by Kim Scott
On the edge of the flat, by the trees and vehicles, a bush lean-to had been erected. Artefacts and silk-screened T-shirts were scattered over some blankets spread on the ground.
As the tourists grazed across the blankets and artefacts, Gerrard was carefully arguing with Fatima and Sebastian. Despite Gerrard’s care, bits of their shattered argument ricocheted through the other voices around them. Gerrard repeated his plan to take the tourists into the community for the dance, not to have it out at the beach. The council, he said, had already agreed to hire the bus! The dancing site, on the mission lawns, would be ready when they got there.
It was a short argument. Gerrard turned away; a frown went, a smile came. The blankets were sulkily rolled up.
The ship’s captain turned. His sunglasses framed the refection of tiny black bodies collecting oysters among the mangroves. The sun glinted on the little pools left in the contours of the sand.
The pale hands of the tourists, like lilies waving the flies from their faces.
The bus wouldn’t start. The starter motor clicked ineffectively. Gerrard sat in the driver’s seat, hand on the key, staring nowhere, a silent sculpted anger. No one had a towrope, of course. No jumper leads, no offer of help.
He was a stubborn man, and it was decided, once again, to take the tourists in with the other vehicles. Billy made two trips, reluctantly volunteering out of some sense of obligation. Gerrard said they needed to stand together at such times. Billy did not argue with the phrasing of that, but...
Many of the people from the community decided to stay out at the beach. They could camp overnight and return with the bus after Murray had been out and fixed it. Gerrard insisted that no one else try to do so.
The tourist ‘corroboree’ was a messy affair, and embarrassing for most. Several of the dancers had stayed at the beach with their families, and others just did not come. So, many of the dancers were not there. The tourists complained that the light was getting too dim for their cameras. Gerrard hassled Samson. Samson shouted, laughed, stormed and blustered about half naked, with his body painted, and leaves rustling about his knees. He became a sideshow, he was the show. He growled at the tourists, and posed shaking a spear at their cameras and appreciative laughter.
Many of the smallest boys were recruited for the dancing, which began in the rapidly fading light. The boys were sullen, and their painted faces smeared with tears. They watched the few older dancers and copied them, and so the dancers did not move together and it was all wrong. The families of the boys, perched on and draped over the vehicles parked on the edge of the area, whooped and jeered, and the dancers grinned or hung their heads. Some swore loudly and would have liked to fight. Samson yelled explanations to the audience. He alternated between playing the sergeant major and the jester; one moment authoritatively barking orders and cuffing the small boys, the next wheedling for the audience’s sympathy.
Cameras slumped. Occasionally a flash went off, but less and less often. Some of the tourists were shaking their heads in anger and disappointment. Dust hung in the air, and the small smoking fires around the dancing area had sucked the hues from the setting sun. Headlights were turned onto the dancers as spotlights, and added a certain sad drama. It was like kangaroos caught in the shooter’s light and staring, puzzled, at the source of their death. The enthusiastic and affectionate mockery which had come from the darkness behind the headlights dwindled away.
The performance finished early.
The mission offered two of its vehicles, one of which had interior seating for several, to help transport the audience back to the beach. But, even so, some of the tourists had to make the return trip huddled on the open backs of utes. They wrinkled their noses at the blankets offered to them as protection from the cold night air.
They were unhappy and, grumbling and shivering, followed the jumping torchlight across the dark and painful beach. The Zodiacs waited, bobbing on a rising tide. The water, at least, felt warm after the cold trip. The lights of the catamaran twinkled at sea.
Gerrard apologised abjectly to the captain of the catamaran, and as Billy returned to his car he saw him arguing with Moses and some of the others who usually danced but had stayed at the beach. A couple of campfires flickered in the darkness spread round them.
Billy turned on his headlights and there before him were Sebastian, Milton, and, just behind them, shielded from the light, Jasmine. They put their hands to their eyes and moved out of the beam. They’d stayed at the beach and now wanted a lift back to the camp. Sebastian sat in the front, and the other two hunched themselves behind the cab. Milton was shirtless and Billy teased him about getting in the back rather than squeezing in the front with him and Sebastian.
Sebastian said they’d had a few beers that some of the people from the boat had given them. He was silent. He turned around to glance at the two huddled behind as they drove of into the crepuscular tunnel before them. Billy glanced in the rearvision mirror.
There, their teeth bright in the moonlight, they laugh and sing. The leaves and the wind whip and roar right round them, whip and roar round that warm quiet place behind us. This car is sliding on silver sand, under a high black sparkling sky, and those two fall together, just touching. His black skin moves like an ocean in the moonlight, she pale as a spirit. Inside the roaring wind, that girl’s hair is weaving, rippling. Lines, writhing desiring, moving between them. There’s goosebumps in moonlight.
Milton bashed on the cab as soon as they reached camp, and leapt out before the car stopped. Sebastian shrugged at Billy, and got out of the car also. Jasmine declined Billy’s offer to return to his place for drinks. Billy drove off, then back to return the scarf she’d left in the car, and saw her struggling to unlock the door of her caravan. She shouted, and kicked at it in a sudden burst of temper. They opened it together.
It was cramped in the van. Jasmine picked a carton of milk from the counter, and turned away from it holding her nose.
‘Pooh ... oh,’ and she indicated a glass of whisky left exposed, ‘I hid that there when some kids came knocking at the door. I never drink in the morning, but this time I was gunna...’ As Billy left she called out, suddenly, after their goodbyes, ‘Hey, we should have a party, eh, some time? Maybe invite Milton...’
Billy nodded yes, said maybe, drove away to sleep.
Something like Homesickness
Father Paul came to see Billy and Liz. He was leaving very soon, and the mission was letting him go, letting him know he was dispensable, even if only for a little time. But perhaps Father Paul was thinking he might not be able to find this place again. He might not come back. Did he know this already? He was, maybe nowtoolate, speaking to people and reaching out to listen and share. He wanted to speak, like when he was a younger man, about God. He was reluctant to, almost, with Billy. Billy was awkwardly reluctant, almost, to listen.
This Saturday morning they sat under a mango tree in Billy’s front yard: Billy, Liz, Father Paul. They sat in the blue shade. Spots and strips of sunlight lay across the grass, creeping, growing, dying as the sun moved across the sky. They could see the steam rising from their tea, and when they first began to talk the sun sparkled white and hurt their eyes.
The teacups became dry, stained, lay in the grass like bones, and still they talked. The shade beneath that mango tree was narrower, and they sweated and breathed shallowly in the hot air.
Oh, they spoke of many things. Father Paul and Liz remembered when Liz had first gone to mass there. ‘I wondered when you were going to turn up,’ he said.
‘How did you know?’ she asked.
‘You can always tell a Catholic,’ he laughed, and turned to Billy.
‘I’m nominally a Catholic. In name only. My father went to New Norcia actually,’ said Billy.
‘Oh,’ Father Paul looked long at Billy. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that. I wondered ... You know that we are, or were, of the same Order as New Norcia? Many part-Aboriginal children were sent there...’
‘I know. He hated it.’
Lapsed Catholic Liz and Father Paul spoke of contraception, liberation theology, needless suffering, and Billy was mostly silent.
Father Paul said he was glad to be going on sabbatical. He was tired. He was tired of his role here. He was just running a business. He had expressed such doubts to the archbishop who had said that was where his talents lay; he served God in this way. Father said he wanted to be more of a priest, to be more personal, to do more counselling. But in a community like this, especially considering the history of the church and Aboriginal people, especially here ... It was difficult. We must work to protect our vested interest, to preserve our institution, for our business, to preserve our God perhaps.
‘I think God is changing. He must to stay alive in these people. Perhaps we need to think of Him as a great spirit, a creator spirit, an artist. A creative force behind the world, living in the world, and giving ceremony and the land. What am I saying?
‘I don’t know. See, even communion. It should be, ideally, more intimate. More even like what we’re doing right now.’
‘And this is such a small community,’ said Billy.
‘Yes...’
‘But is it a community?’
‘Perhaps not,’ said Father Paul, ‘without common beliefs...’
‘You, at the mission, have,’ said Liz. ‘The people here have...’
‘They have no real beliefs left, I think. Superstition perhaps. Still, you could say the same for most people. Maybe they, we, will end up with a new God here, some sort of major spirit from the Dreaming or whatever, who named everything and us—or should I say the Aborigines?—and created this special relationship. People, creation, the land.’
‘Or just nothing. People shrivelling in this inhospitable land, within an inhospitable, wider society.’ Billy had said little, and he mumbled this. Was ignored.
‘And meanwhile, at the mission, we argue about logistics, detail, pragmatics—especially with lay missionaries who come here for a short time.’
‘And this small community, like an island. Are there forces representative of a wider community, you think? Can we talk of it as if it was in a story? Is it a microcosm?’
Father Paul snorted. ‘A microcosm of what? Our society? The whites here work hard. The Aborigines play cards, fight. What else? Incest, child molestation, violence, wife bashing. Alcoholism. Petrol sniffing. The church is dying.’
‘Still, the church does exist here, after a fashion, which may be more than it does elsewhere.’
‘Alex, you, Billy, battling to make your school work, and is your education relevant? The people here, sharp, learning to play government departments against one another; looking for handouts; out for what they can wheedle from the next crew of white do-gooders, government busybodies, investigators...’
‘A microcosm...’
Father Paul sighed, and shook his head. ‘I must be tired. I need this sabbatical. Even the people here like to get out, for a break. It’s a small community all right; intense, in a big land and space.’
‘But the people come back again, they get homesick,’ offered Liz.
‘Is this place real? You wait and see. I’ve been away for a couple of years before. When you’re away you wonder if this place is real.’
Oh, it need not be real. It is not this reality that we are homesick for.
But one time, not long before Father Paul left, he maybe sensed such a thing. Briefly. He and Billy were fishing, in Father Paul’s big boat. They had come across a school of bait fish trapped on the surface and almost inert, perhaps in fear. The men tried dragging lures around the edge of the school, but nothing. In desperation they went right through the centre of the school. The small bait fish were packed solid. They parted before the boat, and reformed, solidly, behind it. They could see the sharks there, fins scything the surface; not in a frenzy, just regularly, back and forth. But still, nothing attacked their lures. There were few birds even. It was so still. It was a mystery to them, seemed somehow dangerous and deadly.
Suddenly one of their lines was hit. The bait fish started leaping. Sharks, speeding. Billy stood at the front of the boat, Father Paul struggled with his line, there were birds squawking diving from the low steel-grey sky, the water boiling and bloody, dark and silver flashes in the depths. God’s grandeur! called Father Paul, God’s grandeur. His rod bowed, reel screaming. The water dark and churning. Things thumped into the boat, leapt from the water. A shark attacked the spinning propeller.
Then it was as suddenly quiet again. The birds wheeling away in a group. The water brown and blood-red, but calm, in a pool around the boat. The birds gathering again in the distance. Father Paul reeled his line in easily now. Just a large silver gaping fish head at its end, the body bitten off.
And about this same time, Gerrard and the builders had some trouble out in their little boats also. They left soon after that. See? We made them.
They were fishing, plenty of them, in their dinghies, and drinking their beer.
Then came the whales, way up here in these warm waters. They were on their little boats and the whales came up beside them, very close.
This was exciting of course. But the whales came too close, like to bump them. Made big splashes. The men shouted, hit them with oars even. Those big whales did bump the boats, they made them rock and the men slipped, fell in their little boats, shouted at one another. Now they knew they were frightened. They thought the whales was going to smash them.
Start the motor, pull pull quickly, and go, get away.
Elsewhere, they laughed about it, and started fishing again. Then again it happened. The whales bumped them, and roared like monsters, pushed their little boats. Moving closer and closer, more and more, big and bigger.
They raced away.
They got back to their camp and talked about it, guffawing, privately wondering. Oh sure, it was an adventure. They filleted all their fish, and when Brother Tom visited they laughed about it with him. They said they were all half pissed, no worries.
They gave him all the fish skeletons to take away for the Sisters to cook up in a stew to feed the old people. Not the good meat, not the boned flesh. Just the skeletons.
But they were frightened all right. And so they, too, were going. And glad of it.
The builders had almost finished for the season, and would have left anyway. But Gerrard, he said he was also leaving this place, as soon as he could. He was meant to be here to help us, his wages come from us, from money the government gives us. But he was no good. He made money from us, and if we borrow some he would not give us our own money until he had been paid back. We pay him back all right.
Gerrard took some good fish to King Alex and his family. He told them about it, half joking, and a good story it was. They listened closely.
So they will go soon too. They too must go from this place because for sure they do not belong.
It is not reality we are homesick for. And not just us Aborigine ones either.
Exchanges
Jasmine borrowed the office utility one Sunday and took some of the women, and their children, with her. She regretted it.
They first hammered on the cab only a couple of kilometres from the community, shouting at her to stop. All of them, except for the children in the cab with her, yelling demanding. The children with her giggled and looked around. Ignoring Jasmine, her passengers wandered into the bush beside the track.
‘Bush apple,’ said the children beside her, and they got out too. They returned, Jasmine drove on, her passengers laughing and munching. One of the children offered a small piece of fruit to Jasmine. No one else did.
This happened several times on their way to the beach. Jasmine was offended. She told Billy and Liz about it afterward.
She thought it was bad mannered. She didn’t know what she had done.
She is young, has no man or children, dresses like she does and all the young men looking at her. They see down her dress. Like Father Paul says, t
here should only be married people, white people, come in here.
When they got to the beach they yelled at Jasmine, telling her to drive over to the shade of a big tree there. She was nervous about going across the soft sand, because she hadn’t driven four-wheel drives much before, and if she did get it bogged, well then what? Murray had laughed when she expressed such doubt to him as she left, and told her it was all right but still, she was not confident.
Some of the women seemed to expect Jasmine to have spare fishing lines for them. She didn’t even have one for herself. She wasn’t interested in that. She said later that she felt they just used her, as if she was only there just to drive them and be a slave. Bitches. And it was so hot. Jasmine sat by the car in the shade. A couple of the children stayed with her for a few minutes but then they too left, and ran to join the others dispersing around the beach, the mangroves, the rocks.
Jasmine wanted to go.
A car approached. She didn’t move. It stopped, noisy rattling by her tree.
‘Hey, lazy girl, why you not fishin’?’
Moses. Jasmine shook her head. ‘I wish I’d never come.’
So, to her great relief, she drove off with Moses, Alphonse, and Milton in the old short-wheel-base Toyota. Kevin stayed behind with the office car to drive the women and kids back later. Moses had some beer in the car. Kevin didn’t drink, and had merely come along for the ride when the others had left to find somewhere cool and private to drink their beer.
They drove back toward the community, because it seemed there were people at all the beaches today, and, quite close to the camp, turned off toward the river. They drove across a rocky part of the riverbed where the water, at this late time of the dry season, only trickled. The track became indistinct, appearing just before the wheels and disappearing behind them as the dry grass, surprisingly, sprang up again. They weaved around rocks and trees until they came to a distinct clearing surrounded by large rocks. Moses dragged a carton of beer out from under one of the seats where it had been covered by a couple of damp hessian bags.