Taboo

by Kim Scott

  She administered to her telephone.

  Her reflection there, too.

  Outside the bus, unnoticed by Tilly, was clear evidence they’d left the city. White lines stuttered along the bitumen and Christmas trees trumpeted orange blossoms from fence corners and road edges. The many masts of a forest of some other tree, tall and straight, sailed by. For a time, the bus sliced through undulating, bright yellow rectangles that were irregularly hemmed by fences, only otherwise interrupted by a thin line or threatened stand of shabby trees crowning a slope. Vast expanses of bright yellow flowers rippled when the wind rolled across them.

  Tilly was so attentive to her screen you would not think she realised two old women were talking about her. Each turned their head to look, turned away again. Their skulls leaned to one another. Tilly pulled her wrists deep into her shirtsleeves. Sipped at a water bottle.

  ‘Pulling over for a toilet break.’ The driver’s amplified voice startled her. ‘Back on the bus in fifteen.’ He made a performance of looking at his watch and named a time. ‘Grab a snack if need be. We’ll pull up again around lunchtime.’ He rose to his feet, singing, and the passengers, save those few laughing and singing with him, went among the billboards and bowsers, headed for bright shelves and cellophane.

  It wasn’t one of those new roadhouses, in which everything is integrated. Vehicles, except those refuelling, parked haphazardly at a distance from the bowsers. There was a little copse of peppermint trees; green, mowed grass; and a path to the toilet block. From behind a tall fence, two llamas stared at Tilly with impertinent expressions. A sign:

  You can feed the llamas!!

  Feed $1 per bag in shop.

  Another on the toilet wall:

  These ARE NOT public toilets.

  They are privately run.

  Please do the Right Thing!

  If you need to use our toilets please use the shop also.

  Thank you.

  Inside the door, large above the basin, in strong red letters:

  NOT DRINKING WATER.

  Tilly went into the shop. With a twinge of anxiety, she passed her fellow passengers going the other way, back to the bus. She grabbed a bottle, handed the man some money. Checking the change as she left and realising she’d been short-changed, Tilly turned around within the doorway. The shopkeeper was smirking; it seemed the skin of his face might split. He teetered toward her with a curling index finger.

  Tilly turned her back on him.

  Back on the bus, Tilly pulled a bright plastic lunchbox from her backpack. Gave it prime place among her luggage.

  Trees closed in on each side of the road, then were flung back again and reduced to scattered clumps, or a thin fringe running beside road or fence and the expanses of bright yellow. ‘Canola,’ she heard someone say, though not addressing her; people looked away at her glance. The undulating yellow was a backdrop, a blanket, something you might fall back upon. Be helpless and pinned down, held there and hurt by some greedy twisted fucker.

  Smothered under this sky.

  Tilly pressed her knees tightly together, folded her arms very tight.

  One of the women across from her held out a plastic container of sandwiches. ‘We’ve made ourselves too much, love. Help yourself.’

  ‘Oh no. Thank you very much, but I’m full, really.’

  The old woman smiled, but seemed disappointed. Before she could withdraw Tilly seized and displayed her own open lunchbox. ‘Something sweet to finish off?’ The plastic box was brimming with brightly iced cupcakes. ‘I baked them for the trip.’

  The women’s faces creased and folded, crumpled with pleasure. They struggled to rise from their seats. Two pair of little old hands reached toward Tilly, fingers trembling.

  ‘Baked them yourself you say?’

  ‘Yep, got up early especially. Ate too many already, myself.’ Though in fact, she had eaten one.

  ‘Mmm, taste even better than they look.’

  ‘Aren’t you the clever girl then?’

  Tilly closed the lunchbox when they’d had their fill, and clamped herself back into the music.

  *

  Road signs held up words and made them strange. She realised they were not from any song or film or book she knew: Wagin, Narrogin, Kojonup, Katanning . . . Wangelanginy Creek: a place, it might be said in the old language, where all the voices are together speaking and where, perhaps, beyond the roaring tunnel of glass and metal that held our Tilly, some innocently babbling brook remained, some safe and sheltered course with its own momentum continuing.

  Tilly removed her tie and curled it in the hollow of her upturned hat.

  At the next stop, the driver – stretching and scratching himself as Tilly stepped from the bus – asked, ‘Where you getting off again, love?’

  ‘Lake Grace.’

  ‘Staying there?’

  ‘No. Kepalup, or Hopetown.’

  A passenger glanced quickly at her, then away again. A woman on her way to her car turned her head at the name and two women leaning against a car watched the bus leave.

  Tilly was wrapping herself in her playlist, her photos, all her friends and the world she wanted kept close:

  You lubbly sing

  Watta dog

  Yey party bitches

  Thas rite niggas u 2 blue.

  Tilly took the lunchbox from her bag, looked at the cakes for a while. She snapped the lid shut, put the box properly away. Sipped water.

  Attending to her homework, Tilly made her way into some old novel: Dracula.

  On the long scar of bitumen ahead, a minor murder of crows prepared to have their feathers ruffled. A couple took reluctantly to their wings, a few hopped away from the furred carcass as the bus buffeted them. Further ahead, a bloated kangaroo thrust its limbs skyward.

  Tilly, bent to the old English words on her small screen, may not have noted the shadows lengthening, or the vegetation changing. Outside, mallee bristled at the bus’s approach, then writhed and thrashed and shivering leaves applauded the blustering vehicle’s departure.

  Despite the fine soil lifting in the wind, shadows remained etched in earth: trees and fence posts, clods of ploughed soil, even a bull ant defiantly gripping the road’s bitumen edge.

  A thin stand of towering trees closed above the speeding bus, and in that brief tunnel of filtered light the trunks and limbs referenced the barely sun-kissed flesh of most of those in the bus; might have reminded them of their own sheltered, intimate parts; Tilly’s secret skin too.

  Deep red gum oozed from old wounds on the scarred trees; dark fluids seeped and coagulated.

  The bus shot between two paired trees as if through a gate.

  Sinking into some old story, Tilly was slipping away from her new friends, their fashion and idols, their boyfriends and bands, their films and photos and gathering energy. Even so, she did not see the clefts and limbs, the gateway of trees, the eagle hovering far above. She heard no rattling leaves, no shivering applause.

  One side of the road was forest reserve, mostly what’s called jam tree. Small, erect trees standing shoulder to shoulder like a sullen crowd, dull with dust. The other side of the road was bare earth, a haze of soil hanging just above the surface and sand heaped at the base of fence posts. Clouds moved across the bare sky, slowly shape-shifting.

  Tilly raised her head. Saw the glass screen beside her. A dead snake on the bitumen. More crows. A shallow pool by the road held a patch of blue sky that rippled. The bus swerved a little.

  ‘Lake Grace coming up. One passenger getting off here, cup of tea and toilet in another hour if everyone can hold until then please.’ It wasn’t a question.

  Tilly read the speed signs. Saw a jeep, recently polished and ostentatiously parked across the entrance of a driveway. Three metal cut-outs of a poppy flower leaned in its open cab. The town labelled wit
h a metal sign. The same colourful metal poppies again, each the height of a person, standing around the fence of the preschool.

  Lest we forget.

  The Great War.

  Farm equipment: For Sale. A pub. Supermarket. Curly Wigs Hair Salon. Eatitup Café. Guns Safes Steel.

  The bus pulled over at a roadhouse the other edge of town.

  ‘Got someone to meet you, love?’

  ‘Yes thanks.’

  But there was no car waiting at the roadhouse.

  Faces in the windows of the bus turned to her, for a moment like a school of fish. All eyes on Tilly, on her backpack and the Aboriginal flag imprinted upon it.

  ‘Tell you what, love, have a word with the roadhouse. You got money? You can wait in there, at a table. He won’t mind if you just sit.’

  Not fifty metres away, the proprietor held open the door. He was a big man; Tilly would need to press against him to get through the door. His shirt tight against his bulging belly; skin like damp beach sand; strands of dark hair pressed against his skull.

  Then there was the sound of another engine, of tyres flicking small stones. The school of faces in the bus windows turned again, lured by glass and sunlight-edged chrome. A dented and dusty four-wheel drive utility pulled up parallel to the bus, facing the other direction. The utility’s tray cover was torn, and a thin cord dangled by a broken taillight. Its motor coughed and grumbled. The girl stood in the space between the two vehicles. The bus driver looked down the tunnel of his open doorway. The faces in the bus floated this way, that, like coy goldfish not wanting to stare.

  The ute’s tinted passenger window opened slowly, teasing the curiosity of the passengers. The onlookers saw two men inside. Twins? Of Aboriginal appearance. Approximately thirty to forty years old. Unshaven. Passenger appeared to be drinking, your grace.

  ‘Tilly?’ said the man in the ute. He gave a small belch.

  ‘Gerry?’ Tilly said, looking from one to the other.

  ‘G’day, Tilly,’ said the driver.

  ‘Gerry,’ she repeated, relieved.

  ‘Hop in.’

  The bus throbbed, waiting.

  That girl in school uniform, no tie or hat; socks down, her skirt surely too short for school rules. She had flounced from the bus, now leapt into the back seat of the dual-cab. Kept her backpack with her, not in the tray.

  ‘Yeah, plen’y room in the cab, Tilly. You don’t want your bag in the back. Blood and all sorts of shit there.’

  They accelerated away before the bus door had closed.

  The roadhouse manager, still with one hand on the open door, raised the other in a wave of departure and the car horn squawked a reply. He looked at the bus, and gave a gap-toothed leer.

  Eyeballs rolled away with the bus. The roadhouse door closed.

  THE KILLERS WE GIVE HER TO

  Tilly sank a little into the seat as the car accelerated noisily. Felt a little thrill. Music on, the volume very low.

  ‘Hi Tilly, long time no see,’ said the driver.

  ‘Hi Gerry,’ she said. ‘Or . . .’ Looking from one to the other.

  The passenger said, ‘He never tell you ’bout his twin? We’re both Gerry. I’m Gerrard, he’s Gerald.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Tilly, laughing in what seemed relief. ‘Must’ve seemed a good idea at the time.’

  ‘Mum and Dad drunks, true. They couldn’t tell us apart most of the time either.’

  It was disconcerting for Tilly, seeing the twins. Like a mirror, almost; a split-screen. One wore a collared shirt.

  ‘Jerries!’ said the passenger. ‘Schnell, schnell! Achtung, English dog. You ever read war comics, Tilly? Ever watch Hogan’s Heroes? Not the WWF, not that Hogan. Hulk Hogan? Nah, you too young to know that stuff.’

  The passenger – Gerrard? – transferred his beer bottle from one hand to the other hand and held up his arm. A number one was tattooed there. ‘Gerry One, me. That’s number two there.’ The driver, Gerald, tilted his head in acknowledgement. His long sleeves hid any tattoos he might have.

  Tilly nodded. She offered them the remainder of her cakes. The driver took one, and she waved them before the passenger.

  ‘Don’t like sweet things, those sweet things. Beer man, me,’ he said, and held up his near-empty beer bottle. ‘Finish these off before the camp. Dry camp. No grog or gear of any kind.’ There were several full bottles at his feet. ‘Gerry’ll drive all the way. Skipper.’

  He held up the bottle in a salute to the driver, then tilted it to his mouth.

  Tilly settled the container of cakes on the console between the twins.

  ‘Your dad, Jim, he’s first cousin to us, Tilly. You call us uncle, know that? Our way.’

  ‘Yeah, I know that.’ She looked to Gerry, the driver.

  ‘Jim’s girl, Tilly. It’s too good you’re with us, Tilly.’ He said a word she did not know. ‘That means very good,’ he explained. Tilly’s lips moved, trying the new word.

  ‘Alright then.’ The passenger scoffed a cake. Had a second.

  ‘Too deadly. You ever been down this way, Tilly? Ancestral country, our country.’

  ‘Dad said I was fostered here, but I don’t remember.’

  ‘That’s right. Only for a bit. Your mum took you back.’

  ‘Dad,’ she hesitated for a moment, then rushed on. ‘Mum never said I was fostered, not who or where or maybe I don’t remember.’

  The driver spoke. ‘You was fostered with Hortons, who got Kokanarup. You know about Kokanarup?’

  ‘I don’t remember much. Nothing really.’

  ‘Know about the massacre?’

  ‘Yeah, Dad told me a bit about it.’

  ‘This farm is where the old wadjela was killed ’cause he was messing with our women, wrong way.’

  ‘Assassination,’ said Gerald. ‘Not an uprising.’

  ‘He broke the law. He could’ve been with another woman. Law. Then his brother and the police got a permit and they killed every blackfella they could find, chased them away, poisoned the waterholes . . . Winchester rifle invented about then, see.’

  ‘Well, some stayed, bro.’

  ‘Our old granny and her sister.’

  ‘Great-great-granny.’

  ‘How come they survived? Stayed?’ Tilly could not help herself asking.

  ‘With white men, I guess. Twins.’ The two men glanced at one another. ‘Married and all.’

  ‘They needed the women, but a proud black man is no use to them.’

  ‘Maybe they were in love,’ said Tilly.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Your dad did all the research, even though he was inside. He reckons can’t blame ’em for what their old people did. He reckons they’re alright. Told us to get in touch. The old girl, Mrs Horton, even went to see him. Last thing your dad said to me: “When you get out, take my Tilly down there.”’

  ‘Yes, I know. Lovely. Take her to massacre country. Back to the white people, the killers’ family we gave her to when she was little.’

  ‘Not like that, Tilly.’

  Sand pelted the windscreen. Twisted cords and eddies of brown and red in the air.

  ‘Sandstorm again. They ripped all the trees out, didn’t they? All the soil just blowing away, years and years now.’

  The few trees fringing the road tossed their noisy leaves as the car shot by.

  ‘Thunderstorm coming maybe.’

  The passenger Gerry regained hold of the conversation. ‘You know most blackfellas never even stop near Kepalup ’cause of what happened. That murderer. ’Cept the grannies. And you.’

  Tilly saw the bird as they hit it. The bright flurry of feathers.

  ‘Fuck.’ The car slowed.

  ‘Need a piss-break anyway, brother. S’cuse me, Tilly. There’s a park just up here.’

  The bir
d was caught in the bumper. Surprisingly intact, it was nevertheless dead. Feathers moved, but it was only the wind. Still warm, and light too; not much more than the weight of its feathers. Tilly wondered if angels were like this: hollow-boned, needing to preen themselves. Its eyes like glass, its claws folded, its feathers bright green and red and so very, very soft.

  Tilly heard the stream of urine hitting the ground, and was again on the enclosed back veranda. Snotty-nosed, weeping, dishevelled and sore. Having given in. Knowing the chain, the smell of dogs. Light in the dimpled glass louvres. The smell of a freshly lit cigarette. A streetlight, pale stars.

  She got back into the car. Closed the door.

  The driver joined her.

  ‘He’s a drunk, but harmless if you can put up with his prattle. Couple of hours to go, which with his already-old-man’s bladder will probably mean a few more stops.’

  They sat in silence for a moment. He yawned. ‘Dunno what he’s up to. See if I can hurry him up.’

  Tilly waited in the car with the window down to feel the wind on her cheeks. The bush rattled in the wind like small bones; an irregular, building rhythm. A flower like a paw waved from beside a rusty and tilted yellow bin; hands clutched, arms swung and reached.

  A kookaburra laughed like a maniac.

  Something howled.

  Tilly felt someone beside her; looked, but there was no one.

  She tried to fall into her phone. No reception.

  When they resumed it seemed the driver’s turn to do all the talking, to tell her the story of their life and their own family’s connection to the area, despite the massacre, and in contrast to other Noongars who were all shitty-arses and too scared to even visit. It began to rain, a fine, misty drizzle.

  The wind had dropped.

  The windscreen wipers squealed softly on each return stroke, as if pleading.

  ‘Piss-stop, bro?’ said the driver.

  Tilly realised she had been asleep.

  They pulled onto an arc of gravel beside the road, up close to another yellow bin into which the passenger tossed the empty bottles that had been rolling around on the car’s floor.