Dead Americans (5 page)

He would have such a chance now:

In front of him a black figure emerged from the fire lit horizon, the harsh crack of leaves, twigs, and scrubs alerting the warrior to his presence long before he came into sight. With a cautioning wave to his warriors, Pemulwy dropped from his perch, leaving his spear balanced along the branches.

The dead was a huge figure, twice the size of Pemulwy. His face, craggy and scarred, was a pitted black stone, with wet pebbles lodged deep within, suggesting in the dark that the dead had no eyes; but he did, and they blinked rapidly, scanning the trees and path around him, before settling upon the Eora. His clothing, covered in soot, smelled of smoke, and around his wrists was a long chain, attached to the manacle on his right arm.

His teeth, when the dead smiled, were yellow and misshaped. “Deve ser o bastard que põe o fogo,” he said slowly. “Agradece.”

Pemulwy had learned a small amount of the dead’s language, but it was difficult to learn without a guide for context and meaning. Yet, knowing as little as he did, he knew that this was not their language.

Come with me
, he said, pointing into the dark scrub.
I will offer you shelter
.

Around him, his warriors tightened in a ring above the dead, watching, waiting, protective. Unaware of them, the dead shook his head, and said, “Eu nao entendo o que você dizem, mas eu nao vou em qualquer lugar com você.” Slowly, as if trying to conceal the action, he began wrapping the length of chain around his right fist.

Pemulwy, giving him one more chance before he killed him, tapped his chest, silently, and then pointed into the bush again.

“Tive suficiente com ser cativo. Você e o Inglês,” the dead’s gaze swept the surrounding area. “São somente os mesmo a mim nesta prisão.”

“Inglês?” Pemulwy repeated, tasting the familiar word. “English?”

The dead nodded, his yellow teeth splashed against his skin. “English,” he agreed, glancing behind him. The message was clear to the Eora: the English were the white men at the fires.

Still glancing behind him, the dead suddenly swung his chain-covered fist at Pemulwy.

The warrior ducked and, darting forward, jammed his foot in the back of the dead’s knee, causing him to cry out in pain and slump to the ground. The cry sent a hot flush through him, and he bared his teeth in joy. Around the fallen man, the dozen Eora warriors emerged, one of them tossing Pemulwy his spear.

The black man—and he was a man, Pemulwy knew,
just a man
—began to speak, but the spear of the Eora warrior never hesitated.

Leaving his spear in the body, Pemulwy turned to the warriors. None of them had struck the dead, but they knew, by watching him, by hearing the exchange, that it was only a matter of time until they too killed the dead.

Running his fiery gaze along the semi circle of men before him, Pemulwy said,
The name of our enemy is the English.

The bones across Cadi’s skin snapped together in faint clicks as the Aborigine walked through the black water of the hulk’s belly to stand before Twain.

Twain, despite his wariness, was fascinated by the features behind the white skull. It was the impression of a man sleeping, with the full, closed lips, smooth skin, and large, closed eyes. But there was nothing childlike or innocent about the Aborigine. Scars covered him in slender lines, as if a series of blades had been run again and again against his skin, and then stitched back together with a care that ultimately could not hide the damage.

“Revolutions.” When Cadi’s faint, skeleton whisper of a voice reached Twain’s ears it was harsher: raw, sad, and violent, whereas before it had sounded like a man’s. “I have tried to organize revolutions.”

“That’s a mighty large thing to do,” Twain replied. “And not always altogether successful, from my understanding of history.”

As he spoke, the ribs of the hulk melted away, and the black water had drained from his shoes; but rather than experience a dryness, the fluid was immediately replaced with new water that signalled, before he saw it, a continual silver slant of steady rain that ran over him.

Before him was an inn made from wood, with a wide, tin roofed veranda around it, and hitching posts for horses out the front. It had glass windows, while behind the glass was light provided by lanterns.

“I have tried to make symbols,” Cadi’s grating voice whispered to his left. “A revolution must have a symbol.”

Twain began to reply, but stopped.

On the veranda, dark shapes slithered into view between the rain. Allowing the Aborigine to lead him through the mud and grass, Twain approached the figures and found them to be man-like, and moments later, to be men. They wore armour that covered their torso and head, and which was made from ugly black metal: it was dented, and poorly shaped, and the helmet looked like an upended tin, with a slit cut across for the eyes.

The armour was crude and laughable, but Twain could not bring himself to acknowledge the fact. Instead, he watched the figures load their pistols and rifles and step from the porch in heavy, awkward footfalls, the silver rain washing over their dark bodies.

“Symbols,” Cadi repeated, and stepped before the figures. They paused, and he ran his bony fingers across the black armour. “A symbol to defy the English, that is what this is.”

“There’s certainly something in it,” Twain replied quietly, shivering, but not from the cold.

“It would have been pure in Sydney.” Cadi turned and raised his right arm, pointing behind Twain.

He gazed through the rain, at the graveyard of fallen branches and trees that littered the ground around the inn. At first, Twain could not see anything. But then, like ghosts emerging in the darkness, outlined by the rain, he saw them: Police Officers. The representation of English authority, scattered throughout the branches and trees, easily fifty in number, each with a rifle or pistol aimed at the four men.

“Here, it is an act of stupidity,” Cadi said.

“Stop them!” Twain cried, spinning on him. “This doesn’t need to happen!”

“It already has. All my Irishman had to do was ride into Sydney and walk down the streets, his guns drawn, dressed in this armour, demanding the release of his mother, and the heart of the nation would have gone to him. But he did not understand that, and instead, he took my revolution and wasted it here, where no one would understand.”

Twain curled his hands into fists and fought back the urge to scream out a warning to the black armoured men. Instead, trying to hide his distaste in the situation, he said, “And what exactly happened to these youngsters who didn’t go to Sydney?”

The Aborigine’s voice was faint, and touched with sadness, “Like all Australian folk legends, they died at the hands of authority.”

There was a loud crack from behind him, and, with a violent shiver, Twain felt a bullet pass through him. He clutched his chest, horrified, terrified, ready to scream out; but there was no injury, only the disconcerting echo of pain.
It’s a fantasy! Nothing more than a cheap trick!
The thought, rather than calming Twain, made him angry. Around him, more guns fired, the bullets fat silver streaks in the air, and the four black armoured men raised their arms and returned fire before falling back into the hotel. As they did, the windows shattered and screaming from men and women inside the inn tore out and ignited the night.

“What is the meaning of this?” Twain demanded angrily. “Why show me this tragedy? Let me go—I’ve no interest in this!”

“You must understand the need for revolution,” Cadi replied, the sockets of his skull gazing intently at him. “You must understand why the heart of Sydney needs to be replaced.”

“I don’t care!” Twain hollered. “This isn’t my country, this isn’t government! This isn’t my goddamned concern!”

“No, not now. But it will be.”

Cadi thrust his bony hand into the mud. There was a faint crack, and he straightened, lifting a smooth hatch from the ground. Inside was a tightly wound spiral staircase made from wood and iron railings.

“Come, Mark Twain, and I will show you more.”

“Where’re you taking me?” Twain asked, his feet moving without his consent. He struggled against them, but realized the futility quickly.

“Into the Spirit World,” Cadi replied without emotion. “Where one step can be a day or a year or a lifetime. At the end of the stairs, you will understand the importance of this event, and why the death of an Irishman will always be remembered, if not understood.”

Twain gazed at the inn, and watched as one of the black armoured men stepped out of the front door, pistols held in his hands. Alone, a dark, iron-covered beast torn by emotions and a lifetime of injustice, he strode down the stairs, firing into the Police.

Unable to watch him fall, Mark Twain accepted his descent.

Toongagal
[3]
had been turned into simple sprawl of ugly, poorly built English buildings parted by a muddy stretch of road and surrounded by dirty bush land.

Pemulwy emerged from the muddy scrub, followed by the lean shadows of twenty warriors. Each man was armed with only a knife, but also carried sticks and cloth across their backs; they held nothing that would hinder their speed or their use of the land and the cloudy night sky as cover, for their goal tonight was one that relied upon stealth.

Silently, Pemulwy lead the warriors along the edge of the muddy road, leading them around the town, aiming for the isolated outpost at the opposite end.

In the years of his war, the Eora warrior had become a fearsome figure in the minds of the English and his fellow tribesman, but he was not pleased with the progress he had made. Burning crops, stealing food, killing farmers on the edge of the townships: these were not stopping the arrival of Englishmen and women and their convicts. If anything, it only dug the farmers on the outskirts deeper into the land. And, as each year progressed, Pemulwy became increasingly aware that he was not winning the war.

To complicate matters, he was also coming to the realization that it was not the English and their weapons that he was losing too, but rather their clothing, food, and luxuries, such as tobacco pipes.

And rum.

Rum was the enemy that Pemulwy could not fight.

It was the currency of the land, spreading not only through the Eora and tribes inland, but the free farmers and convicts who worked for the English. It was indiscriminate, and endless, a dark, intoxicating river that weaved around everyone, and which flowed out of the hands of the English authorities.

He had learned of that only recently, when fellow tribesmen moved into the towns, lured by rum and tobacco that they received for erecting buildings, ploughing the land, and hunting. Tasks that tribesmen had done for their tribes, but now did for the English Redcoats.

Having followed the wayward Eora to threaten and force them back to the tribes, Pemulwy had instead decided upon a frontal attack on the English. The idea had come to him suddenly, a gift from the Spirits that was accompanied by the Elder’s warning nine years ago, about his foretold death. Being a warrior, he pushed aside the doubt, and focused on acquiring English weapons. He would need them.

The outpost was a long, squat building that resembled a giant wooden goanna baking in the sun, or, in this case, the night. There were no lanterns inside it, but on the veranda, on a wooden chair, slept the white body of an Englishman.

Pemulwy motioned for the warriors behind him to wait, and he then slipped up to the veranda. The mud around the barracks pushed coolly through his toes, and clung to his feet, leaving muddy prints along the railing that he climbed, and the porch he stalked along before his strong fingers clamped over the Englishman’s nose and mouth and his dagger sliced into the man’s neck.

The muddy prints multiplied as the Eora warriors joined him, and they pushed through the door, into the dark, half empty barracks and circled the beds that held men. There, nothing more than a concentration of mud marked the struggle and the death that took place in the beds.

At the back of the outpost, behind a poorly made wooden door, the fading prints ended at the weapons of the English: thirty gunmetal black rifles and fifteen pistols, each with wooden stocks; a dozen sabres; one cat-o-nine-tails; chains and manacles; a dozen daggers; a small cannon on wooden wheels; and bags of powder and bullets and balls for the cannon.

The cloth and sticks were laid out, and rifles and pistols and sabres and knives taken. The cannon and its ammunition proved difficult, but Pemulwy ordered two Eora to carry it, and their feet, free of mud, made an invisible, slow exit from the building.

They were ghosts, unable to be tracked in the bush, the only sign of their passing for the returning English soldiers were the dark stains that they experienced with mounting terror two hours later. They knew who it was, in their bones, more spiritual in knowledge than they had ever experienced, as if something in the land was taunting them itself, and they knew what it meant:

Pemulwy was armed for war.

There is no doubt that the protests, art, and stories of the Aboriginal culture influenced Mark Twain during his stay. The reader will note that the retelling of their stories and anecdotes throughout the book are always sympathetic, and that the tales he was told could have filled a dozen books equal to this one’s size. Yet, as the book continues, the reader will find that he is particularly interested in the story of Pemulwy. Indeed, his fascination with the warrior was so intense that he took a band of Aboriginal storytellers under his wing, and made sure that the story of the Eora warrior was heard every evening before he performed.

The great Australian poet and author, Henry Lawson, in his private memoirs (collected, finally, in Lauren Barrow’s biography,
Lawson, One Life
) wrote:

‘Twain’s adoption of an Aboriginal storytelling band was nothing short of shocking. Newspapers were flooded with angry letters from readers and blossomed with poisoned columns from writers. All of these complaints could be summarized into the catch phrase of ‘How dare people pay their hard earned money to see the history of a savage!’ It was quite the scandal at the time. Even I, who had never had a problem with an Aborigine that was based on the colour of his skin, wondered about the quality of the show now that Twain’s ambitions had turned to a local cause.