That Deadman Dance (7 page)

In truth, it was hard to recall exactly.

Somehow separated from the others, he was on his knees vomiting. And then the women’s screaming sent him rushing, stumbling back to the boats. To where the boats had been.

His brother’s body was floating in the water, too far from shore to reach. The strangers and their boats further again from shore, and the women with them. Menak’s woman.

Menak’s shouts made no difference, and the boats grew smaller and smaller.

The water around his brother’s body was dark and oily. That body, isolated and far from shore. Ocean all around, out on the horizon; like Menak was, too. Like he’d been banished as far as the stars, banished within sight of a home unreachable.

Thirsty, he could find no good water and was vomiting again. Aching head, a furred mouth, a weak and heavy body.

He made fires so his countrymen would know he lived, and the smell of smoke and salt air surrounded him as he followed the body drifting around the island. Suddenly it came alive and began thrashing frantically in the water. Then Menak saw the shark. His brother’s body rose above the water and for a moment Menak held the blank gaze, then the body broke apart and disappeared.

A sail grew larger, a ship sailed past. It was as if the sea, the horizon, kept spawning them. This one stopped well inside the island, held by a rope thrown splashing into the sea, and next morning it entered that gap in the land, went onto the flat bed of ocean surrounded by hills, and among the laughing women of that harbour, his home. Menak watched small figures traipse up one slope.

When a second boat nosed onto the beach of the island two days later he knew it was the only way he might return. Apart from those who’d stranded him, the faded men from the horizon had been friendly, but of course Menak was wary. He watched them stand on the beach, looking around.

He had no choice but to go to them.

The sail unfolded, snapped open in the wind.

It was an anxious beginning, but as the shore grew larger he also expanded. Brothers waited for him on the beach, and the boat landed him there and then sailed around to the harbour where the mother ship waited. There was no sign of the boat that had left him on the island.

But where is Wunyeran? Menak asked his people.

*

Where were you, Bobby, what about you? the tourists asked. Sometimes he would throw off his policeman’s jacket and heavy boots and drape a kangaroo skin over his shoulders and—since they wanted a real old-time Aborigine, but not completely—wear the red underpants. At night he would set fire to his boomerangs one by one, and throw them into the night sky. As they came spinning back over the heads of the crowd, roaring with flames, the women shrieked and tried to bury themselves in the arms of their flinching partners who stood their ground and grinned in solidarity with the winking Bobby.

One day a statue of Wunyeran gunna be in the main street of this town, Bobby told his listeners. Maybe not in my lifetime, but I say shame on King George Town that it’s not there right now, because Wunyeran he welcomed the first white people that sailed here, just like I welcome you now.

And oh yes everyone smiled with Bobby.

He looked around to see if any of his people or the constable or shopkeeper were among his listeners and then, hunching his shoulders and beckoning his listeners closer, he said, This is my country, really. This is my home. Straightening up, in a loud voice, he said, You welcome here. You know, Wunyeran never grew to be an old man. Soldiers buried him just like his black brother Menak told them to, and when Dr Cross died (Dr Cross was like the Boss of King George Town back then), they laid him down in the same grave as his good old friend, Wunyeran. A lot of bad things been done here—we won’t speak of them now, my friends—but that was a good beginning.

The old man pointed up that slope, finger quivering at the end of his long, thin arm. That town hall rests upon the hearts of two fine men: Wunyeran and Dr Cross.

He dipped his boomerang in something liquid—whale oil?—touched it to the fire, and threw it at the ground not far from them. It bounced, flame curved in its flight and came spinning back, flames roaring. Even the men ducked and ran a few steps this time.

Wunyeran was a friend of everyone! shouted old Bobby Wabalanginy. He had no fear.

*

It was true Wunyeran had a certain charm, and an easy, soft laugh that was like an arm gently pulling you close.

People had seen the sealers sailing their little boat from shore and to the island. They saw Menak’s signal fire and made smoke to answer him. But no one knew how to reach him. And then the ship—not a single-masted whaleboat like the sealers’, but a
brig
—anchored in the harbour.

People watched.

Wunyeran went to charm them, see what he could find out. Were they enemy? Would they help?

Wunyeran was a young man then, the bone not long through his nose. (And Bobby would lift his head, flare his nostrils, show the tourists the fine bone nestled in his own.) Not alone of course, not on his own, not after what had befallen Menak and the others. He went along the beach to where the white man camped, and an older man and a baby went with him. They had no spears with them, and the old man carried the baby.

The baby would be all grown up now, of course, old Bobby said.

How old?

He paused, waited until all eyes were upon him and met each gaze. Oh, same age as me, exact same age as me. See, Wunyeran was my very special uncle, like we say
Kongk
, but extra special uncle is
Babin.
My special friend, and already I was travelling and going from friend to friend in my family. But yes, that baby is me, Bobby told them, and made his audience think of how long ago but how recent it was. He offered himself as a fine image of the passing of time.

See, he said, no threat in two men and a baby. Nothing to fear from little Bobby, that’s for sure. Sure enough, to be sure be sure, old Bobby would say, winking at one or two in the crowd, Wunyeran was invited aboard and Wunyeran charmed them, amused them, never said a word about his older brother out on the island. Lot of our men liked to go onboard a ship then. But now look what happened! One of the small boats—not a ship, but a smaller one, a whaleboat—took a woman away, and left our men way out on the island. And what did Wunyeran do? He got himself onto the very next ship that arrived.

It was not easy talking back then; you shook hands and grinned, danced and mimed and laughed, but you never knew what the other fellow was thinking, not really (do we ever, dear friends?). Wunyeran was still learning that people on larger boats (people like yourselves) were of a better class, were a different kind of people altogether to those who had only a single whaleboat.

Wunyeran stayed onboard. That was his job, to stay with them, find out what he could. He made himself useful, even went ashore again with a man repairing boats and helped him heat and spread the pitch. Watched how it was done, because everything interested Wunyeran, that’s how he was. And he kept very alert.

Meanwhile, as you know, Menak had come ashore.

Menak and a small band of brothers painted themselves up, as people do on important occasions. They grabbed their unbarbed spears and headed for the far side of the harbour where a smaller boat had landed and men were felling trees and collecting water: all morning people had been following the movements of these latest visitors, reporting back.

Menak’s party was about the same size as that on the other side of the harbour. They moved off at a jog, calling to Wunyeran from the bush as they passed where he was helping repair the boat.

Wunyeran smiled at his companion, tried to explain that he must leave but he had so few words then, so everything was mime. He placed his hands palms together against his cheek: I’m tired. Wiggled his fingers in the air: goodbye.

Calm, see. No sign of stress or fear, and no sign that payback was about to happen. But he quickly got out of the way.

On the other side of the harbour the man never even knew they were there until Menak drove a spear through his thigh. The man screamed and fell to the ground, clutching at the spear and groaning. He tried to drag himself away, kept his frightened eyes on Menak and clawed at the soil. Menak watched him, trying to understand. The man was frightened, yes, but how come in so much pain?

The man’s companions came blundering through the bushes and pulled up short when they saw Menak and the others. The man slowly dragged his wounded self across the space between the two groups as they glared at one another.

Menak lifted his chin and snorted contemptuously. Turned on his heel and walked away. The strangers reached for their companion, and did not follow.

Good.

Menak and his brothers made their way around the harbour. They saw two strangers walking the water’s edge, another repairing the upturned boat on the shore, and one of the speared man’s companions running wildly back around the harbour shore to where the ship was anchored.

Menak made his way up the slope to the rocks above the spring. The sun was almost gone and, from where he stood, the water of the harbour was as calm as a rock pool. His eyes followed the narrow and sandy strip of land that separated the harbour from the less sheltered waters of the great, open bay until it met with the rock ridge to the south; that ridge reached out toward the islands to the east and ended in a bald dome of granite. A giant might need only one, two leaps to reach the islands from that bald headland, but would have to swim to get to the land way over the other side of the bay. So much blue, so much water and sky, and the island he’d been stranded on like a whale dying was the knee or heart of a great giant resting below the ocean.

When Menak got back to camp not so many steps later, Wunyeran put his arms around his waist, lifted him from the ground, and turned him around in a circle.

They talked and sang deep into the night, light from their small fires splashing them, shadows like pools in the silvery moonlight, and again and again their words led them across the ruffled ocean by a path of moonlight to the very island Menak had stood upon.

*

Several days later the boat that had stranded Menak returned and went straight to the ship anchored little more than a spear’s throw from shore.

It might have been a battle, it might have been a long initiation journey he was about to overtake, such was the discussion and preparation, such was the trouble and ceremony Wunyeran undertook later that particular morning. People sang with him and the scented smoke curled around them as if they were mountain peaks. Then a small group of men walked down the slope, but only Wunyeran went along the beach to where the strangers camped on the shore closest to their ship. He carried no spears and his slim body was bare but for a kangaroo-skin cloak slung over his shoulders and a hair belt circling his waist.

Concealed, his brothers studied Wunyeran’s approach.

Hello hello, he called, holding out one hand as he walked slowly toward the strangers, smiling, relaxed and trusting. Brothers breathed with relief to see the strangers lower their guns and shake hands with Wunyeran in the way those people did, and then lead him to a shelter made of sails set back from the shore. Two men came out and they too shook hands with Wunyeran. He got into a small boat with them, and sat very erect at the bow as it rowed out to the mother ship.

*

Old Bobby Wabalanginy, telling this true story of before he was born but of what gave birth to him, wanted his listeners to appreciate how it was for his Uncle Wunyeran to experience, for the first time, things most of his listeners had grown used to: the boat sitting upon the sea’s skin; oars walking across it; the bristling rope ladder; the slap of waves on timber, and being perched high above the water while the space between you and land grew and grew … Even paper, he said. Old people never knew what it was.

And if there were townsfolk among his listeners, as there sometimes were, they might have wondered about that battered and oilskin-covered collection of papers Bobby was rumoured to own.

Wunyeran was friendly, Bobby told anyone who listened. He charmed people. He was a
mabarn
man. People loved him—a bit like me when I was young.

The townsfolk would grin and shake their heads. Ah, that old Bobby. Always playing around.

Wunyeran hauled himself aboard and the men who’d stranded Menak were brought before him, tied with ropes and barely able to walk. They had stolen a young woman of Wunyeran’s clan, and although she was someone with whom Wunyeran would normally not be allowed to socialise, in these circumstances he nodded to her, trying to appear calm out here on the ship as he thought of what might happen next. Looking at the commander, he pointed to her, tapping his chest to explain she is ours. The woman looked around nervously at all the strange men watching and, after the briefest of hesitations, came and stood beside Wunyeran. They did not embrace or exchange emotions in any way. But even the sailors saw her relief.

The roped men glared and sulked, curled their lips. Even without the evidence of ropes it was clear that they and the men on the ship were not friends.

The woman glanced to the shore, spoke softly and Wunyeran turned his back on the roped men and went to the side of the ship and looked down upon the dinghy that had brought him here.

Soon the woman was ashore, and disappearing among the trees.

It was some days before Wunyeran returned. He told how he met the man Menak speared, and he was like a friend now. It was hard to explain the food, he said. Some of them had tasted it before on ships, but other tastes too and … all very strange. There were many things … He tried to explain the tube you looked through that brought you close; the scratched markings one of the men made on something like leaves.
Book. Journal
, they said.

They gave him a good
koitj
, he said, and showed his people the smooth axe. He had chipped trees all the way from shore almost to here, and the blade bit deep.

The man scratching and making marks, Wunyeran told them, has hair like flame but keeps it covered. Cross. It was a difficult word to pronounce. Wunyeran was patient, explaining it. Yes, Dr Cross they call him. I slept in his shelter, he said, and accepted the admiration of his fellows. He is a man who scratches in his
book
all the time.