by Miller, Alex
I wondered if my dad would have taken Irie with him if he was in my situation and gone off somewhere with her without saying nothing to no one. I could see him doing it and I believe he would have. My dad never asked no one’s permission to live the way he lived and he never went to the police to settle his problems but settled them his own way. Daniel said, You can sleep in the quarters tonight but I will expect you to be gone in the morning. You can get your dinner at the hotel. I will pay Chiller for your dinner and I will pay you what you are owed in wages. Sitting there looking at Constable Daniel Collins I could see Ben laughing when I told him this story. Ben would be telling me what a damn fool I had been to ever think I could work for the police. I smiled, for I had suddenly seen what my decision was to be. I would saddle Mother first thing in the morning and meet Irie on her way to school and take her out to Ben’s place. I could already feel her sitting up behind me on Mother, her arms around my waist and her head pressed into my back. I would tell her I was sorry for my weakness and she would believe in me again. She and Deeds would get on fine. Deeds would look after her. We could decide what to do after we got there. Ben would have an idea. We would be our own family.
My strength come back in me as soon as I had this decision in my mind. My mother would see how I redeemed myself by this not only in Irie’s eyes but in my own. I was set on it. I stood up. You don’t owe me nothing, I said. Chiller will feed me without requiring payment from you. I looked at him steady, calculating what I might say to him. You have not understood us people of the ranges, I said. Chiller knew my dad and me all our lives. You don’t need to pay Chiller nothing for my tucker. I turned around and went out and walked around to the hotel and got myself tobacco and papers. It was a good feeling to be a free man again. I would take her away with me like she asked me to. I seen how I had been losing belief in myself for a long time working with them coast people at the police house. I was glad to be done with them. I had no fear of what was to happen. I would be accused of kidnapping their child, but I did not care. Me and Irie would find a way for ourselves. We had our whole lives to see to it.
TEN
That final night on my bunk in the two-man quarters I thought I was dreaming a horse was standing on my chest. I tried to push it off but could not and I opened my eyes. It was already getting light, cockatoos screeching, the chooks going crazy like they had a fox in the pen with them. I opened my eyes. Daniel was leaning over me, pressing down with his open hand up close to my throat so I could hardly breathe. I was gripping his wrist with my own hand. He had his face bent close to mine. I could smell his breath, like there was something sour in him. The girls are gone, he said, kind of panting the words out, that sour breath in my face, saying his words and taking a gasp of air like he had been running hard to reach me. I tried to sit up but he pressed down heavy, holding me there. I seen in his eyes he was not the mild man I had made him out to be but was changed. Where are they, Bobby? There was nothing but menace in his use of my name. His spittle hit my eye and I blinked and snapped my head to one side. I seen he was gripping that leather baton of George’s in his free hand and meant to use it on me right then if I did not give him the answer he was looking for pretty smartly. I said, You can ease up. I know where they have gone to. He stepped away and let me up. Get your gear on! He spoke to me like I was already his prisoner and of no account to him as a man.
I slipped out of my bunk and dragged my clothes on. He stood back, his eyes going around my quarters with suspicion then swinging back to me. Oh yeah, you know where they are, he said. He was wearing his fresh ironed uniform as usual, the Webley .38 on his belt alongside that pouch with the handcuffs in it. He was without his hat. His voice was low and thick with some emotion when he said to me, If anything has happened to my girls I will kill you. It stilled something in me to hear him say it. His voice was like he was speaking of the end of his own life. That is how I felt it. As if he was seeing his own death and mine and everything for him was now changed and a new time was come upon him, the old time and its dreams fallen behind him, broken and lost in the drift. Things to say to him come into my mind but I did not consider it a good time to say them, so I kept quiet. I saw a movement and suddenly realised it was his wife standing in the doorway behind him, a kind of dark shadow out there in the cold light of the morning. I had not heard Esme come up to the quarters.
Daniel said, He knows where they are. In my hurry to get my pants on I tripped and sat down hard on the edge of my bunk, hurting my backside. Esme did not say nothing but stood looking in at me as if I was a beast they had cornered. She was wearing an apron over her dress and her hair was free and wild and hanging loose about her head. She did not look like the neat Mrs Esme Collins I was used to seeing.
I had my head down pulling my boots on, sitting on the side of my bunk. Daniel grabbed me by the back of my neck and he forced my head hard between my knees and he put the cuffs on my wrists behind my back. He dragged me up and pushed me out the door ahead of him. Esme stepped back and stared at me. I stumbled off the verandah ahead of them. The early morning air was cool and fresh and light against my skin, a perfume of wattle flowers on the breeze. My head felt naked without my hat but I could see there was to be no going back for it. Mother was at the horse paddock fence looking over at us, her ears pricked up. When she seen me stumbling ahead of Daniel and his missus she give out a snort and tossed her head, trotting stiffly up along the fence then back again, just as if she had seen a big old king brown snake over this way. Mother hated them old brown snakes more than anything. It was plain enough she did not like the look of what she was seeing. Daniel give me a shove in the back and I seen Tip sneaking along beside us low in the grass, her ears flat against her skull and her hindquarters hunched down and dragging. I never seen a dog look more disheartened.
Daniel stood me on the path and he said, Where are they? I believe he would have shot me there if he had not needed me so badly just then. I seen in his eyes it was what he wanted to do. I said, There is no need for these cuffs. I will not be running off nowhere. He hauled back and whacked me hard in the ribs with that leather baton. The air come out of me and I made a noise and felt my knees give. He hauled me up and put his mouth close to my ear. Where are they? He spoke like he might choke on his words. I shook my head to clear it and sucked in air. They will be at their cubby house out in the bendee, I said. I will take you there. Too right you will, he said and he give me a crack across the back of my head with his open palm. I said, There is no need to go beating on me, Mr Collins. I am taking you there. He give me another good hard whack with his hand and I tripped and nearly went down. He hauled me up and pushed me forward. I reckoned if I was wrong about where the girls was then my chances was going to be thin with these two, for I seen there was a kind of panic and fear had got hold of them in their need to see their girls safe. I could have told them Irie and Miriam was fine but there was no way they was going to listen to me. Them two had a fear of the scrubs. A fear of their own ignorance. I could have told them their girls was safer in the scrubs than they ever was in the town. I had never worn cuffs before and had not realised how thrown from his balance a man is with his hands manacled behind his back. I knew myself wide open to whatever come at me without no defence of it. It was not a good feeling to be made so helpless.
Tip stopped at the fence and stood making a whining sound, watching us go like she was never to see us again but was too afraid to come with us. Whatever it was holding her back, dogs know things we cannot know. I did not feel easy seeing Tip hanging back like that. We went through the horse paddock, the horses spooked like crazy, and I thought one of them might go clean through the wire and injure itself. I called out to Mother to steady her but she had the fear in her just like the others. She come up close then ducked and kicked off and screwed to a sliding stop at the wire, her hind legs going under her and her rump hitting the ground with a thud. I seen her throw her head back, her eye white with the fear, and I felt a touch of her despair in m
y own guts. A horse will wind things and you cannot fool them with what is going on like you can fool cattle. If I had known then that I had ridden her for the last time I would have sat down on the ground and wept and refused to go another inch, and Daniel could have beat me with that baton of his all he pleased and I would not have moved for him. But I did not know that, just as we never know the last time for nothing, either to weep or to eat our last meal. The last time had come and gone for me and that mare, and I never knew nothing of it but kept going across that morning paddock as if the two of us was to ride out again together, free and content in the scrubs we both loved to be in.
I seen Rosie then. She was standing still as a dead tree over next to the shed, watching us. It give me a shock to see that dark woman standing there and I did not know what to make of it, but I knew it was not a good sign for me. Them Old Murris have the gift to read the signs. But us whitefellers do not have that gift to read the future in the signs we see today, but only when we look back do we see how we might have read them. If we had that gift our lives would not go as they do but would go in other ways. My mother told me many times, giving me that sweet smile of hers and touching my hair lovingly with her hand, We go forward into the dark, Bobby Blue, knowing nothing of our fate but putting our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ who is our Saviour. That is how my mother lived. Her faith was steady. But mine faltered. I have seen how a man is alive one minute and dead the next without knowing nothing of it. That is the way it happens for us. As it does for the beasts. We see nothing of it till it is on us. I did not wish to be affected by that fierce panic that was in Daniel and Esme but I felt it around me, just as the horses felt it. It was like a sickness without a cure and I knew I could not stay clean of it. I was only a man myself and had no special powers. I knew that. I felt it. My hands held by them steel rings behind my back felt it. What are we without our hands? We are as the beasts. And without faith that is all we are. As the beasts. I knew it in my soul as I walked on, leading them two despairing parents into the morning, my stomach empty with the knowing of my own weakness.
At the far side of the horse paddock Daniel put his foot on the bottom wire and lifted the middle strand for me to climb through. As I bent down to get through I thought of holding the wire for Irie. The back of my shirt caught on the barb and when I made to look around to get myself unhooked Daniel pushed me through with his boot so I landed on my face. My police shirt tore and I felt the stab of the barb going in my flesh. I found it is not so easy to get up from a lying-down position without the use of your hands and arms and I scrabbled around trying to get my feet under me like an emu hit by a motor along the road. I seen them emus scrabble around just like I was doing. When Daniel and Esme was through the fence Daniel dragged me to my feet and pushed me forward. I heard him curse a couple of times. Esme said nothing. Not one word come out of that woman’s mouth, just that staring panicky fear in her eyes. I do not think she knew what she was going to do and had no control of what she might decide on. I seen her actions was just going to come out of her suddenly and take her off-guard. There was no reasoning with that look she had, and she did not belong to herself but belonged to her fear. Her dream was to be rid of me and to have her girls back safe in her arms, laughing and weeping and hugging them to herself and forgiving them for putting her under the biggest scare of her life.
. . .
We went on into the scrub and I headed for the red outcrop. I started thinking these two would owe me an apology when we got there and found the girls having their picnic of biscuits and dates in that humpy Irie and Miriam had made. I thought of me and Irie sitting cross-legged in there that night, talking by the light of the candle about our dreams, and how I would have done everything I could to make sure no harm ever come to that girl. Give my life if it was asked of me. The injustice burned in me. That picture of how this was to turn out was the best I could hope for. But I knew there was something not right about it. I could feel the wrongness of it, circling us, circling all of us, me and Ben and Deeds and Irie and everyone. A feeling of being encircled by it, so we was all dizzy and not seeing straight and going in circles like people who is lost in the bush go in circles, crossing their own tracks again and again until they are out of time. My dream of our little family together with Deeds and Ben and their kid was lost to me in the dizziness of this.
Like her mother and father, Irie had changed too. I had witnessed her finding the edge of her grown-up world the other night and being called by the touch of it to go on with it and hunt after it. That screaming and yelling with her mother had brought out the determined hunger in her to be free of them and to be herself. I seen it before. It was no different with beasts. Once they kick and feel the power of striking home, they go on kicking till they is either dead or has struggled to their freedom. It was natural. I seen it with Ben when he got sick of his dad beating on him and run off to the coast and worked in the Townsville meatworks that time. Ben was not much older then than Irie was now. When he come back into the ranges Ben was his own man and except for that one last time his dad never beat him again but learned to know him as a man equal to himself. There was no difference in this with Irie wanting to be free of her mother. All creatures struggle for their freedom from the nest. It is the way we are. Who does not do it? A young owl will risk its life to fly that first time. I have seen it. They will hiss at you with their last breath when they are grounded.
I seen a big old-man roo at the edge of a stand of brigalow watching us coming through. When we got close he did not turn and head out but stood tall and give a bit of a cough to us. That roo made me think of Rosie standing back there like a shadow at the corner of the shed, knowing something us three did not know, knowing the way of the dizzying circle we was in. That was her. My dad called her the Black Rose. Dad was polite to everyone he ever met as a fellow human being but I noticed as a boy he was always extra polite with Rosie and would lift his hat when he come on her. I believe he had some fear of her and her knowledge. The roo was hot for something and was not getting out of our way. Daniel and Esme did not see him. They seen nothing but the picture of their two girls in their minds, Daniel urging me along as if I was a piker bullock and was stubborn to go. But I was not stubborn, just hindered by having my hands behind my back. Esme alongside in her dress and shoes, stumbling and silent. She might as well have had her eyes closed. I do not think Esme had ever been into the scrubs before, but I believe that morning she would have stepped into the fires of hell without feeling their heat to get her girls back. I thought there might be a wild dog around holding the roo up, but I seen no tracks of one.
As soon as we come out of the bendee onto a piece of open ground the girls’ tracks was clear as day in the whiteness of the clay. There was no shade and the sun was already hot on my head without my hat, which I was not used to. I pulled up and said, See! Here’s where they come through. With the cuffs on I could not point properly and Daniel did not know what I was telling him. Irie and Miriam’s tracks, I said. Here! Take a look. Him and Esme looked hard at the ground like they expected to see their daughters come floating up out of the earth. Watching the pair of them it seemed to me I was in the power of two dangerous people. I put a calmness in my voice and said, They was walking side by side. Most likely holding hands if you ask me. They will be out there in that cubby house of theirs eating biscuits and dates and making their plans. Them two looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language to them. I tried a smile but I do not think it worked too well on them.
You would not think I would laugh at such a moment but that is what I did right then. It just come out of me when I seen them two puzzling at me then peering at the tracks then looking at each other. It was not much of a laugh but was more a nervous kind of giggle on account of my relief at seeing the girls’ tracks, which I had been searching for, knowing that if I did not see them I was in real trouble. Daniel must have thought I was mocking them. When I laughed he swung around and hit me hard in the face with that polic
e baton of his. It was a reaction that just come to him with all the tension that was in him. I seen that. He did not give it no thought. He was so tight with his panic to see his girls alive and well and was blaming me for his fear. I was not looking for it and the blow caught me full across the bridge of my nose. I sat down on my backside, my right hand bending under me and nearly breaking my wrist, the iron edges of the manacles cutting into my flesh. I give a yelp of pain and Daniel grabbed my shirt and dragged me onto my feet. His face had gone a dark mottled red in the sunlight, strange white patches under his eyes. The birds was going wild around us, a whole tribe of black crows dive-bombing the bendee over our heads like we was trespassing on their ground and stirring up their Old People.