That Deadman Dance (14 page)

Behind him, two more mules pulled a cart in which two women—mother and daughter?—balanced precariously on chairs. A sharp, sweet scent and stale body odour followed the party. Bobby turned to watch them rattle down the slope. Two young men—dark like himself—sat on the back of the cart, feet dangling. They stared at him, but offered no greeting. So solid, so solemn. Who?

Standing between them, bracing himself with a hand on each of their shoulders, was a boy not much older than Bobby himself; a red-haired boy who poked out his tongue. Frowned.

After they were lost from his sight, Bobby listened to the group proceeding down the slope until they were lost from his hearing, too. Later he saw them emerge on the beach below.

A boat left a ship that was anchored in the harbour. Bobby had not seen this one arrive. The boat rowed to the sand, and its men lifted the women from the cart and mule and carried them through the shallows. They bore the Governor on their shoulders. As they reached the ship a thin, cracking thunder reached Bobby’s ears. Wisps of smoke trailed from among the masts.

Shooting at the Governor?

Oh, they must be shooting into the sky just to say hello.

A Yankee challenge

Mr Killam was learning what it was to have someone move in on what you thought was your very own home. He thought it was the last straw. The very last. He was back under canvas, and the Governor was planning the rooms he’d add to the main building; a building Cross had constructed especially for the Cygnet River’s Governor’s summer home, and which Killam had later claimed as his own. And now the new Governor’s family was right there, watching the garden ripen. No surplus to hide away now.

Killam never thought he’d miss the barracks and the company of soldiers and he wondered if he’d done the right thing handing in his resignation. And staying here? It was bad for business having the Governor at The Farm, and how was Killam gunna make his way? And now he had these black boys of the Governor’s. Chaine couldn’t stop grinning when he brought them to Killam and said the Governor wanted them made useful, trained to be capable working men. They’d work for keep, the Governor had said, until they prove their worth. Train them to be useful, they are simply a burden upon me at present. He thought he had enough mouths to feed in this colony and its precarious supplies, without another two.

Jeffrey and James stood with downcast eyes, dressed in fine clothes which, although shabby, were beyond those to which any working man might aspire. They nodded their heads in reply to Killam’s greeting and listened to Chaine’s plans for them and their life with Killam.

A solid working life. The Governor wanted them trained to be useful and to have a place in society as workers. Meantime, Chaine said, and it might take some time, we’ll have their labour.

Well, Killam knew that they’d have to learn to hold their tongues first of all. He didn’t want them talking to the authorities, and best if they never knew the difference between what was legal and what was more in the way of a grey area. If they were clever enough they’d soon realise what could be gained from helping him, and remaining dumb. There was more and more work in this grey area. The reluctance of captains to pay the fee they were charged for entering the harbour meant they anchored outside, and that increased the possibility for tax-free trade. Some called it smuggling, but neither Killam nor his employer, Mr Chaine, used such a term. It was easier to work for Chaine than starting from nothing. And Killam admired Chaine’s ingenuity, his pluck and energy.

*

Soldier Killam … Well, he was no longer a soldier. Just a man trying to make his own way. Trying to advance his-self.

Easy enough to say every man has to sit on his own arse if, like Chaine, you had money to pad the seat of your trousers, but Mr Killam couldn’t afford sitting-down time and had taken to patching his trousers lately. If he wasn’t careful, he might soon be as bare-arsed as the blacks hereabout. Not that these boys of the Governor’s were bare-arsed; a couple of dandies, were Jeffrey and Jimmy. They’d have to prove their worth, and prove they could earn the food he was obliged to give them. The Governor got here with his notion of showing how the natives could be trained to fill the role of working white men, but suddenly realised he might struggle just to feed his own people.

Big-hearted Chaine stepped in yet again, so soon after buying a dead man’s property just to help out the poor widow. Killam wished he’d had the chance—and capital—to do the very same thing. Chaine thought Killam could help train the two black boys.

Killam knew he needed more than his own two hands to properly advance himself in this part of the world. It was handy to have Chaine’s backing, at least until he got some capital behind him, some friends and contacts of influence but—as Chaine showed—he needed to offload labour whenever possible. These two might yet prove useful.

They were rowing now. Having left where the curve of sand met the rocks in the very lee of the headland, the boat slid softly across the sea’s skin. The boys rowed satisfactorily, and after several brisk strokes of the oars they were beyond the rocky point and the ship’s light was once again visible. Closer still and the ship was an almost menacing presence: a squatting coagulation of darkness that the ocean lapped against, that disturbed the wind.

The three in the boat were tense. This was a risky business. The oars dipped, the ocean accepted them. The moon lifted its large and yellow self from the dark silk sea. So calm out on the ocean, and warmer than on land. Tomorrow this ship would lie in the harbour with other Yankee whaling ships.

It would be grand to have a tavern like Mr Chaine. Lucrative too. There’d been enough money passing over that bar the last few days to make up for any high-spirited hijinks the sailors and whalers got up to. But Killam didn’t have a tavern, though he’d once sold grog in a hut. He may once have helped ships into the harbour, and called himself harbourmaster and pilot, but when those positions were made official and put up for tender, he’d not won them. Why? Because he didn’t have his own boat, and maybe they thought he wasn’t good enough with small talk. Maybe because he didn’t have the right connections, the right way about him. Chaine wanted to be first onboard each ship and reckoned he was sharp-witted enough to take best advantage of that—to meet the captain or whoever was best able to strike a deal. Then he gave the task over to Killam, paid him a wage.

Killam knew he was sharp-witted, too, but all he had was his own brain, brawn and near enough to bare arse.

He shifted about on his buttocks. Put up a hand. Shh.

The boys held the oars in the air.

No one had time to notice water drops, silver with moonlight, and the stars dancing in the sea.

Drifting on the silky waters of the sound under a bone-coloured moon, Killam was here on unofficial business. Something overheard, initially, about men wanting to desert ship. The captain had kept too close a watch on them while they were ashore, and let Chaine know he didn’t want any left behind; he was low on hands as it was. For all of that, Killam had managed to lend an ear to a couple of the men who wanted off. Chaine had suggested he might help such men escape, might hide them away, too. There was a need for
skilful
labour, Chaine had said, looking at the two black boys.

So be it. The escapees had promised him a reward, and had tobacco to bring ashore. Chaine would reward him, too, at some future time, if things turned out well.

Here now, the first of them, sliding down a rope ladder he’d swung over the ship’s side. Now, the second …

Killam grunted in pain. Something (an anchor? a grappling hook?) plummeted into the boat, glanced against his leg.

Seize him! A voice of authority, he thought, even as he tried to throw off the hands that obeyed it. He saw someone slip into the water, quiet and fast as a seal. Then, dazed from a clip around the ears, he was aboard ship, lamps swinging and shadows shifting. Unsettled, frightened. Face to face with the captain.

Throw ’em in irons.

Jeffrey and Jimmy were sobbing out loud. Begging for mercy. Praying. To our God, thought Killam.

I am a British subject, sir!

They kicked him below deck.

*

Daylight found Killam tied to the rigging; an insect to the captain’s spider. Shirtless and bound, he could only turn his head a fraction from side to side. His mouth was gagged, otherwise he would have shouted, The whole settlement is beside me, this is sovereign land, sir! Squirming and twisting to try to catch someone’s merciful eye, he chanced to see a many-ended rope, thin and knotted. He realised the crew had gathered, that there was a watching crowd.

The captain made a speech. Any man who tries to escape, or any man who helps him …

There was a silence. Killam heard the noise of the rigging, waves lapping the boat. The wind is coming up, he thought, incongruously.

And then felt the first blow. Killam had been a soldier, a fortunate soldier, obviously, because until now he had never known pain like this.

After what seemed a very long time, the captain untied his gag. Up close, he looked into Killam’s face. Then moved away, it seemed as if on wheels.

Any man, or any man that helps him, desert my ship …

The flogging continued, and Killam cried out, cried out.

They lay him in his own boat, and Jeffrey and Jimmy rowed to shore. The boys were sobbing still and Killam, knees on the floor of the boat, was sprawled across a thwart with his back open to the sky.

The Yankee captain would have left if he could, no doubt, but the wind kept him anchored just outside the harbour mouth. The pilot boat came out once again with Geordie Chaine aboard to take the captain ashore.

The Governor and appointed magistrates heard the Yankee captain. They listened to Mr Chaine, noted the distress of Mr Killam and were of the opinion that the Yankee captain would need to be sent to Headquarters—Cygnet River—on trial for assault. They placed him in the town gaol.

There were several American whalers at rest in the harbour, waiting on a shift in the wind, and those Yankee whaling men had little affection for British law. Bobby Wabalanginy liked their accent and listened close whenever he heard it, and now he heard a loud voice saying they should take possession of an English barroom at a little port like King George, strike up ‘Yankee Doodle’, and break down in genuine fore-and-after.

King George Town had been a disappointment. No pretty barmaids, although some found comfort with a local native lass. There was more life in the blackfellas than the townspeople, for they’d try to trade you a parrot, a spear, and yes, a woman sometimes. But all in all it was a dull place, and now this damned easterly wind held them and threatened to hold them longer. So when the American whaling ships heard one of their captains was imprisoned, their crews were excited. Adventure!

At the time, the population of King George Town was mostly unaware that a party of Yankees braced with pistols confronted the Governor. Some, if not many, would have been delighted to hear that the Governor—whose eyes Bobby once thought were dissolving into sky—had no way to stand against them. It was unlucky for the Governor that he was not at The Farm, the population gossiped, and although not pleased that the authority of their colonial outpost had been so lightly dismissed, they enjoyed hearing of the Governor’s trials.

His eyes watered with helplessness, humiliation.

His voice blustered, faltered.

He insisted that a fine be paid.

A trifling thing, the Yankees told him, laughing, and tossed coins into his lap. You have a man of ours who absconded.

The Governor insisted that he could not spare resources to help track down every missing sailor.

Wooral was in the room, dressed in the livery the Governor required. The American party walked in, and Wooral’s body softened as the exchange developed so that he was overlooked, forgotten. There was no need to step out of his shoes, because he was barefoot—the shortage of footwear in King George Town meant even the Governor could not have servants costumed as he preferred. Wooral dissembled his stance from that preferred by the Governor and, leaning back into the corner of the room, slid down to his haunches. He wanted invisibility; wanted to watch things unfold, was impressed by these men.

Ah by crikey, those blooming Yankees look after their own people, unna?

Jeffrey and James

Jeffrey hated the way people always considered James and himself as if they were the same and quite inseparable from one another. Well, they weren’t. Weren’t inseparable, weren’t twins, weren’t even brothers. He couldn’t remember his own parents, and the people who he’d thought of as his mother and father had all of a sudden disowned him. That was such a long way from here, a long time ago: years and years, and many ship journeys. He still thought of them there in New South Wales when he wanted comfort; actually, not of
them
, but of
being there
. He remembered the oven radiating its warmth and smells, the pages of the Bible turning, rough voices singing hymns and eyes looking down on him. Memories from when he was little more than a baby, he realised.

There were no other children to begin with, only him. Then they had brought James into their home. He came with no name, and they gave him James. Jeffrey remembered no resentment at having to share his foster parents, at least not on that occasion. He liked having baby brother James, liked caring for him and helping Mother with him, in between lessons and Bible study and all the chores children can help with on a farm. In fact, he took over many of Mother’s roles so she could care for the child, since he, as they kept telling him, was a big boy now.

James had taken on many of those chores at an even younger age. So, between the two of them, they milked the cows, tended the vegetable garden, made butter and bread, washed dishes and clothes, steamed sheets in the great copper and hung them out on the propped line, and helped with fencing and shepherding … Two young boys, they were trained well, and did their jobs so diligently that Father rarely had reason to strike them. They were close, Jeffrey and James in those years. But even then, not brothers, not really.

And then Mother became pregnant. Had a shitty baby. A baby that got all the love and their eyes and hugs even, and just gave vomit and tears and crying. Neither boy liked to dwell on the years from then, and they never talked about it. Their bedding was moved to the shed, their meals increasingly eaten apart from Mother and Father and baby. There was still the Bible, but more and more work to be done, and only orders and punishment from Mother and Father. They still came into the house for hymns and Bible readings. The boys knew Mother and Father liked their singing, and when their voices joined in it was almost like old times, before the baby, before …

It was James who chased the old cow. Firstly because it was a bossy one, always hard to get into the milking stall and likely as not to kick if you strayed behind it. When he quite suddenly grew out of the fear of it and realised his mastery, he liked to tease. But Father never saw James chasing the silly cow, oh no, it was Jeffrey he saw chasing it, making it do that clumsy run with its eyes rolling and udder swaying side to side.

Father punished him like a child. Put the gangly boy across his knee and beat him with increasing energy and ferocity. Which was partly why seeing Killam tied up and flogged had upset them so. That was what made them blubber, even though they were grown up now, Jeffrey almost a man.

He smiled to himself, thinking of the hair under James’s arms and the quickly stiffening snake in one another’s trousers that they knew so well. Smiled again. Father to thank for that, too, when you come to think of it. Him coming back to Jeffrey in the long night after the flogging, with ointments to salve the raw, hot flesh. And coming back nights and nights after that, to lie with him; it excited Jeffrey now just thinking of it.

Father thought he was a sinner, you could see the change in him because sometimes he could not look at Jeffrey, but other times Jeffrey might just touch him or brush up against him, and then it would soon be that the man could not get close enough. Then rush away.

Jeffrey taught James what he’d learned from Father. So not brothers, more like lovers almost. And just as well, because they only had one another now that Father and Mother had children of their own.

At church, when they had been talking of the civilising influence of Christianity on the blacks, and Mr Spender said he was on his way to the most isolated of shores at King George Town to administer a small colony amid hordes of savages where he would likely suffer a shortage of servants on the token salary offered, they invited him to take their own well-raised boys to accompany and support both him and his family. It would continue their Christian education also.

Spender paraded the boys as products of his own endeavours. Said he had trained them to dress, moulded their manners and made them so very useful. It could be done with all of the blacks, he said.

And so Jeffrey and James were paraded and locked away for their own sakes, to spare them from the temptations of civilised life. But even they noticed their clothing was shabbier than it had been, Jeffrey wearing his a little longer before they were handed down to James. Then they arrived at King George Town where there was no one worth parading before. Were they really such a drain on finances?

Spender lent them out to Chaine, and he to Mr Killam. Who they watched receive a cruel flogging tied to a ship’s mast, and then rowed to shore in the sparkling sunlight of early morning.

*

Killam lay facedown. Jeffrey and James had tried to help him, but were only able to weep and flutter ineffectually, whereas his good friend—in fact, who would have thought him such a friend?—his good friend Mr Skelly had really come to his aid. Skelly bathed Killam’s flayed skin with calloused but surprisingly gentle hands. Killam winced and made little yelping sounds. Skelly told him the story of the Governor’s surrender; it was all around the town. Killam would have liked to see the familiar face that accompanied these gentle hands and the voice, but it hurt to turn around.

And that sailor, did he stay away?

Skelly had heard nothing of any sailor. He went out of the hut to speak to someone and when he returned said, Yes, that escaped sailor Jak Tar was with Mr Chaine apparently. On his way out to the river property.

Kepalup.