Coal Creek Read online

  Daniel come up beside me. I looked at him and I said, They are gone off for stores more than likely. Them big storms has been keeping Fay off the road with that Blitz of hers. Ben and his girl will have gone to the Dawsons’ place to stock up.

  Daniel stepped down and led out to the end of his reins, Finisher planting his feet and not moving off with him. Daniel stood at the full stretch of the reins, Finisher’s jaw sticking out and his eyes wide. Daniel unbuttoned his flies and had a long pee. When he was done he turned around and eased back on the reins. How do you know that? he said. I set Mother into a walk. Well, I know it, I said. You will see how it is. Daniel did not climb back on board Finisher but led him along behind me. He did not say nothing more just then. I stepped down at the rails and Daniel come up to me. His clothes was all wet. So do you think Rosie was mistaken? he said. I said, Rosie sees things we do not see. Daniel said nothing to this. I looped Mother’s reins through themselves and pushed her off just like I was pushing a boat off from the shore to float with the current, gently easing her flank aside. I ran my hand down her rump as she turned away and walked off towards the green pick the other side of the clearing. I was smiling with the pleasure of it. Mother was the best mare I ever had. I seen Daniel was about to set Finisher loose in the same manner and I knew I had to say something to him or he would be walking home. I would hitch that horse to the rails, I said, or he will decide he is finished for the day and will go home and leave you here to make your way home the best way you can. Daniel looked at his horse and he laughed and patted it on the neck. So that is why they call you Finisher, he said. Finisher give him that queer back-eyed look a horse will give you when it is thinking of nipping you for some offence.

  Daniel looped the reins over the rails then turned around and looked at me. I was rolling a cigarette. So does that mean you believe Rosie more than you would otherwise? I licked the paper and closed the cigarette off and nipped off the threads that always poke out the ends. More than I would otherwise what? I said. Daniel said, More than you would if Rosie did not see things that we do not see. I lit the cigarette and took it from between my lips and inspected it. I said, If Rosie Gnapun did not see things we do not see she would not be Rosie Gnapun but would be some other woman. I had had enough of the conversation and I walked over to Ben’s dwelling.

  Me and Ben built the place out of sheets of ripple iron we salvaged from the picture theatre in Mount Hay after it was burned down by that bunch of stockmen who come in from Mount English that time and went wild when there was nothing left to drink at Chiller’s. Them sheets of iron was all twisted up and rusted when me and Ben got them but we hammered them out and they did the job. We loaded them sheets onto the tray body of Ben’s International and tied them down with our broncoing ropes. We cut bush poles for the framing of the shed, which is what it was, and wired them together with number eight fencing wire. It was not a place you could call a house with any truth but was one open space inside without no divides. Ben did not like divides anyhow. He liked to see what was around him. A zinc tub hung out the side by the galley where Ben kept his tools. Bars and axes and shovels and one or two other things he kept there, a wheelbarrow upended against the wall. The tub was not for bathing but was for when we was cleaning a sucking pig we had shot. Ben liked to clean the guts and fry them. His grandfather taught them to eat pigs’ guts, but I never could come at them, not after the stink of cleaning them. Ben was a number one munga man and was known to eat anything was put in front of him. And there was the creek for bathing and washing clothes. It was a good place to settle on. In the driest time that big hole directly down the bank was always full. I never seen her with less than five or six feet of water in her at the driest. And always clear, except when the creek was up with the storms as it was now. There must have been a spring come out from under them rocks. That is why Ben set his place there. It was like him. There was any amount of jewfish and black bream in that hole. Both good eating.

  Like I said, I helped Ben put her up. It took the two of us one week from go to whoa. The side windows, which was hinged flaps of iron on timber frames, was down that day owing to the storms. I seen the door was blown open from the wind and there was a puddle of rainwater with yellow leaves floating in the hollow where you step in at the door. Them yellow leaves was off the bauhinia tree out the front that I did not mention before. I went inside and saw Ben’s old single-shot .22 rifle that he kept handy by the door. It was knocked over and lying on the floor. I picked it up and rubbed the dirt off the barrel and set it against the lintel of the door where it was kept. Coal Creek was snake country and Ben would shoot any snake that come around the place except a carpet snake. A big old carpet snake camped with him for a season. He said it kept the mice and rats down. Ben called it Sweetheart. He never fed it nothing to keep it hungry. I asked him how he knew the snake was a girl, and he said, A sweetheart don’t have to be a girl, Bobby. Ben always had an answer for you. That snake spent its days sleeping curled in a heap in that dark corner behind where Ben kept his gear. I never seen it eat a mouse or a rat or even move. I used to wonder to myself if it had dreams. I never seen an animal that liked to sleep so much as that snake did. It must have known it had a friend in Ben or it would not have stayed around. I do not remember it ever dying, but I do know it was no longer there. Ben never said when it left. Even a snake as sleepy as that one must have to go off and mate with another snake sometime, or the whole race of snakes would die out from sleep and pure laziness.

  It was half dark inside and I stepped across and pushed up the first window flap and set the pole against the stop, letting daylight in. I stood looking out the window towards the creek. The afternoon was well on and the sun was behind us and hanging low over Mount Dennison. The long shadows of the bauhinia spraying all across the green pick and lighting up Mother’s coat, which looked the colour of a fox just for a minute there, except Mother’s coat was glossy with them oats I was feeding her and foxes I have seen have not been glossy. I turned around from the window as Daniel come to the door. I said to him, I do not think Ben would wish me to invite you inside his place, boss. It was unusual for me to call Daniel boss but I did not feel good with what I was saying and wished to offer him a sign to make it easier for him.

  Daniel stopped where he was, not in nor outside, his boots in the puddle. I kept my eyes on him, although I would have rather looked at something else. He stared back at me, his look steady and with some surprise and maybe with something of contempt in it. It was plain he had not been expecting this from me and did not like to hear it. Well that’s too bad, he said. I believe I have the authority to enter Tobin’s place as I am here on police business. As you are yourself, Bobby. I hope you are not going to forget that.

  It was the first time I ever heard his tone hardened up, like he was warning me. I did not wish to be tested by Daniel on this but I seen he was determined to put me to it now it had come to it. Well, I said, speaking as easy as I could but my throat was tight with it and my voice come out unnatural, I believe Ben would dispute that authority of yours if he was here.

  I did not wish to say this but I knew I was going to regret not saying it when Ben come home, as he was sure to ask me if the constable had been looking through his place. I have found it is no good failing the truth of something when the test of it comes to you. It might feel easy to lie but sooner or later you are always found out. If I did not speak out now I knew my chance to do so later would be gone. But all the same I did not feel good about doing it.

  Daniel laughed like he was saying he did not care one way or the other for Ben’s ideas of his authority. Well, Bobby, he said, Rosie was right about them two not being here. And it seems to me she may well be right about the rest of her claims too, and you may be the one who is mistaken in this. We’ll be running out of daylight soon and we should be riding out in search of them if we are to pick up their tracks before dark and get some idea of their direction.

  I took the cigarette from my lips and
looked at it. I did not think there was a need to be riding anywhere. I said, You don’t see no signs of violence here and neither do I. Them two ponies has been ridden off the place in good order and no one in a hurry to get away. Anyone who knows Ben’s stock can see they took old Lazy to bring home their supplies on from the Dawsons’ place. They will be home here in the morning, the two of them. I would lay my life on that.

  Daniel did not come on any further into the house but stood where he was and I seen I had set him thinking. I turned around and walked down the length of the place to opposite where the bunks was and I opened the side door and went out. You cannot see the creek from the side door of Ben’s place but I could hear the roar of it going over the rocks. The galley where Ben done his cooking was over to my left. The iron roof we put over it was leaning to one side. It would be needing new poles and I thought I would come out and help Ben set them in. If I was out of the police I would have time and a good state of mind to do some work with him again. It would be easier for me to get away from Daniel and Esme and the police house for a while. The only thing with not being at the police house was I would be leaving Irie behind and risking losing my friendship with her. It was Irie was keeping me in the police with Daniel. I stood smoking my cigarette and listening to the roar of the creek and thinking about myself and how I was going to behave. I did not wish to lose Irie’s friendship. That was number one with me now. My mother understood me closely on this. My mother and Irie would have liked each other and been friends. In my thinking on all this I could not get past the fact that my friendship with Irie Collins was just about the most precious thing in my life just then. I was held in a bond by it, and I seen there was a price on that bond if I was to keep it. But I did not at that time see the whole price. That come later. And when it come it was steeper than I could ever have imagined it would be. Some might say it was too steep. I do not say that.

  I dropped the butt of my cigarette and stepped on it and went back inside. Through the door at the end, out behind Daniel in the last of the sunlight, I seen Finisher walking off towards where Mother was grazing, trailing his reins and stepping on them, snapping his head up. I said, He’s come loose. Daniel turned around and he cursed and went after him, calling to him to hold up. When Finisher seen Daniel coming after him he threw up his head and broke into a trot. Which is what I would expect him to do. Daniel might have offered that horse a scoop of oats but he chased him instead. I had told Daniel to hitch him to the rail and Daniel had not taken care to do that but had just tossed the reins over the rail and left it at that. Daniel called out to Finisher and that horse lifted himself and looked back over his shoulder and stepped higher, smelling his freedom and the comforts of the home paddock. Mother stopped feeding and looked over at him. She watched him a moment then ducked her head and went back to grazing the sweet grass. I did not feel inclined to disturb Mother and go after Daniel’s horse for him, which would be an insult to most men I knew to catch their horse for them. I watched Daniel going after that horse and I wondered if it was not too late to hope for much from him.

  I sat on the bench Ben had made to go down one side of his long table. The timbers was from a crow’s ash pine, and was split and adzed by him, worn dark and shiny now with being used. Crow’s ash is not an easy timber to work. I run the flat of my hand over the top of the table and I thought maybe I should resign from the police right now and be done with it, say the word as soon as Daniel come back with Finisher. Being in on this business with him against Ben was dark in me and I knew I could not shake it. I always knew there was something not right about going into the police, which I had done really out of interest to be doing something different from mustering the scrubs. I had not seen the whole thing was not right, and not just me being out here hunting my friend with the Mount Hay constable, which was something I had not seen coming. But that was what my situation was and I could not lie to myself about it.

  My thoughts on all this was distracted by something yellowish lying underneath the rail across from me where Ben kept his spare saddles and gear. I got up off the bench and went around the table and looked at what it was. It was a piece of pinewood shaped into the head of a horse. I picked it up and held it off and turned it around to see it in the light. It had the look of a horse head all right, but small, the wood grain showing close and yellow, fragrant with the seeping oils. I put it to my nose and closed my eyes and took in the smell. There was a good many dark knots which I could see Ben had taken time to dig around and shape with the knife. Which would not have been easy for anyone to do. The cypress pine is a wood that will split and crack open but this piece was sound. I had seen the needles of the pine used as a smoking medicine by Rosie’s people, the sick person standing in the smoke and sweating out the sickness of their mind or their body. You do not see many of them trees this far into the ranges, but when you do see them they usually stand together like a small family knowing itself out of place. There was chips and shavings and pieces of the yellow wood laying about on the floor. I set the carved horse head down in its place again and went back and sat at the table where I was sitting when I seen it. I had never known Ben to carve nothing and I had difficulty seeing him doing it. But I knew when Ben decided to do something he was sure to make a fine job of it. Ben did not go on with a thing unless he was getting it right.

  I was puzzling on these thoughts and the whole situation and looking across at Ben’s spare saddles sitting on the rail opposite me, along with his bridles and hackamores and a couple of hard-twist cotton rope surcingles he was restringing, and I was thinking about that life I had known well with him and how it was now in the past for me though I was still a young man and not yet twenty-one. There was plaited whips and a length of greenhide broncoing rope, and two of them bull straps with the quick-release buckles hanging over saddle cloths. A couple of old leather jackets and Ben’s best hat on a peg which Ben only wore when he come into Mount Hay to do some drinking. His dad’s spurs was hanging on a high peg above the good hat. All that stuff hanging there looked like Ben himself. I could see him in it. I could smell him. It made me smile thinking of him.

  Him and his dad always rode in them military saddles with the kidney boards to save the scalding we sometimes got on horses with tender backs. I never seen a scald on a horse’s back from a military saddle. I never did use one of them myself but always rode in a straight-out stock saddle like my own dad. I still had my dad’s saddle over at my quarters at the police house. I had his spurs and his hat and his bridles too. I kept all them things of Dad’s after he passed away. Seeing Ben’s gear hanging there made me think of the time in the future when Ben was to be passed away himself. I seen Ben’s place in my eye when we was all done and gone, me and him and Daniel and his interfering wife Esme, who I liked anyway, and that fine mare of mine. This place just being eat up by white ants, pieces of rusting iron all to show for it and for our passing by this way and the joy we had had in our lives, and our troubles too. I had witnessed such places often out there in the scrubs. Desolate, they always was. The hopes of people gone to nothing and forgotten. No names to remember them by. Like the poor who lie in their graves, without no carved and fancy headstones. No one knowing who had dwelled there for their brief time, but only knowing someone had been by there and put their hands to work. I had sat my horse with my dad and looked on such scenes many times and we had smoked a cigarette and paused before moving on with our own business, which was usually getting them half-wild cattle out of the scrubs for some station owner. It was the voice of my mother telling me I should resign from working for the police, I knew that. But I was resisting listening to her on account of fearing to lose Irie and the hope for both of us in the future. I had come to value this hope very highly. More highly than I should have, perhaps. If it had not been for Irie and my secret hopes for our future I would not have hesitated that day but would have told Daniel I could not go on with this thing and must leave the police and be my own man again as working for him did not suit
me. Which was only true. But I did not follow the truth of my feelings on that.

  Sitting there on the bench at Ben’s table I knew myself to be on the cross, part of me going one way and the other part going the other way. I wanted the selfish part of me to win and I did not want it to win. It was a divided feeling, one side fighting with the other side. So I decided to make my decision when Daniel returned from chasing his horse. If I ever seen him again and he did not get lost in the scrub and become bones himself out there in the bendee, the rattlepod growing up out of his eye sockets like that old bull, making a mockery of his dreams of finding his home in the ranges.

  The secret hope I cherished to myself but did not voice to anyone, not even in my thoughts to my own mother, had grown in me and I wished to hold it to myself as long as I could hold it. It was the one thing that was my own and belonged to no one else. But it was not in my power to be the boss of it. It was selfish to desire it, but I desired it all the same. One day Irie was going to come into her womanhood and I hoped we was still around each other when that day come. It was not a hope that had much in it, I am willing to admit that, but I could not help holding to it and dreaming it when I was alone and had the chance to think on such things. I imagined conversations with Irie in the future when she was a grown-up girl, which in some ways I had seen she already nearly was. Sometimes I seen the grown woman in Irie’s eyes, especially when she was looking serious and defying her mother. Irie was not like Esme and could have been the daughter of some other woman. Miriam was more like her mother and Esme favoured that younger girl. You could see it in her touch. But Miriam was jealous of Irie’s liking for me. Me and Miriam was not friends and we never would be. I knew that and I did not try to be friends with her. She seen the world in different colours to Irie’s way of seeing it. Irie seen the world in the same colours I seen it. We had no need to speak of this but knew it to be so between us. We could smile and mean things neither she nor I wished to speak of, but a feeling that was fine and good passed between us on those occasions. Things that was not words but was better than words lay between me and Irie. Words is not good for much when it comes to them feelings.