by Paul Howarth
Steadily the riders closed. Two men: one white, one black, both dressed neatly in trousers and shirts. The white man was waving, swinging his hand wildly in the air.
“Look at this fucking fruitcake,” Sullivan muttered. “Who does he think he is?”
Noone motioned for quiet, walked his horse a few paces ahead. He leaned forward in his saddle and waited for the men trotting merrily on.
“Hello, neighbors! Hello there!”
He spoke with a plum English accent, no slippage, no slurs. He dismounted and led his horse by the reins; Noone remained in the saddle, peering down. The man was slight, auburn-haired, the hair combed primly to the side; his freckled face had burned until it peeled. He grinned stupidly at Noone, like the two of them were old friends. But the closer he came, the more his eyes roamed the assembled company of men, a wild and hellish mob, filthy and part-clothed, armed with all manner of things, an easy malevolence in their stares, and by the time he reached Noone he wasn’t grinning anymore.
His accomplice followed closely behind, sense at least to stay on his horse.
“Good day to you, gentlemen,” the white man said, shielding his eyes from the sun.
Noone nodded at him. “Good day.”
“It’s so unusual to encounter anyone out here . . . we thought perhaps you might be lost, or that we might be able to assist in some small way.”
Noone glanced over his shoulder. “Do we look like we need your assistance?”
“Well, no, I don’t suppose you do,” the man said, chuckling. “But you can’t blame me for trying. Better to be the Samaritan than the Levite or the Priest.”
“Ah, a missionary,” Noone said. “A man of God.”
He nodded proudly. “Yes, sir, I am. Reverend Francis Bean, pleased to make your acquaintance.” There was a silence. The reverend asked, “And your name, sir?”
“Noone.”
“You are . . . explorers? Surveyors of some kind?”
“What brings you out this way, Reverend?”
He waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, we have been traveling a long, long time. Doing God’s work. Spreading His word amongst the people of this land.”
“And how goes it? Are they converted?”
The reverend laughed. “If only it were so simple. It will take many years.”
“Long is the way, and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”
“Yes, quite. Milton. Not that I’d call this Hell exactly but—”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Noone interrupted. “Perhaps you just haven’t been here long enough. But your boy there looks a convert. You’ve enchanted him, I see.”
“This is Matthew, my loyal friend. Might I inquire as to your associates, sir?”
Noone stared at him for a very long time. “Tell me something, Reverend, when was the last congregation you held?”
“I wouldn’t presume to call anything I’ve ministered a congregation, but—”
“Sermon, then. When was the last time you preached?”
“Recently, I suppose . . . but, why do you ask?”
“Well, you see, I’m wondering whether you’ve visited a native camp hereabouts. In the last day or two, let’s say.”
“Why would you be wondering that?”
“Because I too have work to attend to. You might even call it the work of God.”
The reverend shook back his shoulders, bristled. “I can guess the kind of work you do, Mr. Noone, and it is certainly not the work of God.”
“Allow me to enlighten you. Behind me here you’ll see two white boys. They are orphans, their parents have been brutally killed. Murdered by the natives once in their employ, and aided by members of the Kurrong tribe. God’s first law, broken. So now we are charged with bringing those responsible to justice, charged to do so by the Crown, by the authority of Queen Victoria herself, the head of the church in this land. If that is not God’s work, Reverend, then I don’t know what is.”
The reverend stood stiff-backed and square, the fire of righteousness still in his eyes.
“I doubt His justice is the same as yours. You are Native Police, then. What is your business with the girl?”
“Tragically lost and abandoned after the dust storm. We are caring for her, until we are able to return her to her people, assuming we can find them, that is. She is also Kurrong, and unfortunately they have a somewhat nomadic urge. Will you not help her, Reverend? Allow the poor girl to go home?”
“I’d be more than happy to take her myself. Lighten your load.”
“But you’re headed east, are you not?”
The reverend brushed back his hair with his hand. “It’s true, we’re in need of supplies, but we’ve enough to provide for the girl.”
“As do we. And we are headed west.”
“Yes, well . . .”
Noone squinted off into the scrubs. “The camp, please, Reverend Bean.”
“It’s not that I doubt you personally, you understand, but the reputation of the Native Police rather precedes you. The stories I’ve heard . . .”
“Are probably all true. I have asked nicely. There are other ways I could ask.”
The reverend’s accomplice slid his hand toward his saddle pack. Jarrah raised his rifle and pointed it at the man. The hand slid back onto his lap.
“We’re expected in Mulumba two days from now. Questions will be asked.”
“Of course they will. But what are the answers? Anything can happen out here, many a man has simply”—Noone twirled his fingers—“disappeared.”
The reverend glanced back at Matthew, worried his reins with his thumb.
“You know, I have my own copy of the Bible,” Noone said. He pulled the slim and ragged book from his pack and flapped it in the air. “I make a point of reading it every single day. Truly. All the stories and parables on how we should live—do you follow that advice, Reverend? Do you listen to what it says?”
“I . . . I do my best, yes.”
“The people in those stories, they always seem to be traveling. As you are. As are we. Then they come to a crossroads, a juncture, perhaps an unexpected meeting such as this, which will prove to be a defining moment in their lives. I believe that every man has these moments, whether he wishes for them or not. Do you believe in such things, Reverend Bean?”
“I believe that we are tested, and that we must—”
“So now I’m going to tell you a story. You might not have heard this particular story before, so I’d suggest you listen well. It concerns a holy man, much like yourself, who traveled all around the world telling people to follow God, telling them how good and benevolent God was, and how when they met Him, provided they had lived a noble and Christian life, He would bestow His virtue upon them.
“The holy man had no evidence for this. He had faith and that was all. Enough, he thought. God would protect and guide him. So he preached this same message to others: faith will see you through. One day the holy man found himself in the desert, in a cruel and dangerous land, only his boy with him; they were very much alone. They believed themselves shielded by God since they were doing God’s good work, but then lo! a stranger appeared before them on the plain. They talked, and as they talked the holy man judged the stranger and found him lacking in the eyes of the Lord. He held that he was dishonest, that he was evil, that Satan guided his hand. He was correct in this judgment, but also foolish. He underestimated the stranger. He disrespected him. With God at his side he believed himself immune to Satan’s reach. He was not immune. The stranger cut out his tongue. He removed his eyes and ears and stripped his clothing and sent him wandering naked across the land.
“Oh, and he killed the boy, also. Left his body for the dogs.
“So now the holy man wandered blindly through the desert, and as he wandered he prayed and prayed but God did not come. God did not listen. God did not help. After many days and nights the man was in such torment that he abandoned his faith and begged Satan for mercy, but Satan has no mercy; he shou
ld have known better than to ask. Eventually, the holy man reached a town where the people gave him shelter but Satan visited him in that town and every other place he went. He hunted him for eternity, wouldn’t let him rest, while God . . . God was never there. The stranger learned of the man’s family, whether in this land or over the seas, and he visited them also. His wife, his children, his parents who were very old.
“When finally the man died he hoped for salvation but he found that there was none. There was only the agony of death. He looked back on that meeting with the stranger and wished that he had understood. When the truth of it was, he had understood. He had understood all too well. But he’d believed himself higher than the stranger. He’d been arrogant enough to think that the words of a parchment best suited to wiping one’s hole could protect him on this earth, an arrogance which led him to question the stranger, to preach to him, to imply certain things about his character, leading the stranger to consider the holy man untrustworthy, to consider that perhaps he might speak ill of the stranger, to talk of their meeting with others; to conclude that the two of them were not friends.
“And although it was bad luck for the holy man that the stranger stood at Satan’s side, that is surely the chance you take, Reverend, is it not, when you decide to make an enemy of anyone you meet upon the empty Queensland plain?”
A long silence followed. Beneath his sunburn, the reverend had turned pale. He looked ready to vomit. His thumb stroked the leather rein, back and forth, back and forth again. The light wind ruffled his yellow hair and the shadows of the clouds slipped and swirled around him on the rutted ground.
“Quite a story, isn’t it?” Noone said.
The reverend answered breathlessly: “Yes, it is.”
“Might just be the most important story you’ve ever heard in your life.”
The reverend nodded.
“I like stories like that. Where the message is nice and clear.”
“Very clear.”
“Will you heed it, I wonder?”
“Yes, sir. Yes, I will. But, in all good conscience, I cannot tell you the location of the Kurrong if you mean to treat them ill.”
Noone smiled. “That’s alright, Reverend, you just have. On your way now.”
The reverend stood there blinking, his mouth hanging open. Noone motioned for him to remount his horse and he did so, though it took him three attempts to climb on. He looked from Noone to the others, surveyed the gathered men.
Noone inclined his head. “Safe journey. Godspeed.”
The reverend gave a mumbled reply, they walked their horses on, and all heads turned as they went by, the two groups watching each other like deckhands on ships that unexpectedly cross. Then the missionaries kicked their horses and were gone, and the party sat watching the dust trail floating on the breeze.
“You don’t think we should have done them?” Sullivan asked.
“It would have brought us no benefit if we had.”
“Shut the buggers up at least.”
“They won’t talk. I know a man when I see one and that was not a man.”
“You seen his face?” Locke said, laughing. “Looked like he’d shat himself!”
“How do you figure he gave up the Kurrong, though?” Sullivan asked, and Noone pointed to where the reverend had been standing with his horse, then trailed his finger toward the horizon in the west.
“He’d had contact with them only recently, perhaps as recently as yesterday. We follow these tracks, we’ll come up with them soon enough. The stupid bastard didn’t know what he was saying.” Noone grinned wickedly. “By God’s good grace we’ll be on them by nightfall.”
24
The tracks led clear as a bridleway through the dusty scrub, and they followed at a canter until the horses tired. The heat was searing, the air stifling and close, though at least now there was some cloud cover, the first clouds Tommy had seen since they left. Smell of lightning still, he thought. The charge of it, the spark. Might have struck the earth nearby. Or was the smell his own, maybe? A trace from the gunshot he had fired? He sniffed at his shirt, his fingertips, smelled sweat and wood smoke and something burning; he wiped his hands clean on his thighs. Did those new cartridge revolvers even leave a stain? Did a killing? Would he be smelling that gunshot for the rest of his days?
Kala sat quietly behind him. Bouncing lightly with each stride. With his head half-turned Tommy could glimpse her, and if he pretended to watch the ground he could see her feet. Sometimes she touched between his shoulder blades for balance, steadying herself with her still-bound hands, or even fell against him, her chest against his back, and he would brace himself in the saddle to support her flimsy weight, until she moved away again. He would have liked for her to stay there, to press herself into him, rest her head and sleep if she was tired. She never did. The briefest touch between them, and she was gone.
“I’m sorry about your . . . what was he anyway? Your brother? Friend?”
Of course she didn’t answer. Might not have understood, or even heard. Tommy spoke quietly so the others couldn’t listen, his voice vibrating inside him; he imagined she could feel it too.
“I didn’t even want to come out here. This was all Billy, Sullivan, Noone. They say we’re after Joseph, but I don’t see how he could have made it all this way on foot. Daddy wouldn’t lend him a horse. We found these two blacks—men—in this tree by our creek, and Joseph was Kurrong, same as you. He wanted to bring them back to your land, must have dragged them, I reckon, since he didn’t have nothing else.”
He felt her touch him. No more than a tap. He turned. Kala eyed him warily, leaning away with her head angled to the side. She signaled for water. Tommy went scrambling for his flask. He pulled out the stopper, gave it to her, watched her put the bottle to her lips and her long neck contract. He faced forward again. Listening to her drinking, a faint gasp after the final sip. She handed back the flask and their fingers lightly brushed, and Tommy made a point of taking a drink of his own, deliberately placing his lips where hers had just been.
On they rode. Nothing more from Kala and nothing more he could think to say, his thoughts instead spiraling back through the hours and replaying the dull thump of the round slamming into her kinsman’s chest, the way his body had twitched and then fallen still, the silence in camp, the smile on Noone’s face, the whispered truth he’d offered about who Father had really been.
Efficient, he had called him. Claimed they used to hunt blacks for pay.
Father hadn’t spoken much about his time at Broken Ridge. Hadn’t spoken much about anything, in truth. He was a man of silences and of secrets: if he had something to tell you he would say it, but idle gossip and chatter only got in the way of work. He worked, he ate, he slept: there had been no more to him as far as Tommy was concerned. The broodiness, the impatience, the outbursts of emotion when he’d embrace one of them so hard they couldn’t breathe . . . all these things he took at face value, hadn’t ever questioned what was happening underneath. The same could be said for Mother, Tommy supposed. He had not considered either of his parents people in their own right; or rather, he had not thought it possible there could be anything more to them than what he already knew.
Certainly Father didn’t like talking about the natives—said the violence against them was not his concern—but he wouldn’t let his white stockmen mistreat black workers in the same way Sullivan did. Tommy had never seen Father beat them or whip them or call them nigger or such things, and though Billy reckoned him soft, Tommy had always put it down to Arthur, a closeness between them going back years. But what if Noone was right? What if he was actually trying to atone for what he’d done at Broken Ridge? And, worse still, how would Tommy ever know?
He was remembering things now. Arguments Father had had with his men, warnings he’d given them. He had warned his family too, warned the children not to listen to the stories they might hear, about fighting and cruelty on both sides, blacks being shot, whites being speared. At one
time hadn’t Father even allowed wild natives to cross over his land, to camp in his scrubs, and then . . . and then Sullivan had come down to the house one day and there’d been a big blowup, Sullivan telling Father to end it or he would, and Father trying to stand his ground but there’d seemed no ground on which he could stand. The men had all been watching, out in the yard, and when Sullivan was gone and Father had marched back into the house, Tommy had heard them mutter and scoff. He couldn’t have been much older than eight. He’d not connected it before now, but that was the night Father had burned the toy wooden horse Sullivan had given him years before.
Tommy watched the column snaking on ahead, following the reverend’s tracks. A feral band of men, and Billy as wild as any of them, his shirt flapping open and his hat tilted back and his hand resting on the revolver at his side. Tommy didn’t know him, not after last night, not after what he’d done. And this morning, shooting that native . . . his mind wasn’t his own anymore, he’d been twisted, twisted by Sullivan and Noone.
Noone—Tommy watched him at the front of the line, shoulders back, paling-straight in the saddle, not even so much as a twitch. While the others fidgeted and drank and spat and smoked, Noone simply rode, studying the horizon with those eyes Tommy had seen chalk-white in the darkness, as his hand crept over Kala’s skin.
Tommy winced at the thought of it, set his jaw, nudged Beau forward along the line. As he passed, Billy asked him, “What you doing?” but Tommy didn’t look across, then kept his head down as Sullivan shouted, “Watch out, fellas, here he comes! Tommy the nigger hunter and his pickaninny bride!”
He passed by the troopers. Felt them stare at him one by one. He glanced only at Rabbit, exchanged a brief nod, the beginnings of a smile on the young trooper’s face before Tommy looked away. He was always bloody smiling. Couldn’t be happier, it seemed. Like this was all good fun to him, one big bloody game.