by Miller, Alex
. . .
After hearing it said in the court again and again I began in the end to half believe what they was saying about me and Ben and to think that maybe it was the truth after all. I found it hard to remember exactly what the real truth was and to untangle it in my mind from the lies and exaggerations. I got confused giving my replies to the lawyer. I even found I was wanting to agree with him after a while just to get it over and done with and to make things easier for everyone. I just wanted to say yes to everything he asked me and be done with the madness of it all. The jury was out less than an hour and when they come back and said they had found me and Ben guilty of all the charges against us the people in the court stood up and clapped and cheered. I felt a kind of relief in myself at the verdict. It is hard to imagine it now, but at the time I remember feeling I was only getting my due after all. It was like I just wanted to be as convinced of my guilt as everyone else was. Two weeks later me and Ben was brought back to the court to be sentenced.
The court was crowded with people wanting to hear the worst for us. There was a waiting silence when the clerk of the court come up behind the judge and held a square of black cloth over the top of the judge’s wig, spread out between his two hands, and the judge looked at me and Ben in the dock with our guards and told us we was to hang. I looked at Ben and he smiled and I was glad I was going with him and was not to stay behind on my own. By that time I had lost my dreams of ever again having a decent life and I had no care in me for my own life. Going with Ben was the best thing in my idea of how it was to be for me just then. They did not set a date for the hanging, but I did not care one way or the other. It was out of my hands and it would soon be over. That was all. Somehow it seemed right the way it was. I had no fear of my own death. If someone had told me a few months earlier I was going to die in three weeks or ten days I would have run a mile. Now it did not affect me except to make me feel quiet inside, like the trial had emptied the lake of my life and I was just the mud on the bottom drying in the sun. It all meant nothing to me at that time, which I suppose was a state of shock.
. . .
Later on I changed this view, but I had come to it at that time and I felt no fear or despair when the judge said them words. I thought to myself, Well this is it then, Bobby. You are done with this life and like the judge said you must trust in the mercy of the Lord for the next. If I had been given the chance that day I would have thanked the judge for his words. I had no ill feelings for him, and I believe he had none for us. We was all just playing our parts in it and it did not matter somehow that it was not true. The truth got lost and we forgot what it was. The account of what took place out at Coal Creek had got so twisted up and rearranged during the trial I was pretty well convinced I deserved what I was to get for my part in it. But I was not convinced I was evil. I was never convinced of that. I seen that good and evil did not count in the law but only if you was found guilty or not guilty. And me and Ben was found guilty. It all come down to that.
Miriam and her dad was dead, there was no arguing with that, and we had all played some part in bringing about their deaths. Esme and Irie was to suffer their loss for the rest of their lives and it did not seem unfair that me and Ben was to also suffer an equal loss. I did not look at Esme when the judge said his words. And I was glad Irie was not in the court to hear them said that day. I knew I did not belong to their world no more and I did not crave the impossible, to be rejoined to it, nor did I regret nothing. My death was all of one piece inside me at that moment, a cool empty place like them playgrounds of the Old Murri people, shining as a silk dress in the starlight. I probably smiled to think of that. The regret I had which did not slip away was to lose Mother. It pained me to think of her.
THIRTEEN
My brother Charley come to the prison to visit me the week after we was sentenced. He brought me my mother’s Bible and her red silk scarf that I had kept it wrapped in. I sniffed the scarf but it had lost the smell of her hair and I knew she was absent from me in that place. Knowing my mother’s absence from me I let the place get me down for a while. Charley had got the Bible and the scarf along with my saddle and my other gear from the police as my only kin. The detectives had searched my few possessions at the Mount Hay quarters and confiscated them. Charley handed the Bible across to me and said, You were always her favourite, and he smiled to show there was no hard feelings between us in him saying this. It was true. He was my brother and though he was something of a stranger to me I could do nothing but love him.
He was wearing a smart grey suit and tie and he had a new brown hat that he held by the brim between his fingers, just like he had in the court. He had grown a moustache, which was not as red as his hair but had brown in it and small touches of grey. He looked prosperous and a man of the town. You could see nothing of the ranges in him. We did not speak of him leaving the family at a young age but I seen it had not been to his disadvantage and he had become the man he wanted to become. He did not ask, but I thought to give him an account of our mother’s funeral and how all the town followed the coffin up the hill behind the dam. He did not move while I told him this but sat looking down at that hat in his hands. So I spared him an account of Dad’s passing. But I told him to sell my saddle and our dad’s gear and to ask Chiller to keep Mother and not to sell her. I did not want no one riding that mare. He said he would do these things but I never found out if he did them and I never seen no money from him selling my gear and my dad’s stuff, which I was sorry to think of leaving my care as I had always thought I would cherish it till my own end. But some things are not to be as we expect them to be. I do not hold no feeling against Charley. He had become a stranger to our ways and made his own life and I respected that in him.
We was like strangers sitting there in the prison and we soon ran out of things to say to each other and sat in silence, him turning the hat by the brim and looking down, and me looking at him. I said, I believe you have a wife and children? He come back to life at the mention of his family and told me he had two girls and a boy and they was all in school and doing well. His job was managing the office at the McKay sugar mill. They had bought themselves a house out at Farleigh, he said. But I did not know where that was and had no picture of it in my mind. Before he left he give me his cigarettes and said he would come again and was there anything else I particularly wanted? I seen he was eager to go and was uncomfortable in the prison with me, so I said there was nothing I wanted and I thanked him for coming to see me. I never seen him again.
. . .
After the sentencing me and Ben was put in two of the three condemned cells at Stuart. They was up on the second floor at the back of the main gallery, the one empty cell between us. We was not allowed to call out to each other and the doors was too thick to hear if we was just speaking. Ben played his Hohner most evenings and I could hear that okay. I lay on my bunk with my eyes closed and listened to his version of The Wild Colonial Boy, which he knew was just about my favourite song, especially the lines, He was his father’s only hope, his mother’s pride and joy. We was neither of us wild colonial boys but we liked that song. I could not hear them lines without thinking of my mother. Ben sang a line then broke off and give a few melancholy bars on the mouth organ then come in again with the words, adding in little flourishes on the Hohner here and there. I lay on my bunk with my eyes closed listening to him playing and imagining a time with me and Irie and him and Deeds camped out at the spring of the old fig tree together, a big fire shooting sparks into a sky full of stars and us all having a good time.
After the judge set a date for Ben’s hanging the days went by quickly. They come to take him down to the execution place at five in the morning. It was still dark and I was awake and heard them open his cell. Ho there, Bobby, he called out to me. And he laughed that good old scary laugh of his that I knew would send a shiver through them guards. They are going to hang me, Bobby. I could not laugh but I called back, I love you, Ben. I love you too, Bobby Blue, he called and th
en the door slammed behind them and they was gone. They was our last words to each other. Good words they was. Ben Tobin was not a saint, but he was not an evil man neither. They should have let him see Deeds before he died but they said she was not his kin and had no rights.
After Ben went down the stairs and we heard the door bang closed on him one of the prisoners in the gallery started singing The Wild Colonial Boy. Gradually all the men joined in, until they was all singing like a loud challenging chant of the song, as if it was the war cry of a crazy horde of warriors. There was a wild colonial boy, Ben Tobin was his name, they sung. And I seen how they was making a legend and a hero for themselves out of Ben. The singing went on for some time then it suddenly stopped like someone had cut it off. The stones of the prison trembled with that silence.
I was standing by the door of my cell waiting, my blood whooshing in my ears. I nearly jumped out of my skin when the shutter on my door banged open. The guard placed Ben’s dinted old Hohner on the plate and when I reached for it he said, Your mate hangs on the bell, Bobby Blue. And that was what the silence of the men was for. They knew it and was waiting for the bell. I stood by the door holding Ben’s mouth organ and I prayed to the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour to take him to him and keep him until the time I was to go over and join him and all those others waiting over there. When the bell struck I hung my head and wept for my friend and I said in my mind, They hung the Lord Jesus on the cross too, Ben, and my mother’s voice come to me then, soft and gentle as the palm of her hand to my cheek, We all hang on the cross, Bobby Blue. We all hang on the cross. And I thought how lonely Ben must have been down there in that place where they hanged men, them judges and newspaper men and Gillen Dawes, the governor, all standing around to see him go. I know he would have smiled at them and they would never have seen his sorrow for the loss of Deeds and their child. Ben would never have let them see his sorrow. I know that. They was hanging a little child’s father and no one was to come to any good from them doing it. I loved Ben and will love him until the day I go over to the other side and join them all assembled there. This true account of what happened is for his memory after all them people who hated him and saw him as an evil man are dead and gone themselves. I have another reason too for writing this, which I will speak of.
. . .
My friend Ben was dead and I was never to see him ever again. When I closed my eyes I could see his smile and hear his voice. Now I thought I was for the rope within a week or two of his hanging, and I did not mind one bit but was impatient to go and be done with it all. I had seen the eye of death in that pea rifle Ben shot Daniel Collins with when Deeds had it pointed at my eye, and I had known the beckoning of that place beyond the dawn. I did not mind the thought of it and had no fear. I read the Gospels each night and thought of my mother reading them same words to me and Dad. Then Alfred come and seen me and told me he was appealing my death sentence now that the heat had gone out of the iron of vengeance and people was feeling satisfied that the ringleader of the horrors, as they called them, of Coal Creek had paid the ultimate price.
That is what he called being hanged: the ultimate price. Alfred had letters from George Wilson and Chiller Swales giving me a good character but he had not been able to use them at the trial as it was said they was not material to the case. He was going to use these character references to help in appealing my death sentence. I told Alfred, I do not want no appeal. I am ready to go. He would not listen to me but said I was young and would change my mind on death given a chance, and he went ahead anyway and my sentence was commuted to life. Which he said meant twenty years if I behaved myself. In spite of the great differences between us I think me and Alfred liked each other. He give me a hug when he come to tell me I would not hang and I smelled the stink of the stale grog on his breath. He said, You are a young man, Bobby. When you come out of this place I will be long gone ahead of you. I told him it was no good predicting the future, as we could not see our way to it.
. . .
I was sorry at that time they did not send me down with Ben, but once I had my life back in my hands I seen Alfred was right and I soon forgot I had ever wished for my own end and began to value my life again and to have hopes for myself. I learned a lot about myself in that time and have not forgotten them lessons. When my sentence was commuted I was taken before Governor Dawes for an interview. He stayed sitting down at his desk looking at me over his glasses for some moments, then he said, Take them cuffs off the boy. He’s not going to run away on us. And he laughed and smoked his cigarette. The guard removed my handcuffs. Dawes was not a bad man, I believe, he just had a lot of bad men to deal with and was let down many times in the trust he give them. He still believed in his own quiet judgment of the people he was in charge of, I mean us prisoners, who was known as the scum of the earth. Which was not too far off the mark.
Governor Dawes said, The chaplain tells me you like to read, Bobby. Is that right? I said it was right and that I enjoyed reading very much. He looked at the guard standing next to me holding the cuffs and said, Well, Toby, old Henry’s gone, so maybe this young feller would like to take over the Stuart library. The guard give me a sideways look and said, Maybe, but he did not sound convinced. The governor looked back at me and said, How about it, Bobby? I thanked him for the offer and said I would do my best. He will do his best, Dawes said to the guard. See that he does. And that is how I come to be looking after the library all them years. I was moved to a cell on the upper floor of C Wing, above the library.
Reading saved my life in that place in them early years when I was still innocent of the ways of some men. So I always reckoned it was Irie saved my life from teaching me to read in the first place. I read every one of them seven hundred books they had in Stuart twice each. And I wrote letters for prisoners who could not write. I read to friends in prison who liked to hear the stories but could not read themselves, and I taught a few to read too. One of their favourite books was Man-Shy, the story of a heifer. I do not know why but the men, some of them vengeful and hard in their minds, loved to hear this story, and were like children with it, demanding to have it read to them over and over. It was written by a writer called Frank Dalby Davison, and no one has heard of him now. I would see a smile creep into the eyes of men I thought lost to all decency when the red heifer makes her bid for freedom.
It was in Stuart Prison that I become a reader and a writer. I was always building on the knowledge given me by Irie Collins. There was quiet hours in the library and it was not long before I began to write letters to Irie. I did not have no address for her so I just kept the letters in a box, each with its date on it. In the letters I went over everything that happened to us and I tried to get the truth of it clear and back into some order so she would understand that I had never betrayed her trust. Even though I knew she was never going to see those letters I got a satisfaction from writing them and they helped me to understand things myself. Sitting there in the quiet hours of the library writing to her I always felt me and Irie was talking to each other. It was a precious time for me.
I was twelve years in Stuart when I got the letter from Irie. I had never had no visitor after Charley and I had never had no letter till Irie’s letter come that day. When I went in to open up the library in the morning I seen the letter lying on the desk where the guard must have put it for me to find. I read my name on the front of the envelope and I picked it up and held it. It had been opened and passed for me to read by the authorities and there was the blue prison stamp on each page of it. I knew in my guts who it was from. I sat down and unfolded the blue sheets of paper and read the whole letter over three or four times. I kept it and have copied it in here word for word. This is Irie’s letter after twelve years of silence from her. It was on blue paper with no lines, which made me feel it was even more special than if it had been on plain white lined paper like they give us in the gaol.
Dear Bobby,
You will be surprised to get this letter from me. I know that. Bu
t I don’t know if you will be pleased. I imagine you have forgotten me long ago and said in your mind good riddance to that girl. I have never forgotten you and our short time together at Mount Hay before the tragedy of that day at Coal Creek. I hardly dare mention Coal Creek to you, but if I am to write to you at all I must be honest and give you my reasons for getting in touch after such a long silence. You might have expected to hear from me and to have received my support at the time of your trial twelve years ago, but I was not able to give you my support as I was a minor and in a strange way I did not want to give it. You will not understand this, and I did not understand it myself, but I just wanted to be as far away in my mind from what happened as I could get. Seeing Miriam lying there dead has never left me. My little sister was alive one minute and sleeping in the cot with her arm over me and she was dead the next. I could not accept it. Some part of me still does not accept it and never will so long as I live. I will not lie to you about any of that now. It has not been easy for me to write and I have many fears about doing it. My biggest fear is that you and Ben Tobin blamed me for what happened that day and that you have never forgiven me and you may even hate the memory of me.
My mother put me into a boarding school in Brisbane and for six years I lived there more or less happily and as if I was a different person from the girl you knew in the ranges. Mum continued to live in Townsville but I did not always come home for the holidays. Except for Christmas I usually stayed with a friend in Brisbane or on the Gold Coast. But Coal Creek and Mount Hay stayed with me like a private shadow. I lived in those early days after Mount Hay in a strangely private world of guilt and remorse for the stupidity of my actions and never for one day ceased to go over and over in my mind how differently things would have worked out if I had not been so stubborn and insisted on running away. It was the stupidest action of my life. I blamed myself for everything that happened—for my little sister’s death and for the death of my father, and for Ben Tobin’s death and for you being in gaol for the rest of your life. Ben and Deeds were kind to me and Miriam, and I repaid them with my silence.