That Deadman Dance (5 page)

They were still trying as day came cold, with a grey and washed-out light. Drops of water fell in clusters from the straggly trees and prickly shrubs with a sound like tiny footsteps rushing and dancing all around them. The low cloud and misty rain thinned, intermittently showing the waiting mountain range.

A high-pitched barking pricked their attention. Bloody Menak’s dog, said Killam, and they watched it scamper back to a group of figures who had apparently coalesced from the clouds, who wore anklets of water drops as they stepped across the plain until they stood in a rough circle around the three shivering men, their sodden bedding and smoking pile of twigs. Dark figures in short cloaks of animal skin moved closer to the three men and Wooral’s hand emerged from beneath his cloak holding a warm and glowing banksia cone. The circle of men brought out similar burning cones from beneath their cloaks, and Chaine and Killam and Skelly felt the warmth enclose them.

Proper fire not far, said Bobby.

The warmth, perhaps even the company, revived Geordie Chaine. They waded through a number of small creeks until eventually the men, as damp as if they were themselves made of clouds and rain, were led to a shelter among towering granite rocks. Their boots crunched dry, coarse sand and a couple of fires warmed a natural enclosure of overhanging walls of stone.

You eat beetle, Wooral told Geordie Chaine, smiling. Now
bardi
, unna? He held out curls of seared meat on a sheet of paperbark.

With a nod from Wooral, Soldier Killam replaced his wet shirt and jacket with the shirt he’d earlier given his guide. Dry and warm, it was scented with the fire’s sweet smoke.

Killam and Skelly slept. But Geordie Chaine circled the rocks of the shelter. Bobby followed the sound of his crunching boots. See, he said, pointing at an old cowpat which, having dried, had now almost disappeared because of all the moisture in the air. Nearby, Bobby indicated a hoof print, protected from the wind and rain by the wall of granite beside which it was so closely imprinted.

The little dog sniffed the cowpat, looked up at Bobby and Geordie Chaine and wagged its stump of a tail.

Bobby wondered if he could explain what his people were saying. Could he? Sheltered like an insect among the fallen bodies of ancestors, he huddled in the eye sockets of a mountainous skull and became part of its vision, was one of its thoughts. Moving across the body, journeying with the old people, he drank from some transformed, still-bleeding wound.

Bobby Wabalanginy and his Uncle Wooral heard the frogs and the birds singing and the voices and even the drooping leaves, and the sky told them there was rain to come, that they must be moving inland.

Wind and rain hide the hunter while the kangaroo scratches his chest, rotates his ears inward and looks away, awaiting the spear. Birds nest. Striped emu chicks appear. There are possums everywhere in the tall trees.

The plains run with water, streams joining old paths leading all the way to the sea, not just to King George Town where those people camp all the time now. Not everything or everyone moves that way.

But these new prints in the earth came from there, these prints made by the bellowing, blundering devils the horizon people brought with them. What they want? What they offer?

*

The Chaine party were shown a creek, and were told it would lead them to the coast close to King George Town. They never really left the mountains behind because they saw them from each hilltop and agreed that, although quite unremarkable in the country of home, they made a grand impression here, floating like blue islands in this otherwise flat landscape. They crossed plains of dense mallee and areas of long, rippling grass, and the creekbed offered knotted groups of trees and deep pools of water at irregular intervals.

Good for kangaroos, Wooral had said. Bullock, too.

There were many small, dry and obviously intermittent tributaries and patches of soggy, recently burned land. One creekbed, descending a rocky slope, became a sequence of small deep pools stepping from one level to the next. An eagle in a large tree beside one pool, its nest surprisingly close to the ground, returned their gaze.

Perhaps it was fatigue. Geordie Chaine moved in some other atmosphere: the air moist, the light thick and honey-coloured, and his breathing so shallow he wondered if the air needed to be eaten, swallowed rather than inhaled. The many and varied voices of frogs, the harsh rustling vegetation and the wind moaning in trees, the impertinent, abrupt birdsong, the improbably bounding wallabies …

He heard a cow bellow, the sound strange in this wilderness, then a high-pitched barking. Chaine fell behind the other two men. He smelled roasting meat, and blundered on until he heard someone coughing and then there was Dr Cross sitting by a campfire outside a small hut, Wooral and Bobby beside him, Killam and Skelly on their feet looking back over their shoulders at him, Chaine.

He scanned the clearing: a cow, tied to a tree and with a bell on its neck; a rough pen full of sheep; a tiny hut with its crude door of kangaroo skin. A vegetable garden. The strong smell of shit. Something tapping in the wind.

I’ve taken this land, Cross said. My land. The three at the fire got to their feet and Chaine and Killam shook hands with them all. Skelly stepped back, but the Noongar man and boy held their hands out to him and when Cross followed their lead he shook all their hands.

Bobby shook hands with Wooral, with Cross and Wooral again.

Skelly kicked at a chicken scratching near his feet.

A single heart beats

Alexander Killam agreed with Skelly’s judgement— agriculture was not worth the effort and trouble. Poor soil, the topsy-turvy seasons. The natives think stock is theirs to spear, and there is the trouble with the fires they light that can race across country like charging cavalry.

True, his pilot duties did not keep him overly busy; he’d been able to take several days off just now, hadn’t he? On average, only about one ship a week came into the inner harbour, although others anchored in the sound and still more at other sheltered bays along the coast. That was the key. Already he had smuggled rum ashore, and sold or exchanged fresh vegetables for things he knew would be valuable.

There were plenty of whaling ships. Perhaps Mr Chaine should put his mind to that enterprise? Alexander Killam had the Sailor’s Rest. Not that there was much rest to be had, unless you counted being dead drunk and laid out in the gutter to one side of the steps. But the whalers who came into the harbour found it amenable enough. The crew of a whaling ship pretty well doubled the population of the community and although they reckoned they found the settlement quiet, it nevertheless provided them with a diversion after their long days at sea. They’d delight in occupying one of the drinking houses, looking for excitement, a fight, women.

The Sailor’s Rest was the sort of place you had to stoop to enter, and even having done so many would be obliged to remain stooped, so low was its ceiling. Its walls often failed to prevent a drunken body crashing through in a cloud of old clay and twigs. The air was usually a fug of grog and tobacco fumes, and thin shafts of sunlight striking across the room showed smoke coiling and collecting, unable to escape. Of an evening a couple of oil lamps and the open fire were the only illumination.

Its customers—rough men, soldiers and sailors mostly—were inclined to fight among themselves. For anything else, say for singing, and certainly for women, they’d go to one of the native campfires beyond the edge of town.

It was often hard to remember how you got there, as both Skelly and Killam knew.

*

Cross sent Bobby for Wooral and Menak, but only Wooral came. Bobby didn’t know what was wrong with Menak, or if he was grumpy with Cross and all his people, these new ones who had arrived with the latest ship. Cross said, No matter, but we need a dance performed, a corroboree. These visitors are our friends and we want to welcome them properly, make them feel at home. But only you, our Noongar friends, can truly do that.

Chaine laughed.

A lot of Noongars were in the settlement. Well, at the edge of the huts, really—Cross’s bed was closest—where the old people and women and children camped when Wooral and the other young men stayed with Cross. There was space there for the fires and the dancing. People readied themselves with ochre and oil and stories, and waited.

Chaine and Cross and their friends from Cygnet River arrived just after sunset. The fires were alight, the men painted-up, and people sat in groups, apart. But Menak and old Manit were still not there. Dr Cross and Chaine—those good friends of Wooral and Bobby—brought tubs of sweet rice. Wooral explained that this was for
after
the dance, and they waited and waited still for Menak and old Manit to arrive. That old woman, Manit, was their best singer. And Menak knew the best dances, the best songs. They knew how things were done properly.

Bobby and Wooral built the fires higher and higher, but still Menak and Manit never came. Cross and his friend sat down, and the Noongar were happy to have them there, but Chaine was rising up and down on his toes, looking around. He beat two of the boomerangs together, laughing loudly, and tried to get everyone to start.

The dancers were nowhere to be seen. And then people began moving, arranging themselves. Voices fell away as Menak and Manit walked across one edge of the circle of firelight and went to Cross and Chaine. Dr Cross was seated on the ground, and Manit held out her hand to help him up. She waited for Menak to shepherd Chaine, whose voice was loud in the relative quiet. The two old ones led the men to where they might sit, waving their hands at the guests so that they might also be properly seated among the group of people, a little while ago seemingly chaotic and now so orderly, organised by a combination of age, gender, familiarity and, it seemed to the alert Dr Cross, what they had to contribute. Cross was closer to the edge than the centre of those who were watching, Chaine and then the newer settlers a little further again, all of them grouped together at the outside of the circle. Menak and Manit went to sit with the ones too old to dance, but in a position that showed their centrality.

Now the young men appeared from behind some bushes, standing in a line just like in that dance from over the ocean horizon, that Deadman Dance. It was very quiet, the wind and the waves hushing them all. Wooral and Bobby were in the middle of the line of dancers, and Bobby the youngest.

Then came the singing.

Emu dance first: the men did it together, sat back and took turns, each man with his arm extended, bent at the wrist, and moving like the neck of an emu. No special dances, and not the Deadman Dance, though many were thinking of that one, hoping this important friend might lead them in something like that. And after the dance where men show their strength, standing on one leg, almost motionless but for the muscles quivering under their skin, Bobby started playing. He did his shipboard dance: the rise and fall. The boys caught on, bobbing like things floating in the water and the wave moving along them; and Bobby took little steps side to side, like on the deck of a ship. The men lay down, and Bobby walked across their moving bodies, like the boat in the harbour going from ship to shore. Walking on the waves, see? And then he was staggering side to side and mimed lifting a bottle to his lips: that dance the sailors do.

The singers tried hard not to laugh, and sometimes took up the rhythm and sound of some other dance, some safe dance, to get everyone back to a less cheeky repertoire. Time and time again they took the dancers back to the test of strength, one man standing motionless with the muscles quivering under his skin while the others stomped the ground, releasing all their strength into it.

Bobby improvised as soon as the singers relented, sang for himself until the Elders took it up, and in his dance was rolling side to side, awash on the deck. Then he was walking, plodding—all the young men joined in, a single line behind, doing the journeys Cross took them on, walking walking walking ever outwards and away. They gathered around Bobby like curious spirits as he plucked flowers and feathers, and turned the pages of a book. Faces turned to Cross, and he did look embarrassed, too. And after each improvisation, everyone still laughing at Bobby and his cheek, the singers brought the dancers back, and again it was Bobby everyone looked at, standing on one leg, his muscles quivering and jumping under the skin. Bobby stayed and stayed and never moved from that one spot until the singers finally released him. All that concentrated power, and he just a boy.

Menak was very pleased with him, everyone could see.

The singing and dancing stopped, and the crowd became like water again, moving and collecting, and Dr Cross as if following some tiny gully rolled away on his own.

*

In the morning and the days to come there was not a Noongar to be seen.

They are a mobile people, Dr Cross tried to explain to the new settlers. And there is an order to their movements, according to season and the laws of their society. They do not yet need us. They will return, he said, and later wrote it down as if for reassurance.

Sailing, sailing just the same almost on the land as on the sea, Bobby came back on a dry wind and found the water holes drying. He went with his Elders as they set fire to the reeds, then a day or two later walked easily to the water for the frogs, tortoises, gilgies, the ducks and swans. The wind swung and brought family from further inland, and fish came close to shore as if to meet them. There were salmon in the face of waves, cobblers and flathead against the ripples of sand. Possums distracted one another, male and female, and were easy game. Kangaroos and wallabies and quokkas and tammars, heavy with young, came to where the grass sprang up with the first rains after Bobby made fire. They were easy, too. There was never trouble with food and shelter, and even less now that the sailors stayed longer ashore. Bobby had seen them back away from a wall of flames, and heard how they thought it a miracle when the flames turned back on themselves and died. Sailors, who should be able to read the wind.

Bobby waded in the shallows of the harbour, eyes scanning the sand ripples beneath the water, his vision at that in-between space, ready for the contrast, the counter movement, the shadow or flick of a tail that broke the pattern. He believed it was on an occasion like this, the same coincidence of natural rhythms—movements of sun and wind, of fish, birds and animals—that his uncle had died. He formed the name inside his skull. Wunyeran. Him and Cross like brothers. And Dr Cross? Dr Cross was coughing same as Wunyeran did.

Dimly, Bobby remembered his own mother, coughing.

Dr Cross’s cheeks and nose were flushed. Bobby had seen blood on his handkerchief and a lace of pink foam on his lips. Dr Cross was a wave, breaking just a little, and what was inside and beneath was spilling out.

The marri trees oozed their red gum, were heavy with flowers.

A ship under little sail moved into the harbour, slowly, and anchored way over the other side in the deep water beside the huts. Where the horizon people stayed. Horizon people? Some of them been here forever now. And Bobby had been over the horizon himself, hadn’t he? Again and again, had sailed away and back from between the islands, from where the sun rises and the whales also come. Him and Menak both.

Dr Cross’s sheep huddled together, their collective back to the wind and rain. Chickens ruffled their feathers. And although it was daylight and he had many things to do, Dr Cross lay curled in the corner of his little bush hut, coughing. This was his new home, his homestead.
Kepalup
, the Noongar called it, because of the spring filling the river: the place of water issuing forth, water welling.

Cross’s body shook with each cough and he pulled the rough woollen blanket more tightly around him. He lay on kangaroo skin, a kangaroo skin was his door, and he thought of his wife and children arriving before he’d built a hut big enough for them to live in, let alone to store all the goods he’d asked they bring. The price of skilled labour was exorbitant. And perhaps they would not want to live out here by the river, so far from the settlement.

They would not.

He’d made a mistake. How could he provide for his family once they arrived, and not simply fritter away his wife’s inheritance? Yes, he had land—good land—and sheep arriving by ship. His friendships with the natives would help enormously, but there must be give and take, not all the benefit going one way. But his strength was going and so, too, his interest, motivation …

What had possessed him? Now men bragged of the land they’d been granted, and never thought that it was seized, was stolen. Why must it matter so much to him that the lives of the natives would be altered forever and their generosity and friendliness be betrayed? He could not change that; what made him think he could do anything, or show another way to go about it when he would not even be able to make an independent life for himself and provide for his own loved ones? He had friends among the natives. He was barefoot, was dirt, grime and pale, peeling skin. He was cold, even though he’d greased himself as Wunyeran might. His fire gave off more smoke than heat. Had he the strength, he would have taken his violin from the chest where it lay among so many other discarded things, and played himself back to health.

If I should die, he’d told Chaine, bury me with Wunyeran. And were that to happen he’d arranged that Chaine buy his land—they’d agreed on a price—so that at least Cross’s own wife and children might benefit, for someone must benefit from this enterprise, this grabbing and selling of land.

Cross had thought to be part of a new kind of society, but his wife and children would be better off to never go aboard a ship, and if it was too late for that, to turn around and sail home at their first chance, sail back to money in the bank and away from here.

He was not strong enough for this.

The trees in the misty rain looked like drawings: trunks and limbs darkly shaded one side and their leafy, drooping heads dissolving at the edges. Cross drifted, buoyed by the rain, and moved by currents as if the heavy damp air was in fact ocean. He was far beneath the surface and did not know up from down as darkness moved in around him. The sound of his coughing was very distant and faint, although his body continued to shake with each loud, plodding heartbeat.