by Rod Moss
I sat between David and Eric. The church was full except the seat in front of us under which two dogs lay. Small kids ran amok during the ‘Our Fathers’. Petrina Johnson threw herself on the coffin and Paul ‘Pinkie’ Hayes, who arrived mid-service, quite dramatically laid flowers on it and burst into tears. As he was about to sit, he glanced at Bernard, who moved to join his weeping. On Bernard’s right shoulder, Kemarre wept continuously. David cried against me. When we moved apart I could feel his tears cooling on my shirt. We sang solemn hymns, though ‘Amazing Grace’ was the only familiar tune. This lustreless singing was sustained by the scant missionary voices.
The biblical language flew past me. It was difficult to get used to how much the funeral procedures had been given over to the Brothers. I regarded it as too definitive a moment to have its Aboriginal core removed. It seemed impersonal, indifferent. This individual’s life collared by Catholic gloss. Was this our Gregory, still here, inside the box? The tone and choice of words couldn’t reach into his life.
Outside, I assisted the blind and infirm into the Toyota and joined the procession to the edge of the township. The chain of cars and community buses cruised slowly to the cemetery set on the plain at the base of Santa Teresa. The dogs, sensing the moment, stood in an honorary guard either side of the bitumen strip and howled at the congestion of passing traffic. A terrible whine raised above them, which drew my eyes to the last house on the street. It was a dog, stretching on the verandah, though it sounded human. Save for a tuft of fur running the length of its spine, it was livid pink. Even its tail was hairless.
We waited by the cemetery gates for the coffin to be placed beside the grave. Then weeping again, of even greater magnitude. We all threw handfuls of dirt on the coffin as it was lowered. As I returned the old ones to their homes, we passed the grader, humming away at a respectful half kilometre, waiting for us to finish before filling the grave.
Gregory had died amid alien chattels without a single loved image his eye might caress. Even his nickname would follow him to the grave. Arranye, following kwementyaye/custom, now referred to his eyeglasses as his ‘look looks’. Any paintings featuring Gregory would now have to be taken from public display. The one at Centrelink would have a template cut to silhouette his face. The photo was returned to the bookshelf face down.
THE NEXT SATURDAY I WENT to Whitegate to sit with the old man and see how he was coping with the loss of yet another brother. Xavier joined me at Arranye’s fire and told me Petrina had run off with his bank book. He gave me time to absorb this news and then asked for ten dollars. I offered five.
‘Elaine’s going to England,’ I explained to him. ‘I’ve hardly got any cash. Apwerte arrangkwe.’
‘Petrina goin’ to Hong Kong,’ he said.
This outrageous notion cracked me up. As quickly as Xavier created tensions, he could dispel them.
Elaine’s trip to England, via South Africa, was without the kids. In Cape Town she intended to look up Ruben. He’d returned to South Africa after his marriage and business had failed. Elaine was keeping me on hold while she tested the possibility of the other relationship, now that he was no longer wedded. I kept hoping, blindly, that our family unit would endure her deviation.
Eight weeks later Elaine returned high from her travels, but reticent with me. Though hurt that Ruben wanted nothing to do with her, she’d met a teacher at a Steiner school conference a day after arriving in Cape Town. So, within hours of arriving home she said she was going to Sydney to spend a fortnight with Bernard, her new South African friend. Which she did, again leaving the kids in my care. Before she left, she made a heartfelt pledge that there was nothing between them, and that she was intent on showing him around the east coast. Apparently he wanted to investigate how Steiner schools operated in Australia.
She returned from Sydney accompanied by Bernard. He came to enquire about employment with the fledgling Steiner school in Alice Springs. Soon after he returned to South Africa, she announced that they were deeply involved with each other, and that his anticipated return and Steiner employment signalled a light for her and more attuned relating. A few days later she moved out to a house half a kilometre around the block. Ronja’s small voice was on the phone. She asked if she could come over.
The pain of even having to ask.
The faces we kiss, the hands we hold, the debris of our lives.
Arranye gave me a rock from his place at Ruby Gap to console me.
‘It be have lotta Dreamin’ I wish be show you. Country make it you strong, my son.’
He cupped his hands to make a mini Larapinta Valley, proffering them as a chalice.
‘ Mpwarntwe [country around Alice Springs] like this. It welcome you. It holdin’ you. You fall. Not far to fall, my son. Same for marle akweke [Ronja] and urreye akweke [Raffi]. It be give it both hands.’
If the country was a safety net for me, it was also there for Raffi, who had just turned four, and for Ronja, now seven. The metronomic mornings, with their regular beat of birdcalls and barking. How I revelled, at least, in my children’s breaths during the amber dawn. They lay beside me half the week to watch these dawns. Raffi was invariably first to slink in beneath my doona. Ronja kept her swag outside. She moved underneath her favourite tree. We lit breakfast fires for our jaffles.
I had tears in my eyes, glazed and heavy all day, as I signed the property split. The lava of the business. We didn’t sort out the contents. Elaine seemed well prepared to take what she wanted and I didn’t contest as the stuff seemed dead. The family home seemed weirdly vacant, irrelevant. I felt desolate and dazed. Elaine convinced me to sign documentation giving her full custody of the kids, stating that it was needed to give her the financial security of the sole parenting pension. She assured me that it was only on paper and that we would continue to share them half and half.
One night I dreamt that Elaine had removed the flower box from the kitchen window. I couldn’t believe she also wanted to claim this box. Then a bird’s shadow appeared. I recognised her presence in the shadow. The bird appeared, squatting on the box. Its wings were lined with the libretto of a comic opera. I placed the bird on my wrist and watched it take off. As it beat its wings ever faster, a shrill soprano sang in time and more sadly. I woke with tears in my eyes and laughed at my absurdity. Outside it was raining after a long dry spell.
Within the week the valley was deep in acacia blossom, long cadmium skeins covering the black scabby trunks. The borers loved it. After brief residencies, polyps of sap festered and boiled down their limbs. Babblers scratched the bark litter, gossiping incessantly. The regenerative energy was all out there. Internally, I was mute.
I WORRIED ABOUT JAMESY JOHNSON’S increasing emaciation. He had been a strapping guy in his mid-twenties when we met. Now in his early thirties, his knees were locked in pain and he could hardly walk. He looked worse than his father, Joseph, had before he died. I took him to Aboriginal Congress Health where he was referred to hospital. But he never showed much interest in himself. David repeated that there was nothing that could be done. Jamesy had been cursed through song for his irresponsibility in the fatal car crash. No one could see the point of getting Jamesy to Congress, the hospital or any form of healing. He was in a one-way street as far as the Johnsons and Hayes were concerned.
Meanwhile, Arranye needed a new walking stick. Someone had fallen on it during a fight and broken it. I said I would get one from the pharmacy. As I was going to town, David asked for a lift. First, he reminded me that I wanted to see a bowerbird’s set-up. I had been asking for months if he’d seen one. He guided me to a valley, heavily thicketed in ti-tree near Emily Gap, where he’d seen a bower while tracking Peter the previous day.
‘That a proper clever bird make it all that set-up for wife,’ said David. ‘He can make it any song. Cat. Or dog. Same bird.’
The bonking shack was empty, but at the U-shaped mouth of
the bower, at both ends, were spectacular assortments of green glass and plastic ring tops from cans, green bush tomatoes and bush bananas. The collector sat a few trees away, irritating the air with complaints. I donated an old green key ring for his turn out and wished him luck.
I returned with Ronja after a few weeks and rejoiced to see the male in full courtship. He screeched his song and bobbed from end to end of his bower. He had engaged a female’s interest by producing one of his bottle tops and bleached bones. Another male arrived and tried to rowdily usurp the owner by stealing some of the chattels and tugging at the bower. He was chased off. After his triumph the male’s lilac comb flashed across his scalp. He presented the female with a feather from his beak and escorted her to a nearby fig tree to mate.
JUST AS THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS LOOMED, Elaine’s money from the property settlement came through and she decided to put half the continent between the kids and me. She had promised not to leave the Territory until the kids were much older and had adjusted to the family split. The South African beau had been dumped in favour of the new guy sharing her rented property. She decided to roam the eastern seaboard with him and the kids until they found a place to settle. I was angry and terrified about being estranged from my kids. I had built my life around being there for them and revelled in their sensuality.
Soon after I had to run Arranye from Whitegate back to where he was now camping at Charles Creek. The news of my separation from the kids was met with much support and concern. As I was about to leave, David came to the car door and leant on it. He told me he loved me, and cradled my head into his shoulder. He wept for Raffi and Ronja.
‘Too hard,’ David said. ‘ Marle and kwemen agwerke too far away from their country.’
After buying a caravan and driving up the eastern seaboard from Melbourne to Brisbane, Elaine and her new partner decided to settle in Bega, on the southern New South Wales coast. But Raffi’s objection to Elaine’s new partner and the unstable accommodation of beachside caravan parks manifested in his ruckus behaviour and caused Elaine to rethink her plans. When the kids flew home at Easter, Raffi stayed on with me. I rejoiced.
ARRANYE WHISPERED TO ME ONE DAY that Peter had still not returned from one of his nightly rambles. He was worried for him. Myra added that neither Big Rosey Johnson nor David looked out for their brother properly. Weeks passed. The police got my name and address from the families and dropped by to get photographs that would be useful for identifying Peter at Port Augusta, Mt Isa and the Pitjantjatjara homelands. There were relatives in all these places. But Jude said a woman in Tennant Creek definitely had seen Peter.
‘Have you heard anything about Peter?’ I asked David.
‘Only dingo and eagle know him now. His guts all rip open, I reckon.’
I picked up Raffi from school and we went to Charles Creek camp to see how Arranye had re-settled. David had said ‘my father’ had been calling for me. Someone’s foot had crushed his latest dentures. He kept them wrapped in toilet paper in the pocket of his jacket, which often lay on the ground by his mattress. Arranye produced the tissue with the two plastic fragments. I thought of superglue and home repairs. I thought of the number of trips and weeks involved. I drew breath and said we’d get another set. Without teeth, he was living on mashed potatoes and Weet-Bix.
To complicate matters, Arranye had recently received a massive government questionnaire on the euthanasia debate, fifteen big questions about death. He dug around his little army bag for the A4 manila envelope.
‘What all this government book? Better read it me, my son,’ he insisted.
His boldly typed name solicited attention. I guessed the sample was randomly chosen from the electoral roll. If he were known to be Aboriginal, surely an interpreter service would have been made available. How else could an accurate assessment of Aboriginal responses to the proposal that euthanasia be made legal prevail?
‘What all this mean? I don’t want to be die in hospital. Old people just walk away with family. Then stay behind tree. Might be they sing themself with Dreamin’ an’ die by tree. Family come back an’ bury. Or maybe like Tennant Creek mob. Put ’em in tree. Hey, what you think, that one?’
‘I don’t think I’d like to be stuck in a tree, Arranye. I’d rather worms eat me than eagles.’
‘Might be frighten people, you think?’ he smiled. ‘My son, I don’t want to die in hospital from man in white coat. That not proper way. That’s the one make me frighten.’
David stood nearby on the verandah, listening to our conversation.
‘You believe it, Jesus, young fella?’
‘I believe he existed,’ I started to struggle. ‘But I’m not a churchman. I never put faith in Jesus. All the dying in camps, who’s that for? Do you think Jesus or God cares or helps us?’ David looked abstractly over my shoulder.
‘What about reincarnation?’ I asked. ‘Do you believe in that, David? Like Jesus was resurrected after he died on the Cross, do you think you might get another chance at life?’
‘No. We just be like dirt in the ground. Until the end of the world. Then we come back.’
‘When’s that likely?’ I queried.
‘Anytime. Could be today. Could be twenty year. Or one million. But you know one thing like the Last Supper. I can eat with you at your place, anytime. You know, Last Supper mean sharing it no worries. I can’t eat it any place, like with rich people. Rich people be hunt it away poor man like me.’
Norleen cut into our conversation. ‘Jesus is all bullshit, I reckon. All that miracle he been do. Like walk on water. You think he did that?’
‘Maybe he was standing on a claypan, Norleen,’ I answered. ‘Or maybe the Bible story isn’t meant like he actually walked on water, but that Jesus was talking in riddles about something else.’
I wasn’t sure where all this was going and was pleased when Arranye suggested we head to the clinic. Once more we started the rounds.
After our last appointment, Arranye wrapped his ‘meat machine’ in his hanky and shuffled along the corridors and through the ‘magic’ sliding doors. I steadied him by the elbow until we reached the car. We drove to Tangentyere for what he called his ‘tucker line’ cash. Having stocked up on bread, meat and powdered milk, we drove back to Charles Creek.
‘My son, you got trailer?’ he asked.
I left him sitting at Charles Creek and drove up Undoolya Road to collect some branches from the plains. I stopped by a pile of mulga and ironwood. A perentie slunk on a log. I picked up a stick and hit nearby logs to caution it. It didn’t move an inch, assured of its camouflage. Only the flicking, cream tail tip gave it away. I thought of pleasing the old man and took aim, one thwack across its neck and blood trickled from its nostrils and mouth. I ducked in home and grabbed some basil and sage.
‘That make me very happy, my son. You’re a good boy. Can’t kill this one when rain be comin’. He be sing for rain on log, looking ready to jump in sky. Help make it. If you kill him when he singin’, lightning might be come an’ finish you, my son.’
Lucky there were no clouds this day.
Old Magdaline called me to her blanket where she sat with the other old blind women.
‘Grandson, Peter Yungi Johnson been too long gone. Go police station, ask it, for my son. I been worry too much that one.’
A copy of my photo of Peter, enlarged, blurred and bleached of colour, was displayed with five other missing persons on the wall beside the information desk. The officer on duty said nothing had turned up on him. No news was bad news, for Magdaline. Peter’s grin under furrowed brows was the last image I had of him.
David heard a few months later that a body had been found up near the ‘sixteen mile’ under a tree. The news-bearer reckoned it was Peter. The description of the clothes sounded like his. There was a full bottle of cordial by the corpse. I offered to drive David to check out the body. He declined.
Though it rankled him, he wouldn’t go to the police. I heard no more about it.
WE PLANNED A LITTLE PARTY at home when Arranye finally got his new ‘eating machine’. He got spruced up for the occasion and tested the new dentures on another round of lamb chops on the front verandah. He joked with Raffi, asking if he could recognise him with his re-formed jaw.
I asked him if he had any ideas about how long the Arrernte had been in Central Australia. I’d recently heard that the Arrernte might have been later arrivals than the other language groups, a paltry ten thousand years ago. He had no numeral to put to the question, only the expression ‘olden times’. This covered the era before whitefellas, the time of his great grandfather, and before people existed. He stated that until the crater at Gosse Bluff was formed, all Aboriginal people spoke one language.
‘Then crater split it up. People go every way. Then all them mobs come back. Build up sides of that place with different lingos.’
ON 2 MARCH 1996, FEDERAL ELECTION DAY, after dropping Raffi off at his buddy’s place, I went with Arranye to the polling booth. He was always keen to vote at elections and didn’t want to be passive in whitefella business. Like many elections before, he asked me to help him identify his name on the electoral roll and to fill in his form. The difficulties presented for illiterate Aboriginal voters seemed wilfully obstructive. Entitlement to assistance is part of the democratic process. He was about to scrawl his usual shaky ‘X’ when a scrutineer rushed us and ordered me out of the building. I protested about Arranye’s blindness and illiteracy as I was escorted through the doors. It was all to no avail. Arranye, a staunch Labor voter, cast his paper into the ballot box, though there was no knowing if it was valid.
We left the voting booth, got some carrot cake from the cake stall and returned home for a cup of tea. A bowerbird was stirring up other birds and mimicking them. Its energetic behaviour thrilled me.