Power of Pinjarra

by Sandra Dengler

  Early next morning—very early—Mave Hurley knocked on the door.

  Pearl herself was just barely out and Enid was still asleep. Her hair still tumbling around her shoulders, Pearl opened the door and scowled.

  “G’day, mum!” Her eyes at half-mast, Mave looked more asleep than Pearl felt. “I know you’re usually up and about early, and I was hoping to pick up a day’s casual work. Need the money.”

  “We don’t work on Sunday. Day of rest. You know that.”

  Undaunted, Mave waved at two bundles by her feet. “Here, mum; I brought along a couple batches I happened to gather on the way. Cyril and Mr. Mentges. Cyril will be by on Tuesday, he says. Mr. Mentges’s I said I’d take to him.”

  “No. No laundry today. Enid doesn’t feel well and I always rest on the Sabbath. Come back tomorrow.”

  From Enid’s corner of the hut came a strangled sound Pearl had never heard before. Enid! She quickly lit a lamp so she could see her, and as she turned around, she heard Mave cry out. The girl’s eyes popped open wide. She gasped God’s name and crossed herself. It was a prayer, not a blasphemy. Charging into the house unbidden, Mave had hastened to the corner. Now staring down at Enid, she moaned “Oh, no!” more to herself than to Pearl.

  “What is it? What do you see?” With Mave’s back toward Pearl, she was unable to see the girl’s face, and discern her expression. She could see Enid’s though. Her sister’s face and neck were tightly drawn, her body quivering.

  Mave stood erect, her lips a firm, thin line, muttering to herself, “I’ll run down to the boys’ place. They have horses. One of them can go for the doctor in Emerald. He’s a quack and a booze artist but he’ll have morphine. The lad can be back by nightfall. And tomorrow we’ll put her on the train to Barcaldine. Hospital there.”

  Pearl grabbed the woman’s arm to keep her from leaving. “What do you see?”

  “Lockjaw, mum. You ain’t seen lockjaw?” The voice trembled. “My own lad died of it. Eleven years old he was. James. He was only eleven.” She tore herself from Pearl’s grasp and ran out the door.

  Obviously it couldn’t be that. The woman couldn’t possibly know what she was talking about. At any rate, who would be foolish enough to accept the diagnosis of a broken-down old floozy? It certainly wasn’t a fatal illness. Enid hadn’t been sick a day in her life. Well, very few days. Even when typhoid moved through the area and she worked at the hospital, she remained healthy. And the ague? Everyone but Enid got it. No. The woman was obviously overreacting.

  About a quarter century later, or perhaps only twenty minutes, Marty arrived literally in a cloud of dust. He had not taken time to slap a saddle on his horse; the barebacked animal was sweaty already and he was camped less than a mile away. Pearl watched him from the doorway, too numb to be gracious.

  He dropped his horse’s reins where it stopped and bounded up onto the verandah. “Jase is on his way to Emerald. Mave will be by later. Says she wants to cry awhile first so she won’t be weepy around here.”

  “Marty, she’s surely wrong. She’s coarse-bred and—”

  “May I see her?” He wasn’t talking about Mave.

  “Of course.”

  Marty slipped into the house and hurried over to the bed. Pearl was the stricken girl’s sister, her only sister. And yet Marty didn’t bother with a kind word or a hug. His only thought was Enid. It never occurred to him that Pearl might need comforting, too. Men!

  The morning turned into a nightmare. Mave arrived with some sort of homemade remedy. Pearl didn’t want her around, but what could she say? The remedy remedied nothing. Enid began to get waves of rigid spasms throughout her body. Mave bathed her with warm towels, trying to relax the muscles. By evening the spasms triggered convulsions every few minutes. Marty did not leave her bedside. That rich, low baritone talked to her about silly, aimless things that would have made her smile had all her facial muscles not been so tightly clenched.

  Mave mentioned that opium sometimes relieves the spasms and convulsions by relaxing the muscles. Marty promised to return in an hour and hurried out into the evening light. He was back before dark with some mysterious coarse-grained stuff. Pearl didn’t ask any questions about it. With towels and a pie tin of coals from the stove, Marty built a tent around Enid’s head, the kind of steam tent one puts over an asthmatic child to help him breathe more easily. He sprinkled some water on the coals to make the steam, then dropped pinches of the remedy on the coals. “Inhale deeply,” he told Enid, but Enid was having trouble breathing at all. For a short time it looked as if the powder would work, but after a few minutes of rest Enid convulsed worse than ever.

  At dark Jason arrived, winded and on foot. The doctor wouldn’t come this far, but he had sent morphine. Mave and the boys put their heads together and between them did a creditable job of administering the drug. Pearl stood by helplessly because she had no idea how to help.

  She answered a loud knock on the door. It was Mr. Sark and Mr. Riley.

  “We don’t want to come in. Just want to sit on the verandah, case we can do something for Miss Enid.”

  “How did you know she was ill?” Pearl asked.

  “Jason told us when his horse fell down dead of exhaustion right by the Dijirru.”

  More men came. The word had spread. Pearl hung some lanterns on the verandah posts when she realized most of Anakie was holding vigil there. She and Marty took turns resting and watching, but Pearl couldn’t sleep. At five-thirty Monday morning, the morphine ran out. It was supposed to be a three-day supply.

  Enid seemed neither better nor worse without morphine.

  Some of the miners set up a fire in the dooryard and cooked a breakfast of bacon and eggs. Jason ate with them. But neither Marty nor Pearl was hungry. They sat on the floor leaning against the foot of Enid’s bed as Mave ministered at the head of it.

  Perhaps this was not the time or place, but Pearl could not stand it any longer. “Marty? What makes Enid so attractive?”

  “I don’t know.” He sat silent a few minutes. “I think…I think it’s because when she’s talking to you, you know she’s truly interested in you. There’s no one more important in the world than you. She genuinely cares; it shows.” He frowned. “Know what I mean?”

  “I think so.” Yes, Enid did care. It was no sham.

  “There’s a…an inner beauty to her,” Marty continued. “A sweetness. Whatever she’s doing she seems happy, including when she’s talking to you. It feels really good when someone is so obviously happy to talk to you.”

  Pearl nodded. “Beautiful on the inside.”

  “Yair.” He sighed. “Sad, isn’t it? If someone who didn’t know her came up to her now, they wouldn’t be able to see her beauty. This lockjaw has her face and body so tensed up and twisted that the beauty’s all driven down so deep inside you can’t see it.”

  “But it’s still there.”

  “Yair, ’cause it’s a part of her. It makes her Enid.”

  Finally it was nearly time to put Enid on the train to Barcaldine. Scores of willing helpers offered to carry her to the railway depot. They moved her as tenderly as they could, bed and all, but even the slightest jostling caused horrible spasms. Enid’s spine arched backward, rigid. Her delicate face froze into a hideous grimace. She turned blue because she could not breathe well.

  The bright sunlight evidently bothered her. Someone said he had read about lockjaw in an old medical book and that anyone with lockjaw, or tetanus, as it was properly termed, should be in a darkened room. Darkened room? How could they do that at the railway station? Three miners had an idea and ripped the door off a locked, windowless baggage shed so that Enid could lie in partial darkness.

  Pearl stood about shifting from foot to foot. Jason walked down the track toward Emerald. She had never seen him sit still for more than a minute or two, except when he was eating.

  “Marty? How did you find that opium?” Pearl asked.

  “A lot of pastoralists and miners hire aborigines for me
nial jobs. They pay them off in beef, grog, tobacco and opium; they say the blacks won’t work if they don’t get it. So I got a box of candy sticks from Mr. Gleason, took them out to the aboriginal camp beyond the creek and traded them for some opium. The blacks have a real soft spot for their children. I figured candy for the kids was about the only thing they’d trade for.”

  She studied the warm and sun-drenched face and considered the tone of his voice. “You sound as though you like blacks.”

  He shrugged. “Some of the rottenest people I ever met are black. And some of the truest and noblest.”

  The train was late. At two o’clock that afternoon, it still had not arrived. Men milled about restlessly, muttering angry threats against the president of the line. At two-thirty the threats grew darker and darker, so that by three they were discussing dismantling both engine and engineer when the train finally arrived. Seized with an idea, men took off in both directions along the railway, seeking a handcar. Unless the train arrived soon, they would put Enid on a handcar and pump her to Jericho or Emerald.

  Pearl sat in the semidarkness beside Enid and watched hope fade along with the waning sun. Was Enid’s mind lucid yet, or was it as warped and twisted as her body?

  In any case, Pearl spoke more to herself than to Enid. “The train is usually late about half the time. It fails to make it at all at least once a month, so I don’t know why I should be surprised by this. But you’re God’s servant. More than anyone in the whole world, you actually enjoy doing things for Him. So if God has any power at all, why does He permit the train to delay? You belong to Him! He should be taking care of you. Not this…not this way. This should never have happened to you in the first place. Me, maybe. I could understand that. But not you.”

  A taut, uncoordinated hand poked her. She gasped. The hand drew her close, motioning her to bend down to listen. Pearl translated as from a foreign language the tortured hisses and moans from behind clenched teeth.

  “God’s will, Pearl. Always good. Best. When He gives good things, I thank Him. He gives me this, I thank Him because I know good things will come from it.” Enid paused as a wrenching convulsion shook her. The spasms subsided. “I am His and He’ll take care of me.”

  “He’s not taking care of you! He’s torturing you!” Pearl exploded.

  Marty was standing in the doorway. He moved in closer.

  “He promised me heaven. He won’t break His promise. I will be so alive, Pearl!” The twitching hand touched Pearl’s. “Pearl. Good things will come of this. Look for them. Write them down so you don’t forget them. And please…please come to Jesus.”

  Outside, the miners stood about in silence or in hushed conversation. Another seizure racked her, a long one this time. Every muscle contracted so tightly that for a minute at a time she could not breathe. She said something else and Pearl and Marty both bowed low to hear. Seizure halted the speech. Pearl straightened a bit to catch Marty’s eye. He frowned and shook his head. He couldn’t translate either.

  Something good of this? Something good!

  Pearl propped her elbows on her knees and covered her face with her hands. She was so bitterly weary. She listened to the labored gasps and the frightful silences when Enid could draw no breath at all. As tired as Pearl was, Enid was far more exhausted, for the constant spasms and convulsions prevented her from resting even a moment.

  Quiet people moved in and out of the dark, stuffy shed. One of them was Jason; Pearl heard him speaking to Marty, but she didn’t listen or care about what was said. She wanted the train to come. She wanted the nightmare to end. She wished someone else could somehow take over her hideous burden of waiting, powerless to help.

  By measured degrees Pearl became aware of the silence. Ominous, mocking silence. Silence outside and in. She forced herself to raise her head enough to turn and look.

  At first she thought the disease had lifted. The cruel arch of Enid’s back had relaxed into a casual line of repose. That grotesque grimace had softened to a smile. No longer forced down into the depths of her mind and heart by the wracking illness, her inner beauty rose again to the surface, free at last. Enid’s body looked like Enid again. God had reclaimed His gem.

  With billows of smoke and a deafening roar, the train arrived.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Birth of Dreams

  Pinjarra and the Commonwealth of Australia were born within hours of each other. On a summer Tuesday in Sydney’s Centennial Park, the Earl of Hopetown proclaimed the colonies to be federated states. In the ensuing celebration, the brand-new nation temporarily forgot everything else—even the tumultuous news that Clean Sweep had won the Melbourne Cup two short months before.

  On that same hot dry Tuesday in Longreach, Martin Frobel Junior assumed the lease, at five shillings per square mile, on the pastoral run that simultaneously made his dream a reality and made him the best catch of all the bachelors on the Barcoo. During the celebration of this event, his cousin lost his head, momentarily forgetting that one doesn’t approach the town bully’s girlfriend—no matter who his cousin is. That small error in judgement netted Jason a black eye.

  Marty did not neglect to dress for the momentous occasion. As dignitaries in Sydney sported the height of fashion, Marty wore the stiff-collared shirt he detested and the tie his mum had made with “Pinjarra” delicately embroidered in its silk. Gimpy Jack, lover of color, gave him a top hat and a vest of bright blue satin. The man beamed, immensely proud of the gift. Marty wore the vest—his coat mostly covered it—but he insisted Gimpy Jack must also dress appropriately for the occasion and gave him back the hat. The flashy attire with the rigid collar would have been a lot more tolerable had Marty not forgotten his change of bush clothes in the hotel room.

  Just as well that he stayed looking flash, for Pop had rented the funeral director’s great open brougham coach with its matching black six-up. Sheer elegance. Mum and Pop, Marty and Jason and Gimpy Jack rode home together to Pinjarra—the whole hundred plus miles—in grand style. And Gimpy Jack wore his new top hat all the way.

  Home. His home. When they arrived in the dooryard, Marty assisted his mum to alight from the brougham. Pastoral tenant of the Crown, master of Pinjarra—not a bad thing a few weeks short of being twenty-four. He offered the driver dinner, but he declined graciously, saying he could make it into Muttaburra not much past nightfall if he got on the track right away.

  Marty watched the brougham roll out onto the southbound track. “You know, Pop, we really did look pretty elegant in that thing.”

  Jason spread his hands. “So true, folks, but the master of Pinjarra won’t let elegance go to his head. No need to embarrass him by kissing his boots—a simple genuflection will suffice.”

  Marty snorted. “I can tell right now I’m gunner have trouble with you. When you going back to your dirt and jewels?”

  “Don’t rush me. Tomorrow I return to Opalton and make my fortune. Today I make merry. What’s for dinner?”

  “Whatever Rosella killed, I suppose.” Marty started in the door, then stopped and turned. “Pop? You look upset.”

  “Not with you. Something else. When I give a simple order, I expect it to be followed. What’s in your front paddock?”

  “Take the roan with the blaze face. He needs exercise anyway.”

  Pop was halfway across the dooryard when Mum called, “Martin? I see dust to the north. I think they’re coming.”

  It didn’t take a soaring intellect to figure out that Pop’s surprise present had been slow to arrive. Arrive it did—in a parade to match any pageant Sydney could produce. A couple of Pop’s station blacks orchestrated the extravaganza, with Mungkala driving the dray and Goonur bringing up the rear. Marty could see in the half dozen yearling seed bulls the broad chest of Pop’s prize-winning stud bull, Goodtime Jack. The horse dray and four of Pop’s best bred horses brought Mum’s old oak table and chairs.

  “Hot ding!” cried Jason. “Now we don’t have to eat on the floor anymore!”


  “Pop, this really isn’t necessary; you don’t have to count me as charity.”

  “You know what I taught you all your life: Never ask for a handout if you’re not willing to work for it. This is not charity. You didn’t ask for it, but I can see you have your work cut out for you.”

  And the gray mare. Silently Goonur slid out of the saddle and handed the reins to Marty. She looked unusually sober, even sad. She knew a good horse, and she was sorry to give up this mare.

  Marty turned to Pop. “You sure you want to give me this?”

  “Remember that colt I sold for three hundred pounds a couple years ago? By Heartbreaker out of this mare right here. Well, she’s in a family way again, by Heartbreaker. She should throw you a dandy.”

  Marty wanted more than anything else to hug Pop, but the man had never been that affectionate with his son and never would; it wasn’t his way. Instead, Marty swung aboard the mare without touching the stirrups and rode out of the dooryard, up the rise, across the north paddock.

  How do you measure happiness? If you add happiness to happiness, is the sum greater than its parts? Marty pondered the mathematics of joy, but not for long. He let the magic of the mare’s fluid motion set him afloat in glorious non-thought. A squatter’s life is difficult at best, an impossible burden at worst. Pinjarra had once been another man’s dream, a man who had built the house and barn, fences and sheds, and then had had to walk away. Marty could well go under as that man had. He faced long, hard work in his immediate future, and probably a few tears—inside if not outside. But today there would be no tears or hard work. Today was unbridled joy.

  The sun chided him as he rode into the barnyard; low in the sky, it told him he’d been out over two hours. For shame, leaving his guests like that! They must all be in the house; he saw no one outside. He slid off the mare and led her into the barn.