That Deadman Dance

by Scott, Kim

  Killam knew he was sharp-witted, too, but all he had was his own brain, brawn and near enough to bare arse.

  He shifted about on his buttocks. Put up a hand. Shh.

  The boys held the oars in the air.

  No one had time to notice water drops, silver with moonlight, and the stars dancing in the sea.

  Drifting on the silky waters of the sound under a bone-coloured moon, Killam was here on unofficial business. Something overheard, initially, about men wanting to desert ship. The captain had kept too close a watch on them while they were ashore, and let Chaine know he didn’t want any left behind; he was low on hands as it was. For all of that, Killam had managed to lend an ear to a couple of the men who wanted off. Chaine had suggested he might help such men escape, might hide them away, too. There was a need for skilful labour, Chaine had said, looking at the two black boys.

  So be it. The escapees had promised him a reward, and had tobacco to bring ashore. Chaine would reward him, too, at some future time, if things turned out well.

  Here now, the first of them, sliding down a rope ladder he’d swung over the ship’s side. Now, the second …

  Killam grunted in pain. Something (an anchor? a grappling hook?) plummeted into the boat, glanced against his leg.

  Seize him! A voice of authority, he thought, even as he tried to throw off the hands that obeyed it. He saw someone slip into the water, quiet and fast as a seal. Then, dazed from a clip around the ears, he was aboard ship, lamps swinging and shadows shifting. Unsettled, frightened. Face to face with the captain.

  Throw ’em in irons.

  Jeffrey and Jimmy were sobbing out loud. Begging for mercy. Praying. To our God, thought Killam.

  I am a British subject, sir!

  They kicked him below deck.

  *

  Daylight found Killam tied to the rigging; an insect to the captain’s spider. Shirtless and bound, he could only turn his head a fraction from side to side. His mouth was gagged, otherwise he would have shouted, The whole settlement is beside me, this is sovereign land, sir! Squirming and twisting to try to catch someone’s merciful eye, he chanced to see a many-ended rope, thin and knotted. He realised the crew had gathered, that there was a watching crowd.

  The captain made a speech. Any man who tries to escape, or any man who helps him …

  There was a silence. Killam heard the noise of the rigging, waves lapping the boat. The wind is coming up, he thought, incongruously.

  And then felt the first blow. Killam had been a soldier, a fortunate soldier, obviously, because until now he had never known pain like this.

  After what seemed a very long time, the captain untied his gag. Up close, he looked into Killam’s face. Then moved away, it seemed as if on wheels.

  Any man, or any man that helps him, desert my ship …

  The flogging continued, and Killam cried out, cried out.

  They lay him in his own boat, and Jeffrey and Jimmy rowed to shore. The boys were sobbing still and Killam, knees on the floor of the boat, was sprawled across a thwart with his back open to the sky.

  The Yankee captain would have left if he could, no doubt, but the wind kept him anchored just outside the harbour mouth. The pilot boat came out once again with Geordie Chaine aboard to take the captain ashore.

  The Governor and appointed magistrates heard the Yankee captain. They listened to Mr Chaine, noted the distress of Mr Killam and were of the opinion that the Yankee captain would need to be sent to Headquarters—Cygnet River—on trial for assault. They placed him in the town gaol.

  There were several American whalers at rest in the harbour, waiting on a shift in the wind, and those Yankee whaling men had little affection for British law. Bobby Wabalanginy liked their accent and listened close whenever he heard it, and now he heard a loud voice saying they should take possession of an English barroom at a little port like King George, strike up ‘Yankee Doodle’, and break down in genuine fore-and-after.

  King George Town had been a disappointment. No pretty barmaids, although some found comfort with a local native lass. There was more life in the blackfellas than the townspeople, for they’d try to trade you a parrot, a spear, and yes, a woman sometimes. But all in all it was a dull place, and now this damned easterly wind held them and threatened to hold them longer. So when the American whaling ships heard one of their captains was imprisoned, their crews were excited. Adventure!

  At the time, the population of King George Town was mostly unaware that a party of Yankees braced with pistols confronted the Governor. Some, if not many, would have been delighted to hear that the Governor—whose eyes Bobby once thought were dissolving into sky—had no way to stand against them. It was unlucky for the Governor that he was not at The Farm, the population gossiped, and although not pleased that the authority of their colonial outpost had been so lightly dismissed, they enjoyed hearing of the Governor’s trials.

  His eyes watered with helplessness, humiliation.

  His voice blustered, faltered.

  He insisted that a fine be paid.

  A trifling thing, the Yankees told him, laughing, and tossed coins into his lap. You have a man of ours who absconded.

  The Governor insisted that he could not spare resources to help track down every missing sailor.

  Wooral was in the room, dressed in the livery the Governor required. The American party walked in, and Wooral’s body softened as the exchange developed so that he was overlooked, forgotten. There was no need to step out of his shoes, because he was barefoot—the shortage of footwear in King George Town meant even the Governor could not have servants costumed as he preferred. Wooral dissembled his stance from that preferred by the Governor and, leaning back into the corner of the room, slid down to his haunches. He wanted invisibility; wanted to watch things unfold, was impressed by these men.

  Ah by crikey, those blooming Yankees look after their own people, unna?

  Jeffrey and James

  Jeffrey hated the way people always considered James and himself as if they were the same and quite inseparable from one another. Well, they weren’t. Weren’t inseparable, weren’t twins, weren’t even brothers. He couldn’t remember his own parents, and the people who he’d thought of as his mother and father had all of a sudden disowned him. That was such a long way from here, a long time ago: years and years, and many ship journeys. He still thought of them there in New South Wales when he wanted comfort; actually, not of them, but of being there. He remembered the oven radiating its warmth and smells, the pages of the Bible turning, rough voices singing hymns and eyes looking down on him. Memories from when he was little more than a baby, he realised.

  There were no other children to begin with, only him. Then they had brought James into their home. He came with no name, and they gave him James. Jeffrey remembered no resentment at having to share his foster parents, at least not on that occasion. He liked having baby brother James, liked caring for him and helping Mother with him, in between lessons and Bible study and all the chores children can help with on a farm. In fact, he took over many of Mother’s roles so she could care for the child, since he, as they kept telling him, was a big boy now.

  James had taken on many of those chores at an even younger age. So, between the two of them, they milked the cows, tended the vegetable garden, made butter and bread, washed dishes and clothes, steamed sheets in the great copper and hung them out on the propped line, and helped with fencing and shepherding … Two young boys, they were trained well, and did their jobs so diligently that Father rarely had reason to strike them. They were close, Jeffrey and James in those years. But even then, not brothers, not really.

  And then Mother became pregnant. Had a shitty baby. A baby that got all the love and their eyes and hugs even, and just gave vomit and tears and crying. Neither boy liked to dwell on the years from then, and they never talked about it. Their bedding was moved to the shed, their meals increasingly eaten apart from Mother and Father and baby. There was still the Bible, but more an
d more work to be done, and only orders and punishment from Mother and Father. They still came into the house for hymns and Bible readings. The boys knew Mother and Father liked their singing, and when their voices joined in it was almost like old times, before the baby, before …

  It was James who chased the old cow. Firstly because it was a bossy one, always hard to get into the milking stall and likely as not to kick if you strayed behind it. When he quite suddenly grew out of the fear of it and realised his mastery, he liked to tease. But Father never saw James chasing the silly cow, oh no, it was Jeffrey he saw chasing it, making it do that clumsy run with its eyes rolling and udder swaying side to side.

  Father punished him like a child. Put the gangly boy across his knee and beat him with increasing energy and ferocity. Which was partly why seeing Killam tied up and flogged had upset them so. That was what made them blubber, even though they were grown up now, Jeffrey almost a man.

  He smiled to himself, thinking of the hair under James’s arms and the quickly stiffening snake in one another’s trousers that they knew so well. Smiled again. Father to thank for that, too, when you come to think of it. Him coming back to Jeffrey in the long night after the flogging, with ointments to salve the raw, hot flesh. And coming back nights and nights after that, to lie with him; it excited Jeffrey now just thinking of it.

  Father thought he was a sinner, you could see the change in him because sometimes he could not look at Jeffrey, but other times Jeffrey might just touch him or brush up against him, and then it would soon be that the man could not get close enough. Then rush away.

  Jeffrey taught James what he’d learned from Father. So not brothers, more like lovers almost. And just as well, because they only had one another now that Father and Mother had children of their own.

  At church, when they had been talking of the civilising influence of Christianity on the blacks, and Mr Spender said he was on his way to the most isolated of shores at King George Town to administer a small colony amid hordes of savages where he would likely suffer a shortage of servants on the token salary offered, they invited him to take their own well-raised boys to accompany and support both him and his family. It would continue their Christian education also.

  Spender paraded the boys as products of his own endeavours. Said he had trained them to dress, moulded their manners and made them so very useful. It could be done with all of the blacks, he said.

  And so Jeffrey and James were paraded and locked away for their own sakes, to spare them from the temptations of civilised life. But even they noticed their clothing was shabbier than it had been, Jeffrey wearing his a little longer before they were handed down to James. Then they arrived at King George Town where there was no one worth parading before. Were they really such a drain on finances?

  Spender lent them out to Chaine, and he to Mr Killam. Who they watched receive a cruel flogging tied to a ship’s mast, and then rowed to shore in the sparkling sunlight of early morning.

  *

  Killam lay facedown. Jeffrey and James had tried to help him, but were only able to weep and flutter ineffectually, whereas his good friend—in fact, who would have thought him such a friend?—his good friend Mr Skelly had really come to his aid. Skelly bathed Killam’s flayed skin with calloused but surprisingly gentle hands. Killam winced and made little yelping sounds. Skelly told him the story of the Governor’s surrender; it was all around the town. Killam would have liked to see the familiar face that accompanied these gentle hands and the voice, but it hurt to turn around.

  And that sailor, did he stay away?

  Skelly had heard nothing of any sailor. He went out of the hut to speak to someone and when he returned said, Yes, that escaped sailor Jak Tar was with Mr Chaine apparently. On his way out to the river property.

  Kepalup.

  Jak Tar

  Jak Tar saw nothing for him at home, no reason to return. On his way down to the waiting boat he’d heard some warning shout and so, instead of sliding into the boat, he slipped into the water with barely a splash. As soon as his head rose above the surface he knew something had gone amiss and he was treading water in a sea of trouble. He duck-dived and swam beneath the dark mass of the ship, swam underwater with the faces of the captain and first mate in his mind until his lungs were bursting, then surfaced to stars like thorns in his wet vision, gasped, and went underwater again. His thudding heart. Rose to breathe and took his bearings best he could. There must be land not far—he saw the absence of stars, swam toward that. Underwater he took off his jacket, his heavy jumper. Lean and smooth, neither fur nor feather nor scale, he rose to the surface like something made for water, or so he told himself. Took another breath. Slipped off his boots.

  The sound of men’s voices carried across the water. Their shouts and their rage. Was that his name he heard? Next time he surfaced he was in the moon shadow of that small isthmus not far from the mouth of the harbour. An island close by, barely a stone’s throw from the beach.

  He swam without a splash, his face barely above water until he reached the rocks. The beach shone white in the darkness and he dared not cross it, felt as visible as a shadow puppet on a screen. Water was warmer than air. He was a seal hauling itself up moonlit rocks with hardly a limb to help him, and dreading the club of some swift-footed, cruel man. He stumbled, crawled to where seaweed was piled high and sand met rock and burrowed deep into salty, ribbony stuff. Pulled it over himself for warmth, for the hiding in.

  It hid him well enough. But warmth?

  Jak Tar was pink and purple wrinkled skin when he rose up stiffly, hobbled with cold, and shook the seaweed off, patting and plucking at himself to be free of the last fleshy ribbon or bauble. He moved away from the rocks, across a corner of squeaking white sand, fine and soft as powder and over succulent fingers … Here, his toes gripped one such fleshy plant finger and shivering in the pre-dawn light he scrambled up a smooth granite shelf. Sunlight fell upon him, and the scent of peppermint trees. His skin was still tender and wrinkled, and he imagined it tearing from him, caught and hanging in seaweed-like strips left on the spiky scrub. He smelled smoke and ash and by the warmth realised he’d almost crawled into a still glowing campfire. Live. Red.

  Whereas he was wet, grey, and dressed in damp rags and seaweed and his skin stung in patches. He lay down and almost curled around a pile of embers, lay at the very edge of soft ash and felt it coat his cheek, moving with his every breath. Oh warmth. His back was cold and hard, brittle, but he could not turn over. Why go from boat into deep water?

  Opened his eyes. Darkness bled away.

  Oh, a boy there, looking at him. Black boy. And two small fires, one either side. The boy had a pouch on the hair belt around his belly. Wore a skin cloak, a pair of sailor’s breeches.

  Ah, my man Friday, the wide-eyed boy said. Clear English like a dream surprising Jak Tar. The boy was at the mouth of a small rounded hut, rubbing thick oil into his skin. He glowed warmly, cast his own light, was his own sun.

  A little dog, a Jack Russell with its head tilted to one side, close-up staring at Jak Tar.

  The heart of home

  The house at Kepalup was built as easily as Geordie Chaine had hoped. Two men pressed its pieces together—click snap nail—almost like a child’s game; indeed, the boy Bobby saw it as exactly that and would’ve leapt in and helped if Chaine hadn’t warned him off. Chaine wished his own boy were as keen or, for that matter, possessed some of the energy and interest of the daughter. She—Christine—and the black boy Bobby were presently coiled at the outer perimeter of Chaine’s consciousness, only springing into the range of his attention at irregular intervals. Where was his son? It irritated him.

  The house went up, the two men toiled and Chaine, rising up and down on his toes like a buoy bobbing on the ocean swell, watched them. Neither man seemed inclined to converse with the other, which was for the best as far as Chaine was concerned. So long as the work went well.

  Bobby knew the workers by name, and would have insi
nuated himself into the project but for the presence of Chaine and his countervailing wishes.

  Nevertheless, Bobby called out, I say, Mr Killam.

  His pronunciation was formal, a near copy of the vowels of Mrs Chaine, and he seemed able to adopt different ways of speaking at will—from the mixed-up English most of the natives used, to high formality. But it was a child’s voice for all that. And there was something in its timbre; call it a dark voice?

  He spoke again. Mr Skelly.

  The smaller man glowered at him, but there did not seem much malice in it. True, the social class implied by Bobby’s voice irked Skelly, the more so because its source was a black boy, but Skelly wanted to impress Chaine with his work ethic and desire to get on with the job. He’d been very grateful when Chaine had asked him to manage things at the farm. They looked an unlikely combination, Killam and Skelly: one stocky and apparently careless of his appearance, the other so tall and neat, all spit and polish and grooming except for the habit of pulling his shirt away from the skin of his back.

  Chaine turned, and sailed away.

  Geordie Chaine allowed the boy Bobby many liberties because he was a fine boy, and it was only right that he be given every chance to better himself. Geordie was proud to let him into the bosom of his family, like he’d promised Dr Cross. It was part of the pact they’d made, along with seeing the good Dr Cross’s wife given every assistance. By now she’d be home.

  His own wife, Mrs Chaine—Grace—was a cultivated, cultured woman. She cared … Their new house (prefabricated, so easily erected) would’ve been the envy of the tiny seashore settlement, if only it had a population capable of such discernment.

  Grace Chaine tutored her own children, since any help—hired or conscripted—was best applied to the many other things that needed doing in these, their altered circumstances. She guessed Christine and Christopher were a bit older than Bobby, but were obviously more advanced in their studies and social development. They were generous children and their proud mother observed the signs of their moral superiority: their helpfulness, and the allowances they made for Bobby. They were nearly always looking out for him. And why not? They’d known him from since before they ever got here—remember, he rowed them ashore himself—and how could they ever forget their teeth crunching into golden beetle? They’d be looking out and Bobby Wabalanginy would suddenly appear: come leaping over the crest of a hill; or when their papa took them down to the seashore there he was, standing on rocks at the ocean’s edge where just now a wave had collapsed.