East of Outback (7 page)

Mary Aileen waited while Edan filled his plate. Then she scooped out her own serving, privately wishing there weren’t quite so many onions in the dish. She settled on the ground near the fire, her warm plate in her lap, and ate in silence, missing Colin.

Mum glanced at Mary Aileen’s sketchbook. “See anything out there this evening?”

“The usual things. A very pretty flight of king parrots.”

In the distance to the north, a mournful sound began:
Wonk. Wonk. Wonk. Wonk
. The litany continued unvarying through the minutes of otherwise silence.

Mum frowned. “That bird calling—you told me what it was and I’ve forgotten.”

“It’s a wonga pigeon,” Mary Aileen smiled. “A white-faced gray pigeon with a few marks. We saw one last year and you remarked on its size; it’s larger than a crested pigeon.”

“I remember now.” Mum nodded. “When first I came to this country I was fascinated by the exotic birds. Erin has nothing like these. I always wondered what their names were, and I never learned them, for some reason. It pleases me that you’ve mastered them all, dear.”

“Not them all, Mum.”

“Near enough. You’ve a gift for it; apparently a gift I lack, although I do remember the first bird I learned by name. Your father identified it for me.” And she looked across at Papa.

An almost misty look came across his face. “A kingfisher. In that crocodile pool beyond Sugarlea. We’ve seen some country since then.”

“Haven’t we.” The memories misted Mum’s face, too.

“Mum, why don’t you ever tell us stories about before you were married?” Hannah popped the last of her dinner into her mouth and extended her plate. “More, please.”

“You may ask again after your mouth is empty.”

Papa lost any mistiness he may have had. “The past is past, Hannah. You’re the future. There wasn’t that much of interest anyway.”

“Surely there was.” Mary Aileen felt her nerve fail. You never contradict Papa. But she pressed on. “I remember once Mum said you hired her and Aunt Meg and Aunt Linnet; that’s how you met her. She would still be in Ireland but for you, and where would we be? You see? The past is ours as well as the future.”

“And you already know as much about it as you need to.” Papa turned his full attention to his plate. The conversation was ended.

Mary Aileen glanced at Mum. She was fully absorbed in eating her dinner also.

“Might I have some more?” Hannah took silence as a yes and refilled her plate.

Edan lurched to his feet. “May I be excused?”

Mum nodded.

Papa scowled. “Stay close where you can hear if we call you. I don’t want you wandering off daydreaming.”

Edan mumbled something. He folded his napkin, carried his dish to the wash tub and walked off into the bush.

Mary Aileen finished quickly, excused herself, and laid her dish in the washtub as she hurried after Edan. Out here at camp, without Grace the maid to wash dishes, the task almost always fell to Mary Aileen.
Let Hannah get them tonight
, she thought.

“Edan! Wait! I want to see, too.” Mary Aileen caught up to him just beyond the boulders they often manned as a fort. She fell in beside her brother and marveled at how silently wise he seemed at only ten years old. She tried to picture Papa being ten. She could not. And yet Edan, like Hannah, had inherited his father’s piercing dark eyes and good looks. It should not be such a difficult thing to look at Edan and see Papa in the past.

The past is past
, Papa’d said. If that was so, why was she memorizing all those dates in history class?

Edan kicked at a stone in the path. “What do you think they’re trying to hide?”

“I don’t know. But I know it’s not something bad, you know—immoral, or anything. When Mum explained the facts of life to me, she said she and Papa didn’t—” Mary Aileen glanced at her little brother. “You know what I mean—nothing before the wedding night. That may not mean much to you yet, Edan, but it’s very important to older people.”

“You don’t suppose Papa’s a convict or something?”

Mary Aileen gasped. “I can’t imagine that! He goes to church every week and seems to like it. He has a spotless business reputation, Mum says. He gives money to the church and to charities. He’s much too good to have been a convict. Mum too. Even in the old country. Mum couldn’t have done anything too terribly wrong.”

Edan led the way down over the rocky precipice, picking his way as he went. To their left, the forested canyon fell away, shimmering in the golden light of evening. “Maybe it’s the aunts and uncles they’re ashamed of.”

“’Tis true that Aunt Linnet is a musical performer. But there’s nothing wrong with that, surely—she’s been married to Uncle Chris all these years, and happy. Uncle Aidan and Uncle Liam out in Kalgoorlie are gold miners. That’s an honest occupation. Uncle Ellis is still back in Ireland; we never hear about him much. And Aunt Meg and Uncle Luke—Papa’s very proud of them, Uncle Luke being in the ministry and all, with his large parish.”

“Papa’s proud of everyone, save me,” Edan blurted.

“Oh, Edan, he just doesn’t understand you fully yet. When you get older and he gets to know you better, he’ll like you more. It worked that way with me.”

“Not with Colin.”

What could she say? He was absolutely right.

That wonga pigeon began its monotonous call again—
wonk, wonk, wonk
. She was supposed to be the nature lover, but the wonga annoyed her now. The annoyance made her angry, not because it was there, but because she could not control it. She knew she could not turn off the pigeon, but she thought she should be able to turn off the irritation.

Wonk, wonk, wonk, wonk
. . . .

Cautiously, Edan traversed the narrow ledge from the pathway to the cave. He stepped into the soft, powdery dirt of the cave and began craning his neck, peering here and there.

Actually, it wasn’t exactly a cave—it was an overhang, a bulging, brittle slab of dark rock that protruded twenty feet from the side of the mountain. Under its jutting nose, the “cave,” at least fifteen feet high at the front, extended thirty feet back into the side of the mountain. Its roof tapered down until only Edan’s body fit between floor and ceiling, and finally, in its very nether recesses, not even Edan could go.

Darkness slithered out from the rear of the recess now, inching forward as the sunlight waned.

“There it is.” Edan pointed straight up.

Matted and plaited of sticks, grasses, moss and spider webs, a rock warbler’s nest hung suspended in a great wad from the cave roof. Like all rock warbler nests, it drooped in a clumsy ovoid glob from its attachments at either end.

“Do you suppose there’s something in it?” Edan strained his neck in an effort to see it better.

“Not this time of year, surely. It’s winter, or nearly. Here, let me lift you up and perhaps you can get your finger through the hole there and feel about for eggs.” Mary Aileen knelt low in the powdery dust and clasped her arms around Edan’s legs.

Tilting and teetering she lurched to her feet. His legs were pressed against her face, his hand gripping her hair for balance. She could neither see nor move her head. “Are you high enough?”

“I think so. Step back. To the left. No, too far. To the right. That’s it. A bit higher?”

Mary Aileen stretched as high as she dared, on tiptoe. Who would imagine such a small lad could weigh so much? “Don’t wiggle!”

“I’m not; I’m reaching. Almost . . . There! It’s all soft inside, ‘Leen. Don’t move around so much!”

“I can’t keep my balance. Don’t; I—.” She lurched uncontrollably sideways. The whole teetering weight of him threw her off, and he came crashing down with her.

The nest, a dry, crackly wad of debris, splacked down on Mary Aileen’s head, spraying a million bits of dust all over her face. She’d be forever brushing it out of her hair.

Edan snapped around to his knees and stared aghast at the fallen nest. “We ruined it! I didn’t mean to pull it down, ‘Leen! Oh, look! There’s no way we can hang it back up there.”

“You needn’t feel bad; you didn’t mean to.”

He glared at her and she was surprised to see tears in his eyes. “’Course I didn’t mean to, but I did it. It happened.”

“Edan—” Why was he so upset? What could she say to soothe him? “Edan, there are many, many rock warblers around and lots of nests. It’s not a great tragedy.”

“’Tis!” He lifted the shattered pile of woven trash as if it were someone’s baby. He looked up at the ceiling, then back at the nest; tears coursed down his cheeks. “It’s always a tragedy, ‘Leen, when somebody’s home gets torn apart.”

And now her own eyes burned hot and wet.

Colin.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

K
ALGOORLIE

“Max? Hey, Max! Come on! Get moving!” Colin twisted in the saddle to look back. It wasn’t easy; Lily rode right behind him and he had to crane his neck to see around her.

Reluctantly, the brindled dog lurched to its feet and padded out onto the track, twenty yards behind them.

Satisfied that her chum had joined them, Colin’s horse quit dancing around and settled to the track. Animals! Weird animals. Why could not Dizzy have chosen ordinary dim-witted horses, horses who placidly plod through life? Colin’s bay mare possessed in the hulking body of a plough horse the brain of a bandicoot. A charitable observer might call the horse “positive,” or “an optimist.” Colin knew her true colors; he was condemned to ride the length of the Madman’s Track and then some on a happy, half-ton twit.

Dizzy’s dun gelding possessed no brain at all. As good feed and fresh grass fattened it and honed its spirit, it grew more and more fidgety. Only when its mates, the bay and the ugly dog, traveled nearby did it behave at all well.

And Max. In the nearly two months on this track, Max had not once come within an arm’s length of a human being. “If I hadn’ took that shot at it and scared it good,” Dizzy would say, “it’d be coming up and biting us now, I vow.”

No contest. Colin agreed. And so they traveled south, the fizz-brained horses and the skulking dog.

Not to mention Lily. Apparently her plans to find Broome died aborning, for when the men moved on, she fell in with them and went south. She was a part of them, yet not a part of them. She kept to herself, said little, volunteered no information. When they camped come evening, she always took it upon herself to gather firewood. Sometimes she added to the menu berries, roots or fish. She had a talent for catching fish with her bare hands. Whenever the rare opportunity presented itself, she would even wash the men’s clothes, and afterwards, her own.

There her participation ended. She allowed the men to let her ride—on Colin’s horse in the morning, on Dizzy’s in the afternoon, so as not to wear either horse down carrying double-dink. She never asked to be taken aboard. One morning Colin deliberately neglected to invite her up behind him, and she simply started walking, with the same mindless acceptance as Max. In camp she remained apart, much the same as did Max, off to herself, wrapped in her own dark dreams.

The land undulated gently now, shaping itself into low orange hills. Smoky green mulga spread in broad patches across the hills and flats.

As they rode beneath a grove of the straight, slim trees, Colin asked over his shoulder, “What’s mulga good for, Lily?”

“Lots of things. Eat the seeds. Start fires with the bark. Make digging sticks and boomerangs; good strong wood. Sometimes it has galls. They’re big round lumps that’re good to eat.”

“You know all this stuff. You’re really smart. You got some Aboriginal blood in you, right? Is that where you learned all this?”

Silence.

“So why won’t you tell us anything about yourself? All we know is your first name. And why did you try to steal from us, instead of just asking?”

“You asked me that before; I didn’t tell you then and I’m not talking about it now.”

That pretty much ended that. Colin gave up the conversation.

The trees ended, too. Dirt tracks crisscrossed the barren hills. Abandoned mullock piles stuck out like boils here and there. For some reason they saw rabbits but not kangaroos or wallabies. And even the rabbits looked scrawny. It was dismal countryside.

Hours later Dizzy pointed beyond the hill ahead. “Dust up there, or smoke. I think maybe we come up on Kalgoorlie, eh?”

On the horizon ahead, a gray cloud stained the sky.

Kalgoorlie!
Now Colin would see adventure of a profitable sort, maybe even lucrative. Deep in the earth below Kalgoorlie ran a network of veins, half a mile wide and two miles long, a lode of gold ore so rich they called the strip The Golden Mile. And Colin’s uncles owned a bit of that mile.

Dizzy twisted himself around in the saddle, the better to converse. “I’m getting a bad feeling ‘bout this, Col.”

“Why?”

“Lookit all these little towns we gone through, eh? Some of them clear dead. Empty houses and boarded-up mines. Some of them only a coupla houses left. Leonora’s got all those dead mines, save one. Menzies ain’ hardly nothing no more, less’n a hunnert people. Goongarrie. Broad Arrow. You hear the folks there talk ‘bout how they used to be big towns. Ghost towns they are now. I think we’re on the wrong end of the boom,
compadre
.”

“You worry too much,
amigo
.”

“Eh, maybe. What you think of Paddington, where we just been through? Six hotels there once, Col. We couldn’ even buy lunch!”

“But Kalgoorlie’s still going strong, Diz. My uncles have been there for as long as I can remember. It’s apples.”

Dizzy might have his misgivings; Colin certainly did not. Colin and Dizzy would do well as miners, he was sure, but what about Lily?

Well? What about Lily? She wasn’t Colin’s responsibility, nor Dizzy’s. She wasn’t anyone’s, really. Did that make her everyone’s?

She coiled her hair up under her hat as they passed still another scraggly, abandoned claim. Sheets of corrugated tin lay about, pocked with rust. A weathered, broken stool sat atilt near the tiny shelter that must have once been home to someone. What did the erstwhile owner dream as he sat by his door on that stool contemplating the evening? They rode on past, almost reverently.