Coal Creek Page 5

  I could feel the woman squatting in the dust by the tank waiting for Daniel. Her murmur and Esme’s singing finding a sister rhythm, as if the two women was intending to harmonise their voices to make a hymn lamenting their lives. Which put me in mind of my mother singing her hymns in her dark beautiful voice, as if she was seeing eternity. Amazing Grace was my favourite, which I begged her to sing sitting by the stove. I seen the dew come in Ben’s eyes listening to my mother singing that song when he was having a feed at our place one time, him cutting in real soft on that dinted old Hohner mouth organ of his and my mother smiling to hear the harmony of it with her own voice. My mother had a love of Ben. He said to me after we rode out to where the camp was in the morning, the mist still rising among the bendee, I did not know your mother could sing so well, Bobby. I knew Ben was not all cruel and I feared for him and what he might come to. If you heard him playing along with my mother on that old mouth organ you would know his sweetness too. I believe in his heart Ben always resented carrying that cruelness that had been put there.

  Daniel took a deep drink of the tea. His chair creaked when he leaned back and Esme turned around. You going to see to her, then? she asked him, as if she was getting impatient waiting for him to do something. Daniel sat admiring his wife. I do not think I was hardly breathing, but was waiting for the thing to get going as I knew it would with these strangers from the coast. Esme’s dark brown hair always brushed and shining, the strength of her features, her apron firm around her womanly figure, Daniel knowing her to be capable in her body and her mind, and maybe knowing her to be his better. You could see that. A determined woman, Esme was. She was not all bony and dried up like the women of Mount Hay but had a substance in her they did not have, or had lost. I never seen her smoke a cigarette and she did not drink. Daniel smiled to see her standing there in that blue and white cross-stitched apron of hers, pushing her hair off her face with the back of her hand and prompting him to his policing duties. I’m trying to finish this tea you made so hot I could hardly drink it, he said. Esme turned back to her task. And who complains it’s never hot enough for him? was all she said. I could see they loved one another and I knew myself outside the true circle of that love but made welcome on terms of her generosity and concern for me as a young man without my own family. She was a mother and behaved like a mother and wished others to know the love of family. At that time I still liked to believe she was my friend.

  Daniel drank the last of the tea and stood up. I stood up with him. Esme did not look around. The scald from the tea must have been severe in Daniel’s gullet. I seen the face he made. He picked that new police slouch hat of his off the peg by the door and he brushed at it with his sleeve and put it on his head and went out and I followed him. My hat stayed on my head, where it always was. I said thank you for the tea to Esme and let the screen door bang to behind me, Esme’s reply and the noise of the door together. That is my pleasure, Bobby, she said. I still hear that door banging to, rebounding and tapping twice against the old wooden lintel, a crack somewhere in that piece of timber that needed fixing.

  . . .

  Rosie Gnapun was sitting cross-legged in the grey dust in the shade beside the tank where the ant-lion larvae had their traps. Rosie’s yellow dress was pulled down over her knees and she was rocking and drawing her private knowledge map in the dust with a twig. I went over and squatted down by the tank and Daniel squatted by her. Rosie’s tears was making grey runnels along her black cheeks, her eyes pits of sorrow. Tip was watching from under the house, dewy-eyed and concerned, her jaw resting on her front paws. That dog was too soft-hearted to hunt. The white tip of her black tail was sweeping side to side on the dust like the windscreen wiper on Fay Stubbs’ Blitz. I rolled a smoke and watched. I did not light my cigarette when I had made it ready out of respect for what Rosie would say.

  Rosie looked at Daniel like she thought he should be ashamed of everything he had ever done and she said, They are gone, Mister Collins. That is what has happened. They are not out there. You have let it happen to her again and that man has killed my Deeds. She sat looking at Daniel like she thought he had killed the child himself. And he looked back at her. I could see he was not understanding half of what Rosie was saying to him but was getting the message all the same, especially of her distrust of him. He was getting that clear enough. Daniel had a hard time with Rosie’s mumblings and the way she hung her head and looked sideways at him and kept drawing with that stick in the dust while she was talking at him. It was like he was not the main one she was talking to but other people was present who was being witness to what she was saying and it was them she was really telling her story to, knowing they would be listening and understanding her and nodding their heads in sympathy. Them people me and Daniel could not see. I understood what Rosie was saying well enough without thinking about it or even trying to understand her. Her words was not always clear to me or to herself but her meaning was plain as can be. That is how my mother would have said it. Plain as can be. I hear her saying that.

  Rosie said, He is laughing at you, Mister Collins. I seen Daniel heard this. I believe he had heard it before in the bar of Chiller Swales’ pub and believed it to be true, even though it might have been no more than gossipy rumour. You put him in the gaol down there and they let him out again and now he has killed that girl. I’ve been out there and they are gone. Rosie give a loud wail and dipped her head onto her chest, that stick going deep into the ant-lion dust between her knees where she was making her secret patterns.

  I looked at my unlit cigarette then I looked at the sky. I seen the black storm cloud had a touch of green in the depths of it. It was starting to block out the sun and I saw the light come on over at the Swanns’ place and heard their lighting plant start up. The Swanns was a good family. They refused to go on the mains. I listened but could not hear the girls in the house and wondered if they was home yet. There was no sound coming from the kitchen. Esme’s singing had gone quiet and I reckoned she was standing close by the screen door listening to Rosie. The girls should have been home about then. The storm was veering over towards Mount Dennison way over the other side of Coal Creek. The country changes over there and you get pockets of big timber and springs. The smell of the rain was in the air. The breeze cool and light on the dampness of my clean police shirt.

  I forgot to wait and I lit my cigarette and drew on it, a small shudder slipping down my spine like the touch of a spider. I had to shift my feet. Tip raised her head at me and give a growl, like she thought I was about to do something fearful, her tail stilled. She was Esme’s dog and no one else’s at that time. I did not think she was much good for anything but sitting around the house watching over Esme and the girls. But I was to learn different. Esme would have had her inside if Daniel had allowed it. It was one point on which Daniel stayed put and had his way. I heard him reasoning with her one day in that quiet way he had that no one in Mount Hay ever let a dog in their house and the Collins should not be the first to do that. We must make some concessions to the local customs was what he said. But Esme would not have Tip put on the chain at night and she had her way with that. Which was to cost us all a great deal. I think if Esme had had her way she would have had everyone in Mount Hay thinking along her own lines about everything. The back step was it for Tip, but that dog never give up appealing to Esme’s soft side and trying to get in the house with her.

  When Daniel brought Ben in on that first occasion Tip went under the house and stayed there until Ben was taken down the coast. A dog knows. I do not know what Tip thought she saw in me at that minute when I shifted my feet under me but she seen something I did not see in myself and she objected to it. Just as a horse will see things its rider does not see. I take notice of the signs animals give us. They can save our lives.

  Rosie give another howl like she had been wounded and Esme come out the door and she leaned down and lifted that old black woman under her arms and she held her to herself and comforted her, rocking Rosie back
and forth like she was an injured child, even though Rosie was a big woman and heavy. But Esme had strength in her arms and she was young. Me and Daniel stood up and looked on at them two. Esme was looking over Rosie’s shoulder at Daniel like she thought he had let down the family’s good name. You would think Daniel had been slapped in the face. I seen he was not sure which way to go with it. I never heard Daniel lose his temper or get too excited, except on one occasion. He was always trying to keep things going along on an even level and reasoning his way with people. To my mind this was not always the best way to deal with things when a hard decision was called for. But it was Daniel’s way and that is what he did. I do not think anything would have changed him. He had chosen policing for the adventure of his family coming out into the ranges and I do not think he was as well suited to the work as some people might have been. In the army, where he was a corporal, he had had to follow orders. Now he was called on to make the decisions himself. Which was different. I thought he looked to Esme too much of the time to take his orders. She was not the police, he was. I wondered if she always give him the full freedom of his job that he give her. But that is only my thinking and does not change how the tragedy of it worked out for us all in the end.

  Esme was trying to coax Rosie into the house to sit a while with her but Rosie would not be coaxed and she eased herself out of Esme’s arms and walked off. We three stood and watched her walking along the back way around the garden beds and over the tussocks and them big horse thistles, her bare feet scuffing the grey dust, as if she was reminding us we had missed out on the storms. As she went by it Rosie snapped a twig off the dead lemon tree Esme was always asking Daniel to root out and she went on out the side gate, leaving the gate open and calling out some words I did not hear. An old black woman’s curse on Esme’s house, I would say. On all of us. Cursing us. I went over and closed the gate before Yule’s goats could get into what was left of Esme’s vegetables. Them goats was out there on the road, heads up and watching for their chance, a young kid bleating for its mother’s tit and getting kicked for its trouble. Yule and his wife and their own tribe of young ones would be roasting that little feller shortly, and if the wind was right we would get the smell of it at the police house. When I come back from closing the gate I seen Esme had not held off from speaking her mind to Daniel.

  Daniel had read me from his geology book one evening that the grey dust of the ranges is all that is left of what was once mountains now worn down by time. I thought of that when I seen Rosie’s bare feet scuffing through it. Rosie was the grey dust herself. It was something to watch out for and I always give her my full respect, as my father did. Them Old People knows things us whitefellers can never know. They are the dust of them worn-down mountains themselves and the knowledge is in them like the marrow of their souls. Which it will never be in us. We are like germs to them Old People, blown in on a foul wind. I knew that from Dad.

  . . .

  Me and Daniel went down to the yards and I brought the horses in and we checked their shoes. We did not talk about Rosie and her visit and I did not ask Daniel what he had in mind to do about Ben. I thought it best to let him settle and if he needed my advice he would ask me for it. When we had done with the horses I filled the fuel tank on the jeep and checked the oil, then we went into the police office and took the guns out into the scrub for some shooting practice. Daniel had the top-break Webley left him by George Wilson and I had the .303. We did not take George Wilson’s old twelve-gauge shotgun that was kept in the kitchen. It was an old gun and the right hammer would hook into cock but would usually misfire. George had used the left barrel for shooting snakes if he seen one up close by the kitchen door. He did not mind if they went under the tank. There was always frogs there in the cool.

  Me and Daniel sighted our weapons up and I took some shots with the Webley at a line of empty tuna in brine tins we set up. I knew it was not easy to hit anything with a revolver as I had often had a go with Ben’s old Colt what he bought off an American soldier who stayed behind in Townsville like a lot of them Yanks did after the war. Ben always carried that gun in a closed holster tied to a dee on his saddle with a strap of redhide. He shot cancer-eyed bulls with it mostly. We cut them old bulls open while they was still hot and put strychnine powder through their meat for the dingoes. I was a clean marksman with a .303 as I had used my dad’s rifle for years shooting brumbies and dingoes whenever there was not a lot of station work going. I made good money with that rifle. You could get them guns for one pound each then. There was any amount of army stuff around after the war and it was cheap. Our own stuff and American. Everyone had something. The bounty on dingo scalps was one pound one shilling each and the tail and mane hair of the brumbies was three shillings and sixpence a pound. Norm Barry made a good living at it. That is all Norm ever did his whole life. We used to see him once or twice a year. The rest of the time he was out in the escarpments with his packhorses and his gun horse. I did not know what he ate but when he come into town he just drank rum over at Chiller’s place till his funds run out. He never had much to say. Ben’s dad was the only person Norm Barry ever had anything to say to. Him and Ben’s dad had known each other since they was boys. The ranges was all either of them ever knew. I do not believe either of them had ever been down to the city in their life.

  I seen Irie coming out to where me and Daniel was shooting. I said, Irie’s coming. Daniel give a start, like I’d scared him, and he looked around and watched her come up to us. He was not at ease in himself since Rosie’s visit. He asked Irie what the trouble was. She said there was no trouble and could she have a go with his handgun. Daniel said, I don’t suppose it would do you any more harm than it does us to know how to shoot a gun. He showed her how to hold the revolver and she took a shot at the cans and missed. She flinched away from the blowback of powder, which he had not mentioned to her and she was not expecting it. She would not touch the gun again after that. She give me a look I did not like and turned around and went home rubbing at her eyes. I lined up a target on an old-man bottle tree a hundred yards off and shot off three rounds with the .303. I hit the centre of the target with all three. There was no adjustment needed to the sights. I hit two cans with the Webley. Two out of six did not seem too bad to me with that handgun. We cleaned the guns in the office and when we got back to the house Esme was ready to serve up.

  She set Daniel’s plate of food in front of him and said, So who are you planning on shooting, Daniel? She called him Daniel when she was displeased with him about something. Irie said, Daddy didn’t hit any cans, Mum. Daniel did not say nothing to this remark but just laughed and give Irie a look. She give him a cheeky grin and I seen the love in her eyes for him that was fighting against her fear of being disappointed in him. I realised then that she wanted her dad to be a hero. I knew Daniel had been a hero in New Guinea fighting the Japs and I promised myself I would tell Irie that when the moment come for it. But I always forgot and never did get to telling her. Daniel was one of them men who do not big-note themselves and a kid might easily think he was nothing special. They left the talk of shooting at that. I did not ask Daniel if the police induction he had down there on the coast ever included instruction in using the sidearm. He had told me something of his time in New Guinea, but only that he was made a corporal. I seen for myself he was at home handling the .303 and hit the target on the bottle tree with a fair degree of accuracy, so perhaps he was an ordinary infantry soldier and had used the rifle before. That is the way it seemed to me. But I do not know for sure. He never talked to me about the details of his time in the army. It was Esme first told me he had come out of the army before going into the police service. She was proud of what he done fighting up there in the jungles. She said to me once with a kind of sadness in her voice, Heroes are always shy men. Isn’t that true, Bobby? I did not know if it was true or not so I said nothing to it. But I seen how her eyes was filled with emotion for him. I do not believe she expected a reply from me anyway, but just neede
d to tell someone her love for him.

  We sat eating our meal of corned brisket and potatoes, the steam rising off the pink meat. Just as my old dad, I liked nothing better than to eat the yellow fat on corned meat while it was hot, the thicker the better, with that bubbly look about it. But Daniel and his family cut the fat away from their meat and left it on the side of the plate. Irie had a go at it when she seen I was enjoying it but she did not take to it. Tip’s nose was at the door and she give a bit of a whimper every few minutes, imploring them to toss her the fat. To my way of thinking, in that house the dog got the best of it. The beans and carrots from Esme’s garden that she had kept in the chiller was green and orange on our plates. They had been kept awhile and tasted of mould. But Esme’s bread was the best I ever tasted next to my mother’s. She made it herself.

  Miriam said, Jon Swann hit me for nothing. Esme said, Did you cry? I hit him back like Daddy tells us to, the girl said. You shouldn’t go hitting people, Esme said. Daniel reached and touched the girl on the shoulder. Jon Swann won’t hit you again, darling. Bullies don’t like getting hit back. Irie said, Miriam is lying, Dad. Jon Swann is not a bully. He did not hit anybody. Esme leaned down at her youngest. Is this true, Miriam? He hit me, the child said. Irie don’t know everything. He did not hit you, Irie said in her quiet voice, stating the fact in a way that was not unlike her dad’s manner of talking, so that we all believed her and disbelieved Miriam. Doesn’t know everything, Esme said, correcting Miriam’s way of speaking. I knew that already and me and Irie give each other a quick look. That is when Miriam started to cry. Now come on, eat up, you two, Esme said. I am eating up, Miriam shouted through her crying. Like a bird she was, quick to fly. Esme put a hand to the little girl’s cheek, as if she was testing for a sign of fever, and I thought of my mother’s hand against my cheek and her words of comfort to me that was also a warning. We all hang on the cross, Bobby Blue. And I seen how Miriam was suffering the injustice of the entire world just then, the way children will. On the cross, she was. Daniel wiped the gravy from his plate with a slice of Esme’s soft white bread and ate it, taking it in two mouthfuls. He picked up his mug and washed the sodden bread down with tea. There’s more, Esme said, looking at him. She waited for him to look at her but he did not look at her, so she got up and started clearing away, telling the girls to go and wash and get themselves ready for bed. Irie went over to Miriam and she put her arm around her sister and took her out to the tank where the washing things was kept. I heard Miriam say, He did hit me. But her need to be believed had gone out of it.