had decided they was going to stay here and make their life in Mount Hay after all, now she had no fear of a brutal killer of young women and girls on the loose out in the scrub. I said nothing. I liked Esme Collins in a number of ways and she was a strong woman herself, and that was something you had to admire. But I suppose it was more or less at that moment that I decided she did not know how to understand people who was not like her. I never had no cause later on to change my judgment on that. It come to me and I knew it. And it surprised me. She was not unkind but was generous and helpful. At the back of her mind I knew she did not see me as an equal to her and her family. And I guess I resented that. It is an easy thing to resent. I wished my own mother had been around to correct her. But that could not be. My dad would have had no time for Esme Collins but would have left her to herself. I knew that, but I was not as clear on these things as Dad was and I always looked for the best in people, and wanted to believe that deep down they was good. My dad would have been scornful of that idea.
I was eating my breakfast and thinking these thoughts when I felt the touch of Irie’s school shoe pressing against the side of my boot. She pushed until I looked at her. Her lips was twisted into a shape that was half smile and half something else that I cannot put a name to. Her eyes was hard and glittery, as if she expected me to say something to her out in the open in front of her mother and sister. She was scaring me. I never seen her look that way before. She pressed hard on my boot until she forced me to move my foot away. My heart was whipping around in my chest and my cheeks was hot, half with fear and half with the excitement of it. Esme seen there was something going on with me and she looked hard at me. Oh! she said. Now I am so sorry, Bobby! I forgot again to leave the fat on your corned beef. I’m afraid I gave it to Tip. I could see she was laughing and was not too upset with herself for cutting the fat off my corned beef. She would not have been laughing if she could have seen what was going on under her kitchen table just then with her husband’s offsider and her daughter.
Irie had never been so direct before. It was a new turn in our friendship. I was not sure if we could ever get ourselves back to where we had stood before, without being called on to do something about this new turn. Which I had no intention of doing. I feared Irie might not be going to let me go on treating her like a child but was going to insist on something else between us. Whatever that something else was she had in mind. If she had anything in mind. Which I do not suppose she did have with any clearness, but only the feelings of it, which was strong in her just then. The way I seen it Irie Collins was still a child at that time and that is how I wished things to go on between us. I give Irie a hard look, like I was her teacher, and I cleared my throat and said, That is okay, Mrs Collins. She put her hand on mine and said to Irie and Miriam, Oh dear, I’ve upset our Bobby now, I can see that. I wanted to tell h
er, I am not your Bobby, Mrs Collins. I am my own Bobby and no one else’s. But I let it go.
Daniel come through from the police office. Like always he was wearing a fresh ironed shirt and had had a shave, his hair slicked down, his belt leather shining and the police buckle so polished it looked like it had just been issued to him. He seen me sitting there and he said good morning and went over to the sink and washed his hands. He did not say nothing of Ben and Deeds or about him calling the Dawsons on the telephone. I was expecting him to ask me how I had gone out there with Ben and Deeds. But it all just clung there between us in his silence, like old mud hard and cracked and needing to be picked off as soon as ever we could get to it. Irie said, Dad got lost coming home through the scrub from Coal Creek. I looked at Daniel. He shook the water off his hands and wiped them on a tea towel and he turned around and smiled at her. It’s nice you’re sticking up for your old dad, darling, he said. Miriam did not look at me but I knew it was me she was talking to when she said, My dad did not get lost. That stupid old horse of his got lost and Dad found his way home. Irie give a bit of a snort at this and wiped the yellow streaks of yolk off her plate with a piece of toast and ate it. There was a kind of impatience in her way of doing this that I did not think rightly belonged to the manners of a child. Daniel stood behind Esme’s chair and he said, As usual the truth is somewhere between the two of you. He leaned down and kissed Esme on her cheek and she went to get up and he put his hand to her shoulder and said it was okay, he would get his own breakfast. But Esme made him sit down and she left her breakfast to get cold and got up and put his eggs on to fry. Cooking was her territory and she was not giving it up that easily. He come over and sat on my right-hand side and started telling the girls to get a hurry on or they would be late for school, just as if there was nothing between him and me that needed talking about.
. . .
I went down to the yards and give my gear a going-over with the mixture I had made up for the harness. Daniel come down later and he told me to take the jeep and go and tell Rosie Gnapun we had located Deirdre and she was okay. I said, Deeds is more than okay. Her and Ben is having a baby. Daniel said, Well, I am pleased to hear it. But he did not sound too pleased.
I took the jeep and headed out for Rosie’s place. As I was driving down to find Rosie the thought come to me that Irie had showed something of that same old feeling as Ben’s in her mood at breakfast, going with her feelings and not knowing how far she was going with them. And maybe frightening herself with how the feelings was getting hold of her, like a horse that is too strong and too wild for its rider and is stirred up by the touch on the bit. That look in her eyes frightened me, that I do know. I had always been the boss of my own feelings until I met Irie. Before that I truly believed we was born one way or the other. I do take after my mother in this more than my father and I am not like Ben. I seen my father lose his temper with people, but never with animals, and I never seen my mother get too carried away at all, and there were times she had plenty of cause to. Usually my dad was quiet, but it was a quiet you was careful around. I had seen Ben softened with Deeds and the thought of their child, and I did not know whether to think that people never do change all the way through or that they do change. How was I to know either way? My head was just full of questions and I had no answers for them. I was thinking so hard on these things I drove clean past the turn-off to the town camp and had to spin around and come on back along the road in my own dust.
. . .
When the girls come home from school later in the day I went over to the house for my reading and writing lesson with Irie. I did not know how it would be with her. But she was quiet and thoughtful and did not play up like she had in the morning. I had the feeling things was not the same as they had been with us, but saw she was holding it in now and considering it. That girl was neither a child nor a woman at that time of her life but was on the edge of strong things in herself that was new to her and she did not have the way of them yet. I seen it was that time when we make some stupid mistakes that we live to regret. Sitting beside her at the kitchen table doing the reading lesson I got the feeling from her she was alone with herself and with the puzzle of her strong feelings of that morning. She was not sharing herself with Miriam the way she usually did. Which was another cause for Miriam to hate me all the harder. I was wishing things could go on being just the same as before. But that was not going to happen. I was either going to have to ride it to its end or get off right that minute and clear out. I could not bring myself to do that. I valued it too much. Maybe it would have been better if I had cut the tie right then. I have come to know since that day that we can recover from just about any loss in this life but the loss of life itself.
Esme was up on a chair painting the cupboards and singing to herself and Miriam was doing her homework at the other end of the table. Miriam kept looking up from her work to ask questions of Irie. Irie had patience with her sister and she interrupted our reading lesson and come back to Miriam with an answer every time. I caught Miriam’s look and seen how she was smirking at interrupting the lesson for me. Irie and me was reading from her school book. It was a story about a man in the old days. His ship sank in the sea and his mates was all lost and drowned. He was the only one to make it to an island. I forget the name of that book. I did not believe the truth of it and did not think much of it. We had the book open between us on the table and Irie read a piece first, following her reading with her finger so I could follow it too. Then I read the piece over after her and she asked me if I knew what this or that word meant. I copied down with a pencil on a piece of paper the words I did not know. I had to take this list of words to my quarters and learn them off by heart later. Which I mostly did as I wished to be a good reader, and for Irie to admire me for it, which was more than half my reason for doing it. And I liked her to feel she was a good teacher too. If I come on a word I could not read out, Irie leaned close and whispered to me how to say it, as if she was whispering a secret between us. And I knew this is just what she was doing. And she knew it too. I asked her to repeat a word and we both smiled at this, knowing what I was up to. Miriam was on the lookout and yelled, Mum! Irie and Bobby are whispering again. Esme stopped her painting and turned around and said, That is not nice, Miriam. Irie is whispering a word to Bobby so she will not disturb your work by speaking it aloud. Please be nice to Bobby. Miriam made a face at me. I did not mind her. I winked back at her so she would hate me all the harder. It was easy to make her cry and I knew I could do that if I wished to and she knew it too. I kept it so she was just a little bit afraid of what I might do if she stirred me up too much. This way I kept her on the chain. I knew I could not keep Irie on no chain. If anyone was on Irie’s chain it was me. Them things are the way they are and it is no good us fighting them.
Irie was reading to me how the man on the island picks up the tracks of another man and sees he is not alone. Her voice was soft and serious, her head close to mine. It made me very happy to be so close to her and her not doing nothing wild. I listened to her reading and I thought of my mother reading her Bible out loud in the evening to me and Dad when we was home from the camps, which she did almost every evening. My dad could not read neither. He never tried to learn. While Mum read her Bible my dad used to go to sleep by the fire after a time. But I never did. I watched my mother’s face and saw in her eyes the great meaning them words in the Bible had for her. My dad had no shame of not being able to read. If something needed reading when we come into Mount Hay he asked someone to read it for him. But that did not happen very often. Mostly he got by okay without needing to read. There was nothing ever needed reading in the scrubs. And he could read the scrubs without trying. My mother had a good education off the nuns in reading and writing and in singing. I still had her old Bible. I kept it beside my bunk in the drawer of the cupboard that was there. It was wrapped in an old red silk scarf of hers. When I balled the scarf in my hand and held it to my nose and closed my eyes I could smell her h
air. Her smell lingered in that scarf for years after she passed away. I sat on the side of my bed some nights and got out her Bible and opened it on my knees and turned the pages. It was a very small Bible, not much bigger than the palm of my hand, and the pages was so thin you could have rolled cigarettes with them. I could not read it yet, the writing was so small and so many of the words were not known to me, but I hoped to be able to read it one day with Irie’s help. I had whole sections of it by heart from hearing my mother read them to me many times. Her favourite parts was in the Book of Revelation.
I was listening to Irie reading the story of the man on the island and I was thinking these thoughts about my mother and her Bible when Irie leaned in close to me so her forehead touched my cheek just for a moment before she pulled back. She whispered, I do not get lost in the scrubs, Bobby. I was surprised and I looked at her. I seen how serious she was in making this claim and I did not laugh at her. She was shining with it. I whispered back to her, Everyone gets lost once, Irie. Like I heard you only get homesick once. She did not say nothing to this for a minute but thought about it. Then she said in a whisper, Did you ever get lost in the scrubs? I said I did, but only once. And did you ever get homesick? she wanted to know. I said I had never been away from the ranges but I would be sure to get sick pining for them if I ever did leave.