That Deadman Dance (15 page)

Jak Tar

Jak Tar saw nothing for him at home, no reason to return. On his way down to the waiting boat he’d heard some warning shout and so, instead of sliding into the boat, he slipped into the water with barely a splash. As soon as his head rose above the surface he knew something had gone amiss and he was treading water in a sea of trouble. He duck-dived and swam beneath the dark mass of the ship, swam underwater with the faces of the captain and first mate in his mind until his lungs were bursting, then surfaced to stars like thorns in his wet vision, gasped, and went underwater again. His thudding heart. Rose to breathe and took his bearings best he could. There must be land not far—he saw the absence of stars, swam toward that. Underwater he took off his jacket, his heavy jumper. Lean and smooth, neither fur nor feather nor scale, he rose to the surface like something made for water, or so he told himself. Took another breath. Slipped off his boots.

The sound of men’s voices carried across the water. Their shouts and their rage. Was that his name he heard? Next time he surfaced he was in the moon shadow of that small isthmus not far from the mouth of the harbour. An island close by, barely a stone’s throw from the beach.

He swam without a splash, his face barely above water until he reached the rocks. The beach shone white in the darkness and he dared not cross it, felt as visible as a shadow puppet on a screen. Water was warmer than air. He was a seal hauling itself up moonlit rocks with hardly a limb to help him, and dreading the club of some swift-footed, cruel man. He stumbled, crawled to where seaweed was piled high and sand met rock and burrowed deep into salty, ribbony stuff. Pulled it over himself for warmth, for the hiding in.

It hid him well enough. But warmth?

Jak Tar was pink and purple wrinkled skin when he rose up stiffly, hobbled with cold, and shook the seaweed off, patting and plucking at himself to be free of the last fleshy ribbon or bauble. He moved away from the rocks, across a corner of squeaking white sand, fine and soft as powder and over succulent fingers … Here, his toes gripped one such fleshy plant finger and shivering in the pre-dawn light he scrambled up a smooth granite shelf. Sunlight fell upon him, and the scent of peppermint trees. His skin was still tender and wrinkled, and he imagined it tearing from him, caught and hanging in seaweed-like strips left on the spiky scrub. He smelled smoke and ash and by the warmth realised he’d almost crawled into a still glowing campfire. Live. Red.

Whereas he was wet, grey, and dressed in damp rags and seaweed and his skin stung in patches. He lay down and almost curled around a pile of embers, lay at the very edge of soft ash and felt it coat his cheek, moving with his every breath. Oh warmth. His back was cold and hard, brittle, but he could not turn over. Why go from boat into deep water?

Opened his eyes. Darkness bled away.

Oh, a boy there, looking at him. Black boy. And two small fires, one either side. The boy had a pouch on the hair belt around his belly. Wore a skin cloak, a pair of sailor’s breeches.

Ah, my man Friday, the wide-eyed boy said. Clear English like a dream surprising Jak Tar. The boy was at the mouth of a small rounded hut, rubbing thick oil into his skin. He glowed warmly, cast his own light, was his own sun.

A little dog, a Jack Russell with its head tilted to one side, close-up staring at Jak Tar.

The heart of home

The house at Kepalup was built as easily as Geordie Chaine had hoped. Two men pressed its pieces together—click snap nail—almost like a child’s game; indeed, the boy Bobby saw it as exactly that and would’ve leapt in and helped if Chaine hadn’t warned him off. Chaine wished his own boy were as keen or, for that matter, possessed some of the energy and interest of the daughter. She—Christine—and the black boy Bobby were presently coiled at the outer perimeter of Chaine’s consciousness, only springing into the range of his attention at irregular intervals. Where was his son? It irritated him.

The house went up, the two men toiled and Chaine, rising up and down on his toes like a buoy bobbing on the ocean swell, watched them. Neither man seemed inclined to converse with the other, which was for the best as far as Chaine was concerned. So long as the work went well.

Bobby knew the workers by name, and would have insinuated himself into the project but for the presence of Chaine and his countervailing wishes.

Nevertheless, Bobby called out, I say, Mr Killam.

His pronunciation was formal, a near copy of the vowels of Mrs Chaine, and he seemed able to adopt different ways of speaking at will—from the mixed-up English most of the natives used, to high formality. But it was a child’s voice for all that. And there was something in its timbre; call it a dark voice?

He spoke again. Mr Skelly.

The smaller man glowered at him, but there did not seem much malice in it. True, the social class implied by Bobby’s voice irked Skelly, the more so because its source was a black boy, but Skelly wanted to impress Chaine with his work ethic and desire to get on with the job. He’d been very grateful when Chaine had asked him to manage things at the farm. They looked an unlikely combination, Killam and Skelly: one stocky and apparently careless of his appearance, the other so tall and neat, all spit and polish and grooming except for the habit of pulling his shirt away from the skin of his back.

Chaine turned, and sailed away.

Geordie Chaine allowed the boy Bobby many liberties because he was a fine boy, and it was only right that he be given every chance to better himself. Geordie was proud to let him into the bosom of his family, like he’d promised Dr Cross. It was part of the pact they’d made, along with seeing the good Dr Cross’s wife given every assistance. By now she’d be home.

His own wife, Mrs Chaine—Grace—was a cultivated, cultured woman. She cared … Their new house (prefabricated, so easily erected) would’ve been the envy of the tiny seashore settlement, if only it had a population capable of such discernment.

Grace Chaine tutored her own children, since any help—hired or conscripted—was best applied to the many other things that needed doing in these, their altered circumstances. She guessed Christine and Christopher were a bit older than Bobby, but were obviously more advanced in their studies and social development. They were generous children and their proud mother observed the signs of their moral superiority: their helpfulness, and the allowances they made for Bobby. They were nearly always looking out for him. And why not? They’d known him from since before they ever got here—remember, he rowed them ashore himself—and how could they ever forget their teeth crunching into golden beetle? They’d be looking out and Bobby Wabalanginy would suddenly appear: come leaping over the crest of a hill; or when their papa took them down to the seashore there he was, standing on rocks at the ocean’s edge where just now a wave had collapsed.

They were twins, but Christopher was still finding his feet, still getting his balance after that long sea voyage from home. Christine could barely remember leaving; her earliest memories floated on ocean, and she felt as though she had surfed to shore. But Christopher was a buttoned-up, hands-by-his-side sort of child who would now and then stand to attention with his fringe straight across his brow like a helmet, his mouth a thin line. Christine had tended him when he was seasick, emptied his bucket of vomit, wiped his brow. Not that she was a servant to him, or obsequious. No, she was the leader, but she cared for him. Was it at sea then that their relationship had set, or had it always been that she was always the one who decided a direction and reached back to grab her brother, made sure he came, too, so they could later share the talk of it? Like they shared the one room in their new home, its walls of twigs and clay.

She remembered, not so long ago perhaps since she herself was so young, when their home here at Kepalup had a door of animal skin. One day a native swept it aside and stood proud and tall with an axe and boomerang stuffed into his hair belt. Dangling at the front was a piece of fur and his thingy. He peered into the room, and spoke, but all she understood was, Cross Cross. Children and mother retreated into the tiny enclosed space, but Bobby walked at the man talking blackfella lingo. Outside, Papa had his rifle in hand, raised.

Bobby laughed, brushed past the man and stood between him and Papa, his back against the barrel of Papa’s gun. Bobby stood between and against them both offering their names to one another and, switching from one language to another, was so animated, so cheerful and delighted in their company that he soon had everyone smiling.

The naked man went away with Papa’s hat pulled tight onto his head. And he never came back no more.

Anymore, Christine heard her mother say. Didn’t come
anymore
. Didn’t return ever again.

Yes, Missus Chaine tutored Bobby, too, of course. Strange, but at first Bobby was shy, since he didn’t know how he should be with her: look into her face, keep his back turned or what? Whose relation was she?

She thought Bobby shy. Sweetly took his jaw in her hand one time. Look at me, she said. Look at me when I talk.

He smiled. Saw how giving his smile meant a lot to her and that, therefore, so might not giving his smile. But it was the same for him, because he wanted to please her, too. She liked him to look at her, but sometimes watched him closely with Christine. Even though he was a boy himself he was formal with Christine, like he was a grown man and she was forbidden him. So he thought, not yet understanding the force that can drive a man and woman together. He was still a child.

And pleasing Missus Chaine helped him learn the words; the reading and writing of her sound and what those marks might mean. And even painting; he liked the feel of those things, the paper more than the slate. And then, slowly, he came to need the feel of all those small and intricate movements required to build up a picture, a story, a permanence. Came to need the ritual of it, the absorption in the doing of things, and then—stepping back—oh look what had been brought forth. It was like you froze things, froze the fluid shift and shaping, held it. Like cold time.
Nyitiny.
Like a seed in cold time, and when the sun came out the waters rose.

Roze.

Roze a wail.

*

The notes went from the piano, through the window, and joined the trembling light which lay over the harbour. Awestruck, Bobby watched Mrs Chaine’s hands closely as she played and then, when she left, sat with his hands splayed above the keyboard, humming, touching, softly moving his lips. Soon he was playing simple pieces by ear, matching sound to the keyboard pattern.

Mama, called Christine, as was her way, and she rushed to fetch her mother, the two of them delighted at Bobby’s achievement.

Grace Chaine was also a watercolourist of—as she herself said—some small accomplishment. She took real pleasure in it. Mother and children and their little friend painted pictures from books first, then from nature. They made washes of grey-blue skies, clouds billowed on the paper, clouds that had bellies heavy with rain. And when Bobby made a solid stem, a dark cloud joining ground to sky, and explained it in his own mother tongue, they worked out that the English words for it would be
a leg of rain.

That afternoon three children strode the earth, giants of all creation. On slate boards they played at spelling. But Bobby’s name! His real name. Who could spell that?

There were few servants, and very little labour available. Mr Chaine had found a man with carpentry skills, best of all one who could work in stone and even metal. Skelly was capable at a blacksmith’s forge, and could also make a boat.

Now, from inside the house, Geordie Chaine saw movement at the edge of his vision. Three children, Christine, Christopher and black Bobby leaping in the flaws of his window glass, bent and sliding down toward the river over the other side of a patch of open, grassy ground. Damp ground, good soil, and with small holes dug all over it even in the time Cross had been here. It had caught fire in that time, too, just this patch. The children ran, Bobby out front, skipping backwards and facing Christine as she ran up to him. It pained Geordie Chaine to see his boy, pale-haired Christopher, trailing the other two. What playmates were there for his son? What young man might he become in this new land? As for the girl … But they were children yet. His daughter turned to hurry her brother and Bobby scanned their surrounds while he waited. Those blank windows at the house.

The children ran through soft grass, followed a natural pathway, a path any visitor used after crossing the river. They ran past the fence being built around the garden, its upright posts of Strawberry Jam Tree; the saplings just the right size for a fence post, needing only the weedy branches trimmed. It burned to a fine ash, too. Further down the slope a bubbling spring fed a pool, made a creek, flowed into the river. Chaine planned to build a wall around that spring, make a well.

I come back from the islands out there, Bobby told his friends, pointing. I come back and speared him in the leg! I rode a boat with a gun in my hand. I stood on the old men’s shoulders and waved down at the soldiers!

Bobby told them stories, sometimes nearly the same ones Papa told them. Nearly, but different.

Skelly bringing them sheep back, said Bobby, and he got old Nelly on a lead, (he mimed holding the lead, the weary horse) and all of a sudden all these Noongars standing all round him. Spears
mirrel
, you know, ready to spear him. He proper scared then, like he gunna mess himself and I, said Bobby, never too modest, I go up and say, This is my friend Mr Skelly and Dr Cross he’s my friend, too. Then Bobby grabbed Skelly’s gun and said, This rifle my friend, too, and held the gun and his hand up like a governor or soldier or Geordie Chaine so they knew he was a strong man.

Christine laughed at him. Oh yes, so you say.

And Bobby said, Yes, I say. You know, I jumped over the top of all their spears and over the moon, too, still holding Mr Skelly’s hand, and when I landed I put Skelly on my shoulders and took off. Running like an emu.

Bobby held his arm, hand up, making it look like an emu’s head and turning around, just a little bit frightened and watchful, looking back as he ran.

And Skelly sitting on my shoulders backwards so he could watch their spears flying after us, and tell me run this way, that, to dodge them. Skelly on my shoulders backwards, said Bobby, giggling, his feet knocking on my back, his thingy in my face …

Christopher laughed out loud, Christine opened her mouth, Oh yuck … but Bobby was gone, running down to the river and they ran after him. Bobby pulled rushes from a grass tree beside the spring, and the twins helped him make a carpet of tiny crisscrossed spears. Together they walked barefoot across to reach the edge of the pool.

The trees were women leaning to the water to wash their hair, and when the children stood under their limbs they were among loved ones. Christine looked up to a magpie, just above her, a grey fuzz of downy feathers on its chest. A parent bird, glossy black and white, landed beside it. They were close, just beyond her reach, and their gaze held hers. The birds warbled and Christine tried to answer with the sound they made, but they looked at her quizzically. From close behind came the voice of another magpie. She turned and there was Bobby, at her shoulder, magpie-talking, liquid sound bubbling from him. The birds turned their heads, each keeping one eye on them. And stepped along the branch a little closer.

Bobby sang one short phrase. Christine tried to repeat it, but her mouth was stone and wood, her tongue cloth. Close together, face to face like this, music continued to spill from Bobby’s lips and tongue and bright teeth and then from feathers and sharp beaks, too, as the magpies joined in, their songs merging, swelling, buoying them all.

At a distance, the bubbling music spilling over him, Christopher crouched by the riverbank. Fins and tails of mullet broke the surface, trees shifted and whispered reassurance among themselves, and the river flowed over stone weirs with barely a sound. The fish here, Christopher saw, could move neither upstream nor down.

The three children spent most of that afternoon throwing crudely made spears into the water. Twice there was a small spear moving sideways, upright on the surface, twice it toppled from fish flesh before they could grasp it. Small groups of mullet, frightened, eventually leapt from the water, over the stone, out of the pool. Each time it happened the group of mullet in the next pool was a little larger. Yet this pool was smaller than the first, and so the fish even easier to spear. Bobby grinned when Christine tried her spear there.

Trees bent over them, bowed each side of the sandy pathway Bobby led them along, then straightened again and rose higher as the humans passed. At another bend in the river there was a tiny tributary and Bobby, crouching, plunged an arm below the surface and came up with a handful of red clay. A few steps away he did it again, but this time it was white clay in his hand.

Christopher was tiring, was too mature for ochre dabbed onto his skin. The bubbling spring held him, how it fell from granite onto sword and sedge, along a cleft running down to the pool. His father, he knew, thought to fatten sheep and cattle beside it.

They made letters of ochre, three-dimensional at first, then smeared large on bark and rock. Finally, they used their fingers to make letters in the sand. Bobby showed them footprints; did they know the animals that made each mark?