Carpentaria (35 page)

That night, a mist crept over him while he slept on the beach. This was when he heard the devil woman Gardajala singing out from the bush. If he had been awoken by her lewd song he did not know, but he had seen her eyes shining like two golden coins –
like dollars
– as she stared at him through the grass on top of the rise. She kept crying how much she wanted him to come up there to her, but he was stalwart, steadfastly maintaining his repugnance as he eschewed her enticements. She was like no other woman he had ever heard, calling her sexual innuendo without shame. ‘You don’t want me, old woman prostituting yourself, I am crippled up, dried up like a prune,’ he called back, in a mocking voice, speaking back at the bush like one of the old senile men of Desperance’s Fisherman’s Hotel.

But she kept on crying out loud for him, saying he was going to crack, saying maybe he wanted to go up there and keep her warm. ‘Quiet woman!’ Come on, just one night, just until dawn. ‘You got no shame. Quiet or you will stir up herself over there in the sea watching.’ The bartering for her desires to quench his, and his to quench hers, went on until he could stand it no longer. He could almost feel his hands touching her body covered in yellow grass where she lay waiting for him. Miserable in his physical needs of lust, hunger and thirst, he strapped his hands over his ears, as he forced himself to recite over and over, ‘Don’t go thinking of her, don’t go thinking of her.’ Faster and faster he sang his little lines, at such an exciting pace, while pressing his hands hard onto his ears, and she in return begged faster, and he cried singing faster and thinking of her, wanting her, and she cried, until their ecstasy was consummated. Then, they both curled up in foetal positions on their earth beds, hers of grass, his of sand, and went to sleep.

O
h! Magic big time. A land full of tricks. The sea full of spirits. Poor land woman devil Gardajala. The sea woman, whose name must not be mentioned because she might be listening, far out at sea, was spinning herself into a jealous rage. She was almost cyclonic, if you could believe in the power of her magic. She canvassed and corralled her armies. Her movement was slow. The low cloud band radiated out a sea of mist that had already touched her old enemy Gardajala by the time Norm woke from his sleep. And all the while, all poor old Gardajala could do was to raise herself up into a
wirriwidji
whirly wind to throw her spiteful hand full of dirt at the sea.

Everyone in the Pricklebush knew of the poisonous countries out at sea, places where it was too dangerous for a man to go, where the spirits dwelt, like the Gundugundu men who were even more dangerous than Kadajala, the white-man devil, and those of the unhappy warring spirit warriors of the old wars. Gundugundu spirits, if riled up enough, could kill a man straight out in the middle of their stormy wars – not just leave him halfway crashing into the ocean like what happened to Norm Phantom. The movement of Gundugundu was always swift. Faster than a fish or bird. No living person would be capable of seeing them with their eyes.

Only the old people blind in the eye watched them flying through the air inside of cyclones. Those old people used to tell stories to their families when the cyclones were about. Perhaps their stories were an invention of their imagination whenever they got a funny feeling under their skin, but whatever it was, it was uncanny how they always knew when someone was going to die in mysterious circumstances by a bolt of lightning. One would never know if it was the will of God, or whatever was out there in those waters of the oceans, but everyone in the Pricklebush expected to hear the news before someone died of mysterious circumstances during a cyclone. So say:
Oh! No! They never walked to pick up souls. They got legs alright, and feet too, but funny thing that, because they do not use them, maybe they can’t but just fly about instead.
Once a child asked if they had any shoes. Some did. Some wore something on their feet. Sometimes these spirits had to travel over land, travelling many hundreds of kilometres to carry out their ghastly business, but still, they never used their legs and feet to walk. Whenever they came to kill, it all happened in a split second. Afterwards, utter calm was restored.

The boat was stuck fast in the sand where the ocean had dumped it on the previous day. Now, as another king tide built deepening trenches over the sand, Norm failed to notice the water encroaching around the sides of the boat and those watery arms cunningly drawing back enough sand to steal it. Norm heard a small voice telling him to save the boat, but he refused to listen to voices, just as he had refused to listen to the sound of his stomach telling him to eat. Instead, he prayed for matches
.
‘God help me to make a fire. I got to have a fire tonight to keep those devils away.’ The small voice said he would make the fire if Norm would help to move the boat up onto higher ground. But Norm refused to acknowledge the voice. ‘You got to light a fire first before moving the boat,’ Norm said, puckering up one side of his lips that indicated he wanted the fire lit back up towards the bush, without turning his head around to look at it.

Suddenly – Norm thought he was becoming even more delirious – the aluminium boat was moving. ‘Hold up,’ Norm grunted, but his movement was slow and weak. As he struggled to get to his feet, he saw that the boat was not being moved by the incoming tide, but through the efforts of a small five- or six-year-old boy with his head bent to the back of the boat, struggling to push it higher up the beach. ‘Hold up, Will,’ Norm said, instantly recognising the boy as his own son, but the child ignored him. Norm looked at the boy who was knee-deep in water, desperately pushing with all his might. Norm could not believe it, for there was Will, as though all those intervening years had not passed. Now, on his feet, somehow with the restored strength of a man half his age, Norm was able to help the boy until the boat was lugged higher onto the beach.

Once again, the old man’s weakness forced him to sit down on the sand, where he slipped into the luxury of his wandering thoughts which were more alive than the busy boy. Yet, undeniably, he could see for himself that the boy was real live flesh and blood
.
‘You are a good boy, Will, always a good boy,’ he said, but the boy was not listening. The boy, with his brown skin, covered in sand and dried sea salt, and wind-swept brown hair, had leapt into the boat, and was rummaging around through the plastic containers.

‘Can I use these?’ he asked Norm, while holding out some fishing line and hooks.

‘Sure, Will,’ Norm smiled, ‘run off quick smart and get the rest of them kids to help you.’

The boy looked at Norm for a moment and said, ‘Alright, I’ll get us some fish.’ Then without hesitation he was off, running up the beach, leaving Norm looking at the waves and saying half-heartedly, ‘And tell your Mother I am here too.’

The afternoon passed by as the sun receded lower in the horizon, until finally the clouds became blood red, and the water looked as though it was on fire. Norm thought Will ought to be coming back any minute now. It would not be easy to have to find him in the dark. His old impatience of his children returned, and triggered his grumbling about how they never listened to what they had been told
.
‘Well! I have told him. Told him many times about how much those devil-devils were looking for good-looking kids like him in the night.’ He began to hear the devil woman’s voice crying and singing as she moved through the bushes behind the sand bank. She complained about how her family would just turn up whenever it suited them:
But you are not like proper family. You don’t know what love is.

‘He’s a good boy. Always listens to me,’ Norm tried to reassure himself, ignoring the bush woman. He looked up the beach where the boy had gone, half expecting to see the rest of the family coming back. The expectation of seeing his little children rollicking around as they always did gave him pleasure. He held the joyful memory and took greater pleasure wiping aside all the whispering doubts in the back of his mind, questioning what was real: saying the boy was false. Not Norm though, he chose the best times as his parable. Sand, sun, happy family. It freed him from the impossible future that showed no easy path to the home he had left.

Life was good waiting for the children to come down to the beach, and he found himself promising this and promising that. Everything would be good from now on. Everything. It was so good to start again, to be given one’s time over – another chance. The waves kept roaring in, and old Gardajala started up in her windy song, singing,
There was nothing as foolish as a silly old fool who lost his boat, lost his wife and lost his house, his children too, and what is he going to do, sitting by himself, lonely by himself, and coming by himself, to me.
She could make a singsong all night out of nothing. He knew other women like that.

Over his head, she blew treacherously taunting words in her wind. He had ducked for cover behind the boat, when all at once, he saw her long hair blow out of the bush in a gigantic whorly wind, carrying a solemn haze of red dust, large flocks of sea birds, and seagulls, in among clouds of white down feathers from the rookeries in the swamps over the sand rise.

When she disappeared out to sea to find her opponent, he was again surprised when he looked down the beach for the boy. What came instead of children after the dust, feathers and birds, was the screeching of a lone cockatoo flying up the beach towards him. It reminded Norm of his bird Pirate
.
‘Where’s your flock, boy?’ the bird hollered out its question, like so, whenever he clapped eyes on Norm walking out of the house in Desperance. The bird fell out of the wind like a little spirit. The little black eyes peered at Norm. It looked and looked, until suddenly it announced matter-of-factly, in a flat voice, ‘What are you doing?’ Less feathered than Norm remembered him, the bird’s remaining feathers, enough for flight, were covered with filth and oil.

‘Hello old boy, how did you get here?’ Norm said, putting out his hand for the bird to come to him.

A spray of sand went flying through the air as the boy landed smack bang between them. The bird jumped back in fright.

‘What the hell you go and done that for?’ Norm asked as he retreated his hand with its twiddling fingers.

‘You leave him alone,’ said the boy running to swoop up the bird in his arms.

‘You are handling him too much with your filthy hands. No wonder his feathers are falling out,’ Norm said, chastising the child’s dirty fish-oil-stained shorts and fish-smelling body.

‘No it aren’t.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘No it aren’t.’

The boy ploughed back up through the sand towards the bush where the whirlwind had passed with the bird perched on his head. The sea wind blew down over the top of them. Funny sort of kid, Norm thought, briefly watching the boy, reasoning it was not like Will at all to start behaving like that. A half an hour would have passed before the boy came back down the beach, bird still sitting on his head, carrying a blue plastic bucket. When he reached Norm, the boy plonked the bucket down in front of him, then he took his own place in the sand some distance away.

‘Nice fish,’ Norm said, looking at four charred-baked barra covered in fire ash stuffed into the bucket. ‘You want some Will?’

The boy looked at Norm, shook his head with the bird on top, and sat waiting for him to eat.

‘Where’s Mum?’ Norm asked eventually, after he had eaten one of the fish. He felt nauseous from eating too fast.

‘None of your business,’ the boy replied.

‘Course it’s my business, your Mum’s my business, that bird on your head is my business too. And, you are my business.’

‘Bird aren’t yours.’

‘Look Will.’

‘And I aren’t Will either.’

‘Oh! Then who am I if you are not Will.’

‘
Malbu
, I don’t know who you are, and my name is not Will either.’

‘Old man am I? What’s your name then if you are not Will either?’

The boy points to the sky and says, ‘Bala.’

‘Since when did that happen?’

‘That’s my name Malbu – my Mum and Dad called it to me.’

‘Your Mum and Dad eh! And their name?’

‘My Mum,’ whispered Bala. ‘Well! Her name was Hope and me Dad is Will Phantom.’

Norm stopped eating. He placed the fish back into the bucket. He looked hard at the boy. He did not know Will had a child but then, why would he know anything? Who told him a thing anymore? Of all the things Will had to go and do to the family. ‘I am going to kill that bastard when I see him.’ Yes, Norm decided on the spot, Will had gone too far this time. The old hostilities jumped from his heart into his head. Instantly, there was no sign of Will in the child anymore. Only the family resemblances from the other side stood out, as clear as day, he was surprised he had not seen it straightaway. ‘I must have been mad,’ he mumbled, unable to stop the words coming out of his mouth. He was staring at the child as though he was looking Old Midnight in the face.

The boy moved back out of reach, sensing the poison pouring out of the heart of the old man for whom he had cooked the fish. He thought the fish might have been one of the poisonous fish, like the puffer fish. He glanced in the bucket just to make sure he had not made a mistake. He edged further away just in case the old Malbu grabbed him because he might be a Gundugundu man, or some other devil-devil from the sea. He might have been the one who killed all of the fish along the beach. The small boy was reminded of his Mother’s voice: ‘Stay away from all strangers here Bala.’ He knew he had to be careful and he should not have fed the old man. She said they had to hide from the bad people because they might be devil-devils in disguise. He had asked her to explain what was
disguise
. She said anyone he did not know. But he thought the old Malbu looked very sick. That was why he fed him. He contemplated how he was going to take the bucket away from Malbu because he needed to keep it.

He knew his Mum would be mad if he lost the bucket. She had said they could not afford to lose anything. He did not want to make her angry. It was only that he was lonely that he helped the old man, old Malbu, because he sat on the beach and did not move. He had watched him all day and when he did not move, he had been convinced he could not walk. It would be alright he thought to make a friend of Malbu. Even if they were friends just long enough to see what he could use from the boat, because they needed things like fishing line and hooks. Then the old man could go back to the sea.

Norm saw how frightened the boy was by the way he had become withdrawn. He was the living image of his father – Will the capable: ‘Will the fucking stupid who went off with that stupid slut Hope from the other side. Living
dandaayana
.’ The thought of mixing their blood with his, was like a hex. His face twisted up into a knot. But the truth, terrible in its reality, was that any
dandaayana
people could produce a child that looked like the pride of the Phantom breed, which was what everyone thought of Will, until he went stupid. Norm considered how his own flesh and blood was the worst kind of mongrel who went around looking for trouble, until he caught the
dandaayana
people’s disease which he claimed must make you stupid. Now, way out in the bloody woop woop of Christ knows where, sorry Lord but it was true, Norm told himself, ‘I finds some kid who happens to be my grandchild.’

‘Give me the bucket Malbu,’ Bala demanded, standing up in the sand, with his hand out ready to snatch the bucket and run off with it. Norm gave him the bucket and thanked him for the fish.

‘I will bring you more tomorrow,’ Bala says, relieved it did not require a fight.

‘Alright little fellow, you do that. You can take some more hooks and line from the boat if you want too.’