Journey to the Stone Country (36 page)

He nodded and they stepped down.

Arner followed them up to the doorway. The door was half open, stubbed against a lifted board in the passage. Bo eased the door wider and called uncertainly, ‘You in there Panya?’ A dog barked gruffly. They stepped into the foetid passageway and turned into a small dark room. A blanket was nailed down over the window. An old woman sitting back on a sagged-down settee under the window, the cold blue light of a teevee playing over her features. Her eyes set deep in her head, reflecting the teevee, flickering in the darkness of her face. The skin of her features jowled and folded down over her cheeks, as if it would slough and leave the naked white bone of her skull. A surprising epiphany. Annabelle wondered if she was blind. A grey dog stood shivering at the old woman’s feet. It barked feebly a couple of times then lay down, whining and twisting around, licking and nipping at a deep ulcer on its back, the muscles and sinews of its hindquarters laid bare as a piece of butcher’s meat. There was a strong smell of excrement. An open pail standing beside the settee. Blowflies humming around inside the pail, coming out and batting against the teevee screen, ricocheting off into the dark. The sound on the teevee was turned down low, the voice of the commentator a barely audible mumble above the whining and buzzing of the flies. The channel replaying highlights of the Eagle Farm races. The old woman didn’t turn from the teevee but raised her arm and called throatily, ‘Come over here, Arner! Let Aunty Panya touch you.’

Arner went over and stood by her.

Annabelle stood just inside the door to the passage, a step behind Bo. She held a hand to her mouth.

The old woman reached and took hold of Arner by the wrist.

Arner lowered himself onto the couch beside her. She took his big hand in hers, folding it on her lap, tucking herself close against him. Minutes passed, the two of them sitting gazing at the screen, as if they communicated by means of its mesmerising illumination.

Bo and Annabelle waiting by the door.

The big flies droning around, dipping in and out of the bucket.

The old woman’s voice came out of the silence with a suddenness that made Annabelle jump.

‘I know what you come here for, Bo Rennie!’ Her tone was harsh and unwelcoming, her speech half-stifled by an occlusion of phlegm in her throat, a cheesy mucous in the corners of her eyes. ‘You don’t even know your own grandmother’s name.’ She laughed thickly.

Bo was silent, shifting uneasily, glancing at the teevee then looking down at the boards, as if he had been called before the ancient dark of this old Jangga woman’s judgement to answer for all the wrongdoing of his life.

‘He don’t know his own grandmother’s name!’ she confided, lifting Arner’s hand to her lips and kissing it, the dog raising its head and going, whooo. ‘What else don’t he know?’ She chuckled throatily. ‘They tell me you give up drink, Bo Rennie.’

Bo said quietly, ‘I haven’t had a drink for seven years.’

‘Seven years not long!’ She dismissed the significance of his claim. ‘Foul language and drinking. I heard all that from you. A man like you will take up the drink again when he’s got troubles.’ She fell silent, holding Arner’s hand and stroking it as if it were a warm creature nestled comfortingly in her lap. Arner’s great bulk beside her in the teevee light like a carved effigy. Her demon companion. Still and sombre, drugged by the airless stench and the effulgent light of the screen, the soft caresses of the old woman, his eyelids drooping. He might have arrived at his destination.

Minutes went by, the silence broken only by the hum of the flies and the murmuring teevee. It seemed as if Panya had forgotten Bo and would not address him again, her preoccupation with passing some occult knowledge to her companion on the settee. Then suddenly she said, ‘You goin up there to the playground of the old people.’ Her voice accused him. She coughed, gasping and choking and bringing phlegm into her mouth. She leaned forward and spat the gobbet of phlegm at the pail. It hit the side and slid down, the flies rising with a hum at the impact. She eased back and groaned, struggling to regain her breath. ‘Your grandmother was the last stone women,’ she said. ‘You didn’t even know that.’ She fell silent again, the immensity of her charge recoiling against a resistance in her, as if the effort of speech and recollection exhausted her, memory draining her of the will for words. ‘Now there’s only old Panya left to tell the truth. Get him to toss his tobacco over, Arner. I gotta clear these pipes.’

Bo took the packet of Drum from his shirt pocket and tossed it into Arner’s lap.

‘Roll your old Aunty a smoke, Arner,’ she said. ‘He thinks he’s as smart as his daddy was.’ Confiding in Arner as if they were alone in the room. She accepted the lit cigarette and took a long drag at it. ‘Bo Rennie always thought he was a smart packet. Drinking and chasing other men’s women.’ She brought up more loose phlegm and swallowed it. ‘He’s takin that Beck woman to the playground of the old people, that’s what he’s doin. I know him. That woman already got things don’t belong to her. But she wants everything.’

Dismayed by the old woman’s words, Annabelle looked at Bo. But he would not meet her eyes. She wanted to turn and leave the house, but she was afraid to.

‘They can’t leave nothin alone, Arner. They gotta have everything before they’re satisfied. They leave you with nothin. I know them. He’s gonna show her the heart of the old people.’ She coughed and groaned and drew on the cigarette, reaching for what she had to say. ‘That grandfather of hers hunted us in the moonlight. Louis Beck and his mate, George Bigges. Them two hunted our people all up through them bendee scrubs.’ She spat hard without taking aim. ‘Now he’s takin one of them Beck women up there to the playground of the old people. What’s that woman want with our old place?’ She waited, the silence dragging out, and no one answering her question. ‘What’s she want?’ she repeated. ‘That’s the man you are, Bo Rennie!’ she accused him. ‘You not worth a spit of your old dad.’ A skein of tacky saliva clung to her lips, dribbling onto her front. She swiped at it impatiently with the flat of her hand. ‘Don’t even know his grandmother’s name, Arner.’ She was silent again. ‘You gonna ask me your grandmother’s secret name, Bo Rennie? That what you come to see old Panya for?’ She smoked, mocking him. ‘You don’t know nothin.’

‘I know where the old playground is,’ Bo objected, quiet and modest in his claim. ‘I know where them old highways are. I followed them with Grandma when I was a boy.’

‘What d’you know about the stone people? You know nothin! Your grandmother was the last woman given birth to in the cradle of them stones. When we was little children together me and her seen the killings. That woman there! Her granddad was huntin our families up through them scrubs. Your grandmother’s old lady hid us two kids with her in the hollow carcass of a old scrubber bull that was layin out in the open of a natural clearing. Me and your Grandma was all curled up inside that carcass looking out through the old bull’s skullholes watching them men murderin our people in the moonlight. They never thought to come looking for us inside that old bull. After they finished the killings, they lit a fire and brewed up a quartpot of tea and they sat on a ironbark log and ate their damper and beef, laughing and talking, them bodies laying all around in plain view, all broken and unattended. I don’t forget that sight,’ she said and was suddenly overcome by her emotions. She sat weeping noisily and unable to speak, her hands clinging to Arner’s big hand, her fingers kneading his flesh as if she found a resource in his great size and in the perfect equanimity of his unbroken silence. When she had regained her composure she went on, ‘We stayed in that old bull for three days like we was goannas livin there and then we come out and walked the scrubs all the way back to the Suttor. We kept going, hungry and scared, till we met up with your grandmother’s mob. That’s when them Bigges come over and took your grandmother and her sister to the Ranna Station. But I give them the slip and they didn’t get me. And they still haven’t got me, Bo Rennie!’ She was crying softly to herself again, sniffling and murmuring, the tears glistening in the folds of her cheeks. ‘Where are my sisters and brothers, Bo Rennie?’ she cried out to him. ‘Where did them kids go to? I watched them bein murdered! My mother and father too. Murdered in front of me. Your grandmother’s old lady holding her hand over my mouth so I couldn’t cry out to them. I seen that Louis Beck ride down my little brother across that clearing and bust his skull wide open with his stirrup iron. That’s what I seen. I seen it happen. I don’t forget that! I never gonna forget that. I see that little boy running for the shelter of the scrub every day of my life and that horse coming up on him and I see he’s not gonna make it and I cry out to him and weep for that little boy every day of my life. My dear and loving family killed by the grandfather of that woman you got standing there beside you! Now you come back here and you bring that Beck woman into old Panya’s place! That’s the kind of stupid man you are and always was, Bo Rennie. You got no sense.’ She didn’t turn and look at him. ‘You could have turned out like Les Marra but you never did. You could have done some good for your people. That sister of his got little enough but she and her kid brings me cooked meat and cigarettes whenever they can. What did you bring? That woman! A insult. Now you gonna insult the old people.’ She said suddenly, ‘You take off your hat in here! You have some respect for old Panya.’ She wiped her face on her sleeve, sighing and moaning and struggling with her memory of the horror.

Bo removed his hat and stood holding it by the brim, looking down at his boots.

‘You ever hear the story of them killings before, Bo Rennie?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Bo murmured.

‘No!’ she said. ‘There, you hear that, Arner? Bo Rennie never heard that story before! That’s what he says! Some people don’t find it too hard to lie to themselves.’

Bo looked at her. He didn’t say anything.

‘You bring that Beck woman here so she can apologise to me? Is that what you doin bringin her in here? Because I been trying to think of a reason why you would bring Louis Beck’s granddaughter into old Panya’s house. Or she just come here to look at old Panya? That her idea is it? Satisfy her curiosity? Pretend to her friends she understand the old Jangga people now? You gonna marry her? That what you gonna do?’ She sniffed back hard and spat, her hand going out in a direction-making gesture. ‘That’s all hollow ground up there. You go tramping around up there with her and you’ll wake up them old people. That grandfather of hers hunted us through them scrubs till we had to stop and rest. Then he shot the grown people and he rode down the children and clubbed them to death with his stirrup iron. Yeah! I seen it! Him and his mate. I seen him swing his stirrup and bust the skull of my brother. Did I tell you this before? But maybe you forgot it already and you need tellin again? I don’t forget. Every day I weep for them murdered people of ours. Every day. I never gonna forget. To me it just happened yesterday. You one of them people like to forget. You gonna ask me the secret name your grandmother was given by the old people the day she come into life up there in the playground? That what you come to ask old Panya for?’ She waited. ‘If I told you her name, and I’m not gonna tell you, Bo Rennie, so don’t get your hopes up, if I told you her name it wouldn’t mean nothin to you because you don’t know enough to make no sense of the old ways. Tellin you your grandmother’s name would be like spittin it into that shit bucket there.’ She coughed and spat some more and sat musing and murmuring and stroking Arner. ‘I been waitin for you to come lookin for your grandmother. I knew you was comin back for her.’ She fell silent.

Minutes went by.

Annabelle dared not move.

The boards creaked under the heels of Bo’s boots as he shifted his weight.

‘Well here’s something else you don’t know, Bo Rennie. Me and your Grandma planned our revenge and we took it. As soon as we come of age your grandmother and me went up there to the women’s place in that old playground where we was born. Them Bigges over at Ranna didn’t know where your grandmother was gone to. They was stupid enough to think she was lost in the bush.’ She laughed at the idea. ‘They sent out search parties lookin for her. But she give em the slip and met up with me in the poison bendee and we walked to the old playground together. It was cold and rainin and they never picked up our tracks. We stayed a week up there without eating nothin. And we sung Louis Beck and George Bigges. That George Bigges, he was always smiling at you and givin you a shilling, pretending he was a friend of the dark people. Only me and your grandmother seen what him and Louis Beck done that day. We set the demons free in them two. You ask
her
! That woman standing next to you! She his granddaughter! Her own dad watched the demons eating into that old man over the years until he lost his mind and become a old dried up carcass of a bull himself, a tormented halfwit wandering around the paddocks. You ask that woman you got with you! She seen it. She knows. Them Becks was ashamed of him before the finish. She don’t say nothin but she knows what I’m talkin about. Them Becks never said nothin about it, but they knew. They knew what their old man done. They all knew it. She seen her grandfather eaten up by the demons in his head. Me and your grandmother done that. That’s what we done, Bo Rennie. We sung them two real good. We never give Louis Beck no place to find rest from his torment. He heard the cries of them murdered children for the rest of his miserable days in the wailing of the curlews in the moonlight. Louis Beck never slept peacefully again after me and your grandmother sung him. We watched the spirits of them murdered children drive him out of his senses as the years went by. It all come to nothing for him.’ She was silent. ‘The remains of that George Bigges’ place is finished and him and his generations gone for good too. You think we didn’t do that? Me and your Grandma? We done it. Les Marra gonna see that old Ranna drowned. Les know what to do.’ She laughed loudly, a sudden exultant youthfulness in her voice. ‘We cleaned them two out! They all gone from round here now!
We
done that! Your Grandma and me. Only that Beck woman trying to get back in and pick over what’s left. Are you gonna be the one to let her do that, Bo Rennie? You gonna be the one to let them people back in again? Is that what you plannin to do for the old people after me and your Grandma sung em out? You don’t understand nothin of what’s going on between us.’