Salt Creek (28 page)

He stopped talking again. I put the dough in a bowl and a cloth over the top and set it to rise at the side of the stove. Fred cut a slice of bread and opened the fire door on the stove and held the bread over the coals with a toasting fork. He scraped some butter over it and ate it slowly, then had another cup of sweet tea.

As if he'd never stopped talking, he said, ‘I kept thinking of a drawing I'm working on, of some little fruits –
muntharies
, Tull calls them. It's hard to get the blush on them right'. He stopped and rubbed his cheek before gathering himself. ‘We went to a native camp. I heard the dogs first. Hugh and Stanton weren't worried about them. It was horrible. There were a lot of sick people. I thought an old woman lying by a fire had died. She stared so fixed. The shelters were falling apart. Their weapons were lying about. Hugh and Stanton got down. I thought I would stay mounted until we left. A man came out of a wurly and they made me bring the drink over, so I had to get down. The native was quiet until he saw the drink. He wasn't well, coughing and so on. He called two girls out of the wurly. They were only young, a little younger than me perhaps. They went into the bushes with Hugh and Stanton.'

‘Don't tell me,' I said.

‘I couldn't do it. Stanton came out after a while. He said it was my turn.'

‘Stop.'

It was as if he didn't hear me. ‘She had scars across her front. I remember that.' He inscribed three lines across his chest with a light stroke of his fingers. ‘I would not have expected them to feel like that, hard and smooth. She smelled strange.' His breath came rather short. ‘I was sick. I couldn't help it. It was the drink. Hugh and Stanton laughed. That's when I ran away. I found Birdie and sprang up before they could stop me. I didn't care where we went, but she found the way home. Thank you for putting the lamps out.'

‘That's all right.'

‘I'm sorry, Hett.'

‘I suppose you are.'

Hugh and Stanton arrived home in the middle of the morning, sauntering in as if there could be no doubt about Fred's safety. (Perhaps they had been concerned. Before they came inside they would have seen Fred's horse, unsaddled, and known he had come to no harm. I will allow that that might have been true.) There would be no work that day – Sunday – or worship service with Papa not there. A working day would have been easier – a distraction. Addie hung about like Skipper when in need of reassurance. When she asked me what the matter was with the boys, I told her it was nothing.

Fred sat on the veranda. Hugh and Stanton clattered about the kitchen, banging pans to the stove and cooking eggs and thick slices of salt pork and sawing hunks of bread as if they were a conquering army in need of victualling. I left them and went inside to the dining room. Hugh and Stanton clattered up the stairs to sit near him. I could hear them quite well through the window.

‘You're a man now, I hope, for your troubles,' Stanton said.

‘What was it, Fred?' Hugh asked, mopping his egg with bread. ‘Not what you imagined?'

‘A spree,' Fred said. ‘That is a spree?'

‘What did you think?' Hugh asked.

‘Something different. What should I have thought? How would anyone think such a thing?'

‘Oh, I think there are many who would,' Hugh said. He sounded quite mild, considering the matter with distant interest.

‘It turned my stomach,' Fred said.

I peeped through the window then, since he seemed rather desperate. I should have gone out to stop them. I was shocked, and I confess I was curious.

‘The ale?' Hugh asked.

‘The smell.'

Stanton leaned towards him. ‘Of her? Because of that? Her flesh, her titties, her sweet girlish—'

‘Shut up,' Fred roared and there was a thump and scuffle.

‘Oh brother dear, dear Fred. I begin to know you.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Can it be that you do not know? I may not be your equal in intellect or in learning, as people do not tire of reminding me, but I do know what is right. It is right to want that, even with one such as her.'

‘And I begin to know you. It was the stink of Hugh on her. I should tell Papa.'

They both laughed. ‘Speak to Papa, eh, Hugh. Oh no,' Stanton said, as if Fred had said the drollest thing. His laugh stopped as sudden as musket shot. ‘Who do you suppose first took us?'

Papa returned and was happy to see Hugh and Stanton. He did not mention them running away. They were able to give him a little money, which softened him somewhat towards them. It was as if he had given his blessing to their departure the year Mama died, and in this way could take some credit for their modest success. A big strike would have been more difficult; it would have shown him to have been wrong. I hardly knew how to look at him after the conversation I had overheard. I thought of those girls and wondered if they ever ran from their lives, and where.

Worst of all was that Papa had left Tull behind at the Point McLeay mission. He was to study with Reverend Taplin at the mission school for native children, which any sensible person would know was an absurd idea even if Papa did not, but at least it meant I would not have to talk to him of the connection growing between Tull and Addie.

‘To do such a thing without telling us, without telling Tull,' Fred burst out. ‘What are you thinking? He knows how to read and figure and more besides. They won't know anything.' He spoke with such passion. I had not seen him so before.

I glanced up again from my sewing at Fred all flushed and Papa fiddling with his watch chain and not looking at Fred, and not remonstrating either, and I said, ‘But it could be an opportunity for him. We shouldn't stand in his way.'

‘I thought you liked Tull,' Fred said.

‘I do.'

‘He doesn't need school. He'd learn more here with us than at some school for—'

‘Blacks?' Stanton said. ‘Tull
is
black, Fred. He needs to be reminded.'

‘You don't know him. You're the one who needs reminding,' Addie said. ‘Not Tull. Tull never forgets a thing. Only say something once and he remembers it forever.'

‘Of his colour and his place, I mean.' Stanton imagined himself a man of the world now. Hugh always had, so the change was less marked in him.

‘I think it's an excellent notion,' Hugh said.

‘As if we cared what you think,' Fred said.

‘Now, now, Fred,' Stanton said softly. His mouth curled up a little as if he were toying with him.

Fred made a furious growling sound in his throat. ‘What do you do each morning, Stanton? Throw a dice to decide what you'll be that day: adventurer, libertine, oaf?'

‘Boys,' Papa said.

Stanton turned his hands into fists. Hugh held his arm. ‘Very droll, Fred,' he said.

There had been a strange dance of feeling between the boys since their expedition. Contempt and loathing and rage and other things besides. Addie could not understand, and I would not tell her; I did not perfectly understand it myself, despite what Fred had told me. ‘Not a matter for young ladies,' Stanton told Addie. Really, I could not wait for them to leave.

‘Tull wanted to stay,' Papa said. ‘And he might be of assistance to Reverend Taplin in his work. It was because of my high regard for him, which I spoke of to Taplin, that he thought to ask whether Tull might be willing.'

‘How did you persuade him?' Fred said. ‘What did you say?'

Papa drew himself upright in his narrow black clothes and set his narrow face. ‘I do not have to answer to you and neither does Tull. Think of the good he might do, the service he will be to his people. I wish only good for him. Believe that.'

‘He belongs here, with us,' Addie said, almost sobbing with rage.

‘Addie's right. They're not his people there. Why would they listen to him?' Fred said. ‘If Tull stayed of his own will it's for his own reasons, not yours.'

‘He is there, and there he is staying for the time being and let that be the end of it. I consider Taplin's work to be truly Christian and I will do what I can to support it.'

After supper, Papa sat on the veranda writing in his journal and I pulled a chair to the veranda edge where the light was still good for sewing, and presently Hugh came out and sat with him. Neither of them said anything for a while and it seemed quite companionable. Papa had never mentioned missing Hugh and Stanton; perhaps he had though, or missed talking things over with them. He and Mama had enjoyed their conversations.

Papa said, ‘Tull made a proposal while we were travelling.'

‘Did he now?' Hugh said. ‘And what was it?'

‘That we share the land with the natives.'

‘We do that already.'

‘He had in mind a more formal arrangement, I believe. They would help manage it, or we could give them some land and cattle.'

Hugh fell back in his chair. ‘Ridiculous.' He leaned towards Papa. ‘The blacks have no right to anything. They didn't improve the land or work it. They did nothing. They don't own it. And they know nothing about farming. Why should they benefit? Send them away, I say.'

‘They have known nothing else, but they might learn. Tull could teach
them. We are right; we have the right over it. But we have done them no good. Not only us, I know that, but the fact of it cannot be denied. Only a native who also knows our world could be of any use working with them. Tull is such a person. The scheme might work with him.'

‘You operate within the law, above it I would say,' Hugh said. He stood.

‘Yet I cannot feel easy. What my own father would— It may be the law, but as to justice.'

‘Papa,' Hugh said. ‘You are no worse than anyone; in fact you are a great deal better. The familiarity you encourage. Look at Tull, a native in your own home. It's madness to think of sharing it with them. Sell it, rather, and move back to town if it troubles your conscience.'

‘There's no selling to be done. I borrowed from Stubbs against Salt Creek. It's all I can do to pay him the interest and there's the lease too. If I don't pay Stubbs, the lease is his. What else could I do, as hard as things are?'

‘I did not realise.'

But Papa shook his head, and his hair, which had grown untidy, fell across his face. ‘No, there is nothing for us but this. I cannot risk working with the blacks, but they do need their own land. Tull has made me see that. I must think.' Hugh left to find Stanton, who was trying his hand at fishing again. Papa remained behind, tapping his pipe stem on the arm of his chair. He was still there when I went to bed.

The next morning he had become purposeful. At breakfast he ate with appetite. We all noted it, even Addie, who looked to him when she burst through the door. Sometimes it seemed as if every door, every window had to be opened to allow the house to encompass her energies. He was neat, his shirt buttoned at wrist and chin.

Passing behind his chair, she slowed, glancing at him curiously as did we all, sideways or from across the table, as if some clue might be gleaned from his hearty sawing at his food.

None of us spoke. Papa appeared oblivious to the unusual silence. He hummed a few lines from ‘Bread of Heaven' and drained his cup and held it out: ‘A little more tea, Hester, if there is some.'

‘What is it, Papa?' Addie said. ‘You are cheerful today.' Her cheeks flushed so that I saw that her boldness was sometimes an effort for her, and that she was not always certain how Papa might respond.

He put down his knife and fork and cleared his throat. ‘It was the condition of the blacks at the lakes that has been on my mind. So many are ill. It will come here too, I don't doubt. I could not be easy in my conscience if I did not try to do something on their behalf. If it were not for Reverend Taplin's work with them I think they might die out entirely. Their suffering—'

‘From what, Papa?' I said. ‘What ails them?'