That Deadman Dance (25 page)

Just for him

Bobby awoke. A woman slept beside him, soft hands pressed together under one cheek. She was wrapped in woollen blankets and kangaroo skin, and Bobby could smell her and the two of them and the sandalwood oil on his own skin.

Later today, he’d join the other men and it’d be a brother or uncle rubbing oil and ochre into his skin, but not like a woman would. His shape would be consolidated, as if he were wood being carved, or stone chipped and ground and polished. Except he wasn’t wood or stone and the oil and ochre and strong hands made him more alive, loosened his muscles so he felt how they were anchored to strong white bones, and how the blood surged in his veins and his lungs filled. The ochre had been carried and passed from person to person until it reached him, had begun with a hand cupping it far east of here.

The smell of earth in the ochre and oil, his increasing sense of the fine and delicate paths of blood and nerves and the many fine sinews connecting him to this place, this perpetual moment. Fingertips tingled, and his body hummed with the voices all around him, of bees, cicadas and crickets; of whispering wind and rustling leaves; of bird song and wingbeat; the creak and hiss of reptiles; the breath and various footfalls of animals; the murmur of waves upon the sand; the exhalation of dolphin and whale; of water welling and spilling playful paths across rock, through and beneath the sand …

A day for singing, for decoration and embellishment; a day of strength rising in them all, and of women and young men in the evening, dancing together.

Bobby breathed close upon the neck of the sleeping body beside him. Who murmured. As Christine had murmured to her drunken father that night. Bobby lifted the rugs, let them fall softly so that the air moved gently across them. Ran the back of his hand across the fine grain of her skin, felt the vertebrae of her neck, shoulders, continued down the vertebrae of her spine with his thumb and fingers, and with his open palm, the pads of his fingertips brushed lightly across her flesh. The woman moved against him. Smiled, welcomed and wanted him, opened her limbs and drew him in. Christine must move like this, too. The two of them might also move on deep currents like this, opening and plunging, and breathing deeply, rhythmically, be lost like this in salty air, ride rolling waves from far away and call out to one another.

And yet fall away. Christine.

*

Bobby woke a second time and looked again at the sleeping body beside him. He ran his fingers through his wispy beard, took a strip of softened kangaroo hide and wound it round and round his skull to hold his hair.

Later today he’d be among bodies adorned with feathers, leaves, the fur of possum or dingo, all their voices and spirits so close there was no need for thinking or choosing but only for moving together like grains of sand rolled by water, like the flowers blossoming from their armbands and hair, and rooted in their heart and guts.

A woman in his dream had called from the other side of the campfire, moist eyes reflecting the flames, following him as he sang and leapt. Could a blonde woman be at his campfire? He had walked away from her and the warm mass of granite which sheltered their camp, just as if something had nudged him, as if some story had left a space into which he might venture. His bare feet trod the warm sand, the scent of the oil and ochre enclosed him. Who knows how long he walked? The sun was like a shiny coin, grass trees shimmered, life hummed. Just for him.

Bones and children

What with his tent, and all these dark-skinned people around him, Jak Tar felt like an Ar-ab: the sheik of Close-by-island Bay. No harem for him, though, thank you very much; he had quite enough trouble keeping his one woman in sight and under control.

It was a fine life, and this season leading up to the wintery whale season he thought the finest of all. Not yet the strong ocean wind and rain, but past the heat of summer, and the ocean smoothed by a land breeze blowing gently all day long. He expected to have seen more whaling ships by now. But not a one. He wondered if there were any even at King George Town.

Chaine would be at King George Town, of course. Had a house here at Close-by-island Bay, too, overlooking the estuary. Follow the river inland and you’d reach his third house at Kepalup, and his sheep grazed between here and there, and beyond. Chaine had sheep and shepherds, teams of kangaroo shooters, men employed cutting and carting sandalwood, and all of it came to this little private port here at Close-by-island Bay. He traded with the whalers and ran whaling teams as well. You had to admire his acumen and pluck.

His workforce was ex-convicts and soldiers, a few labourers he’d imported from India and China even and men like Jak Tar himself (not all of them runaway sailors) who just wanted to keep out of the way of the authorities. Noongars worked for Chaine, too; one or two on roo-shooting teams even had their own guns. They were invaluable to the sandalwood axemen and carriers. Jak Tar saw how working with white men helped young men like Bobby and Wooral get out from under the Elders’ control and become aware of other possibilities. Noongar people were already arriving, anticipating feasts and festivities like the last few winters and Jak Tar had seen smoke wisping from campfires the other side of the estuary.

Menak’s little dog strutted into the clearing, looked back over its shoulder, and gave a few short barks. Menak and Manit appeared moments later, the old woman stooped and limping. And although Jak Tar remembered Menak as a man who could speak English, he had trouble following their conversation with Binyan because Menak refused to use that tongue. It was obvious they were both unhappy. Their gestures had an anger he hadn’t seen before, perhaps because of the violence they recounted. Jak Tar picked up words here and there and, from the resentful glances occasionally cast upon him, began to feel he was classed with the perpetrators. He kept himself busy: stoked the fire and set up the spit for the sheep he’d slaughtered (he knew what losses Chaine would tolerate).

They were talking about whales; Jak Tar recognised the vocabulary from parts of Bobby’s song. Stroking and patting the little rat-catching dog, Menak spoke of whales rising from the water; of whale tails beating the water, striking men and splintering whaleboats; of whales charging, and energy from beneath the sea’s skin bursting forth …

And then he was speaking of there being no more whales. No more ships. No more white men.

Day after day the gentle land breezes persisted. Some days were bright blue and sparkling and the white sand shone; other days were steel-grey or black, and sea and sky merged so that there was no horizon; or it might be that a fine, misty rain fell all day … but always the wind blew from land to sea. No ships came. No whales.

The wind?

No, said Jak Tar, this wind won’t stop a ship getting here. Perhaps they’ve found themselves another whaling ground, one closer to home.

But what about the whales?

Maybe we fished them out.

But no one could know for sure.

The men were done with coopering barrels for the oil. The boats were sanded and oiled, spread with pitch. Boat crews raced one another: pushed the boats across the sand, rowed out to a bay and back again. Harpooners challenged one another to target practice, sharpened their weapons. The card games grew longer. They waited.

In the evenings singing came from the Noongar camps at the estuary; came on the wind, headed out to sea. Jak Tar would not increase the whalers’ allowance of rum.

Bobby walked a path that ran through the dunes from the whalers’ camp to the estuary. Then walked along the beach; he liked to look for the silhouette of fish in the waves, the flash of silver he might at any time see. Who knows, maybe even the spout of a whale.

Menak thought it unlikely.

What was wrong with that old man? When Bobby was a child Menak made him laugh, speaking English in different accents; French, too, just playing. Now he grumbled if you spoke anything but Noongar language. Jak Tar was the only white person he talked to, and he was cranky with him, too.

It was a calm day, the tide so very full that the sea on the beach seemed to be brimming, was like water in a bowl about to overflow. Seaweed floated, not moving, as if the sea, too, had lost direction, was also waiting.

Bobby stopped. Far out at sea, almost on the horizon, he saw a whale spout. He took a few long strides and shouted, but his voice was so feeble. No one to hear him here. Oh, a few Noongar children in the dunes looked up and waved. Bobby began to run back along the beach, speeding up when—yes, the boy on lookout must’ve seen the spout, too—he saw the tiny figures of men running to the boats. Someone would have to take his place: the cook, or even Chaine himself if he was down at the camp. Bobby wished he hadn’t wandered away … But the grey day was closing around him. He was running in fine rain, feet slapping on hard sand the ocean lapped. He could no longer make out men or boats, and in a few moments could barely even see the headland.

Would they find a lone whale?

Panting. There was no one, and he could not see any distance in this damp fine rain. The water beside the headland was smooth; wind must’ve shifted. Finally, the beginning of the winter pattern.

The boats returned just on dark, the men wet and miserable. The wind was up now, and rain came over the headland in irregular and violent forays against the huts where the men huddled grumbling, snarling, muttering. Jak Tar allowed a second and third tot of rum to help fight the cold and their disappointment. Bobby and Wooral slipped away, their kangaroo skins turned fur inward and well greased against rain and cold, to visit some of the Noongar camped in a sheltered hollow of paperbark trees over the other side of the estuary. The strong wind at their backs lifted them, their cloaks rose like wings, their feet were light. Jak Tar had given them half a sheep, exotic food still to those they were visiting, and they bottled their share of rum as a gift. The old man and his young wives would be pleased. So long as they did not bump into Menak.

People usually moved inland this time of year, and despite the last few years most had renewed that habit. Those who remained had withdrawn into small groups, the wind and rain making it a bad night for singing and dancing together. Menak had told everyone the whales would not come, but what would he know? He reckoned sheep was no good food.

Bobby and Wooral found a friendly campfire in a sheltered grove among the dunes, and late in the night listened to the sound of the wind in the trees joining that of the sea, and slept curled in the warmth of their people.

Not long after dawn they walked back around the littered beach. The air was washed and still. Not only driftwood and weed and dead things, but also a lot of old whalebones had been washed ashore during the storm. Bobby thought he could hear bone rattling against bone.

*

Weeks passed: a succession of cold fronts, with barely a day between them. Rain, winds strong and always cold, the sea ragged and torn. The try-pots were ready, the lookout tower manned. The men slept and played cards. Empty barrels awaited their whale oil, and the boats sat on the sand without the weight of men or feel of the sea.

No ships came. Occasionally a lone whale was seen far out to sea, and the whaleboats gave chase but never got close enough to use a harpoon.

The cook got drunk and wanted to fight. Jak Tar sacked him, and brought Binyan in to cook for the men. She knew how to feed Jak and could cook like he wanted, but they required bigger quantities now. The camp was not happy, and where were the whales? If none came, some were thinking, how would they live beyond the season?

William Skelly kept a few men working on the gardens, still hoping for trade with visiting whalers. But he had to set a guard now, because the gardens had been raided. Bobby and Wooral studied the prints. Said they didn’t know who’d done it, but yes, the people at the camps were getting hungry, too, and these last years there’d always been plenty of whales. Skelly’s job was to oversee the garden and sheep, and the animals he penned each night. He wanted to give Wooral and Bobby a gun and have them stand guard. But no, they could not, not here. Of course these people were unhappy, because there were no whales, see?

Skelly and Jak Tar didn’t want anyone coming close to the whale camp, only Bobby and Wooral.

On a still day Bobby heard whalebones tock-tock, moving with the waves. Skeletons of the carcasses that had been towed away from the headland these last few seasons were scattered over the floor of the bay, and each storm washed more bones up onto the beach and among the rocks. Children played at the edge of the sea among bleached and weathered whalebones, and thin stems of smoke rose from among the dunes where camp dogs snapped and snarled.

Menak’s dog, Jock, swaggered right into the rough bough shed where the whalers waited. Bobby called the animal, but it ignored him and a little later Menak appeared. He looked very old and, standing almost naked before the men, began speaking passionately of something they could not follow.

Some of them turned away almost immediately. Jak Tar, who might have listened, was not among them. Someone laughed. Menak shook his fist, and Wooral and Bobby got to their feet and went to the old man who, shaking with rage and feeble in his old age, flailed his arms at them.

Kokinjeri mamang ngalakatang …

Bobby tried to translate: My people need their share of these sheep, too. We share the whales, you camp on our land and kill our kangaroos and tear up our trees and dirty our water and we forgive, but now you will not share your sheep and my people are hungry and wait here because of you …

Bobby realised it was true what the old man said, it was all true.

Skelly muttered, You’ll get a ball in the skull, old man.

Get him out of here, said another.

But it’s true. Bobby saw the whalebones on the shore, and the children playing among them, the dogs snapping, the thin stems of smoke in the dunes … At King George Town, too: the old men trading their daughters and young women for food and rum.

Chaine suddenly appeared. Chaine was prepared to brook no opposition from his men. I’m breaking up camp, there’s nothing to …

He had barely registered Menak, who stepped toward him with boomerang raised and Chaine, hardly faltering, grabbed and twisted the old man’s arm. The boomerang dropped to the ground and Menak fell back into Bobby’s arms. The little dog snarled and leapt, but Chaine’s boot sent it rolling among some empty barrels and, cringing, whimpering, it limped back to Menak’s side. It was the three of them and a wounded dog against the others; Skelly had a lance in his hand, Killam a hatchet. One whaler had a musket. The others had also risen to their feet, excited. Bobby was glad Jak Tar was not among them.

Chaine flung the boomerang away contemptuously, and it flew a surprising distance across the scrub, low and spinning, before it curved up into the air and hovered, turning and turning and turning …

All the men looked, couldn’t help themselves. Even Chaine, even Skelly and Mr Killam; they just stood and stared as it spun, so fast it blurred and seemed to almost melt and become a pool of water in the sky.

Bobby and Wooral and Menak looked at one another. They had thought Geordie Chaine would stand with them, and not against Menak. And Jak Tar? With the others still distracted and staring, Bobby and Wooral led Menak—injured dog in his arms—back to his camp.

The boomerang fell with hardly a sound; cushioned, suspended by the mallee, it was gently lowered to the soil, twig by twig. The men looked at one another, looked around. What? And they began to pack up their things, moved to another game of cards, another tot of rum on Chaine, who said, See me in the morning, I always have need of good workers elsewhere.