Coal Creek

by Miller, Alex

  I felt suddenly very low at that moment and seemed to know in my heart this thing was not going to work out well for me. I still had my picture of the girls in their cubby house, and I clung to it, but I knew it was not a picture of anything real. In my own way I seen I was just as lost with this thing as Esme and Daniel was. We was three fools trampling around in the scrubs, blind to good sense and to the certainty of our own fate. Which is what my mother would have said. We are blind to our own fate, that is what she always said.

  When we come on Irie’s shelter I seen at once the girls was not there. My guts sank and there was an emptiness in me. By the look of their tracks they had not even stopped but had gone straight past. I reckoned Irie was making for the red wall and the playgrounds of the Old Murri people, which I had made her see as some kind of magic place. Her direction was off by a couple of degrees. A couple of degrees in the scrubs is the difference between getting where you want to go and getting somewhere else entirely. There is no point taking the wrong line in the scrubs unless you want to get yourself lost. Daniel got down on his knees and looked into the entrance of the shelter, Esme getting down and looking in over his shoulder, her hand to his back. As if they was hoping to find their two girls hidden in some dark corner, giggling and just playing an innocent old game of hidey after all. Daniel’s voice come out hollow from the cubby house: They are not here. The pair of them stayed down looking in at the emptiness, hoping I suppose where there was no hope to be had. Esme said, So that is where those dates went. She almost sounded normal when she said this and it give me a gentle feeling towards her to hear her speaking just like my own mother would have spoken at that moment. So that is where those dates went. As if knowing how come she lost the dates was the biggest satisfaction for her just then.

  Daniel crawled out and stood up and looked at Esme. She got up and put her hands to her mouth and called, I . . . reee! Mi . . . reee! She listened then turned a half pace, facing more to the south, and called again, her voice waking the crows and sending a flock of feeding cockatoos flapping and screeching out of the brigalow sticks. We stood waiting to hear Irie’s voice coming back to us out of the silence. But it was just Esme’s voice come back to us, faint and empty and filled with the quiet of the bush, like a ghost calling to us from the escarpments, mocking our hopes. Esme stood and called their names and called again and again, then suddenly she bent double and began to cry, making loud sobbing noises like she had been overcome with a sudden horror of it. Daniel put his hand to her back and stood close beside her, helpless to know what to do.

  I felt sorry for them two. I wished in my heart none of this had happened to them. But there was also a stranger in me I had not known before that morning. He stood by and looked on at this scene in the scrubs without no feelings for it, but as if he knew it was always meant to be this way and there was nothing none of us could ever have done different to change the way it was. It was the first time I met that stranger and I did not like to know him. I have met him many times since that day and he has become a familiar to me. I seen we three was sharing something that morning that we did not understand, and maybe never would understand, something bigger than each of us. I have had time to think about it over and over again, and I still do not understand it. It resists me and is like a door closed against my thoughts.

  . . .

  Common sense told me the girls was up ahead of us, somewhere between where we was standing and maybe a mile or so off to the south of the playgrounds, depending on the head start they had on us. I was wondering if Irie packed the two of them up and got away in the night. Or had she waited till it was coming on to dawn before heading out? Again Tip had not alerted no one to them two leaving, which she would have done if she had been on the chain. Being off the chain she probably went along with them some way for the adventure of it until Irie told her to get home. I was not a good enough tracker to pick the time of their passing from the signs they had left in the claypan. They could be miles ahead or just over the near rise. My dad would have known. My dad could track a moth through the scrubs on a moonless night. He had a feel for it I never did have. It was the feel for it he followed, not the sign on the ground. You cannot teach tracking, it is like the voice of a singer. It has to be in you if it is to come out of you.

  The ground was a series of undulations and small shallow valleys all running into each other, and we only got a general view of the country every once in a while when we was on top of a rise and found a clear line through the dense scrub. On foot we saw very little. If you are on a horse you see more. I had never been through there on foot in my whole life. On foot we was down in among the thick of things and it was not possible to see more than fifty yards ahead of ourselves at the best of it, and a lot less most of the time. It was ideal country for wild scrubber cattle and I knew it like I knew my own self, even on foot. Them scrubs was home to me since I was old enough to run off after school, and I did not need to bother thinking about where I was to know where I was. I just knew where I was. I was thinking of Irie going along with her fine courage, holding Miriam’s hand and telling her about the magic of the playgrounds and giving her hope of the adventure of getting to the spring of the old fig tree, even though she would have had little idea herself how she might ever get to that place. That fig tree was a good two days ride from the playgrounds. I looked at Daniel and Esme and they seemed to have forgotten about me. I said, Irie is trying to get to the playgrounds of the Old Murri people. Them playgrounds is a long way off from here. We should turn around and come back on horses. There is no water between here and Coal Creek. We will need to bring water for the girls. And we should get our hats too or we will soon cook.

  Them two turned around and looked at me. Sweat was staining Daniel’s clean ironed shirt and Esme’s dress was clinging to her and she was plucking at it under her arms to free the material from her skin. They was hot and flushed and wild in their eyes, as if they had fallen into a trap and did not know the way out of it. We stood in our own silence a while, the bird sounds giving us the feel of space and emptiness that I loved to feel around me but which must have made them two feel they was lost to all the usual things of their life. I could feel my heart pumping my blood around in my body and I thought to myself how fit and well I was and how much life there was still in me. I had my whole strength and had never had a day’s illness in my entire life. I was wishing I was sitting up on Mother instead of standing in my boots without my hat with my hands gripped in them iron rings behind my back.

  My eyes was on Daniel’s eyes and his eyes stayed on mine and we both waited for something. I do not know what it was we was waiting for, but it held us like we was in a room alone together sworn to silence until the word was given for us to speak. I seen I would have to say something. I said, Irie has tried to make it to the playgrounds of the Old Murri people but she has not gone in the exact right direction.

  Daniel kind of woke up and wiped at his face with his open hand and looked at his hand. He then looked at me. What did you say? I repeated myself again. He and Esme looked defeated with the horror of the thoughts of their girls that was in them. I said I had told Irie stories of the playgrounds and they puzzled at me to hear me saying it. I seen the hope of their girls struggling in them against their terror of loss and death. And I seen the disgust they had of being forced to listen to me on the subject of their daughters. I do not know what they had in their minds about what me and Irie might have got up to, but I do know it was not good. They had not trusted their daughter no more than they had trusted me. They did not know the kind of man I was or they would have had no fear of Irie being my friend. And I believe they did not know their daughter neither, but only had fear in themselves for her. I said, We had better go back and get the horses. And the sooner the better. The girls will be out there somewhere and it is rough country for walking in and it gets a lot rougher from here on. And it is only going to get hotter as we follow the watershed.

  Daniel said, What watershed? Like h
e thought there was a secret in what I was saying and I was leading him on, his confused mind suspicious of some deeper trap he might be walking into, his girls, his wife and himself all swallowed up out there in that poison bendee scrub. I said, You do not see it because it is only gradual, but we have crossed over onto the Coal Creek side and the land declines down from here. He looked around. That ridge, he said, suspicion loud in his voice and pointing, is higher than this ground. I said, It is, but the way of the country is down from here generally till you get to Coal Creek. After Coal it rises again onto the western side till it peaks at the Dixon Creek watershed. I could have given him a detailed description of the map of the country east of Mount Hay that I had in my head but it would just have confused him further. He stared hard at me and wiped at his face with that downward sweep of his hand again. He was a man suffering. He turned to Esme. Maybe we should do as he says, he said. Esme give him a sick look. You can go back if you want to, Daniel Collins, she said. I am going on until I find my girls. Daniel said, There is no need for you to take that tone with me, Ez. We are in this together. But if there is no water we will all be in trouble soon enough. He is right about that. I do not like to listen to him any more than you do, but what he says is true.

  Then it was suddenly like someone had lit a match to dry grass in a wind and they was flaring up with all the fear and tension coming out of them in a rush of hatred for each other. She swung around on him and shouted in his face, Are you happy now? Are you satisfied with your stupid adventure in the ranges? You brought us up here, Daniel Collins, and look where it has got us! He come back at her, It was you invited him to eat in the house with the girls. That was not my idea. And just look what that has brought us to. She slapped him hard across the face and he reeled back and snatched at her wrist and held her, the sting of her blow making his eyes water and setting his hat sideways on his head. I thought he was going to hit her but he held off. She struggled against his grip on her wrist and cried out at him, and he held her a while, showing her he was stronger and she could not break his grip till he wanted to let her go. She shouted at him, You are the stupidest man I ever met! I hate you! These people have been laughing at you ever since the day we arrived.

  He let her go with a flinging of his hand and she fell back against the shelter. He was yelling at her that she had been a willing partner coming into the ranges and more the cause of their troubles than he was. You want to control every damn thing and you have no idea of the damage you do to people. If you had not insisted Irie go to boarding school but had kept your calm and listened to her none of this would have happened. I thought he had a good point with this, but Esme was past hearing him. I seen the thought of murder in the wildness of her eyes. I do not remember all the exact things they accused each other of, but it was like they suddenly hated each other more even than the fear of losing their girls. Then Esme was heading off on her own. Daniel shouted to her to come back but she went on. I said, She will not be able to follow them tracks once they go into the scrub again. She will not see nothing of them once she gets into the bendee, there is too much ground litter. Daniel turned around and he looked at me. Nothing would give me more satisfaction than to shoot you right here and now where you stand, he said.

  He turned around and called to Esme that he was coming and for her to wait up but she kept going. He undid the buckle on his Webley and he pulled that gun out and fired a shot into the air. I thought, I am next. At the sound of the shot echoing around the scrub Esme stopped and turned around and looked back at us. He give me a hard push in the back and said, Get going. Esme stood and waited and I went past her and led them across the open claypan and into the bendee again. I had a feeling I was walking to my own death.

  . . .

  I soon lost Irie’s and Miriam’s tracks among the ground litter but I had a good feel for their direction and I followed the natural run of the country, keeping not too far south of the red wall, which I could see from time to time over on our left, unless we was down in a gully. It was the natural way a stranger would go. I knew where there was a number of rock pools that would have water in them after the storms and I was hoping Irie would come on them. I did not see their tracks again but kept going anyhow, hoping I was going to cross them sooner or later. A person who is lost will tend to work their way around in a circle until they cross their own tracks, which Chiller told me once was something to do with the way the earth was turning around. I am not sure of that. But I always thought there might be something in it. Chiller knew things I did not know.

  The bendee is low and dense and does not give a lot of shade. The country over that way soon gets uneven with rocky outcrops. The sun was hot on my head, my back burning where my shirt was torn open from the barb. We went on in silence, the three of us. I was dry in the throat but I believe they must have been a lot drier in their throats than I was in mine from all their yelling at each other. And I had gone without water plenty of times for a whole day. Neither of them said nothing, but just walked along behind me. I did not look around to see how they was going. I was wondering if Daniel had put that revolver back in its holster or was maybe still carrying it with the idea of using it at some stage. It give me a tight feeling in my back thinking of him coming on behind me with that gun in his hand. Daniel Collins was always a lost man in the scrub. I had not had no breakfast and kept thinking of a drink of tea and a couple of fried eggs. With death maybe an inch away I could still think of my stomach. But I loved to eat in them days.

  Halfway through the morning I seen something blue over to our left and I stopped and turned around to them. I said, There is something over there they dropped. I was glad to see Daniel had holstered the gun. Him and Esme went over and took up the thing. They come back and Daniel said, They can’t be far away. He put his hands around his mouth and yelled Irie’s name and we waited. There was no echo from where we was but I seen a black hawk rise and peel away. Daniel’s call fell dead among the stand of brigalow we had got into. Him and Esme looked at each other. He reached and touched her arm and said, I’m sorry for what I said. She nodded to him and did not look up from the blue handkerchief. She did not apologise back to him. I had seen wild pig rootings and I reckoned there would be water not too far off.

  I went on and they followed behind me, Esme first and him coming on last, the scrape and crackle of their footsteps through the litter. I cut across a low ridge to get out of the brigalow and the ground fell away sharply into a steep gully. I did not know how I would go with my hands behind my back and I asked Daniel if he would loose the cuffs till I had made my way down the steep. He said, We do not have to go down there. We can go across lower, and he pointed along where it was not so steep. I said, This is the only place where they will have found water. You might like to get a drink yourself. I seen he was hesitating whether to take the cuffs off me. Esme said, If you turn him loose he will run off and leave us to our fate out here or you will have to shoot him. Which will be the same thing. It has been his plan all along. Can’t you see that? Him and that Ben Tobin have had their plan to get back at you and you are too simple and trusting to see it. Daniel did not say nothing to this but he frowned hard with what was going through his thoughts.

  I said, I never had no plan, Mrs Collins. She screamed at me, Shut up! Shut up! She screamed it three times and nearly choked herself trying to scream it a fourth time. She was clutching on to that blue hankie and her face was bright red, her dress all sweated up and nicked here and there with branches that had dragged at her. I said, I will get down the best way I can. We will not get ourselves a drink nowhere else out this way. I got down on my backside and worked my way down into the bottom of the gully. I felt just like a broken-backed dog dragging its arse. I was glad my dad could not see me.

  The pools of water were cupped in the narrow bottom among the tumbled rock. The pigs had not been down there. The pools was small and filled with no more than a billy of water each. The water was clear and I seen at once the girls had not been t
here. If they had drunk at any of these little places the water would have been clouded with being stirred up. I stood back and watched Esme and Daniel get down on their bellies and suck up a drink. He had left the Webley’s holster flap unbuckled and I thought I could have sat on him and hauled that gun out and had the better of the pair of them. But I looked ahead of doing it and seen there was nowhere for me to take it from there without committing some terrible crime and destroying my life and theirs forever after. And that was not something I could seriously think about doing. It made my heart race standing there looking down at him thinking about doing it all the same. I was still thinking about the whack he give me with that leather baton of his. When it was my turn to get a drink he held me by the shirt and helped me squirm myself into position. There was only a cup of water left and it was all stirred up and murky. I had drunk a lot worse many times and been more hard-pressed for it than I was just then, but I had never drunk on my belly in the bottom of a gully with cuffs on. That was something new for me.

  . . .

  It was late in the day and we was all pretty well done up when we come on the rock shelter and seen the girls had been there a few hours ahead of us. There was a scuffed-up sandy patch out the front of the rock shelter. The three of us stood out the front and Daniel said to me, Do you think they have been here? The first thing I seen among all that scuffing was the fresh tracks of two unshod horses. I did not stop to think about what I was saying but was so relieved to see this sight I just come out with it. I said, Ben and Deeds have picked them up. They are okay. Ben and Deeds would have come through this way from visiting in Mount Hay on their way home to Coal Creek. It looks like the girls had themselves a little fire going. I was full of admiration for Irie getting a fire going with the ground litter dull from the storms. It looked like that girl was a long way from feeling lost and panicked. I wished to tell this to her mother and father so that they might admire her too, but I was not fool enough to try doing it just then. I would like to have bragged about her to them.