Bright Side of my Condition ePub

by Randall, Charlotte

  ‘Thanks, girlie,’ he say before he stride back to work. But he don’t take the long shirt off, and soon I make each of us one of the same excellent design.

  Boots is the next problem. The ones we wear weren’t good to begin with, now they all in varying states of disrepair. Soon we start to argue about distance travelled, because distance travelled equal thickness of leather being wore out.

  ‘Catching fish use up a lot of boot leather,’ Slangam say.

  ‘It’s worst for me,’ say I. ‘I have to go all over searching for firewood.’

  ‘Yer also go off a long time and come back without no wood,’ Toper object.

  It were a mistake for him to speak, because all eyes fly to his boots, boots that do take him to little patches of berries and leafs, true, but also spend a lot of time resting by the fire while he stir a cooking pot. Toper foller our eyes and very slow tuck his feet under his bony arse.

  ‘Yer shud give me your boots,’ I tell him.

  Uproar erupt. Course I knowed it wud, indeed I say it jes for effect, probably his boots don’t even fit me. But the uproar don’t jes come from him, it come in a unison from all. Yer think firewood is what’s most needed here! look at my boots! what a fucken cheek! how do you deserve!

  ‘I once read about some sealers that were marooned on a island,’ Fatty say, ‘and they tied sealskins over their feet for boots.’

  ‘Yer wud be like a monster walking,’ Slangam disdain him, and he jump up and go stomp stomp stomp to show how a man walk when his feet is lumbered with unshaped skins. Toper and I laugh loud and Fatty turn red.

  Slangam sit down and say, ‘To make boots, yer have to cure the skins. Them savages in the icy wastes chew the skins to soften them, then cut and shape them into boots, line em with furs from them white bears.’

  ‘White bears is jes a myth,’ sniff Fatty.

  ‘They aint. I seen that white fur on boots that come into Port Jackson.’

  ‘Well, I aint chewing no sealskin.’

  The same way the one who do the sewing get demote to girl, the one who chew the skin get demote to savage.

  ‘I do it,’ say I. ‘I prefer to be a savage than buck naked and barefeeted.’

  ‘And I catch the white bears,’ Fatty declare.

  ‘No one’s chewing no sealskins,’ Slangam snap. ‘What, yer so worried yer gonna wear out yer boots, yer don’t worry yer wear out yer teeth? Where yer gonna get new teeth from? A walrus?’

  ‘A shark,’ Toper laugh.

  ‘Good,’ Fatty say sour. ‘You catch the shark and take its teeth, I aint helping yer.’

  ‘To make boots,’ Slangam pronounce, drawing himself up, ‘yer have to do more to the skin than jes cut out a boot shape and tie it on. We go hunting don’t we, how can we hunt with bags on our feet?’

  ‘Alright then,’ Fatty say, folding his blubbery arms with sceptikleness, ‘what yer have to do?’

  ‘Curing and tanning and every fucken thing.’

  ‘Every fucken what thing?’

  ‘I teach yers in the morning. It’s complicated and take a long time to teach.’

  The next morning he make us sit on the little beach to be teached. We have to sit in a semicircle like he’s the schoolmaster and we the boys. That don’t happen without a grumble but soon we’re sitting there like we afraid he tan us.

  He pluck up a skin and flourish it. He have ready the trypot at his feet and he drape his skin in it and rub and scrape it.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ Fatty say. ‘There aint nothing in the pot.’

  ‘That’s right, there aint.’

  ‘It all jes for show?’

  ‘No, stupid, we fill the pot when we start.’

  ‘What we fill it with?’ Toper ask.

  ‘For the removing of the fibres on the skins, piss.’

  ‘Eh?’ Toper squawk. ‘Yer gonna put piss in my pot?’

  ‘And for the tanning, dung.’

  Cry Fatty, ‘What dung beasts we got here?’

  Slangam ask unperturbed, ‘Aint you a fucken dung beast?’

  The insult turn out less than the horror, it seem to come into all our minds at once, of Fatty shitting in our pot.

  ‘Well, yer cud use tannin,’ Slangam scorn us. ‘But any of yer seen a oak tree hereabouts?’

  ‘Aint jes oaks what have tannins,’ Fatty object, but Slangam ignore him.

  Slangam say before we do any shitting in the pot, and still I don’t know if he were trying to rile Fatty up, he say we have to soften the skins we spend so long drying.

  So first he put some wood ash and water in the trypot and make us pound and scour the skin for a long time, each man taking his turn, even him. After softening, he say the hair fibres have to come off. He throw out the water and wood ash and say it’s time to fill the trypot with piss. Every time we need to go, we have to do it in the trypot. If he see us sneaking off to the bushes, he come yelling after us. Course I get to take some sneaky pisses when I fetch the wood, but still I have to do my business in the trypot often enough.

  ‘I aint putting my hands in that ale,’ Fatty declare when Slangam deem it full enough.

  ‘Yer want boots, don’t yer?’ Slangam ask.

  Fatty hesitate. He suddenly seen the deal.

  ‘Course if yer have another liquid more suited …’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Lime water?’

  ‘I aint got no fucken lime.’

  Slangam shrug and ask who want to volunteer to go first.

  Rest of us stare at the brimming pot in horror and shrink back.

  ‘Bunch of queans,’ he shout and plunge his arm in up to the elbow. He stir it round and round and pull his arm out dripping. He grab a skin and swirl it, making a most violent tide and froth. He leave it to soften the hairs and Toper complain loud about the dinner.

  After the correct longness of time, a issue that cause Slangam to rant and rave with doubts for several nights, he make us scrape the piss-stinking hide with our sealing knifes. The hairs come off slow but they do come off. I keep to myself the opinion that hairy boots is more warmer. What do I know about why this or that get done?

  When the hair’s all gone, Slangam line us up to talk about dung. We all hunch up unwilling as he speechify. He say dung have to be put in the trypot with water and we have to knead the skin in the vile broth till it go supple.

  ‘I aint sticking my hands in a shit soup,’ Fatty refuse flat.

  ‘What kind of dung?’ Toper ask timid.

  ‘Well, we aint got no dogs, and whalefish don’t shit, or if they do it’s too far out in the deeps for us, so look like it will have to be …’

  We wait in horror while he suspend the last word a long time.

  ‘Birds.’

  ‘What we doing all this for?’ Fatty cry. ‘Yer jes want to torture us?’

  ‘It’s called bating,’ Slangam reply.

  ‘Who care what it’s fucken called? Lot of filthy things got names, it don’t make them less filthy.’

  Slangam fold his muscular arms across his chest, he draw himself up, he expand in heighth and width, he take on a glaring and threatening countenance. He say if everything that rot and putrefy don’t come off the skin, our boots jes fall apart. They let the water in, the rocks cut them to ribbons, they useless as a shallow throat on a choirboy.

  ‘What?’ Toper ask in a startle.

  ‘Can’t sing proper,’ Fatty explain and wink at me.

  ‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with …’

  ‘Shut yer gobs!’ Slangam shout.

  Fatty sit down on a log that the wild sea throw up.

  ‘What yer doing?’ Slangam ask ferocious.

  ‘I aint going on a shit collection. And I aint putting my hands in birdshit, I don’t care what it’s for. If my feet drop off, yer jes have one less to do all the work. Far as I can see that’s the problem of them that need the workers.’

  Oh, cunning monstrous fat man! He know Slangam won’t let him go feetless, he do need th
e workers – it aint a need like food in yer belly, it’s a grip on his brains, a burning brand on his back.

  Me and Toper watch what happen next. A shadder go across Slangam’s face, left to right, it change him from fury to confusion, he seem to grope his way to understanding, go on to a new tactic.

  ‘I heared yer can use eggs,’ he say a bit conciliatory. ‘Or brains.’

  ‘Alright then,’ Fatty say. ‘I’m happy with that.’

  Slangam turn away and I see a little twitchy smile on his lips. It come to me sudden he knowed he had to start with shit to get agreement for eggs and brains.

  Slangam tell me to search for eggs when I fetch the firewood. And out of any small creature that I find dead, to scoop out its brains. I reply I don’t know how to balance brains and eggs atop a pile of wood, he say I learn if I fucken try. It were the savage reply of a man that put himself more high than the rest of us, jes a little bit more high every day, slowly he advance himself from labourer to foreman. The foreman also work but he take the right of giving orders. Toper avert his eyes, he like to have a strong arm near, and Fatty laugh, he think mockery dilute authority, dunno how he come out of Norfolk with that belief, maybe he’s a slow learner. That jes leave me to fight or obey and I do the latter out of laziness. I can’t be bothered with no trouble, and anyway, I want them boots and I don’t know no other way to make the skin able to be wore.

  Everything I find is small. Bird brains and the eggs of small birds.

  ‘That aint enough,’ Slangam say every day I bring home my collection. ‘We have to make a paste that go all over the skin.’

  ‘Well then, why don’t yer go and get some albatross eggs?’

  Slangam puff out his chest. ‘That I might,’ he say proud.

  ‘Yer better watch out,’ Fatty warn him, ‘yer might fall off the cliff.’

  ‘He don’t need to go to a cliff,’ I say. ‘Yair, course there’s plenty there, but our albatrosses also got nests under trees in the Interior. I seen them.’

  ‘Pff,’ Fatty reply.

  ‘They make big nests of soil and roots and leafs,’ I tell Slangam. ‘I seen them on my walks.’

  ‘When do a man afraid of albatrosses inspect nests?’ Fatty disdain me.

  ‘There aint no need to do inspecting. Yer can see them from miles away. The eggs is huge. The Mamas lay jes one, but they look after it proper. They never leave it alone or let it roll. Yer gonna get yer head beat to death if yer try to take it.’

  Slangam puff up more, he aint a weakling like the rest of us, a weakling that get beat up by a bird.

  Next afternoon he put on his sealing cape and take his seal baton and declare he’s off to steal albatross eggs. Toper offer to go with him. Slangam hesitate and then say, yair, I club them fuckers and you can put the eggs in yer little plaited basket.

  I have a pleasant afternoon. I sit by the fire and keep it burning. I stretch and yawn and don’t do no make-work or time filling, don’t make no effort to stop the devil from stealing my idle hands. Not that he try. Fatty come and sit beside the fire and grumble about what time do the cook come home. When I don’t answer he go away again.

  The sky’s already pinked up by the time them nest robbers come home. I expect to see their faces pecked to bleeding or their hair beat off the tops of their heads, but no, they come home jubilant with two huge speckled eggs. Toper’s so pleased he want to make us a omelette straight away and rob more tomorrow, but Slangam say what about them boots, we don’t want to go barefeeted in a blizzard. He heared a man can die from freezed feet. The freeze give him gangrene when it thaw, the gangrene rot his body from the black toes up, the black bits have to be chopped off, soon he jes a armless, legless corpse. After this wise counsel, he take the eggs off to his special store, the place where he put things none of us ever allowed to touch.

  In the night I toss and turn. What if them eggs hatch while we sleep? What if the Mamas come looking for their childs? It bring me out in a sweat to see a Mama standing over me and jutting out her huge beak and flapping her huge wings. Also I worry that stealing them eggs tie us to a debt we have to honour. If the mariner that shoot the albatross get it hanged round his neck and his crew turn to ghosts, at the very least any ship that come to rescue us sink straight to the bottom of the ocean.

  Next morning Slangam mix the eggs into a paste. He grumble and grumble we orta have brains, maybe it don’t work, maybe we waste a skin. He grumble pigeon shit is the best, he seen everywhere the superiorness of pigeon shit, even if we don’t have no pigeons maybe we shud place our bets on the Incognita birds.

  Then he start a rant. Why dint yer, Mister fucken Bloodsworth, find more shit than yer done, what’s the matter with yer, sitting on yer arsehole all day sewing like a girl, too dainty to scrape shit off the rocks are yer, well I show yer what dainty gonna do to yer fucken feet. In the blizzard they gonna turn black and be chopped off, what we gonna do when we can’t hunt, can’t even fetch wood or fresh water, we orta have new boots nearly ready, we orta have feet inspections every chill morning, we orta rub our feet with fish oil, we don’t want them to dry out and split, we aint got bandages, we aint got ointments, and who’s gonna do the chopping off of the feet, we only got a tomahawk, it’s gonna be slow and think of the blood, the victim die for sure, then we’re a man short for the work, maybe the Captain don’t take us, he say what the fuck yer been doing all this time, sitting with yer fingers up yer bumholes, what do God say about talents, yer dint even try, off to the fiery pit yer go, burn for Eternity and it’s all yer own fucken fault.

  This rant’s the most any of us heared Slangam say all in one go. While he do it he smear paste all over the skins with the tomahawk and at the end he drag them away to his lair. The rest of us dint even get our hands dirty and now we separate in confusion, jes wander off wondering how we get so lucky.

  Next day the weather break again. It rain and blow for more’n a week. God knows what happen to the boot skin, I don’t ask, I tire of the whole thing. Soon as the sun break through one morning I rush off for firewood. I watch the penguins for a while, then collect the wood.

  It’s one of them lovely mornings of blue sky and little fat clouds like curds and stillness. It make my heart glad to walk with my muttery mind blanked. It so blanked it don’t think where I walk and before I know it I come out on a cliff of albatross nests. The Mama albatrosses is still on their eggs but some of them huge birds, probably the Papas, is flying along the edge of the cliffs, they glide with their huge wings full outstretched and don’t even flap. Yer wud think they fall straight to the ground but no, they’re sustained in the air by a miracle.

  Course I still hate the fuckers.

  Kinda.

  From here, where I’m still quite aways off, they look like giant seagulls. Who’s scared of a seagull jes because Fatty know a ghostship poem that have a venging albatross in it? Alright then, say I to myself, if yer aint afraid, why yer don’t creep closer? See how close yer get before a large seagull turn into a other thing?

  Not today.

  Today I want to be happy. Some days is like that. Yer wake up and go out and fullness come in yer heart and being happy seem easy, yer jes have to reach out and grab it.

  When I get back, the boot hide is spread flat out on the ground like a accusation. Slangam stand above it staring. I dunno what he think. Maybe he wonder why them boots aint already made their selves.

  ‘We gonna make turn-shoes,’ he announce soon as I throw down my wood.

  ‘What’s a turn-shoe?’

  ‘Yer make it inside out, then turn it so the stitchings is on the inside and yer don’t go rubbing them on the rough ground all the time. It’s the way the poor folk do it.’

  ‘Alright,’ I agree humble. I’m jes glad he done some thinking about it.

  He put his big hairy foot on the skin, take his knife and cut some shapes. Then he show me where to do the stitchings.

  ‘We all going to have the same size?’ I ask careful.

 
‘Course not. These is mine.’

  This dismay me. I were hoping to get some practice before making Slangam’s boots. But I take my awl and plaitings and slink off to do the best I can. In the end they don’t look bad and Slangam is pleased even if he do his best to hide it. He put on his turn-shoes and show them off, he stand this way then that, he stick out each booted foot in turn and regard it a long time.

  Next I make my own. I have a lot of pride in what I do, but when I put them on I learn that what footwear look like aint important as how it work. These ones slip and slide like yer walking on ice and they wear out faster’n kindness.

  It pour for another week. That’s how it is, it never clear up and stay clear. The rain don’t relieve me of my wood collecting, I rush about under what remain of my sealing cape and hood and scarce look up at the grey sky lest its needle rain prick out my eyes. The penguins go on with family life, they don’t need my watching to help them, but back in the hut my mind is all the time fixing on what they doing.

  Toper stay out and cook under the shelter Slangam build. He cook the usual fare, but at the end of the rain week he also dish up some fry seaweed. We all stare in silence like he serve us a dead dog.

  ‘What’s this shit?’ Slangam ask after a while.

  ‘Japonese food.’

  ‘Well it aint fucken food to me.’

  ‘What do you know about the Japon isles?’ Gargantua start on at Toper.

  ‘I know they eat seaweed.’

  ‘Yair,’ say Slangam, sounding even more angry than he do when we’re slacking, ‘that’s why their eyes is funny.’

  ‘They have sages that live a long, long time,’ Toper argue.

  I look down at my little plaited plate. The seaweed look jes like what it is. ‘I’ll eat some. I wud like to live long enough to see faces other than yers.’

  ‘Charmed,’ Gargantua say sour.

  ‘I know yer aint charmed by me, Flonker. But what do I care? I don’t. Not a fucken jot.’

  ‘Flonker?’ He go bright red and wet-looking like a Turkish bath attack him.

  I take a bite of the salty rubbery fry and have a hard time not to spit it in the fire. I dunno, maybe Japonese seaweed aint the same as what float in the southern ocean. But I aint got no strong objection to this penguin diet long as it don’t make me spew. What I do love though is how the new name I come up with for Fatty so much discompose him.