I heard footsteps and I looked up. A man carrying a prospector’s dish was clambering down the bank.
‘This man never speaks,’ the store-keeper in the town three miles away had told me. ‘A few people have heard him say one word like “Hullo” or something. He makes himself understood by shaking or nodding his head.’
‘Is there something wrong with him?’ I asked.
‘No. He can talk if he wants to. Silent Joe, they call him.’
When the man reached a spot where the creek widened into a pool he squatted on his heels and scooped some water into the dish. He stood up and, bending over the dish, began to wash the dirt it contained by swinging it in a circular motion.
I lifted my crutches from the ground and hopped along the pebbles till I stood opposite him across the pool.
‘Good day,’ I said. ‘Great day.’
He raised his head and looked at me. His eyes were grey, the greenish grey of the bush. There was no hostility in his look, just a searching.
They suddenly changed their expression and said, as plainly as if he had spoken, ‘Yes.’
I sat down and watched him. He poured the muddy water into the clear pool.
It rolled along the sandy bottom, twisting and turning in whirls and convolutions until it faded into a faint cloud, moving swiftly with the current.
He washed the residue many times.
I crossed over above the pool and walked down to him.
‘Get anything?’
He held the dish towards me and pointed to three specks of gold resting on the outer edge of a layer of sand.
‘So that’s gold,’ I said. ‘Three specks, eh! Half the troubles of this world come from collections of specks like those.’
He smiled. It took a long time to develop. It moved over his face slowly and somehow I thought of an egret in flight, as if wings had come and gone.
He looked at me with kindliness and, for a moment, I saw the bush, not remote and pitying, but beckoning like a friend. He was akin to trees and they spoke through him.
If I could only understand him I would understand the bush, I thought.
But he turned away and, like the gums, was remote again, removed from contact by his silence which was not the silence of absent speech, but the eloquent silence of trees.
‘I am coming with you,’ I said.
We walked side by side. He studied the track for my benefit. He kicked limbs aside, broke the branches of wattles drooping over the pad that skirted the foot of the hill.
We moved into thicker timber. The sun pierced the canopy of branches and spangled our shoulders with leaf patterns. A cool, leaf-mould breath of earth rose from the foot-printed moss. The track dipped sharply down into a gully and ended in a small clearing.
Thin grass, spent with seeding, quivered hopelessly in a circle of trees.
In the centre of the clearing a mound of yellow clay rose from around the brink of a shaft. A windlass, erected on top of the mound, spanned the opening.
A heavy iron bucket dangled from the roller.
‘So this is your mine!’ I said.
He nodded, looking at it with a pleased expression.
I climbed to the top of the mound and peered down into darkness. A movement of air, dank with the moisture from buried rocks and clay, welled up and broke coldly on my face. I pushed a small stone over the edge. It flashed silently from sight, speeding through a narrow darkness for a tense gap of time, then rang an ending from somewhere deep down in the earth.
‘Cripes, that’s deep!’ I exclaimed.
He was standing beside me, pleased that I was impressed.
‘Do you go down that ladder?’ I asked. I pointed to a ladder of lashed saplings that was wired to a facing of timber.
He nodded.
‘I can climb ladders,’ I murmured, wondering how I could get down, ‘but not that one.’
He looked at me questioningly, a sympathetic concern shading his face.
‘Infantile paralysis,’ I explain. ‘It’s a nuisance sometimes. Do you think you could lower me down in that bucket? I want to see the reef where you get the gold.’
I expected him to demur. It would be the natural reaction. I expected him to shake his head in an expressive communication of the danger involved.
But he didn’t hesitate. He reached out across the shaft and drew the bucket to the edge. I placed my crutches on the ground and straddled it so that my legs hung down the sides and the handle lay between my knees. I grasped the rope and said, ‘Righto,’ then added, ‘You’re coming down the ladder, aren’t you?’
He nodded and caught hold of the bucket handle. He lifted and I was swung out over the shaft. The bucket slowly revolved, then stopped and began a reversing movement. He grasped the windlass, removed a chock. I saw him brace himself against the strain. His powerful arms worked slowly like crank-shafts. I sank into the cold air that smelt of frogs.
‘What the hell did I come down here for?’ I thought. ‘This is a damn silly thing to do.’
The bucket twisted slowly. A spiralling succession of jutting rock and layers of clay passed my eyes. I suddenly bumped the side. The shaft took a turn and continued down at an angle so that the opening was eclipsed and I was alone.
I pushed against the side to save my legs from being scraped against rocks. The bucket grated downwards, sending a cascade of clay slithering before it, then stopped.
A heavy darkness pressed against me. I reached down and touched the floor of the shaft. I slid off the bucket and sat down on the ground beside it.
In a little while I heard the creak of a ladder. Gravel and small stones pattered beside me. I was conscious of someone near me in the dark, then a match flared and he lit a candle. A yellow stiletto of flame rose towards his face, then shrank back to the drooping wick. He sheltered it with his hand till the wax melted and the shadows moved away to a tunnel that branched from the foot of the shaft.
‘I’m a fool,’ I said. ‘I didn’t bring my crutches.’
He looked at me speculatively while candle shadows fluttered upon his face like moths. His expression changed to one of decision and I answered the unspoken intention as if it had been conveyed to me in words.
‘Thanks very much. I’m not heavy.’
He bent down and lifted me to his back. Beneath his faded blue shirt I could feel his shoulder muscles bunch then slip into movement.
He crouched low as he walked so that my head would not strike the rocks projecting from the roof of the tunnel. I rose and fell to each firm step.
The light from the candle moved ahead of us, cleansing the tunnel of darkness.
At the end of the drive he stopped and lowered me gently to the ground.
He held the candle close to the face and pointed a heavy finger at the narrow reef which formed a diagonal scar across the rock.
‘So that’s it!’ I exclaimed.
I tried to break a piece out with my fingers. He lifted a small bar from the ground and drove it into the vein. I picked up some shattered pieces and searched them in the light of the candle. He bent his head near mine and watched the stone I was turning in my fingers. He suddenly reached out his hand and took it away. He licked it then smiled and held it towards me. With his thumb he indicated a speck of gold adhering to the surface.
I was excited at the find. I asked him many questions. He sat with his hands clasped around his drawn-up knees and answered with eloquent expressions and shakes of the head.
The candle flame began to flutter in a scooped stub of wax.
‘I think it’s time we left,’ I said.
He rose and carried me back to the foot of the shaft, I tied my knees together with string and placed my legs in the bucket this time. I had no control over the right leg, which fell helplessly to one side if not bound to its stronger neighbour. I sat on the edge of the bucket clasping the windlass rope and waited. The candle welled into sudden brightness then fluttered and died. I could hear the creaks of the tortured ladder, then silence.
In all the world only I was alive. The darkness had texture and weight like a blanket of black. The silence had no expectancy. I sat brooding sombrely, drained of all sunlight and song. The world of birds and trees and laughter was as remote as a star.
Without reason, seemingly without object, I suddenly began to rise like a bubble. I swung in emptiness; I moved in a void, governed by planetary laws over which I had no control.
Then I crashed against the side and the lip of the bucket tipped as it caught in projecting tongues of stone. The bottom moved up and out then slumped heavily downwards as the edge broke free.
I scraped and bounced upwards till I emerged from a sediment of darkness into a growing light. Above my head the mouth of the shaft increased in size.
I suddenly burst into dazzling sunlight. An arm reached out; a hand grasped the handle of the bucket. There was a lift and I felt the solidity of earth beneath me. It was good to stand on something that didn’t move, to feel sun on your face.
He stood watching me, his outstretched arm bridging him to a grey box-tree that seemed strangely like himself.
I thanked him then sat down on the rubble for a yarn. I told him about myself and something about the people I had met. He listened without moving, but I felt the power of his interest drawing words from me as dry earth absorbs water.
‘Goodbye,’ I said before I left him, and I shook his hand.
I went away, but before I reached the trees I turned and waved to him.
He was still standing against the grey box like a kindred tree, but he straightened quickly and waved in return.
‘Goodbye,’ he called, and it was as if a tree had spoken.