Cicada Page 27

  ‘Shoes, we need shoes, we could go back tonight.’ She squatted down to examine the clothes. ‘So pretty! This one is for you.’ She lifted up a dress with velvet ribbons on the bodice, but Wirritjil had gone.

  Emily felt the woman’s presence. She turned around. The station woman stood a few yards away, her rifle pointed.

  Emily held the velvet-ribboned dress in front of her, hiding her nakedness.

  ‘Are you alright?’ The woman kept the rifle pointed at Emily. ‘Where’s the black woman, the killer? Where did she go?’

  The woman gripped the rifle tightly. Her scarf had fallen back and hair fell into her eyes. She stared into the bush, behind her and back. She began to circle Emily.

  ‘Help me,’ said Emily. ‘Help us.’

  ‘She kidnapped you.’

  ‘No.’ Emily shook her head.

  ‘Killed a white man, a black man and a baby. Are you alright?’

  ‘No. She didn’t kill anyone.’

  The woman jumped at the snap of a twig behind her. She spun around, waving her rifle into the bush. When she turned back Emily was gone and the clothes lay in a heap on the ground.

  Emily and Wirritjil ran. They rolled in the red pindan dirt and hid in a thicket of wattle, crawling through the dust and the prickly sticks. They heard the bark of the dogs and the thunder of the stockmen’s horses coming towards them. They knew they would be trapped. They crept away towards a muddy clay pan and dragged their feet through the sucking clay to a shallow stream fast-moving and milky with pale dirt. They took deep breaths, lay down on their backs and held the reed tubes from their lips to the surface. They heard the horses neigh and the gurgle of their hoofs sinking in the clay pan. They flinched as the men shot, discharging their rifles in the air or slicing the bullets through the mud.

  ‘The white woman!’ One shouted and the shooting stopped.

  The women’s breathing became strained and they blew what little air they had to stop the reeds collapsing as passing shadows of the clouds streamed across their eyelids. When they heard the horsemen moving northwards they rose, grey-streaked like wraiths, and headed south-west, running when they could.

  Emily looked back. She muttered, ‘Where is the black woman? Where is the killer?’

  The night came and the moon, fat and lopsided, rose just before the sun set.

  The moon was high when Wirritjil and Emily came to the dirt road that connected Broome to the north and to the port town of Derby.

  Emily stared at the road like it was an extraordinary thing. ‘Broome?’

  Wirritjil pointed south.

  She waited, but Emily did not move. They were naked and mud-splattered, standing in the open on a whitefellas’ road. Wirritjil smelt a fire and heard the braying of camels to the north. She tugged at Emily’s arm. Emily shook her away and took a step in the direction of Broome then stopped. Wirritjil waited. She heard the screech of a single flying fox that should be sleeping, folded in his wings, and heard the camels call out again, angry at something in the night. She pushed Emily hard into the scrub. They slipped, half running down the slight bank and tumbling over gnarled low shrubs. They righted themselves and sat with their backs against the grouped slender trunks of a wattle, camouflaged from the moon under the patchy shade of the leaves.

  They were still for a long time. The camels had settled. Wirritjil heard familiar night sounds and new sounds of this part of the country: the muffled woo of the button quail disturbed in its sleep and the pale frogs that cried out like hungry babies.

  Emily looked up to the moon. Her face was white and her eyes black. ‘They think it is you.’ She paused and then the words came quickly, quietly, falling over each other, stumbling and starting again. ‘I could—I could say it was you. They think it was you. That you murdered them all. I could be free. I could go back to Cicada Springs.’

  Wirritjil raised her head. She could hear the camels braying again, this time in a chorus of objection. They were being whipped awake. The camp was packing up. They would be passing by soon.

  Emily put her head down. Her mumble continued. ‘I’d pray. Pray to the Lord for you. Every day. I promise. You could go to heaven. I will pray so much you will go to heaven. You will.’

  ‘Miss, we go.’

  Wirritjil stood and eyed the moon, figuring the time they had and the best way to travel to Broome.

  Emily didn’t rise. She sat hugging her knees, rocking back and forth. She looked up at Wirritjil and whispered, ‘Let’s go to the sea.’

  The two horsemen stopped at the road. They searched for prints, but the shadows in the setting moon were deceiving. The dogs growled to the west but the men felt certain the women would be travelling alongside the road to Broome or perhaps north to the port of Derby. They didn’t hear the camel train until it was almost upon them. The caravan was small, six camels with long snaking necks of jutting teeth and spitting lips, loaded with rigid boxes that slapped against their sides and leant perilously on top. A bearded man with a turbaned head and long dirty robes sat high on top of a load chewing a bone, swaying with the boxes and the stride of the beast beneath him. He had a whip that trailed almost to the ground. Two men walked carrying sticks and tapping the camels’ noses every few strides. One wore trousers and the other had folded his robes around his waist to a short skirt.

  ‘Where have you come from?’ called one of the station men.

  The man on the camel shouted back, waving the hand that held the bone, ‘River too big. Bastard.’

  ‘Seen any women?’

  The cameleer shrugged.

  The horseman trotted, coming close to the swinging loads. ‘Two, on foot, running from the law.’

  The head man shrugged again and threw the bone to the ground. The dogs dived for it, fighting over it in the muddy turmoil of the road. The horseman raised his fist at the cameleer. The cameleer laughed and the caravan moved on without a pause.

  The dogs had forgotten the hunt and the scent. The men dismounted and stood by their horses, discussing what to do. They could not agree. They squatted and lit rolled tobacco. The dogs crawled towards them but were stopped by the men’s scowls. As the sun rose, one man stood and stated that he didn’t like chasing women. The other was quick to agree and they made a decision. They would ride as fast as possible to Broome and alert the police. After that they could go home.

  The two men rode breathlessly, their hats low across their heads and their faces colourless. They galloped hard, thrashing through the bush on either side to pass the camel train. The cameleers slashed their whips in the air and the camels swung their heads to bite.

  It was late afternoon when they came to the edge of Broome. The ground was naked flat red dirt, streaked white with salt blown from the swamp pans that marked the land in the south curve of the bay. The sun beat harshly from a mottled sky and tin shanties at the end of mirages shone like silver and burnt into their eyes. Men dressed in Asian sarongs or loose pants rolled at the waist and the legs stood in small sullen groups. They held items such as rope, cardboard or pieces of leather slackly by their side. A few had long knives.

  The horses were glad to slow and let their heads and shoulders slump as they walked. Further into the town the men passed narrow streets that slanted away to the swampy south and were busy with shops and noodle houses. In a crowded lane across from the police lock-up, the two men could see women lounging on the steps of shops and latticed boarding houses. They smiled at one another as a woman dressed in coarse lace waved a red fan coquettishly across her face. If they had time they would visit. They turned their attention to the police station, a generous building with wooden verandas. Next to it was the lock-up, a small block building of stone and corrugated iron. In front was a sapling boab tree, bright with green leaves and creamy flowers.

  The men didn’t dismount immediately, for they were struck by a song that came from a nearby building. The building had little to distinguish it from others except for a cross on the apex of the roof. The children�
��s voices were quavering and brittle, the women held the song in the middle and the men’s voices were underneath like deep shadows. Broken notes dissolved in the muddle of the untrained choir or flew high and cracked, flailing arrows in the heat of the sky and the drip of the rain. The horsemen bowed their heads as the voices rose to a chorus.

  ‘Silent night, holy night,

  All is calm, all is bright,

  Round yon virgin, mother and child . . .’

  In the police station Perez was preparing to leave. He was exhausted. The simmering anger between the Japanese and other Asiatics had erupted over the last few weeks. Outright fighting and surprise attacks against one another, some even against the white leaders of the pearl industry, had occurred almost daily. The Japanese were certainly superior in their demeanour and they had networks and connections, yet the Koepangers, the small-boned dark Timorese, had stamina, the stamina of the serf. They claimed mistreatment by the Japanese, and the Malays tended to support their struggling brothers. The inspector had worked without stop; the townsfolk were frightened and every woman and child slept uneasily. He had multiplied the force from three police officers to hundreds by swearing in every white man above the age of sixteen as a special constable. As the town breathed again, the inspector finally rested but his heart was taxed and with his head on the pillow he drew his last breath. The death of the inspector had been a shock, coming as it did when the riots were settling.

  Perez had no time to grieve. All day he listened to the litany of complaints of the Koepangers against the Japanese and kept his eye on the Malays, who watched churlishly from the side. Somehow he had to rein in his own anger. He had to consider all sides and apply the law. It was an onerous responsibility but as the accusations flew he found it hard to determine which side was wrong or right and all he wanted to do was avenge the inspector’s death. Then there were the Aborigines, lowly, like a bony spur in his heel, irritating him, threatening to lame him in his real work.

  ‘In this small plot,’ he muttered.

  Young white strappers in from the wet season were causing trouble in the volatile environment. They didn’t realise their foolery was a form of arson, a match to fuel-soaked tinder. Their white faces stopped grinning when they were thrown in the lock-up. He put them in a crowded sweaty cell with no beds and only the corner of the concrete floor to shit in. He released them in the morning without charge and took pleasure in their relief and gratitude.

  Perez walked over to his gramophone where it sat on a polished bench. He had played it on his return to Broome but, instead of soothing him, the long notes of the violin had shaken him. The autumn leaves and the Spanish woman no longer appeared. He had examined the record time and time again and finally determined that the heat had damaged the grooves irreparably.

  Perez glanced through the window and saw the two station men on their horses with their heads bowed. The horses were layered in sweat and foam, the men’s shirts were wet and both horses and men were covered in pindan dust and streaked with red mud.

  The sweet strains of the Christmas carol did not prevent the sudden surge of anger he felt and the tightening of all his muscles. He knew immediately. He searched for his saddlebags and called to the relieving police officer. ‘Can we spare a couple of special constables?’

  Perez greeted the station men and sensed they were afraid. He felt sorry for them and at the same time he was enlivened by the thought of the hunt and the capture of the Aboriginal woman.

  The two women headed west. They paused only to eat berries from their pouches and suck the clean raindrops from the gum leaves. They rested for a short time as the sun rose. The coals in their pouches were soaked with the water and the mud of the clay pan. Emily took out a digging stick but Wirritjil said soon they would be at the sea and they could eat mussels and make a fire, the slow way. They hurried, dodging the stunted bushes of the pindan and jogging across patches of baked mud strewn with flattened tussocks of old grasses. Wirritjil puffed, drawing breath in deep sighs. She stopped and put one hand on her swollen belly and the other against the rough trunk of a cork tree. Emily could not hear the dogs or any sound to indicate that the men were close. The wood swallows chatted and flitted searching for insects. A dark bird with blue on its wings flew across the tops of the trees in a rolling relaxed flight. He had no messages.

  She urged Wirritjil to rest. They sat cross-legged and Emily savoured the respite, the heat and the new smell of salt mixed with the dusty air of the pindan. She put her hand on Wirritjil’s belly. ‘What will Charcoal say?’

  Wirritjil smiled. ‘I tell ’im, ’im ngamarriny. He say ’im cheeky one, dat bird.’

  Emily took a berry from her pouch but she did not feel like eating. ‘Is this the place of the turtle man?’

  Wirritjil nodded.

  Emily reached out to touch a hermit crab shell close to her feet. The shell was light and intricate. It was empty, discarded for a better home. She found the tracks of the owner’s pointy feet and the scuffle where he had crawled from his shell. She followed the prints to another flurry and guessed that this was where he had found his new home. She picked up the empty shell and held it in the palm of her hand. ‘I don’t belong anywhere anymore.’

  She put the shell on the ground. It was pale against the stark red sand. ‘Not to yesterday, not to tomorrow.’

  Emily searched for more hermit crab tracks. ‘There will be another who will come and find this shell just right. It is a pretty home, don’t you think so?’

  Emily circled her fingers around Wirritjil’s wrist. ‘Wirritjil, my sister, her name is Kathryn. When she was young we called her Katalina, or Kata.’

  Wirritjil smiled. Emily’s voice was suddenly stronger, she seemed happy.

  ‘My father called her his gypsy girl. It was the fiddle music my mother liked for a while.’ Emily pushed her palm against Wirritjil’s palm and laced her fingers through hers. ‘Wirritjil, when you see my sister call her Kata.’

  Emily dropped her head to her chest for a moment then looked back into Wirritjil’s eyes. ‘My sister Kathryn, her name is Kata. You say Kata.’

  ‘Kata.’

  ‘She skinny one of me.’ Emily smiled. ‘Though maybe I am thinner now. She has a big nose. Bigger nose than me.’

  Wirritjil drew waves in the red soil and put two dots close to the waves. A bit further on she drew a circle. It was the midden. ‘We go dat place.’

  ‘And straight hair, black.’

  Emily’s eyes were shining, she was thinking of something far away. She leant against Wirritjil and they fell asleep, propped against the base of a skinny rough-barked cork tree.

  Charcoal sat atop the midden watching the nimble shape of Janarra as he skipped across the reef looking for fish feeding in the light of the climbing moon. Trevor turned as he dozed in the sandy hollow he had dug for himself. Charcoal understood the man’s restlessness, the signals his body knew but he did not yet know how to comprehend. Charcoal wondered why white men had forgotten so much.

  He did not sleep. He watched the sky and listened to the earth. He listened to its music and its voice. He knew the women were near. He was uneasy, though, because he had not known whitefellas until he was old and he did not know how they influenced the sky and the earth or what their next actions might be.

  Perez lashed his horse into a fast gallop, two citizen constables and one of the station horsemen followed. The lonely road, luminous in the moonlight, beckoned the riders on.

  They rode hard, pausing only when Perez felt his horse trip or one of the constables waved at him, pointing out the horses’ laboured breathing.

  The man from the station fell asleep as he rode. He slumped on his horse and woke again, tried to sit upright, but the cycle repeated. He raised his hand to slow the others as the first lights of dawn came. He looked around for the markers they had left.

  The men trotted in circles in the drying mud thick with the three-toe indents of camel prints. Perez saw the tracks of the three horsem
en on the east side of the road.

  ‘You crossed here.’

  ‘Yes.’ The man from the station roused himself to sit straight in the saddle. He saw the branches they had piled on the side of the road. He pointed west. ‘Dogs wanted to go thatta way—was the direction the women were travellin’ before. Sometimes big camp of blackfellas out that way.’

  ‘Big camp?’

  ‘Yeah, meeting place, fishin’ ’n’ all that. Gatherin’ spot.

  Seems they do a bit o’ dancin’ there too.’

  Perez felt a shiver down his spine. Such a gathering would be protection for the women to meet with Bayliss. He wondered whether his special constables would be sufficient. They were alert and armed. He looked at the station man’s half-closed eyes.

  ‘I am sure we can handle this now.’

  The special constables insisted on rest for themselves and the horses and time to eat. They were voluntary citizens. Perez waited.

  In the mid-morning Perez raised his arm high and dug his heels into the horse’s flanks. The horse jumped and Perez pushed him to a hard trot through the scrub and the appointed policemen followed.

  Emily woke during the night, surprised at the darkness and how long they had slept. The moon was low in the western sky. Wirritjil had fallen on her side, folded around her belly as though keeping it warm. Her black eyelashes were long on her moonlit cheeks. Emily circled her body around the Aboriginal woman. She heard faintly the faraway surf and with it the song again. She tried to catch it but it came and went and she fell back to sleep.

  The heat of the sun, burning high in the sky, woke her. She sat up and listened for any sounds of a chase. A slight breeze came from inland and picked up small whirls of dust. The chatter of the birds was unhurried. She felt they were safe for a moment. She hunted nearby for water and found damp leaves in a log hollow. She sat next to Wirritjil, watching her breathe, slow and even. She moistened Wirritjil’s lips and when Wirritjil rose they said nothing, just walked slowly towards the sound of the surf as if in a dream. Emily put her arm around Wirritjil’s lower back and her hand on the rise of Wirritjil’s belly. She could feel the baby waking, his feet kicking and his arms stretching.