Journey to the Stone Country (35 page)
They all laughed. Tiger joined in. ‘The Spanish dancer,’ he said.
‘That’s Eva!’ Bo said. ‘She’s took the powder off now and is going for the boot polish.’
They laughed some more. Then they fell silent. Tiger said, ‘Life’s like a wall of water.’
‘That’s it,’ Bo encouraged him. ‘A wall of water.’
‘It goes out of control and knocks everything down. Then it’s gone and there’s nothing.’ Tiger sat cheek-to-cheek with his daughter, gazing out the long window at the evening sky. ‘Look at that sunset!’ he said. A high ripple of cloud tinted a brilliant vermilion lit up the room. They all sat looking at the sunset. The brilliance did not last long before the evening sky turned grey. Elsie switched on the light.
Tiger said, ‘You ought to get the Land Council to buy back Verbena for you, Bo.’
They looked at Bo, waiting to see what he would say. He examined his cigarette.
‘For someone like you it’s the right time,’ Tiger said. ‘They got money for that sort of thing.’
Elsie said quietly, ‘Bo don’t want the Land Council getting mixed up in Verbena. He don’t want that country for the Murris.’
‘Then who’s he want it for?’
Elsie kept looking at Bo. He smoked his cigarette, looking down at the dog and saying nothing, the smoke from his cigarette drifting through the kitchen.
‘Bo wants it for his Grandma and for old Iain Rennie.’ She waited until Bo looked up at her and smiled. ‘Did you know Bill Stirling’s still alive?’ she asked him.
‘Yes I did know that.’
Elsie turned to Annabelle. ‘He’s the land agent went out to Verbena with Jude Horrie to see Bo’s grandma with the agreement of sale that day. He’s still living in Collinsville with his granddaughter. He’s over ninety. He’d know if Bo’s grandma ever really signed that agreement of sale or not.’
Bo said quietly, ‘Grandma never signed no agreement of sale.’
Tiger said, ‘You need a piece of paper, Bo. That old feller’s not gonna last much longer. While you still got the chance you oughta get a piece of paper off him swearing your grandma never signed. You need a good witness for that too. A magistrate or the sergeant of police. Someone them people gonna believe.’
Bo sucked his teeth. ‘My dad always said people will lie to you on paper quicker than they’ll lie to your face.’
Tiger said, ‘That may be true. But it’s the piece of paper that’s gonna count for you. It don’t matter what you know in your mind, if you haven’t got a piece of paper you got nothin. That’s the way things are, Bo. Them courts not gonna listen to you without a piece of paper to back you up. No one is. Looking them in the eye don’t impress them judges one little bit.’ He turned to Annabelle. ‘Annabelle knows that’s true. You can’t do nothin without a piece of paper. Look at what Jude Horrie did with that piece of paper of his? That so-called agreement of sale of his? And that was a forgery.’ He looked around at each of them in turn to see if they appreciated the justice of his argument. Sarah looked around with him, checking the impression made on the company by these truths of her father’s. Tiger laughed and they cuddled each other, laughing together. ‘Go and get my guitar,’ he told her. He held her around the waist, not letting her go, and she turned and looked at him, waiting for what he would say. ‘That’s what they call
evidence
, Bubble. In this world, proof is not in a man’s word but is on the paper he carries. Without a piece of paper even the best man is only a liar and a thief. It’s not only your mother’s people gotta get their pieces of paper back. We all gotta do it any way we can. That’s why they crucified our Lord and Saviour, Jesus.’
Bo murmured, ‘Here we go.’
Tiger looked at him. He said without rancour, ‘You can mock, Bo, but in this house it’s the truth of Jesus we live by.’ He turned again to Sarah. ‘The Lord Jesus asked them to believe his word. He gave them the truth. But they wanted evidence. It’s evidence that destroys the word of truth in a man’s heart. Nothing’s changed, my little Bubble. That’s the world we got. Without the Lord Jesus, you and me and your mother are nothin. Without a signature on a piece a paper we
got
nothin. X marks the spot.’ He laughed and let her go.
She slipped off his knee and went into the back room and a moment later came back with a guitar. She handed him the instrument and stood by watching him tune it. He looked up from tuning the guitar and said evenly to Bo, ‘You gotta bring that old Verbena title into dispute. I know something about that business and how it works. You listen to me. Them Heffernans not gonna get no one to offer for your Grandma’s old place if the title’s in dispute.’
Elsie said, ‘It’s true, Bo. You gotta have a disputed title on Verbena. That’s what happened to Tiger’s mum and dad with their place at Sarina. There was no clear title and it finished up they couldn’t find a buyer for it. There’s squatters in there now and they can’t be shifted.’
Tiger gazed at his daughter, his eyes shining. He began to sing softly, striking the chords and a rippling array of notes with his fingers, his light tenor voice tuned perfectly to the pitch of the instrument,
Free at last, free at last, thank God a’mighty I’m free at last . . .
After a few bars he stopped singing and put the guitar aside. ‘Sing
Grace
for Annabelle, Bubble.’
Sarah smiled at Annabelle and she pulled out a chair from the table and she sat, her knees together, her open palms flat on her skirt. She gazed levelly ahead of her out the window at the evening sky and sang,
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like
me! I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see . . .
She sang the familiar words of the old gospel song in an unmannered and clear voice that was without sentimentality. When she came to the end of the song she turned to her father and smiled. He thanked her and she got up and went over and stood with her mother. There were tears in Tiger’s eyes.
Annabelle said, ‘Thank you Sarah. That was beautiful.’ She was afraid she might seem to be condescending if she said more.
Tiger picked up his guitar and strummed it. ‘It was a white slaver wrote that song, Annabelle.’
It was past midnight when Tiger left them and went to bed. Bo went out to the Pajero and brought the swag in and they unrolled it by the stove. They lay side by side waiting for sleep and thinking their thoughts. Bo smoking an illicit cigarette. The dog watching them from the doorway, its head laid on its paws. Every once in a while it gave a breathy woof and Bo spoke back to it. Outside in the night scrubs curlews cried back and forth, their eerie chorus like the forlorn wailing of the damned calling to each other. Bo raised himself on his elbow and opened the fire door of the stove and threw the butt of his cigarette in, his face lit by the red glow from the coals. He looked down at her, ‘Am I gonna get that massage?’
He lay beneath her in the glow from the fire door and she probed the muscles of his back with her fingers.
He said, ‘Grandma always said the whole story’s in that photograph, if only there was someone could tell it.’
After breakfast in the morning, Tiger and Elsie and Sarah came out to the Pajero with them to say goodbye. The older boys climbed into the cabin of Arner’s truck with him and closed the doors, turning the music up as high as it would go. Tiger showed Bo and Annabelle his workshop in the shed, Sarah standing with him, her arm through his.
Annabelle picked up a spear-thrower, smoothing her hand along its polished shank. ‘It’s beautiful, Tiger.’
‘Buy it,’ he said and laughed, a pain of self-mockery in his laughter, so that Elsie looked at him. ‘It’s fifty bucks, that piece. Red bauhinia. She’s hard to find in these scrubs around here. Sarah found that piece.’ He turned to Bo. ‘I stopped doin it. After what that Eva woman said I thought maybe a Indian shouldn’t be makin Murri stuff. What do you think, Bo?’ He frowned, puzzled, uncertain, angry, waiting for Bo’s verdict.
Elsie and Sarah looked at Bo and waited for his judgement.
‘There’s a Russian feller making it in Townsville,’ Bo said. ‘Peter the Great he calls himself. Not bad lookin stuff neither. He sells it to the tourists in the mall there.’ He looked up at them. ‘I seen the police move him along a couple of times but he comes right back and sets up again. Big feller. Sits cross-legged playing a warpy lookin didgeridoo to attract the customers.’ Bo shook his head in wonderment. ‘Gets some weird sounds out of that thing. Make your hair stand up.’ He looked at them as if he thought they might go and listen to the Russian didgeridoo player in Townsville. ‘He sells his stuff.’
Tiger cast his gaze over the bench, the litter of half-finished artefacts. ‘I sold none.’ He gave the little self-mocking laugh again. Sarah held his arm, pressing herself to her father’s side. ‘Not one piece. I’m not a salesman. Some people got the knack.’ He picked up the spear-thrower that Annabelle had replaced on the bench and he slapped his open palm with it. ‘You wanna keep that Ranna country the way she is, Annabelle. And that’s all right for you and I can see what you’re thinkin about conservation. But what are our kids gonna do for a economic base if we don’t exploit the water resources out there now we got the chance?’
Annabelle did not know what to say.
Bo said, ‘You startin to sound like Les, Tiger.’
‘So what? Les’s right.’
Elsie said, ‘He is right, Bo. I’m sorry, Annabelle, but it’s true. Les is getting things done for us.’
Bo lit his smoke and he turned aside and spat against the front tyre of the old Holden sedan. He spoke with impatience. ‘That dam’s not gonna make nobody free. You’ll be tied to the government and the banks by agreements. If you wanna be free you gotta get out and do something yourself.’ He made a flinging gesture at the artefacts with his open hand. ‘There’s a way to sell this stuff. I don’t know what that way is but I know there’s a way. You’re good at it. I never seen better lookin stuff than this even out there in Alice Springs, and they got some good stuff out that way. You just gotta find the way to sell it. That’s the hard part. Findin the way. But that’s what you gotta do. It don’t matter if you’re Indian or what you are. If you make good stuff it’s good stuff. No one can argue with that.’ He stood examining the three of them. ‘You may as well have stayed on the missions as get yourselves tied to the government and them banks. They’ll give you a hardhat and a site pass with your name on it like young Trace keeps on her trophy stand, but you’ll never get to be the boss of what you’re doin. Not with them people. Your kids neither. That dam’s not gonna be a economic base for them, it’s gonna be another chain around their necks.’ He turned to Annabelle. ‘You ready?’
‘I’m ready.’
Sarah let go of her father’s hand. She stepped up to Annabelle and put her arms around her and hugged her. When Sarah stepped away there were tears in Annabelle’s eyes.
Tiger and Sarah and Elsie followed them out to the Pajero. Tiger carried the polished shank of red bauhinia. He watched Bo. ‘Dougald don’t agree with you neither,’ he said.
Bo paused, holding the door open, and turned back to Tiger. ‘I didn’t say nobody had to agree with me.’
Tiger stood with one hand on the bonnet watching him settle himself into the driver’s seat. ‘You’re like they say your old feller was, Bo Rennie. Stubborn.’
Bo was rolling a smoke. ‘That’ll do me, Tiger.’ He called over to Elsie, ‘That was a good feed we had for breakfast, Elsie. We’ll be coming back for some more of that.’
As they were pulling away, Tiger called, ‘You be sure to call on Panya, Bo. Don’t you go slipping away without seeing that old woman.’ He laughed and handed the spear-thrower to Sarah. ‘Give this to Annabelle, Bubble.’ He watched his daughter go around to the passenger side and reach the spear-thrower in through the window to Annabelle.
Bo hooted the horn and waved out the sidewindow, Arner pulling in behind, the boys hanging off the back of his truck yelling, Annabelle leaning out her window and calling back her thanks to Tiger.
She turned to Bo, ‘They’ve got nothing and they gave us everything.’
‘That’s the way it is,’ Bo said. ‘The poor always got their door open.’
Driving out past the racetrack sheds again Bo looked across at the rusting bulldozer. ‘Trace and Mathew,’ he said, considering. ‘How long before they have a kid?’ He looked at Annabelle, ‘You reckon that mother of his is gonna be pleased to be expectin her first grandchild?’ He came to the end of the dirt track and turned onto the Yacamunda road, heading back into Mount Coolon. ‘Elsie’s right. We’re gonna have wedding bells before too long.’
H
E WAS SILENT AS THEY DROVE BACK INTO TOWN.
S
HE DID NOT ASK
him what was troubling him. He turned right at the police station and followed a dirt track for two hundred metres over a bare undulation of stony ground into a narrow-sided gully. A derelict weatherboard shack stood alone on the side of the dry gully, its framework canting downhill, its grey boards sprung and no smoke coming from the roof pipe. Bo parked the Pajero on the sideling. He turned to her, ‘If you wanna wait here, that’s okay.’
His suggestion puzzled her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll come with you.’