The Burial (11 page)

Ever skinned a rabbit, Sergeant?
said Jack Brown.

Neither skinned one nor eaten one
, said Barlow as he took a slurping sip
. This will be my first.

Oh no, Sergeant
, said Jack Brown.
This is my dinner. I'm wondering what you're having for yours.

Barlow raised his cup.
You've got a good humour, Jack Brown.

What about a fire, Sergeant?
said Jack Brown
. You ever built one of those?
He squatted down and began stacking small sticks and leaves.

There's the first star
, said Barlow, ignoring Jack Brown's question.

Jack Brown did not need to see the first star and he ignored Barlow right back, bringing his attention to building the fire. He lit the kindling and blew on it till it flared up. He broke some of the longer branches against his knee and fed them into the fire. He felt a tinge of pleasure when the wind picked up and blew smoke into Barlow's face and Barlow groped for his shirt to shield himself from it.

When the fire was blazing Jack Brown sat himself on the ground cross-legged to skin the rabbit.

Is that good eating, Jack Brown?
Barlow peered out over his shirt.

You'll see
, said Jack Brown. He took out his knife and, stretching out the rabbit, cut a neat seam down the middle of it.

Barlow moved in closer to watch him.

Sorry, Sergeant
, said Jack Brown,
but you're blocking all my light.
He thought,
Second only to regret, there must be no heavier load than riding with a man with no bush skills at all.

When the rabbit was skinned, Jack Brown held it up to the fire, which lit up its bones and translucent skin. He rested it on a rock and twisted a piece of fence wire into two brackets. He straightened out another piece between his palms and threaded it through the rabbit and then he pushed his boot into the burning branches, slung the rabbit between the brackets and kicked at the coals till the wind swelled their flames, and then he sat himself down.

How long have you been working for Fitzgerald Henry?
asked Barlow.

Fitz? About three years in all.

Does he pay you well?

Sometimes he does and sometimes not at all.
Jack Brown leant towards the fire and caught some drips of fat from the rabbit in a bowl.

What keeps you there?

Jack Brown was glad to have something to do while he was being questioned, to prevent him from fidgeting and giving himself away. He took a tin of flour from his saddlebag, added it to the bowl and mixed in enough water to make dough.

Hard to say, Sergeant. When Fitz pays me he pays me well.

Does he owe you?

Yes, he does
.

The rabbit hissed on the wire and Jack Brown buried the dough in a bowl at the edge of the fire.

I've been watching you today, Jack Brown.

Oh yeah?

You're a good rider
, said Barlow
.

I don't know about that, Sergeant, but what I do know is that in the saddle you've got a style all of your own.

Barlow laughed but Jack Brown could not even force one. He felt only tiredness and hunger. Barlow poured Jack Brown a whiskey and this time Jack Brown did not resist it. He threw it back and it livened up his throat.

What does the wife look like?
asked Barlow.

Depends on who you ask.

I'm asking you. But I can ask around.

Well, Sergeant, that there is a tricky question. She is the boss's wife after all. So for that one you'll have to ask around.

When Jack Brown tried to cut the rabbit he found the bones were so fine and there were so many of them it was not worth cutting. They ate from the same plate, a dented lid from a pot, and picked the flesh off the rabbit, which was tender enough, sucked the meat from the bones and then threw the bones back into the fire. The damper had risen to a golden lump and they washed it down with more whiskey.

When there was nothing left on the plate, the two men sat in silence. It was the kind of night when Jack Brown felt the whole world shrinking around him so there was only what was lit up by the fire. Soon Barlow was nodding into his cup and Jack Brown thought to stand up to wake him but his own legs felt drunk. He could only get to his knees. So it was on his knees he decided to build up the fire. When it was licking at Barlow's feet and Barlow still had not stirred Jack Brown yelled,
Barlow! You'd be best to get into that swag of yours if you prize your balls and don't want 'em to be singed by the fire.

Barlow shuffled himself into his swag. He said,
Goodnight, Jack Brown
, and the sound of his voice made Jack Brown feel sober.

Jack Brown turned into his own swag and lay on his side and watched the fire spark up against the darkness and light up the trees beyond it. He tried to think only of trees, tree after tree, scattered, in lines, just trees. But then Jessie was there, always there, stepping out from behind them.

He rolled onto his back and the world of the fire opened up as he looked above him. Patterns of stars seemed to orbit each other, dust orbiting dust. He closed his eyes against them and he saw the stars falling behind his eyes. He followed the stars into dark, shimmering pools and he found that the shimmering pools had no end.

When Jack Brown woke in the morning, Barlow was sitting near the fire making tea. He had the look of just being washed. His hair was combed flat to his head and his face was smooth and freshly shaven, which made the hollows under his eyes look darker.

Sleep tight, Sergeant?
asked Jack Brown.

Not a wink
, said Barlow.

Ground not good enough for you?
said Jack Brown as he stood up and shook his swag.

It's the cold, Jack Brown. Gets right into my back.

Could be colder. You got a dodg y back, Sarge?

I took a fall when I was a kid.

Well, let's get you back on the horse before you jam right up and I have to carry you out of here.

As they rode into the forest the mass of the trees glistened with dew above them. They looked to Jack Brown like giant pools in the air and he did not know how they held together and how it did not all rain upon him.

THE FIRST TIME Jack Brown ever touched Jessie they were on the way to a drove. There was nothing of circumstance that night to bring them together. The weather was warm. They were suffering no storm and there had been nothing exceptional about the day. They had ridden along quietly beside each other for days. And days before on other rides.

That evening he made a campfire and prepared their dinner. She went down to the river to wash herself and when she came back her skin glowed in the light of the fire and her eyes were bright. It was the first time he had looked at her that day, always she was riding out ahead of him. But suddenly there was a feeling in him and it felt dangerous. He knew that when a man has enough space and silence and time he begins to think anything is possible or nothing is possible at all. This day, all the space and silence had set him to daydreaming of her, although she was right there, if not right there beside him.

That night, when they settled down to sleep, he imagined what it would be like to be next to her, to press his chest against her back, to feel her skin. But there was no reason for it. No way of closing up that distance between them.

Until he did.

She was lying awake on her swag next to the fire. He moved in beside her. She took his hand and rolled onto her side with her back to him and held his hand against her chest.
Sleep now
, she said. But neither of them slept. He lay awake for some time breathing into her hair. Eventually, he forced himself to close his eyes, only with the hope of dreaming of her, of finding something that would flow from dreaming into life. And then it did.

In the morning she would not meet his eyes.

We cannot ever speak of this
, she said.

My lips are sealed.

I mean it, Jack Brown. This can never happen again.

As you wish.

Do you know what Fitz would do to you? And you can guess what he would do to me. Our feelings cannot be worth both of our lives, Jack Brown. We will bury them. Right here.

He knew her words were true. There was only danger between them.

NORTH AND WEST the inland climate gave rise to black and white cypress and tumbledown gums of ironbark. Jessie looked down from the high ridge. Around her were deep cliff-lined gorges, giant ramparts and then more canyons, more rock. There was wilderness as far as she could see. It did not end.

She had been riding for a week.

She had stepped Houdini up and over the ridges and escarpments, felt the weather change, the air dampening her skin. Ledge to ledge were animals she had only seen before as fleeing creatures—rock wallaby, quoll. Here, they did not flee. They were as still as rocks as they watched her.

She and Houdini wound further up the mountain, crossing granite bands, observing that their ledges curved like cupping hands and contained clear pools of water from which she and Houdini drank. When she reached a large saddle of the range she dismounted and led him through. Sweeping over them was an arch of granite boulders and walking through she felt a reverence such as she had never felt.

She navigated her way by the sun, and where the forest grew so dense that it would not let the light in there were plants on the ground that turned their heads to face the sun's direction.

At night, she took her cue from those same plants and her limbs relaxed and her head turned down against her own chest and she slept an exhausted sleep, and when the sun rose again she travelled with the compass of the shadow of the mountain.

Her peace did not last.

She was leading Houdini over a high ridgeline when her remorse caught up with her suddenly. In front of her a spectacular basalt scarp revealed the stretched necks and seismic heads of mother, father and child, the same faces Jack Brown had first pointed out to her from a far, far distance. It pained her to see them and feel that he should be beside her and that between them there could have been a child, his or even Fitz's. And there was no escaping it, not the longing nor its looming and ancient reminder, its head lifted up against the sky.

She rode or walked or scraped along, leading Houdini, sometimes Houdini leading her. It was as if her eyes had turned in, seeking some clue, something that in the spit and struggle of living she had missed as to how things could have been different.

Her sleep was taken up with nightmares of Fitz, so day and night she was ricocheting off the walls of her past and the feeling was like prison and now the prison was herself. She pushed herself and Houdini up more treacherous slopes. Houdini stepped dutifully behind her, though he was slipping more and more often. She had no appetite but was reminded to graze when he did, feeding on fern fronds that grew between the exposed roots of trees. Still, she was growing ragged.

When she found herself kneeling against a slope and surrounded by sharp-edged rocks it seemed to her that if she had spewed out her insides that was how they would look.

THE FIRST TIME Jack Brown rode into Fitz's forest was the first time he saw my mother.

Jack Brown had ridden his horse along the southbound track as the letter from Fitz instructed. The track had wound through an open paddock and then into the forest, alongside the river. He moved through the forest till he heard the reverberating sound of kangaroos, their bounding noise travelling from every direction. Jack Brown pulled up his horse and halted on the track. He had heard stories of mobs attacking lone riders, although he had never seen it himself.

He lay down along the neck of his horse and a huge grey buck appeared on the track, then a dozen or so smaller roos bounded past. They travelled in single file, following the grey buck down to the river, clearing the fence line one at a time. Jack Brown had seen them travelling in mobs before, mainly across open fields, but there was something impressive about the agile way they negotiated the thick bushland without losing their order. He watched them until they reached the river and it was then that Jack Brown saw my mother, sitting on a rock ledge. She was so still he might not have seen her camouflaged against the rock if she had not sensed him near and turned around.

Who's there?
she yelled.

Jack Brown was surprised to see any human form after so long and especially a woman. He dismounted and walked his horse up to the fence line. She was already climbing up the rise to meet him.

I'm Jack Brown
, he said.
I am looking for Fitzgerald Henry
.

You're Jack Brown?
she asked.

Yes
, he said.
I've an offer of employment from Mr Henry.
He tapped his top pocket.

I'm Jessie
, she said, surveying him. To him she looked steely and confused.
Keep heading down the track then
, she said,
and follow it till you get there.

She turned away suddenly and headed back towards the river.

Jack Brown mounted his horse.
Thank you
, he called after her. But she was already gone.

He steered his horse to the track and rode slowly, wondering who she was, if she was some forest dweller, some itinerant, and if he could expect to see her again.

He had set off from Sydney, where he had been convalescing for two months in a boarding house for ex-servicemen. The mood there was depressive and he was glad to leave it. It was filled with soldiers who had no family or wives or girlfriends waiting for them and who could not work immediately due to whatever injury they suffered. There were some single rooms, which were coveted, but otherwise they slept in bunk beds in a large dorm.

On Friday and Saturday afternoons most of the men would try to forget themselves by donning their army uniforms and crawling the pubs for good-looking girls before closing time in the early evening. For Jack Brown this usually meant smoking cigarettes outside before they moved along to one speakeasy or another, where anyone could enter. If they arrived somewhere to find it shut down they would set up in a park or close to the harbour, which Jack Brown preferred.