Walkabout (9 page)

But a little before noon he came – if only for a moment – out of his lethargy.

It was Peter who saw the echidna first: a pair of porcupine-like creatures scurrying between two clumps of yacca. He grabbed the bush boy's hand.

‘Look! Food!
Yeemara
!'

The bush boy came suddenly to life. He snapped off a branch of yacca, and leapt after the echidna. They heard him coming; they tried to escape in the only manner they knew; by diving under the ground; by burrowing into the earth as if it were chocolate marsh-mallow. But the bush boy was too quick for them. With a thrust of the yacca he blocked their getaway; with the end of the branch he prised them up to the surface. He unrolled them, skilfully avoiding their quills, and set them down on the sand. In the pouch of the female he found a tiny replica of herself: a frightened, blinking pup, whose quills were soft as chickens' down. Gently he put the mother down; set her free to tend her young; to raise the pup to a size more suitable for food. But for the male there was no reprieve. His death blow was mercifully swift; his body was tossed to the lubra. They ate him, when the
day was at its hottest, casseroled in eucalyptus leaves.

For a long time that afternoon the hills seemed to come no nearer; then, quite suddenly, the children were walking into their shadow.

They found an idyllic place to camp; in the shade of an outcrop of rocks and close to a stream that meandered into a looping chain of billabongs. They drank deeply, kindled their fire and settled down in the shade of a boxwood thicket for the night.

The bush boy's cold didn't appear to be any worse; indeed if anything he was sneezing and coughing less. Yet he seemed weaker: increasingly preoccupied: and the children noticed that his coordination was beginning to fail – twice, while making fire, the yacca rolled from between his hands.

Peter was very solicitous. Seeing the bush boy huddled by the fire yet still trembling – he supposed with cold – he took off his shorts and tried to cover him up. And the Aboriginal seemed to be grateful. Peter looked at him thoughtfully: then at his sister. He had a sudden idea.

‘Hey, Mary!' His cheerful shout echoed back from the rocks. ‘The darkie's cold. Couldn't he have your dress?'

The girl's mouth fell open. For a second she stared at her brother in disbelief. Then she swung round and started to bank up the fire.

But the little boy wasn't put off.

‘Gee, Mary! Don't be a meany. He's cold.'

The girl said nothing.

Peter looked at her curiously. Her face had gone suddenly pale; her eyes, once again, were frightened, hunted.

‘I think you're scared!' the little boy announced with unexpected relish. ‘Cowardy girl! Cowardy girl'

Mary turned away. She hid her face in her hands. If only he wasn't so small; if only he was a few years older; then he'd understand.

She saw the bush boy looking at her: watching her. And she shivered.

The Southern Cross blazed out of a cobalt sky; the sundown wind faded to a whisper; and a pair of marsupial rats, their eyes aglow like luminous peas, hopped hesitantly round the camp site. Mary threw a branch of yacca into the flames. The sparks crackled and flew; and the rats, with tiny ping-ponging hops, fled. The stars glowed like gems. The desert, and the children, slept.

Next morning Peter woke early. He yawned; stretched; looked first at the others – still asleep – then at the billabongs. The water looked cool and tempting. He got up, strolled across to the nearest pool, sat on the edge and dangled in an exploratory toe. The water was delightfully warm; but shallow; barely up to his knees. He wandered upstream, seeking a deeper, more exciting pool.

He found it on the far side of the outcrop of rock: a
granite-encircled basin, fed by a miniature waterfall. With a noisy belly-flop, he dived in.

The pool was exactly the right depth: up to his armpits. Working his way to under the waterfall, he revelled in the cascading, sunlit spray. He stayed a long time in the water, soaking every pore of his sturdy young body. He noticed with satisfaction that his body wasn't white any longer; a week's continual exposure to the desert sun had tanned it a rich mahogany – only he hoped it wouldn't get any darker, else he'd be turning into a blackamoor. At last he wandered back to the camp site.

The bush boy was still asleep; but Mary had just woken, and he told her about the rock-bound billa-bong.

The girl looked at the Aboriginal and saw that he was motionless: apparently fast asleep.

‘You stir up the fire, Pete,' she said. ‘Can you manage that? While I bathe?'

‘Sure I can manage.'

She smiled, glad of his self-reliance, and made her way to the far side of the rock.

The billabong was everything Peter had promised. The river that ran out of Eden couldn't have been more beautiful. The girl took off her dress, ruefully noting its rents and tears, shook loose her hair, and dived into the pool. The water was crystal clear and warm as a tepid bath. Lazily she swam across to the waterfall, and let the spray cascade on to her naked body. She felt relaxed, washed clean of cares and doubts and fears. Sometime, she thought, some distant
day or week or month, they'd come to Adelaide (or some other settlement); the bush boy she wouldn't think about; in the meantime the sun shone, there was water to drink, food to eat, and Peter's cold was on the mend. She started to sing: gaily: swirling her hair from shoulder to shoulder.

Peter, meanwhile, had fanned the fire into a blazing pyre of yacca. And the bush boy had woken up.

He lay on his back, thinking. He wasn't used to thinking – most of his actions being dictated by custom and instinct rather than thought. But there was something he had to think about now: something vitally important: his burial table. Did the strangers know how to make it: high off the ground: so that the serpent that slept in the bowels of the earth couldn't creep out and molest his body? The strangers were such an ignorant pair; he couldn't leave anything to chance; he'd have to make sure they knew what had to be done.

He got to his feet. Slowly. Weakly.

If other things had been equal he'd have talked to the little one – he was on easier terms with him than with the lubra. But he saw that the little one was working: was collecting firewood; while the lubra, to judge from her singing and splashing, was merely washing her body. Tribal custom frowned on disturbing those who were working. And it never occurred to the bush boy to wait for a more propitious moment. He set off to find the lubra.

He climbed the outcrop of rock and saw her a little way below him, bathing in the billabong. She'd taken
off her strange decorations, and loosened her hair so that it was no longer scraped up on the back of her head but flowed, long and golden, on the surface of the water. The bush boy had never seen such hair, sand-coloured and trailing like the comet that rides the midnight sky. He thought it very beautiful. He lay down on the sun-warmed rock, and stared. Admiringly.

Quite suddenly the girl looked up: looked up straight into his eyes: into his staring, admiring eyes.

She backed away. In terror. Her hands, sliding along the bank of the pool, clutched at a loosened fragment of rock. She pulled the rock free; grasped it firmly.

The bush boy came walking down to the billabong. But at the water's edge he stopped: stopped in amazement. For the lubra was snarling at him; was snarling like a cornered dingo, her nose wrinkled, her lips curled back, her eyes filled with terror. He took a hesitant step forward, saw the stone in the lubra's hand and stopped again. Hatred was something alien to the bush boy; but he couldn't fail to recognize the look in the lubra's eyes. He knew, in that moment, that his body would never get its burial platform.

He felt suddenly weaker: much weaker. Things were happening that he didn't understand: didn't want to understand. He looked at the lubra's frightened eyes and snarling mouth, and was appalled. The will to live drained irrevocably away.

Slowly he turned. He walked a few paces back into the desert; then he lay down in the shade of a mugga-wood
wood tree.
^*
The branches hung limply over him; the great puce-coloured flowers wept their tears of blood.

^*
The mugga-wood, to the Aboriginals, is the tree of sorrow, symbol of the broken heart; for its appearance is sad and drooping, and its flowers are perpetually wet with a crimson fluid, seeping out like blood.

T
HE
yacca wood burned quickly, and Peter had I a full-time job replenishing the fire. He couldn't think what was keeping the others; but he hoped they'd come soon – before he ran out of firewood.

At last he saw his sister scrambling down the outcrop of rock. Even from a distance he sensed that something was wrong; and when she came slowly up to the fire and held out her hands to the blaze, he noticed about her an unnatural calm, an air of too carefully imposed restraint. For a while neither spoke; then the girl picked up a branch and started to draw ash over the flames.

‘Hey!' Peter was indignant. ‘You'll put it out.'

She nodded. ‘We don't need it.'

‘Course we need it. How we going to cook for breakfast?'

‘There's no breakfast.'

She followed the point up.

‘Listen, Peter,' she moved closer to him. ‘There's no food here. It's no use staying. Let's push off.'

He eyed her suspiciously.

‘What's the rush? The darkie'll get food.'

‘Listen, Pete' – she was pleading now – ‘Let's go by ourselves. Just you an' me. We'll be O.K.'

His mouth started to droop.

‘I don't wanna leave the darkie.'

‘He doesn't want to come, Pete. I know he doesn't. I asked him.'

‘You sure? Cross your heart.'

‘Real sure. Cross my heart.'

He eyed her doubtfully: unconvinced.

‘How d'you ask him? You can't talk darkie talk!'

She went on raking over the ash.

‘I tell you,' she said, ‘he doesn't want to come. I know.'

A week ago he'd have accepted her word; have fallen in with her plans. But not now.

‘I'm goin' ask him myself.' He strode off purposefully, heading for the outcrop of rock.

The girl made as if to run after him, to pull him back. Then she stopped; that, she realized, would do no good. She sat down, beside the dead fire. Her fingers plucked at the hem of her skirt.

After about ten minutes Peter came running back; out of breath.

‘Say, Mary!' his voice was frightened. ‘The darkie's ill. Real ill. He's lying under a bush. An' he won't move.'

‘P'raps he's asleep.'

Peter looked at her in disgust.

‘Course he's not asleep. He's ill. You come an' look.'

‘No!'

The girl drew back.

‘No!' she whispered. ‘I won't go near him.'

They spent a miserable, frustrating day. Peter wouldn't leave the bush boy; Mary wouldn't go near him; and they had no food.

A little before noon the white boy went wandering off upstream, and his sister followed.

‘Where you going, Pete?'

‘I'm gonna look for fish.'

She came with him eagerly, hoping this was the first step in breaking away, in going off on their own. But Peter wouldn't go far: after less than an hour he turned back, insisted on retracing their steps. They found no fish.

Peter spent most of the afternoon carrying palmfuls of water up from the billabong to where the bush boy lay motionless in the shade of the mugga-wood. At first the Aboriginal wouldn't drink, but eventually he accepted a little – though Peter noticed he seemed to have difficulty in swallowing.

A couple of hours before sundown the white children went on another food hunt. This time downstream. And, more by luck than judgement, they found a cluster of the yams-with-foliage-under-the-ground. They rooted up three apiece and carried them back to the camp. After a good deal of difficulty they rekindled the fire, and covered the yams with, ash. An hour later they were eating them, while the sunset wind rustled the boxwoods, and flying phalangers zoomed from tree to tree.