Cicada Read online

  ‘Worla country, Walangkernany place.’ She waved her hand across the surface of the water.

  ‘Oh, that snake story. What does walanga . . .?

  ‘Walangkernany, he make ’em trees, water, jiyilem and ngalingalim, dem mans and womans. All ’em. He make ’em country. He ngarrangkarni.’

  Wirritjil piled the lily stems and tubers into her laanturrji.

  ‘Ngarran . . . is that your God?’ Emily kicked the water, making a small splash, and stopped abruptly, remembering the Walangkernany. She pulled herself out of the water and sat by Wirritjil. ‘Will that big snake hurt me?’

  Wirritjil shook her head.

  ‘You kardiya.’ She pointed to the large tuber root of the lily. ‘Tangarriny dis wununguny.’ She held up a smaller tuber.

  Emily didn’t notice. ‘I don’t understand your heaven, your snake.’

  Wirritjil plucked the flowers from the heads of the lilies and placed them so they floated.

  ‘Karrjam,’ she said.

  Emily swished her hand in the water and the flowers drifted towards the far edge of the pool in a garland of layered white petals.

  ‘Father gave William a silver pistol. He said keep your eye on the snake’s eyes. The snake won’t move while you are staring at him, when you are ready shoot him right between the eyes. Imagine that, shooting snakes with a little shiny pistol. Would the Walangkernany die if you shot him?’

  Wirritjil furrowed her brow trying to work out the question.

  ‘Can the Walangkernany die?’

  Wirritjil shook her head.

  Emily dolloped mud on to her leg and watched it slide down her skin that was now a tan colour. ‘Our God cannot die. He is like the sky. He made the sky. He has no shape but he sent down Jesus in the form of a man. They are spirits really, God the all-powerful, Jesus and the Holy Ghost. My sister Kathryn believes God is truly everywhere, you can know God, but you can’t know the Holy Ghost unless you reach eternity. Which is in heaven, I think. Hard to believe but most of England does.’

  Emily laughed at Wirritjil’s puzzled face. ‘God is the big, big spirit that made me,’ she added. ‘And you.’

  Wirritjil sat patiently. She liked all the words running together smoothly and Emily’s face lively and smiling.

  ‘Kathryn believed God would help William and me be strong in this country. Of that she was sure. She was not fond of William really. My mother adored him, said she adored him.’

  Emily’s voice trailed off. She took a breath and began again. ‘My mother didn’t come to the marriage ceremony. She was too busy in Vienna. She is a concert violinist, one of the best. It was a special concert for the soldiers. The end of the war. The Great War. Have you heard of that, the Great War? My father surprised William at the wedding by announcing that as well as Cicada Springs station he was giving William the Lidscombe name. The Lidscombe name and the silver pistol.’

  Wirritjil stood with her laanturrji full of lily bulbs on her hip.

  Emily looked up at her. ‘He didn’t want the name.’

  Wirritjil waited until Emily didn’t speak anymore then she walked away to the camp near the big mernda. Her walk was measured and her hips swung as though she was in a slow dance. Emily saw her pause and put the laanturrji on one hip and the other hand on the hollow of her back as if she had an ache.

  Emily thought of what she really wanted to tell Wirritjil. So much, but she could not talk of Jurulu to Wirritjil. That was Law, she knew. She could not tell her, she could not tell Kathryn, or her father, how she had touched him as the whistling kite flew across the blue crescent moon, just before the dawn. She could not tell them how she put her cheek against his back and ran her hand down the firmness of the muscles of his arms to entwine her fingers with his, how she felt like they knew one another—more than that: as if they were one another.

  The sky above Cicada Springs went from a brazen midday blue to the purple of thunder clouds in the late afternoon. In the evening, the parting sun shot the clouds through with gold and red and they were wispy and torn when the stars appeared.

  William left the veranda and searched the kitchen for food. Flies sipped on juice that seeped from a heap of empty tins, debris and animal bones pushed into one corner. William put the few remaining full cans on the kitchen table. He felt the layer of grime on his face and the looseness of his belt and trousers. He had been neglecting himself, chasing the slightest raise of dust in the sky with his eyes, his heart beating fast, wanting to run to it even as it died back to the earth.

  He walked to the shed, found a shovel, dug a hole near the house and threw the cans in. Phlegm tickled in his chest as he worked but he refused to cough. A crow sat on the branch of the nearby tree cawing in harsh phrases. He had no energy to hate it.

  He washed himself in the creek and at the house dressed in a clean white cotton shirt and brown moleskins. He shaved his beard, pulled his hair up into a ponytail and cut the ponytail off. His hair swung in thin blond locks just below his ears. He sat for a few hours on the Prussian blue sofa underneath the fading painting of the vase of meadow flowers. He thought of all the poets he had read, the chop-chop canter of Chaucer’s rhyme, the melodic stargaze of John Donne and the swaying passions of Shakespeare. Shakespeare. He returned to the veranda.

  The kingfishers were calling, waiting for mice and frogs near the creek or lizards to come out from under the house. The sound of the cicadas, bold and strong in the safety of their hardened coats, pressed at him. He tried to ignore it. He took the bullets out of his rifle, cleaned and oiled it as he did almost every day, and slipped the bullets back in.

  William marched down to the creek and took aim at the kingfishers. They rose from the branches screaming their laughter, flashing their blue wings. He took a shot and hit one. Its feathers, blue and grey and white, made a brief cloud that fell apart and fluttered to the ground. He went back to his chair and waited. The pair of pheasant coucals came walking across the lawn, as was their evening habit, looking for insects. The lawn was dry, the black beetles long gone, and the pickings were thin. The birds’ voices had changed with the coming of the clouds and they called to each other in high wooop wooop sounds. They spread their wings, showing each other the dancing season’s feathers of banded orange and white. William raised his rifle to his eye and looked down the level of the barrel. He shot the closest bird. The other fell over, picked itself up and fled into the bush, trying to fly, falling as it looked back.

  William tore the feathers off the bird as its mate peered at him from the edge of the bush. He threw wood into the oven in the kitchen and cooked the coucal in an oiled skittle.

  At midnight he ate, tearing angrily at the bird’s flesh, spitting out feather points and small bones. The grease trickled onto his fresh shirt and he tore it off, ran to the creek and bathed, rolling in the sand, feeling its roughness over and over until he felt scraped and clean.

  In the morning he stood on the veranda and opened a thin volume of Shakespeare. He recited Macbeth to the sky and the bush as if the tormented lines might make the country itself disappear. He shouted, but the country stayed and the cicadas barked. He threw the book down and heaved as he coughed and spat. He steadied himself and waited until the tremble had gone, then he sat and wrote a schedule.

  Oil the motorcycle engine, keep it free from dust.

  Restock the kitchen from the ration shed.

  Dig the vegetable garden.

  Check the pump.

  He walked the tracks at the front and back to see if visitors were coming but there was no-one. He thought of reasons that Trevor or John might have abandoned him. For some time he was sure that they had met with miners and gone to Halls Creek to look for gold.

  ‘Fools,’ he muttered, then decided he was wrong. There was too much at stake. They would not abandon him. Trevor relied on him. Trevor, he thought, my little brother who cannot read or write.

  He upended the wheelbarrow by the kitchen, spilling the wood, then fashioned a rope around the
handles and passed it around the seat of the motorbike. He started up the bike and rode it slowly in a circle. The wheelbarrow tipped precariously on any curve. He threw rocks in it and tried again, and this time both wheels stayed on the ground as he turned.

  In the evening, the lone pheasant coucal came crying with a low wooop wooop. The kingfishers seemed to have doubled in number. Their evening laughter ricocheted around the homestead, sharp in the rising hum of the cicadas. The noises scared him. He hated the evening when the bush came alive like it wanted to come into the house and smother him.

  He closed the doors and hid. It was hot. He sweated in the darkness until he could bear it no more and went back out to the veranda. Four big black crows stood on the veranda just where the stockmen had stood, staring at him with beady eyes. One was smaller than the rest and seemed to be standing as the young strapper had stood, faced away and with one leg bent.

  He took his rifle and shot at them. They flew in circles with their wings spread wide, playing with him and covering the stars.

  He rose early and loaded the wheelbarrow with cans of fuel and water, a fresh pair of clothes and some dried beef. The bike started easily. William felt good as the engine hummed. He tested it, circling to see if the barrow tipped. He put the Enfield across his knee and the Winchester in the wheelbarrow. The sky was clear except for the west where a few small clouds drifted like early scouts. He felt sweat forming on his temples.

  He headed down the track that the priest and the nurse had travelled. Delighted at the movement and the coolness against his face, he shouted out, ‘Bayliss, William Bayliss.’ The road curved and soon he could no longer see the homestead. He approached a dip where a small dry culvert to the creek crossed the road. He hesitated and slowed down into it. The wheelbarrow slammed into the back of the bike and jolted him. He accelerated, pushing hard out of the dip, jumping on the rise.

  Ahead, across the road, was a thick snake with a coppery mosaic of dark and light scales.

  The snake raised its head and hissed. William thought for a second to keep riding, to speed up and go over him. The snake struck towards the bike. William braked. The abrupt motion and weight of the wheelbarrow flung the bike in the air and it came down heavily with William underneath. The engine choked then stopped.

  He dragged himself out. The snake had disappeared. There was just its thick wavy slither mark in the dust. One of the tins of fuel was broken, its contents spilling and evaporating in a shiny plume. He righted the bike and kick-started it. The engine chugged then cut out. He wheeled it back to the homestead and laid it on the front lawn, gathered a few tools from the shed and sat by the bike willing it to work.

  He could not get the bike to go. He put it back together twice. He begged the pieces spread across the lawn, cleaned and gleaming, begged them to work. In the evening he retreated as the clouds grew and the lightning spiked and the noise of insects and birds rose. In the morning he crouched down sorting the pieces of the bike. The kunjiny trees seemed to be reaching for him. There were sounds that should not be; the bean pods rattling on the branches when there was no wind, the clacking call of the night heron in the day, the hiss of a snake at his feet when there was nothing there. He scrambled up onto the roof and looked to the west. There was nothing, no dust, no movement, just those damned clouds gathering.

  8

  Fitzroy Crossing

  Trevor and John skirted wide as the ranges rose and the sheer cliffs took the river from them. They made camp only once. Their minds were busy with different threads of thought. Trevor felt safe with the fast pace that gave him the chance to be alone, a respite from John’s anger, and to think of the women, what they might be doing. Were they afraid? Where were they headed? Were they alive?

  John rode sitting back in his saddle, the dog straddled in front of him. He kept his rifle in one hand, gripping it hard and occasionally holding it high and calling out, ‘We are getting close. Close to a beer.’

  He pushed his horse to catch up with Trevor, his voice breathless with the pace of their horses. ‘You ’n’ me, we are the same. I ain’t been educated, you ain’t been educated. We both know horses. We ain’t got no missus. Hey, you a gambler?’

  ‘This country. Every day.’

  John laughed, bumping on the saddle.

  They stopped on the banks of the river at an entrance to a gorge with pocked and cracked walls towering dark grey above a band of pale made by the water’s powerful sweep in the wet season.

  John peered into the reeds at the edge of the water. ‘No baby crocs. No rain for a bit.’

  The dog nestled close to him and John patted him and rested his hand on the dog’s back. He lay back and watched the smoke from the billy fire disappear into the leaves of the river gum. He whistled and hummed an old Irish tune. It was as if he had never known anger that day at all.

  They rode hard again on the second day, coming to the road that linked the east with the west. There, the river bed was wide, sandy and dry except for a few dark pools with tannin scum lapping at the edges. Trevor and John threw their swags on the bank. In the camps of the river bed, the workers freed from the stations were gathering for their delayed ceremonies. Eddies of wind twirled sand in curving columns as if there were other spirits readying to join in the dance. The sky rumbled behind the beat of clapping sticks as the dark clouds spiked with spears of lightning.

  John smoked. The two men were silent as they ate. They cleaned the plates in the sand.

  ‘Johnno, thanks for sticking with it.’

  ‘I am sticking with yer, mate. Our job, bring ’em women back, nothing else.’

  Trevor nodded but he stayed awake as John slept, watching as the stockman grasped his rifle with every few breaths, as though he might suddenly sit up and shoot.

  The town of Fitzroy Crossing was a collection of a few buildings made mainly of tin or corrugated iron and wood. The most substantial building was the Crossing Inn, where the drinking and trading was done. It was on a slight rise near the river. It had stone walls and an iron roof that was laced inside with dried geckos. Stacked around the outside were drums of oil and pieces of machinery on an uneven floor of concrete. Wooden slats were propped open all around. Inside, station hands sat next to sacks of flour and tea, drinking whisky or the cheaper rum, wide-brimmed hats on their knees, hair sticky with dirt and sweat, and hands red with black fingernails tight around their mugs and bottles. They were quiet, waiting for the drink to wake up their stories.

  A distance back was a smooth-shaven man sitting at a rickety table. He wore a clean blue shirt that was stretched with the bulge of his belly spilling over a tight belt. He pumped hard on the keys of a typewriter.

  John joined the station hands. ‘How’s yer luck?’

  The man in the blue shirt looked up at John’s voice, sweat rolled down his nose and plunked onto his papers.

  Trevor walked over to him. ‘Trevor Bayliss. Cicada Springs station.’

  ‘Tom Jeferies. Agent of AO Neville.’ Jeferies adjusted his typewriter.

  ‘AO Neville?’

  The man didn’t look up. ‘Chief Protector of Aborigines.’

  Trevor stood quietly, thinking what that meant. The man in the blue shirt tapped at his typewriter, frowning and striking the letters fast with exaggerated flourishes as though trying to stamp out a rush of threatening mites. He said without looking up, ‘We rescue the not-so-black.’

  ‘Not-so-black?’

  Tom Jeferies sighed and put his hands on his thighs but kept his eyes fixed on the piece of paper in front of him. His face was pudgy with round red cheeks wet with sweat. ‘Yep. You know—we take them under our wing and teach them in the white way so they have half a chance.’ He peered over the small circles of his rimless glasses as if to emphasise the need to concentrate on the work in front of him. ‘I am here from Perth. Teaching the police to do their job. They have to do their job. You know.’

  He looked up, saw Trevor’s puzzled expression and sighed again. ‘Milky k
ids. You know—the caste kids. Mixed breed. They have to bring them in. Some of them are very good at things, you know. They grow up and can be good servants. Some may even get, you know, possibly, into the public service. Some are good at cricket. Batting, fielding.’ He shrugged. ‘Bowling too.’

  ‘What about their parents?’

  ‘Parents? Jeez. These black people, they ain’t no parents.’ His fingers scurried like beetles over the keys. ‘You know, they aren’t . . . evolved. No, I shouldn’t say that. Not educated, haven’t known civilisation, that’s the main issue.’

  Trevor walked away.

  Tom Jeferies’ voice rose behind him. ‘It’s the law. The law is clear: caste children must be removed. People should know the law. Ignorance creates problems.’ He sighed but kept typing. ‘Stupid.’

  Trevor turned around.

  Tom Jeferies glanced at Trevor, tall and wide in the shoulders. He adjusted his glasses and looked away. ‘Hot here, isn’t it? Darn hot. You’re a clever Englishman, aren’t you? I can tell by your voice.’

  ‘No.’ Trevor replied. ‘I am stupid. I can’t read or write.’

  ‘Well you should learn. It’s not that hard.’

  Jeferies turned back to his work before he finished the sentence. He poured water from a glass onto a towel and draped it over his head so his face was hidden.

  Trevor went to the proprietor to arrange their stay. The skinks ran across the corrugations of the tin walls and outside the insects hummed. John drank whisky with the strappers and the painted dog lay flat and panting across his feet.

  Trevor packed small bags of tea and flour into his saddlebags and headed down to the river. He stopped a few yards away from a blackfella camp. The group sat in the sand of the river bed, all near naked, cooking pieces of a wallaby on the fire. Trevor held out a bag of sugar.

  One of the men stood up and came towards him. He grinned and nodded to the fire. ‘Eat?’

  Trevor sat down. The camp was mainly men, except for two old women who watched the wallaby cooking and turned small cakes over in the coals. One handed him a piece of blackened kangaroo thigh. Trevor took it and held it in his hands. He put it back at the edge of the fire. A tin, black but for scrapings of an old label that showed it had once held powdered milk, bubbled with a foamy layer of tea leaves.