by Miller, Alex
PART TWO
EIGHT
I was deep asleep that night and content in my dreams, the moon shining through my door as it always did, when I was woken up by a tapping on my fingers where my hand was hanging out over the side of the bunk. It was a strange soft kind of tap-tap-tap, like a child might tap at a sleeping dog to test if it is still alive, half scared to wake the dog but curious to see. I woke up and pulled my hand away. Irie was crouching beside my bunk in her pyjama shorts and top. She was barefoot and her hair was all tossed around and sticking out from her head. In the day Irie always kept her hair well brushed and I had often admired its shine. I was very startled to see her there and I sat up and said, Jesus, Irie! You had better get back to your bed before your mother comes looking for you. I will be sacked and thrown off the place if they catch you out here with me. She had never done nothing like this before. She stood up and stepped away from my bunk, like she was afraid I was going to make a grab at her. I said, Whoa! I am not going to grab you.
She said, I did not think you were going to grab me, and I don’t know why you say that. Her voice was kind of breathless, and I suppose it was with the fear and the excitement of what she was daring herself to. She said, We can never talk about interesting things over at the house with Miriam spying on us all the time, only whisper them. I want you to know how good I am in the bush, Bobby, but I never get the chance to show you. I may not yet be as good as you are, but I will be just as good as you one day. I never get lost like Dad. I always find my way. As she talked she was settling down to it and the boldness come back into her voice. You don’t think too much of me as a bushman, she said, I know that. You never say anything to me about it. But I want you to know I am just as good a bushman as you are a reader. I tell you all the time what a good reader you are and I know you like to hear me say that.
I had never thought of looking at things this way between us and I laughed at the idea of her admiring me for being a bushman. Being at home in the bush was just the way I was from when I was a kid. What else was I? The scrubs was my home like they had been home for my dad and Ben and for everyone who worked them. I did not think of myself as a bushman but just as me. And I did not consider being as I was to be anything special for anyone but myself. She said with a sharpness in her voice, Don’t you laugh at me, Bobby Blue! I never laughed at you when you were first trying to read. I always helped you. I will prove to you how good I am if you will come with me and let me show you something in the scrub. She looked at me a minute, considering something. Then she said, That is if you are not too scared of my mother. She stood waiting to see what I was going to say to this, ready to despise me if I showed my fear of her mother, who she did not fear. I could not see her expression with the moonlight behind her through the open door, but I heard in her voice she was determined and I knew she was not about to have her mind changed with no arguments from me. I said, Well, Irie Collins, I guess I am as game for anything as you are. But you will have to go out on the verandah there and wait for me while I get my pants and shirt on.
It was the most foolish thing I was ever likely to do in my entire life, but I went on with it anyway. I never once felt scared climbing onto one of them black bulls in the chute at the Mount Hay rodeo when they used to have it out there, but I was trembly in my legs now and had to sit on the side of the bed to get my feet through the legs of my pants. There was two people in me: the steady one who was always the boss of his own feelings and the other one who did not care what was going to happen but was going to ride this thing whichever way it was to turn out. I could not put down the excitement in me. It was too strong for putting down. We are different in the night to how we are in the day. The night makes us someone else and we believe our daylight self will not see us and we can keep our night self secret from our day self. That is why the night is when evil is done, and the morning is for repentance and remorse. What I was doing following Irie scared me, but I still climbed out of my bunk and pulled on my pants and shirt and pulled on my boots. I could see her sitting on the verandah, swinging her legs over the side and talking to Tip, who had come out to see what was going on. Sitting there swinging her legs Irie was only just coming up to thirteen in a month or two and I was already past my twentieth birthday and a full-grown working man at that time. I should have told her to go on back to bed and to find a way of showing me the secret she wanted to show me in the morning. Which is what my mother would have approved in me and I knew it. I did not think it would have been too hard for Irie and me to find ways of meeting and talking in the day if we had looked to do it. I knew what I was doing was wrong and would not be approved of by any grown-ups except maybe Ben, who would have laughed at the idea of it if he had known of it.
There was something I did not think much of at the time, and it is only looking back now that I see how close this whole thing was for me and Irie that night, and how it all hung on that one small detail. I see it now, but at the time I brushed it aside and thought nothing of it. It was this. Daniel never put Tip on the chain at night like anyone from Mount Hay, who would always chain their dogs, because Esme would not allow it. And if Tip had been on the chain she would have barked and rattled her chain when she seen Irie sneaking out to my quarters in her pyjamas in the dead of night. Then Daniel would have come out to see what was upsetting his dog and the whole thing that come out of this night would not have gone on to happen and all our lives would have been different. That is why a dog is on a chain in Mount Hay, so it will do its job and warn you when there is something unusual going on. Being off the chain, Tip thought she would join the party. I looked at that dog and I said to myself, None of this would be happening if Daniel was from the ranges and was not a coastal man. That was my thought. And I was amused by it, and it did not put me on my guard as it should have done, like it was the warning that come to me instead of the barking of the dog coming to Irie’s dad. I ignored the warning and just laughed at it. Tip looking up at Irie with that eagerness for adventure, her tail slapping from side to side like she was signalling me, only I was refusing to see the meaning of her signal. Refusing to see it because I did not want to see it. So does that make me responsible for the tragedy that come to us from these small beginnings? That is a question I have asked myself many times since. It is a question everyone else asked themselves too, except Esme, who did not ask anything of herself but only of other people. For Esme I was always to be the villain who had betrayed her and her family. She never shifted on that once it was fixed in her mind.
I went out onto the verandah and Irie got up and stood to face me, the moonlight white and clear, the clean pale light of it shining on her, the pinpoints of the moon in her eyes. And I seen she was just as eager as Tip for this night adventure. I said, I will come with you if you will go and get your jeans and a shirt on. I am not going into the scrub with you wearing them shortie pyjamas. She looked down at herself. I am warm enough, she said. I said, I do not care if you are warm or cold. That is not my point. She looked up at me and said, If I go back I might wake up Miriam. I said, That is a risk you will have to take. You already took a risk coming out here, so I believe you can take that risk as well. I am not coming with you if you do not do as I am asking you to do. She stood a while looking back at me and I thought she was going to stay stubborn on her decision. In my fear I was seeing Miriam waking up and finding her sister gone and going into her mother and father’s bedroom and telling them, and Esme and Daniel coming out to look for Irie, calling her name and flashing torches around the way they did even when there was a moon to see by. I did not wish to be found hanging about in the scrub at night with their daughter wearing only them cotton shorts and that top with one button holding it together. If we was to be found I wanted Irie to be properly dressed in her clothes. That would be bad enough, but not as bad as the other. I said, You had better decide right now. I am not budging on this one.
She said nothing but jumped off the verandah and ran back along the path past the hen run, Tip
flying along behind her. And that is when Tip let out a bark of excitement. I thought, Well that is it then, that yelping will have woken them up. I felt a mix of regret and relief that I would not be having this night adventure with Irie after all. I stood on my verandah looking over towards the back steps to the police house, and I waited. I was half hoping to see Irie running back along the path to me and half hoping not to see her. But I was not strong enough in my mind to know for sure where I wanted to be with it. I knew where I should be with it, but that was different to deciding to be there. Knowing is not wanting or deciding. I was all off-balance, like a man with one foot in the stirrup and one foot free when his horse gets a scare and takes off with him. I knew it could go either way for me just then. I went back inside and I put my hat on and got my tobacco and I come out onto the verandah again and rolled a cigarette and lit it. The smoke did not settle my nerves.
I seen her coming back then, Tip at her heels. She had on her jeans and boots and a check shirt she wore. I watched her walking towards me through the moonlight and I said aloud to myself, My God, Irie Collins. Just look at you. And I knew just what I meant saying her name aloud in this admiring way, but I cannot put the words to that meaning here. There was something in it of my amazement at her trusting me. I had never met no one like her. I stepped off the verandah and said to her, You did not wake Miriam then? She said, Mirri was snoring. She snores like an old man. We walked down to the horse paddock and I held the barb back for her to climb through the wire and when she was through she turned around and held it for me and I ducked and went through it. I straightened up and said, I seen you and Miriam slipping off into the scrub down here one night. She said, very grown up, I know you did.
We went on without saying more. She was not a chatterbox. We climbed through the wire at the far end of the paddock, the horses watching us, and went on into the scrub. I wondered if Irie was as nervous as I was. She did not show no nerves if she had them. She was an unusual young woman. I believe she always was. I could not see that she belonged to this family, but just belonged to herself. Miriam must have been ten going on for eleven around then but she always seemed to me like a much younger kid than her age. Miriam did not know herself as Irie knew herself and needed to look to her mother to be told how she was going. Irie looked to herself. She knew how she was going. It was not something you could teach but was bred in them two girls, one way or the other. It was what made them different, even though they was close sisters. Irie was not the leader between them because she was older than Miriam. She was the leader because that is what she was. A leader. I have seen people in life who wish to be the leader and others who are the leader without caring one way or another about being it. That was Irie Collins. She was a natural born leader. You either followed her or you stayed behind.
She took the lead with me that night and I was content to follow along, watching her going through the scrub a couple of steps ahead of me, taking me to her secret place. Light and quick she was, like a moon shadow herself, flickering through the bendee. I believe she was afraid of nothing. She was not following a cattle pad but ducked and weaved her way with a clear notion of where she was heading. We had gone on somewhat over a mile when we come to a clearing. There was some kind of stick shelter. She stopped and turned to me and said, See? Here it is. I can find my way in the dark. She looked at me, expecting praise from me, I dare say, for finding her way without ever stopping to check. We stood side by side looking at the shelter. I said, You did that very well. She said, Thank you. That is the first time you ever said anything nice to me about my ability in the scrub. I said, Well, you do have it and I have always seen you had it, but I never thought to say nothing to you about it. But it is because I trust you in such things that I give you Mother to ride instead of that old plug of your dad’s. She said, You are not the only one in the world who likes to hear a word of praise, Bobby Blue. I have heard you compliment your horse at the end of a long day. I said, I am sorry. I was not thinking. I will tell you in the future if there are things about you I admire. She said, I would like that. We looked at each other and we was both laughing and it seemed suddenly to be kind of strange that I was saying this to her standing out there in the scrub in the middle of the night. She said, I would like you to tell me those things that you admire about me when you think of them. Please don’t keep them to yourself. I’m glad you think I am capable in the bush. I would not like you to believe me to be a fool.
I knew what she was aiming at and I said, Your dad is a good man in his heart and he is honest. I have met a lot worse than him. You are lucky to have a good father. She come back at me, I know that. Dad understands me in ways Mum never will and I love him. But he lets himself be told by Mum and I would like to see him stand up to her. Dad is never going to be a real bushman and you know that as well as I do. He is a fool in the bush. That is all I meant. I am being honest, that is all, I am not being mean.
I was glad to let it go at that as I did not want to be wasting our good feelings talking about Daniel with her at that moment. The shelter was made of dry brigalow sticks closely put together, with leaves and pieces of rusted tin. It was built up against an isolated island of the red wall, where the wall comes out of the ground. I knew the place well but had not been by that way for some time. The cattle dung I had seen was all old and grey and broken about. I seen no tracks of cattle all the way out and the pad we crossed had only dog and roo tracks on it. Tip was at the entrance to the shelter, nose to the ground, snuffling. Irie invited me to step inside with her and she went down on her knees and disappeared into the dark of the shelter. I got down on my knees and crawled in after her. There was not a lot of room and we was bumping around on each other getting settled. Tip stayed at the door. Irie struck a match and put it to the wick of a candle she had stuck to the bottom of an empty tuna in brine can. She set the candle between us on the ground and we sat cross-legged like Red Indians in their teepee, the small yellow flame between us reaching and flickering and lighting her face. She had her back leaning against the red stone of the wall island. I said, You are not afraid of being out here on your own in the night, then? She said, Miriam is scared of being here. I’m not. Miriam is even scared of being alone in our room at night. I said, That may be, but them bull ants out here can give you a lift. She said, There are no bull ants just here where I am sitting. I said, They will find you. I seen she was getting just a bit cocky with it and it made me smile. I said, One of these days you are going to come face to face with some old scrubber bull and that will stop you in your tracks.
She was fussing around with getting the lid off a tin and I sat admiring her. Your mother did not notice you stole a candle from her? I said. I stole it from school, she said. They don’t notice anything at school. I have lots of them here. She got the lid off the tin and held it out to me. I looked in it. There was some dates and pieces of broken biscuit. She smiled when I looked at her. It is more fun being here with you than with Miriam. You don’t complain all the time. I took a piece of broken biscuit and a date and thanked her. I said, If Miriam is scared in her own room while you are there with her, if she wakes up and finds you gone, what about that? Irie shrugged her narrow shoulders and offered me another go at the biscuit tin. She did not wish to think of the worst any more than I did. We sat eating our biscuits and the dried dates. I said, That lid must be tight. Them little black ants would like these dates if they could get into them. She considered the lid but said nothing. The night was deep and quiet.
Tip whimpered and pushed her backside in the entrance. Irie said, Tip is afraid. I said, Tip hears a dingo howling up in them stone escarpments. Irie said, Can you hear it? No, I said, I cannot. The dog can hear more than we can. We sat a while in silence eating our dates and biscuits. Now we was free and alone together it seemed like we could not think of nothing to say to each other. But I did not mind if we said nothing at all. It was just good being there with her. I looked at her sitting in the light of that school candle, cross-legged a
nd eating them dates and broken biscuits, and I wondered what I thought I was doing out there in the middle of the night with this girl. I could make no sense of what I expected to come of it. But there was something firm in me that was going on with it to wherever it was going to take us. It was more precious to me than anything else I had. I knew that. I felt blessed by her trust in me. And it was like her mother and father and the police house and the rest of Mount Hay did not exist, and it was just Irie and me out there on our own in the night and was no one’s business but ours that we was there together. I would keep her safe no matter what, like in my daze of the fire. I would fly with her if I had to.
She said, You promised to tell me about the time you got bushed. I said, I will tell you something right now about your shelter here that is more interesting than me getting lost in the scrub when I was a boy. You see that red stone you are leaning against? She squirmed around and looked at the stone face and placed the flat of her hand on it. Me and Miriam decided this is a magic stone, she said. I said, And you are right. There is the spirits of the Old Murri people all around here. I told her about the line of isolated outcrops of the red wall leading from here to the playgrounds of the Old Murri people. I said, Them Murris called the red wall their highway and when the strangers gathered there for meetings they knew the wall from hearing of it even though they had never seen it before and they followed it where it led them. It was always a feature of their knowledge maps. And it was like a welcome when they seen this first little outcrop sticking up. And this is it, I said. This first outcrop of the wall is where you made your shelter. You are right to say there is a magic in it. Right here where you set your camp and are resting your back. There is no better place than this to camp out here.