True Country

by Kim Scott

  True. Silly buggers we be. We need a say.

  Desire

  Of course all the people were shocked at Franny’s death. Word first came with the return of Raphael and the others. Billy saw their vehicle return: Raphael had acquired a new one, an old station wagon which looked like it had little time left to it after being bullied along the track all the way from Derby. Billy was standing out under the mango trees in front of his house which faced onto the main track to Derby. He saw them return. He waved, but they ignored him.

  Moses stayed in Broome and Derby for a time with some of his family, for the trial.

  Alex returned having heard nothing of the murder, and complaining only of his own problems with ‘Stella’s crew’. So the news made him quiet, anyway.

  But the real shock was the verdict of the jury. Those that went to the court case returned in dribs and drabs. They were sullen and hurt. Moses tried to say how it was for him, and he spoke with the others, quietly. It was a disjointed thing, and hard to understand without anger and weakness and loss.

  He had been in that court the whole time. Other people did march, protest. He been like a shadow in that court.

  Yeah. It was in the news. On the television. Everything. And they let them killers go free. That shocked the whole Aboriginal people, the whole community, you know. Why, we, nowadays we follow the white law, you know.

  They wanted us to follow the white law and we did that.

  There was the rotting smell of unhappiness, defeat, and festering, helpless anger in the hot winds that slipped around the community and left the red dust in eyes ears between teeth.

  It was not good. People carried bitterness, mistrust, defeat with them. In their pockets, purses, shoes; in their bowels and heads. It was always there, and now it was growing.

  The students came to school late. Billy visited houses in the early morning. Everyone weary.

  Billy walked to school early in the balmy mornings, and then home again in the bone-wilting heat. Liz and he, they slumped in the kitchen chairs and ate burnt mission-baked bread. They returned to school to do preparation until a couple of hours before sunset when Billy would go to the gorge and fish. The red rocks radiating heat, the sky bleeding, the river rushing with the tide. The sound of the water, all the time muttering, speaking, singing.

  Moses, you know, he sat in that court, and sometimes Fatima was with him, and sometimes Sebastian. They sat there listening like big fools. Nobody telling them anything. Sitting. Looking at them talking twisting showing themselves off like big rich boss men. The boy dead.

  After what happened you expect someone, the crown or someone, to do something. If we gotta follow the white law then we expect them to do the right thing by all Australians, by everybody.

  We Aboriginal people. Look at us. We’re low down, we down there in the dark, and nobody. One time it was different, for us and this land. We had ones that could fix things, and could fly, disappear, punish.

  We feel we must find our traditional homeland, go home, go back and try to forget. Or no? Maybe we should try to find answers to these problems. We are trying so hard for the past and our hopes to return. Maybe some of that past and our power.

  Alphonse returned from prison. He was glad to be home, but he had like an adventure and holiday staying in prison for a short time.

  Franny’s murderers. What was their time in prison like? They looked unhappy at the trial. But not when it finished. They looked relieved and happy enough then as they skipped down the steps, into the embraces of their families. It was on the TV.

  Yes, those murderers of Franny been clear off proper quick all right. They been run out of that court, into their cars, gone! Gone like a bullet. They frightened, see. Want to get back to Perth, Melbourne, and away. Away from us mob.

  Oh, it be a long drive but. You drive all day all night day night day night, like that if you want to get there. No sleep, or only little bit. They not drive together. Not friends no more, you know.

  One of them with his girlfriend. He make some stops on the way down, took it slowly slow.

  Other one, him drive drive driving. One bit of road out there, long skinny lonely straight road out there in the dark time, something happened. Maybe he get out to check if he moving or not, because that road so long straight dark through the desert. Maybe a sharp shell from the ocean far away long ago come out of the ground and stab his tyre. Might be a kangaroo appear disappear in front of him and make him swerve, you know. And it could be that he see a fat belly black man flyin’, swoop into the tunnel his headlights make.

  Crash! He crash that car. Rolling and rolling over and over in his car, he so frightened even before that car start going arse over tit again and again and again.

  He screaming out there in the cold cold dark time, no one to hear him, them black things in the sky between the sparkling stars looking down on him not caring. Him screaming, car upside down, wheels spinning motor hissing steaming. Blood all over him, arms and legs bent all wrong anykind, chest smashed, and heart still parked but going fast fast faster. Then stop. There. Dead dead proper dead bastard. Got him.

  Other one? His mate? Death in our custody, eh? Can’t make love, you know, can’t make love with his girl no more. His dick shrivel up like a baby’s, soft like a string. You put a special poison in his blood, make him go that way. Proper worried then. He have poison in his blood, have nightmares about us old people watching him. He see our eyes in dogs, in the kangaroos his car hits and hits. He see us watching him from the eagles high in the sky, from crows sitting on carcasses he passes. Even the seagulls back nearing Perth, they watch him with their all the time open eyes.

  His girl goes. In his little place in Perth there he is like in a box. He start thinking about him being in a box, you know. Another box, small small one that fit him tight.

  So we got him too. He makes a tube—he make it like a snake—that go from his exhaust pipe to the window of his car. He just sit in car then, start the motor, listen to radio.

  Him dead. We got him. Just like old times. Still got power, see?

  True. True story. Listen! We could do that. Could could could.

  Dangers

  Billy was buying beer from the mission. He would walk over there early in the evenings carrying an empty bag—an old superphosphate bag, or a large bin liner, anything like that—rolled up under his arm. A little time later you see him walking back with a carton of beer wrapped in that bag, and trying to make like he was just carrying something light and ordinary. But he tried not to stop or meet anyone. Father Paul had ample supplies, and sold it cheaply, but not to Aborigines.

  Billy drank every evening, alone. Except sometimes, when the band was practising he’d take his own guitar with him and join in. He play pretty good, too. Then, at school he’d teach them kids some of the songs the band did.

  But he was keeping away from people, and he was drinking too much, like some of our own younger ones did when they could.

  He went fishing on his own on the weekends, very early. Liz stayed sleeping. He come home, and then start quiet drinking on his own. Why?

  Maybe he was tired. Franny’s death. Thinking about Beatrice. Walanguh in his dreams. Tired from the strain of teaching, and not being able to escape from the school and those other teachers. He was finding this place like an island, and in this community he was here as teacher, government teacher. Not happy being duty institution bound all round.

  What he want? What about those stories? He should look there.

  He returned each weekend, again and again, to those ocean places Milton and Sebastian had shown him. Some people would hear him, fewer see him, leaving just before sunrise. Often he’d be returning from the beach as others were driving out to it. Rattling and bashing across rocks and slewing through sand, the two vehicles approaching one another would have to slow and edge into the bush either side of the track. Billy, usually alone, but sometimes with Sebastian, in his Toyota ute with outboard motor, rods and tackle in the back
and the dinghy loaded on top; the people in the other vehicle, also tipping on the other slope, with bodies and handlines and nets spilling out of the tray and laughing whooping waving at him. He should have been with them, they with him.

  It was late in the dry season. Every day there were columns of smoke on the horizon. Father Paul told Billy they showed you where the people had been. A tradition of burning off the land combined with the mobility given by Toyotas resulted in numerous bush fires. The plains around our settlement were burnt and black.

  For similar reasons he said, wildlife no longer existed close to the camp. After Father Pujol had been banished, there was no one to stop the people having and using guns. No reason except poverty. Only a few guns had been needed to slaughter anything within range of the huts and houses. This had occurred within ten years. No longer did ’roos and bush turkeys dot the plains. There were plenty of bullocks though. Half-wild cattle, bred from those not mustered by stations.

  Oh, it was dry, and hot. The school and mission grounds defiantly blazed green amid the black earth which surrounded them. The cattle moved closer to graze, even in daylight, and were occasionally chased by packs of dogs and children waving sticks.

  Vehicles came, and went, often with dark bodies packed into the trays of the utilities. The red dust snaked behind the vehicles, and was spread by the wind. It was between Billy’s teeth as he ground them in his sleep. The air grew dark with smoke and sulking clouds. Flies stuck in the corners of eyes and sucked at nostrils and lips. Burnt earth and stubble crunched under boots, and footprints were clear in the dust.

  Billy still went to the river each afternoon. He fished, but rarely caught anything at that time. It was just quiet. The red rocks glowing in the shade, the river, glistening and dark, reflecting the afternoon clouds, and always moving one way or another with the powerful tides.

  One afternoon Billy approached it from close to the camp, and walked downstream to locate the upper tidal limit. He found a large pool and settled down. He stood close to the water and at the base of a steep, rocky slope. Directly across the river from where he stood a small cliff face dropped sheer into the water. On this day the sky, and therefore the water, was blue. And, partly because of the size of the pool, and partly because it was between tides, the water was still.

  Billy used a short rod and lures. A cast; a slow, jerky, retrieval. Cast, retrieval. Again and again.

  Suddenly there was a strange noise. A loud scraping, dragging sound. Upriver, and diagonally across the pool, near where it narrowed, there was a ledge cut into the rock face. The sound Billy heard, magnified in the rock-surrounded stillness, was that of a large crocodile dragging itself on that ledge. He heard dragon scales scraping, and echoing down the gorge. The heavy reptile pushed, fell into the water with a great splash, and disappeared.

  Billy was shaken, but it appeared to have been heading upriver, into the channel there. He decided there was no good reason to move or be frightened. He moved up the slope a few steps.

  Cast, and retrieve. Cast. Retrieve. He kept one eye out for that crocodile. The water was so clear that he expected to see it swimming dimensions below, watching him.

  People had warned him about fishing at the gorge. Take care we said. But he was wise not to fish with bait. A crocodile might wait below you, in the deep deep river, then swim up close and knock you with its swinging tail. You fall into the water, you crocodile meat.

  He moved another couple of steps up the rocky slope, out of range of a lashing tail.

  Suddenly, the crocodile returned. It came from upstream, moving into the pool at speed and pushing the water before it like a powerboat. Its head and back were proper clear of the water. The crocodile followed the other side of our pool, slowed, and stopped some forty metres across from him. It rested parallel, and close, to the bank where the cliff face changed to a slope of boulders. It submerged so that only its nostrils and eyes remained above the surface, but Billy could see the rest of its form in the clear water. Its short legs were relaxed and curled up slightly, and its tail rested on a rock just under the water.

  It seemed to have barnacles growing on it, and was certainly very large. Billy knew it was the old one he’d heard of that had survived the times when its kind was trapped and shot for profit. A wise old crocodile.

  It was surely watching him from the corner of its eye, although it faced downstream still, feigning indifference. Lazy, yet watchful, cunning with its dragon years.

  Billy had stopped fishing and stood, also motionless. He studied the reptile as if enchanted. Awesome. After a time it turned, slow and silent, and with only its nostrils and eyes above the surface moved straight for him. It came slowly, millimetres per second. Slowly, making no sound, no ripples in the still water.

  Billy stayed as he was, but thinking thinking I have misjudged the distance this thing is huge its eyes those lumps are the size of people’s heads on the water it is so big and silent it is holding my gaze and why is it coming at me and when will it decide close enough a tail length or leap?

  He broke, moved a few steps back and up, and the thing was gone. No ripple, no sound. The water just closed over it. The water, although clear, was dark in its depth and Billy saw nothing.

  He left. Billy walked back along the river. It became a high cliff-sided gorge. In a place another few hundred metres up, where you could get to the water again, there was a gill net slung right across a narrow part of the river at the upper limit of a deep tidal pool. There were several small barramundi in it. It was sure death to whatever swam in that water. Billy thought about slicing the net. But didn’t.

  He walked back up the steep slope beside the river to return across ground to the community. At the top he looked back along the river into the setting sun and saw what appeared to be two birds swimming upriver together, each at the apex of a faint triangle behind it. But they remained perfectly equidistant from one another. They moved into a turn in the river, and in the shade there Billy saw that it was the crocodile. The birds were its lumpy eyes above the water. Its tail snaked slowly as it moved upstream, swimming like a big lazy goanna.

  He fled. He felt silly, but that’s what he did, thinking: no barramundi maybe, but I caught myself something. I know that crocodile now. He was excited and happy.

  Kinds of Desire

  It was to be the last tourist dance for the year. The weather was getting too unpleasant, the rains too close, for tourists to continue visiting.

  All right. Friday afternoon. Jasmine and her bouncing pup visited Billy and Liz as they lunched. She told them the tourists were coming ashore and that the corroboree for them would take place at the camp.

  ‘Gerrard’s bus again?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The three of them crammed into the front of the Toyota.

  Jasmine kept twisting around and leaning out the window to speak to her pup, which leapt around on the tray like a mad thing. She worried it would fall out.

  A group of small children stood up from their game and waved at them as they drove through the village. Suddenly, three dogs raced out barking ferociously, knocking aside the children as they did so. One of the children, sprawled on the ground, started bawling. Billy stopped the car, but he wasn’t about to get out while those dogs leapt and snapped at Jasmine’s pup in the back.

  Milton hurried across and shouted at the dogs. They slunk away. Liz said, ‘Come with us,’ and he leapt into the back, and Jasmine joined him there, relieved to be able to restrain her young dog.

  They slid through soft sand, crept across dry creek beds, and rattled and bounced so noisily over corrugations that the cassette player, cranked up almost to full volume, spewed out distorted music. Billy looked in the rear-vision mirror and saw Jasmine and Milton bouncing around the tray like children, laughing, showing their teeth to the sky.

  They first saw the catamaran from between the trees as they approached the dried marsh flats. It gleamed in the late sun, dreadfully white on the blue sea, and as incongruous
as a spaceship as it turned very slowly around its anchor. Two yellow Zodiacs sped between it and the beach, ferrying the tourists in.

  A number of men from the community sat in the grasses just above the rows of grey driftwood at the edge of the beach and watched the tourists disembark from the Zodiacs. Most of the tourists were aged and frail and, unwisely, had chosen to walk barefoot across the beach. They picked their way painfully over the shells which were exposed by the low tide. It was a long walk.

  ‘M’walkin’ like bird...’

  ‘Lookin’ for food.’

  ‘Moses! Go carry ’em. You chairman or what?’

  ‘They old eh?’

  The men were silent as the first of the tourists arrived escorted by Gerrard, who held his hand under the elbow of one old lady. He chatted pattered charmingly and steadied her as she reached the soft grassy sand.

  Samson got to his feet, wiping his hands over the baggy bum of his khaki trousers, to greet them. For a moment it seemed Gerrard was going to lead the tourists right past him. The men were silent. Gerrard chatted on.

  Samson swept off his old slouch hat and, clutching it in his left hand, he stepped at the party of tourists with his other hand stretched out before him.

  ‘Welcome to our country ladies and gentlemen. Welcome. My name is Samson, like the strong fella. You see me dancing soon. This here some of the dancers and my boys.’ Somehow Samson managed to show a sincere smiling face, yet also give his own mob a wink.

  ‘How ya doing Samson?’ An outstretched hand detached itself from the group. It was attached to just one large, soft, brightly garbed man. It clasped Samson’s hand, and the two hands jerked stiffly up and down.

  ‘This sure is a beautiful place you have here.’ The American accent, so familiar from countless videos, resonated thinly for an instant before the bush drank it up.

  Samson introduced Jasmine, Liz and Billy (‘These are teachers of our children’), and a wall of clean linen and sweet perfumes moved upon them, firing questions. Liz accepted a role. Samson continued walking with the group, all heading for the shade. He winked and grinned at the others who drifted away as the camera filters came off.