That Deadman Dance

by Scott, Kim

  Wunyeran was rowing, his mime made that clear. Then a pause. He mimed … It was hard to be sure, the distance and all, but it seemed he was miming someone writing. There was the sharpening of the quill, the dipping in ink, the turning of a heavy page. He mimed what seemed to be a hunt. It was not a silent mime—clearly he was enacting what he spoke—but Cross could not hear the words and if he had he would still not have understood them.

  Wunyeran put a hand to his chin, stared into space, again acted out a pen crossing a page. Now he was someone walking, and tired. Someone unsteady on his feet. Oh, it was a most uncanny skill he had. Now he was setting fire to something, to things at head height all around him. His hands showed the explosion of flames. He was writing again. He was shooting a gun, undressing and wading into water …

  Cross got to his feet and blundered away into the bushes, making a wide detour around the group.

  Wunyeran’s performance of the journey was structured in the way of an expedition journal. Or was Cross imagining things? He knew himself well enough, knew that sometimes his perception of the world became very unstable.

  *

  Cross awoke under canvas, his tent billowing, snapping and straining at its guy-ropes. It was a very small tent, and only when Cross crawled from it did he realise he was on a vast mallee plain. He was still on his knees, forced by the wind to clutch at one of the tent pegs, and the tent was the tallest thing he could see and then it was as if the wind had him, was sucking him up into the cloud-torn sky and his little tent, shivering with the wind, was lit from within. He felt his own round face glowing like the moon, and shredded clouds cobwebbed his vision even as he drifted below them, drawn to the glowing tent. The wind had dropped.

  Below him a banksia cone glowed like a piece of coal, the smell of strawberry jam oozed from the pile of kindling; these hints of home. But the Far East scent of sandalwood was in the smoke, and who might be in the shadows around the fire …

  He saw himself hovering at the tent’s entrance, like an insect silhouetted against a lamp. A body in his place, beneath his blanket, was breathing deeply; calm, asleep. The soft light showed Wunyeran’s black face and thickly greased hair upon Cross’s pillow.

  Cross awoke in the grainy light of morning safe in his little hut. The white clay covering the thin walls of acacia branches and twigs glowed, he could smell the clay and the paperbark and rushes of the roof and just then the flimsy door opened, and he saw Wunyeran silhouetted against the early morning sky.

  Come in, he said, and sat up in his rough bed. He was so very pleased to see a native, he realised. A Noongar. He wondered where he was. Who?

  Men at sea

  Accepting responsibility for the settlement’s health, Dr Cross insisted a vegetable garden be established as soon as possible. The agricultural possibilities interested him, even though the current population preferred a diet of salt meat with no fruit or vegetables.

  He visited The Farm at least twice a week. Strode straight up the hill from the sea in the early morning, pausing at the top to gather his breath and take in the view. Whitewashed buildings, the saucer-shaped harbour, the narrow isthmus dividing it from the sound to the east, and then two islands hovering by the horizon, white foam pulsing at the edge of the one on the right. He went across a granite scalp, and then wound his way down between boulders and wildflowers.

  The men had broken up more ground, but the only one there now was the supervisor, Sergeant Killam, who Cross thought a decent but prissy fellow. The man had a passion for gardening, and had been relieved from other duties in the hope he might help provide fresh vegetables.

  We got the bull, Killam said.

  Some nights ago, woken from sleep by a Minotaur’s bellowing, Cross had rushed to the door of his flimsy hut as a solid shadow sped past in the darkness. He remembered the beast’s warm breath and the ground shaking beneath his feet. He remembered its great bulk. The few soldiers pursuing it passed by like ghosts: pale, insubstantial, their footsteps barely detectable.

  Killam showed him the enclosure built to hold the animal and Cross was surprised at how quickly it had been completed, and how sturdy it seemed. The work of Skelly, he was told, and Cross once again thanked whatever fate had decreed a craftsman be among the prisoners; he doubted it was the good planning and foresight of their superiors. And he thanked God that Skelly had survived the spear he’d received by way of welcome. The man was a good worker, and tractable. Cross wondered how much of his sentence remained.

  And sir, they been into the potatoes again. Killam pointed out the footprints.

  But our own people are among these, Cross declared, pleased with himself, despite the evidence of theft. He showed Killam how the large toe of someone accustomed to wearing boots turns inward, and how different this was to a native’s imprint, something Wunyeran had explained to him.

  Perhaps we should make a plaster cast, he said, and test it against each man’s foot. Killam’s expression flickered, and Cross glanced down at the man’s boots. They were distracted by a high-pitched and excited barking, as Killam’s terrier, stiff-legged and sniffing, circled the woodheap.

  She’s a good ratter, sir. One of the ships’ dogs got to her in season. I could give you one of her pups, sir. If you’ve a mind.

  A few weeks later Cross surveyed the evidence of yet another raid on the vegetable garden: just the one small area of digging, and what seemed two sets of footprints.

  Wooral, said Wunyeran, with a snort of amusement. Wooral had been in the settlement just yesterday, he explained, was visiting from his country a little further to the east.

  Nearby, Sergeant Killam pushed at the spilled soil with the toe of a well-worn boot. He’d like—no, needed—new boots, but who knew when the next supply boat was due? It was as if their settlement had been forgotten, and now even the natives were not taking them seriously, stealing a small number of potatoes each time, just enough to challenge and annoy. Every little thing added to his irritation, his frustration. Killam was a soldier and expected Cross to take command and put a stop to these games. Or order him to do something.

  He was all the more irritated because he was putting aside a small amount of vegetables from each crop and trading with ships—whalers generally—anchored at one of the sheltered coves nearby. Ships moored there rather than Princess Harbour so as to avoid pilot fees, and to prevent crew members deserting. Killam was simply demonstrating the very initiative Cross himself kept telling people was necessary for the growth and sustainability of a tiny, isolated settlement like this. An American had wanted to make a bet with him about how many whalers there’d be in a few years. Killam would be happy to lose the bet; some hundred or more American whalers sailing along the south coast would be very good for business indeed. He sold rum to his fellow soldiers cheaper than they’d get it elsewhere in the settlement. Grog, a good garden and a regular supply of fresh meat (kangaroo was popular with the French, he believed) provided a nice supplement to a soldier’s income. He reckoned he could better it.

  Let the others live for their cards and rum. Killam had too much drive for that, although he understood their boredom well enough. Perhaps that was why the natives were always quarrelling, one family with another. Was that also why they stole potatoes, just a few at a time? Because it was fun? Kept them amused?

  Killam was far from amused to be among the soldiers the Commandant chose to pursue the potato thieves, especially when they were told not to load their rifles. Far from amused? He was furious. At least Cross didn’t give Wunyeran a rifle, too. Killam never liked seeing him heading away from the settlement with a rifle borrowed from Cross, even if he inevitably returned with a welcome addition to the soldier’s monotonous diet.

  Wunyeran suggested they take a boat straight to the river mouth in Shellfeast Harbour and make up ground on Wooral that way. That path they used, remember? he said. It crossed a bit more upriver, and Wooral would go there heading east. It was a good suggestion, and spared them a long walk. Not only that,
but a favourable wind meant they needn’t row.

  Almost as soon as the longboat nosed onto the riverbank just past where the rocks were laid out in maze-like patterns to trap fish, the wind suddenly dropped and it was strangely quiet; perhaps it was the proximity of the water and stone to the trees that gave the air such a peculiar acoustic quality. Killam heard the sound of the pup he’d given Cross: grown, but still young. The high bark sounded very close, intimate.

  It offended Killam that Cross had given Menak the pup. It wasn’t the sort of dog natives should be interested in, unless as food! He thought a hulking wolf, a lion or bear would make a better companion, but their dogs were quiet and as likely to sneak behind you as come up barking and snarling. Whereas this pup, the offspring of two small rat-catching ship’s dogs, yappy and strutting, demanded attention out of all proportion to its size. Its yap yap yap came drifting over the valley in which the settlement lay: a familiar voice, made alien in this landscape.

  Menak carried the dog in his arms more often than not, and Killam had seen it sniffing the air, head up as if it ruled the landscape. He was surprised how calm it seemed; they were usually quite nervy beasts.

  Now here was its voice again.

  Wunyeran moved to the back of the group, assuring them all Wooral was not far ahead. (As is obvious to all of us, thought Killam, and no doubt Menak is with him, too.)

  Killam stepped from a grove of peppermint and redgum, bending his head beneath a low branch, and there was Wooral, at the centre of a small clearing. Killam swung the barrel as Wooral turned and ran, and received the disappointment of a tiny click, no Boom! Killam imagined a wound widening on the native’s naked back, but the man was gone. Killam spat, cursed, and was about to race off in pursuit of other bodies running in the shrubbery when Cross called, Halt!

  The soldiers glanced at one another. Heart pounding, Killam listened to Cross and Wunyeran speaking in that gladbag bastard language the two of them used together, and then Wunyeran was calling out in his blackfella talk. Half a dozen or so grinning heads appeared from around trunks and rose above the low shrubbery. Within range, thought Killam. The soldiers and Captain listened uncomprehendingly as Wunyeran and the others— Wooral among them—spoke to one another across the distance. The wind snatched at their voices and swept between pursuers and pursued, shaking the shrubs, and bending the small trees.

  Wooral and the others began to walk toward Killam’s party. Halfway there, Wooral called out and Wunyeran responded. It must’ve been the answer that stopped them. Wunyeran looked at Cross, and Cross called out, Apprehend them, men!

  But the soldiers’ quarry knew there was no spite in the gun barrels brandished their way, and although well within rifle range, they were forever just beyond reach of the heavy hands and boots clumping toward them. One moment they were in a circle around the soldiers, showering them with kangaroo pellets, the next they were in one group, leading the soldiers on and waving, laughing. Wind rocked the trees and shrubs, and the Noongar disappeared and rose again, so light on their feet they seemed to glide. Killam thought of men in the sea: diving not falling, waving not drowning. The same branches that alternately supported or concealed them clutched at his jacket, and tree roots tripped him.

  Wunyeran had moved from pursuer to pursued, from hound to hare. Killam could hear the puppy’s excited barking. Menak must be with them, too, then. It was a game. They thought it fun.

  Killam stopped to load his gun.

  They had lost all sight of their quarry.

  One potato, two potato, three potato, four. Bye bye redcoat, bye bye Jak Tar, bye bye.

  The voices fading, and that infernal dog’s yapping.

  The wrong port

  Cross was relieved the natives had left on one of their journeys, their regular migrations. Feeding them proved a drain on the stores and Wunyeran and the rest often took up a great part of his day, distracting him from other things he could be doing: collecting specimens, recording, instilling in the men the importance of diet. And then—Cross was an honest man—with the natives absent, the awkward issue of his own presence was not always bothering his conscience …

  Certainly, their absence pleased the rest of the settlement’s population. Friendly enough, the natives, but the smallest things could suddenly turn their mood, people said, reminding one another of the times there’d been trouble. The spearing. The theft and lying. The nuisance of them. The prisoners were glad not to be every day reminded of their servitude while inferior beings were free and feted. Those soldiers with families dined at one another’s tables. Others kept at their cards and rum and tried not to doze through their days between supervising at The Farm, or maintaining and building their homes, or at the fishing or road works. The prisoners were kept under guard, but not shackled.

  Cross dealt with his correspondence and planning, and discussed morale with the Captain. He went on long walks around the coastline.

  But a child ran to its mother, sobbing that a black had chased her. A gunshot echoed from the hills around the harbour, and the settlement froze. A soldier had fired at a few blackfellas he’d seen hiding either side of the path ahead of him. The way they flitted in and out of the strange trees you never knew for sure if you were safe or not.

  At least with Menak and the rest, you knew where you stood. And they were friendly, they made you laugh. Where are our natives? Menak was a leader and he kept the others away. Wunyeran too, and he was such a happy young man. Had they stayed away so long last winter? Some people thought not. Why so long away this time, then? Yes, they had fought other blacks, but everyone knew they all cooperated at other times. What if they were to join forces against us? What chance would we have?

  Heavy rain swept across the harbour, and in the valley between their two hills a stream of water ran back to the sea. Whales came close to shore, and a few whaling ships came into the harbour. Some visiting sailors said they’d seen blacks, and certainly their fires. There was a great crowd around a whale that had been cast up on the beach to the east of here. Hundreds of them.

  The soldier’s lookout duty was increased.

  *

  On his own, old Bobby often agreed that yes, he really was important to the way everyone—black and white—had got on so well here in this, what did people call it? This neck of the woods, this isolated seaport, this godforsaken place? Yep. Truthfully, he had been the main man. It wasn’t his fault things went bad.

  Like mallee or moort his roots reached out, and people sheltered close to the ground under his branches, made like a family. Moort means family, too.

  Dr Cross and everyone remembered the special thing that happened, but they never knew Bobby was right at the middle of it. He didn’t remember Bobby from when he was still just a little boy not long on his feet who walked into that settlement set upon the windswept shore where no Noongar had been for a while and lay down beside the soldiers’ hearth, lay down upon the soldier’s bed to die. But it was Bobby. It was Bobby himself who caused the trouble and who also made the peace.

  His sickness was part of the story that was circling round and round in his head, beginning with his own mother and father forgetting how to breathe properly so they could only exhale and cough, always bent over, stooped, moving like their feet hurt from touching their very own earth. They lay down quietly until the flies came around them and went into their eyes and mouth and nostrils. Lay there as the birds settled upon them with their hard and gripping feet and their beaks tore at the softest flesh first. Bobby could not keep the flies away; not the birds, either.

  There was no one strong enough to bury his mother and father, or send them on their way properly. So Bobby had wandered away from them and into the soldiers’ barracks, into the walls of white clay beneath the roof of thatched grasstree rushes. It was a large inside space, smelling sharply of earth and dried vegetation. He could not speak the language then, only ‘hello hello’ and anyway there was no one about. The floor inside the big hut was worn and hollowed from the s
oldiers’ sweeping and sweeping, so that he stepped down into what was like swept and packed ash, like soothing talcum powder. The breeze came cool from the harbour through openings on one side of the barracks and out the other, refreshing his hot cheeks. There were no soldiers there, but the beds were laid out side by side to the left and the right. He picked one in the very middle. Sat upon it.

  Lay down.

  He sank into the bed, the smell of soldier, snuffled at the rough blanket prickling his nose. The smell of soldier who was no longer a stranger. He went very silent and deep into the cave of himself.

  When the soldier came in he saw a very young boy soft and all but naked on the bed, and leaking.

  Cried out.

  And the voices went out, saying a young native boy (it was his old self, Bobby knew, he felt it still) had died. But Bobby was deep inside himself, gone very tiny like a pale mouse and was watching, listening. The voices went away from the barracks that was the centre of this trouble, and his own people were angry, of course, because how could a young boy die just like that? Someone must be to blame. The soldiers, see.

  The men came into the settlement trembling with anger, shaking their spears.

  Dr Cross went up to them, heading straight for Wunyeran and ignoring the spears. He wanted just to talk, and the other men moved back from Wunyeran, and a few soldiers walked quietly up to stand behind Cross so it was the two men—Cross and Wunyeran—with the others standing behind each of them. Two groups, apart.

  Wunyeran was wild, and the soldiers and their prisoners and Dr Cross and the soldiers’ wives and children all looking on had known Wunyeran only as a laughing, playful man. They hardly thought him a savage now. But here he was with his people, shouting and glaring at them and shaking spears more than anyone.