by Alex Miller
After they’d eaten their meal and washed up the dishes Arner stood, the magazine in his hand.
They looked at him.
‘Goodnight,’ he murmured and turned and went out the door.
Trace got up quickly. ‘I’ll see you guys in the morning.’ She leaned across and gave Annabelle a quick kiss on the cheek. ‘Sleep tight you two,’ she said cheekily and skipped out the door after her brother.
After Trace had gone, Annabelle and Bo sat by the range watching the flames for some time without speaking. Annabelle wasn’t sure whether they were particularly at ease with each other or if there was a tension between them. The silence, however, grew and thickened between them until she felt she had to break it by saying something. She moved and was about to speak when, at the same moment, Bo cleared his throat. She turned to him expectantly.
‘I’ll roll out my swag in the old ringers’ quarters,’ he said and stood up.
Annabelle laughed. ‘You can’t be serious? You’ll sleep in here won’t you?’
He said evenly, ‘It looks like them quarters has held up pretty good. I’ve slept there plenty of times.’
Annabelle said with some annoyance, ‘If you don’t sleep in here, Bo, I’ll be really offended.’
He looked at her and grinned. She was not sure if he was uncomfortable with her insistence or pleased. She realised she was finding him difficult to read, and felt put at a disadvantage.
They went out to the Pajero together and brought their swags into the kitchen. Bo would have unrolled his by the door but Annabelle told him to unroll it next to hers by the fire. ‘I’m not going to bite you,’ she said. ‘We can be a bit companionable, can’t we?’ She sat on her swag and took off her boots and overalls.
Bo carefully averted his gaze until she was settled.
‘You can look now,’ she said playfully. She was determined to wear down his old-fashioned manners. Things seemed to her to be ambiguous enough between them without having to negotiate the labyrinth of bygone Queensland habits of chivalry. Bo lay down and pulled his blanket up around his ears, his back to her. He wished her goodnight and began snoring evenly and gently almost at once. She lay awake looking across at his shape under the blanket in the glow from the embers of the fire, marvelling at how incredibly relaxed and untroubled he must be to go straight to sleep like that. She lay awake for a long time, listening to the night sounds and wondering about her life, her job at the university and what she was beginning, in her mind, to refer to as her old life with Steven. It all seemed so unreal and hard to believe in from her place by the fire in the Ranna kitchen. She had been surprised and impressed by the way her parents’ old house at Zamia Street had enfolded her with a feeling of being her own special place. A real haven. Her sense there at once of being effortlessly at home. She wondered if perhaps it was the honeymoon enchantment of being suddenly liberated from troublesome responsibilities and duties . . . She realised she must have been sleeping, for suddenly she was wide awake and alert. The kitchen was cold and in darkness, the fire dead. Something was moving stealthily on the table. She held her breath, listening, imagining a king brown snake gliding towards her. She reached and felt for Bo’s shoulder in the dark and shook him. He murmured, ‘What’s doin?’
She whispered, ‘There’s something on the table!’
‘An old possum,’ he mumbled and began snoring again at once.
She said, ‘God! You’re like a possum yourself.’
It was daylight when he woke her with a mug of tea. She sat up and took the mug from him. The fire was going and he was dressed, the early sun streaming in through the open door.
He stood looking down at her admiringly. ‘You’re a number one sleeper,’ he said.
‘I was awake half the night. I hardly had any sleep.’
After a late breakfast that first morning they all walked down the rise to the river Indian file, Bo in the lead trampling a track through the ribbon grass, Annabelle and Trace staying close behind him for fear of brown snakes. The air was filled with a moving tide of living creatures. Grasshoppers, beetles and clouds of small chocolate moths flickered in the sunlight around them. Arner was back some way wearing shorts and thongs and seemingly untroubled by the possibility of venomous serpents in the grass. After a hundred metres they came out of the tall grass onto a cropped greensward of soft ankle-high couchgrass, black wattles standing like park trees. Closer to the river they came into the shade of the old casuarinas and bluegums, a coolness in the sweet air, brightly coloured butterflies and birds feeding on the insects and nectar among the drooping foliage and blossoms. The warm air vibrating with the shrilling of millions of insects.
Annabelle and Trace came up and stood beside Bo on the smooth benchrock at the edge of an open stretch of sunlit water. They stood gazing on the scene at their feet, the flow of the river green and clear in its depths, the water golden and rippling with sunlight where it slipped over the shallow bottom sands.
Bo pointed with his fishing rod towards the purple shadows of a deep hole against the far bank, overhung by weeping fronds of bottlebrush, the green tips trailing vees in the current. Dragonflies hovering above the pool, touching the water delicately then sweeping away upon the shadows of the air. ‘I reckon we might hook us a big old black bream out of there.’
Trace asked, ‘Are there any crocodiles in here, Uncle Bo?’
‘No crocodiles in the Ranna, my dear.’
Annabelle said, ‘I’m going in.’
Trace looked at her.
Annabelle put down the bag she was carrying and dropped her towel on the rock. She took off her hat and put it on the towel and unfastened her overalls. Bo carried his rod and bucket of tackle back into the shade. He crouched to fix the body of a fat woodgrub on the hook, his back to the women.
Annabelle swam in her pants and bra, diving to the bottom and drifting through the cool flow of sunlit water over her limbs. The taste of the water familiar. She was remembering the swimming hole by the redcliff on the Suttor, seeing herself as her mother had been then, a woman of middle age, but without the comfort or distraction of young children. She stayed underwater for a long time, holding her breath easily, moving across the sandy bottom, reaching and touching the glassy surface of the rocks, shoals of small translucent fish darting away from her approach then returning to delicately pick at suspended morsels from the sand disturbed by her passage.
Trace’s shadow entered the water above her and Annabelle looked up. The girl’s bare legs glossy and golden in the sunlight, moving languidly back and forth in the water. It seemed to Annabelle that the mystery of all life was radiant in Trace’s beauty. Entranced, she gazed up through the dazzle of sunlight at the young woman. She was filled suddenly with intense happiness, as if she could touch life’s essence and make it real for herself . . . Annabelle surfaced beside Trace, laughing to see the girl’s startled look. ‘It’s all right, I’m not a crocodile.’ She touched Trace’s shoulder and kissed her on her wet cheek. Their eyes met, bright with the dazzle off the water. She climbed out onto the rock ledge and picked up her things and went back into the shade. She lay down on a cool contour of water-smoothed rock, her towel bunched under her head. Her heart was thumping in her chest, her breath catching in her throat. It was as if for a fleeting moment she had been in love, with Trace and with herself . . . She soon fell into a delicious half doze on the warm rock, images and dreams moving softly through her mind like fading sepia photographs; herself as Trace, poignant and intense and just beyond the reach of reality, a sadness and joy in the identical longing, then something of the tattooed man in the Bowen servo slipping between the images of herself and the young girl, something she had not understood and would never understand, a glimpse of a coded message . . . She sat up and looked around. There was no sign of Bo. Trace was lying in the shallows on her stomach in the sun, her T-shirt ballooning in the water, her bare legs trailing in the gentle current. She saw Arner then, back in the shade of the trees, seated on a square ro
ck, his back resting against the furrowed trunk of a black casuarina. The guardian of his perfect sister. As still as the stone he sat on, as if it were his throne and he solemnly awaited the sacramental anointing of the chrism, sovereign of Australia, king of kings. Annabelle watched him. Although he made no sign, she felt certain he was aware of her attention.
She lay down again and closed her eyes. Time passed as it had passed when she was a child, the gurgling of the river over the stones and around the roots of the casuarinas, the cicada chorus shrilling then dying away, then rising again mysteriously, flowing back and forth through the warm day, the chirrup and chitter of small birds busy in the bushes, and the cool sweet smell of the riverwater . . . She heard the distinctive click of a horse’s iron shoe striking stone. She sat up.
On the far bank Mathew Hearn stepped his horse out of the dark trees into the sunlit water and started across, the horse’s ears working, ducking its lips at the stream. Trace got up hurriedly off the sand and sat on the flat rock, facing the young man, her shoulders hunched, her bare arms hugging her breasts, her shining legs pressed together, her toes working into the sand, as if she were a startled creature of the wild and would conceal herself from the intruder. The young man rode up beside her. He lifted his hat in an old-fashioned gentlemanly manner and wished her good morning, his tone modest and respectful.
Trace looked up at him, squinting into the sun. ‘Yeah, I’m all right, how are you?’ she said. ‘Where are your dogs?’ She giggled and looked around, making a face at Annabelle.
‘They’re dad’s and Ellen’s dogs,’ he said, serious, diffident and earnest in his manner, concerned for his reception, for her image of him, his world touching the young woman’s world delicately like the dragonflies touching the surface of the water, hesitant and sensitive and ready to flee at the first sign of a rebuff.
Annabelle called, ‘Hi Mathew. What are you doing down this way? Looking for scrubber bulls?’
He rode his horse out of the water onto the rocks, ducking his head to pass under the trailing bough of a casuarina. He stepped off beside Annabelle and dropped the reins. ‘I thought I’d come and see how you fellers were making out.’ His blue eyes anxiously held her gaze, watching for a sign from her.
‘Well we’re very glad you did. Bo’s down the river somewhere trying to catch a fish.’ She stood and put on her overalls. ‘Your horse is walking off.’
Mathew Hearn looked at his horse, which was picking its way through the trees to the couch grass flat. ‘Dancer won’t go far.’
‘That’s a lovely name for a mare, Mathew.’
‘Ellen does the naming.’
Annabelle looked at him and smiled, ‘And it’s Ellen who won’t let your dad kill the pups, I suppose?’
‘That’s it.’ Mathew shook his head. ‘Something will have to be done soon though, or we’re going to be overrun with dogs.’
‘We’re just about to have some morning tea.’ Annabelle crouched and opened the bag. She pulled out a stainless steel coolpot and a square plastic cake box. She laid out mugs and tea things on the towel.
Trace stood and Mathew turned to watch her. She reached and picked up her towel from the rocks and tied it under her shoulders. She came over and stood beside him, looking down at Annabelle. ‘Bo’s going to want a fire for his tea,’ she said. ‘You got any matches?’
Annabelle looked up at her.
Mathew Hearn reached into his shirt pocket and took out a box of matches. He held them out for Trace. ‘I’ll gather up some firewood,’ he said.
‘It’s all right, I can do it.’ Trace took the matches from him. ‘Thanks.’ They stood looking at each other. She laughed and turned away, making her way back among the trees where the dried flood debris of seasons past garlanded the limbs. He watched her, the colour rising on his neck, then he followed her.
Annabelle observed the two young people gathering firewood together, their graceful forms moving among the drooping foliage of the trees, back and forth between shadows and sunbeams, their voices sudden and brief, a quick uncertain laugh then silence, and she thought how easy it was for them, their existence uncluttered and without ambivalence. Out in the sunlight beyond them, Mathew Hearn’s mare trailed her reins and lipped the sweet green couch grass. At the crack of a stick she raised her head and gazed into the shadows at the young man and the girl, her ears working. They came back with armfuls of kindling and firewood and chose for their hearth a natural hollow in the rock. They crouched together to set their fire, he sitting back on his heels when they had arranged the sticks and watching while Trace bent low and touched the flame to the silky grass heads. Together they watched the curl of blue smoke rise through the sticks and ascend into the trees, the smell of burning gumleaves suddenly in the still air. A yellow flame leaping up through the laid sticks. ‘It’s going!’ Trace exclaimed with delight. ‘I lit it!’ The young man and woman looked at each other and laughed. And in their laughter it seemed to Annabelle it was to be enough for them that they had struck this fire, and for the moment they would ask for no more, but would be content. As if they could believe their actions served some more worthy power than their own desires.
When they looked up together and saw her watching them, she smiled.
‘It’s going,’ Trace said and she turned to the young man. ‘Uncle Bo thinks he’s the only one who knows how to light a fire.’
Mathew Hearn said, ‘Yeah, that’s my dad too.’
Trace and Mathew Hearn had set the billy among the burning sticks some while ago when the young man’s horse whinnied. They all looked up. Bo was picking his way towards them across the rocks, his fishing rod in one hand, the bucket of tackle and bait in the other. He came up and set the rod against a tree and put the bucket down.
Mathew Hearn stood up. ‘G’day Bo. How are you?.’
‘Well, I’m good Mathew. How are you?’
They shook hands, as if they had arranged this meeting here among the trees by the river in order that some formality might be transacted between them.
‘Yeah, I’m pretty good.’ Bo nodded at the fire, ‘I smelled that little fire and reckoned it must be smoko time.’
Annabelle said, ‘Trace lit the fire.’
Bo looked at the fire and then at Trace.
Trace said, ‘Did you catch any fish, Uncle Bo?’
‘Nope. Them fish decided to ignore me.’ He went over and looked into the billy. ‘She’s boiling. Who’s making this tea?’
Trace scrambled up and took the packet of Bushells across and tipped a quantity of tea leaves into the palm of her hand and tossed them into the boiling water.
‘Pick her out!’ Bo instructed sharply. ‘Quick there!’ He reached impatiently and grabbed a stick from their stock of firewood. He slipped the end of the stick into the billy handle and lifted the billy off the fire. ‘Get her off the fire there!’
Trace exchanged a look with Mathew.
Annabelle held out a plastic cup of chilled cola from the coolpot and a thick slice of dark fruitcake. ‘Could you take this to Arner?’
Trace took the things from her and carried them over to Arner. She came back and sat with them.
‘You having tea, Mathew, or would you like a cola with Trace?’
‘I’ll have tea, thank you.’
Bo motioned down the river, ‘Three cows and calves been tracking up the bank down there, Mathew.’ He looked at Mathew. ‘Me and Dougald would have built ourselves a trap yard for them.’
‘They’d be cleanskins, I suppose?’ Mathew asked, deeply interested but uncertain of the way forward with this new knowledge.
‘As clean as God made them. There’s been no one running cattle around here for more than twenty years. They’d be the descendants of them that me and Dougald let slip going through at Mount Cauley that time. Them cows and calves would be whoever’s could put a brand on them now, that’s for sure. I don’t think anyone would be disputing their ownership if someone landed them up in the saleyards in Mackay one of
these days.’ Bo drank his tea and chewed the cake. ‘Getting them there would be kind of interesting though. This is good cake.’
Mathew asked, ‘Where do you think would be a good place for a trap yard, Bo?’
Bo said, ‘No good having a trap yard without a bunch of coachers.’
‘If I trapped them I could drive them up the road to Zigzag.’
‘You let these little ladies out of a yard and you’ll never see them again. The only way for these cows out of a yard is into the back of a stock float and down to the Mackay meatworks the same day. Now I don’t know how you would propose to do that.’ He gestured dismissively in a general way. ‘With this abundance of feed and water they’d be laughing at your trap yard.’
Mathew frowned into the fire.
Bo said, ‘We can take a look down that way later. Have a bit of a poke around and see what’s what. Them cows are sure to have picked out a nice little nursery somewhere to plant their calves during the heat.’ He looked up and smiled at the young man. ‘Just a look, Mathew. For interest. Them calves could be your best bet, if you’re quick enough.’
‘That sounds good.’ Mathew did not know how he might express his gratitude and he stared at Bo a moment then gazed around, looking beyond the trees and out onto the flat where his mare cropped the sweet grass. ‘What a place!’ he said, his hunger and his admiration for this soft country with its spring-fed streams and sweet natural pastureland. ‘Uninhabited?’ It was both a question and a statement of disbelief. He looked from Bo to Annabelle as if this were the greatest mystery to him, that such country could lie fallow of human occupation while he and his father attempted to hammer an existence from the rocks and dry ridges of the escarpment.
‘That’s the way it goes,’ Bo said, matter-of-fact. ‘Them old Birri people was here till the Bigges chased them out. Now the Bigges is gone and there’s nobody. She’s all gonna be drowned soon.’ He rolled a cigarette. ‘That’s the way it goes. Round and round. You gotta be there when it’s your turn.’