That short teacher bloke, he bit like us, but—he Nyungar or what? Look at him, he could be. Why’s he wanna know things?
He get to school proper early anyway, sun-up even. Sebastian, he say he see him then at the school. Sebastian just sitting making fire, you know, making tea. He see him.
He get one of the kids with him, go out and get the lazy kids that still sleeping. Lazy those kids. Their mums, dads, still sleeping. That teacher, what’s him name? Billy? He goes and he gets ’em, the big ones mostly, them boys over in Moses’ house.
Dry season: early morning cool, and I left the first footprints in the dew on the lawn. More and more appeared, those footprints increased until there were tracks everywhere, crisscrossing dark green on the silver sheen of the dew.
Deslie was usually the first of the high school kids to arrive. Our prints intersected at the door of the classroom.
A siren sounded each morning, just before seven, to signal that it was almost time to start work. School started at seven. Kids would arrive dream mumbling, stiff legged and stumbling, knuckling their puffy eyes.
Many of the young people wore bracelets made from the rubber sealing rings of opened fuel drums. Pieces of coloured cloth would be knotted around thighs, wrists, or worn as headbands. Fashions changed as far as they could according to what was worn on the videos and what was available in such a small community. Everyone liked to wear bits of army uniform they got from brothers or cousins—it was only ever males—who’d been away with Norforce, the Army Reserve.
We often went to wake the students to get them to school. The school staff discussed whether to begin school at a later time, especially in the dry season when the mornings were cool. It was not like the past when the mission generator supplied electricity and Brother Tom would turn off the generator soon after dark. Now many of the students sat up late watching videos. Some of the newer houses were even air-conditioned. We decided not to change the school hours. Alex pointed out the need to learn to work to the clock. And there were advantages to having long afternoons, especially once we got television reception, courtesy of a satellite dish donated to us because of our status as the most isolated school in Australia. The teachers’ houses were incorporated into the school connection.
One particular morning I sat at my desk in the classroom and watched Deslie push open the gate which led to the high school area. It leaned on its hinges and had strands of barbed wire on its upper section. It was difficult to open. Deslie struggled only a little, evidence of years of practice.
He got to the classroom door and stopped. Slowly the door opened and his head appeared around its edge at about waist height. He grinned from his crouched position as he saw me looking at him. He put on his school T-shirt.
‘Use the computer sir?’ The students took to the computers enthusiastically, especially before school when we let them play games.
A few more students arrived. They read comics, played guitar or Scrabble, or took a basketball outside. Just before seven a.m. I said, ‘Let’s go, Deslie.’ It had become a routine with us.
‘Get the other kids, Sir? Sleepy ones?’
‘Yep. Children hunting.’
‘Sylvester and that mob playin’ basketball late last night, Sir. I came home sleepy and they still there. And when it was cold last night, you know, Sir, cold, I found myself a good spot. Good warm spot. I went into the cupboard, you know the one Sir? Big one, and pulled all the clothes over me and shut the door. Nice and warm and quiet.’
Suddenly he said, ‘Sir, know what? Yesterday I was walking along, just walking walking. I was thinking of a snake, and I looked and there was a snake. There! Right in front of me. True!’
He commented on who lived where as we passed different huts and houses and if any of the kids were sleeping in a different place from a few days ago. Occasionally he’d shout at a snarling dog and it would slink away, looking back at us. Most of the dogs were silent and merely watched us pass. Some tails wagged.
The housing consisted mostly of corrugated iron huts built decades ago. Each hut sat on a concrete pad and had a smaller building out the back, usually with a piece of hessian or a blanket thrown across its doorway. This was the toilet, and sometimes there was a shower there also. At a couple of separate locations, one by the river and one by the creek, there was a group of tiny huts, each barely large enough to shelter a single body, which were used, at an even earlier date, as accommodation. They were only ever actually slept in when it rained heavily. Some of the very oldest people used them still. Apparently there was also a deserted site across the river. Fatima told me she used to stay over there when she was younger, until the mission successfully discouraged it. Walanguh, her husband, still liked to go over there whenever he was well enough.
Most of the huts had the ashes of a fire, some rubbish, a few blankets, and perhaps an old mattress, or an old wire bed that doubled as seating, spread before them. Sometimes there would be a family group sitting around a fire drinking tea from small food cans. We’d say good morning, speak for a little while, and agree that the kids would be at school soon.
There were also newer houses, like the one Deslie stayed in. They were standard urban bungalows and not altogether appropriate to the climate or the inhabitants. But they were larger, and more prestigious.
One hut we walked past, near a large tree under which important card games took place, had an old woman living in it who sometimes screamed with pain in the night. This morning she sat in the dirt in front of her hut, warming herself in the sun. She stared vacantly into space, her toothless mouth open. She rubbed one plump arm with the other and her breasts hung to the dirty grey blanket wrapped around her lower body. She did not respond to us as we walked by. Deslie glanced at me to see if I was looking at her.
When we were well past Deslie grabbed my arm and whispered, ‘Devil lives in that house. She got him, that what they say. See that big tree back there? Casino?’ He smiled at the joke. ‘They heard the devil there the other night. And she makes devil noises at night-time.’ He watched me closely to see how I reacted. No wonder she had the hut to herself.
I nodded and said, ‘Where will these boys be? All at one house still?’
‘Mostly Uncle Moses’ house, Sir. One crazy dog there.’
We stopped at the back door of Moses’ house. A number of the older boys and younger men stayed here. The older girls and young women lived in houses over the other side of the village. Deslie shooed a few dogs away. ‘Where that crazy one?’ he whispered. He waved me back and went cautiously ahead, a few steps, into the house. I followed, several steps behind, equally cautiously. The house had no coverings on the grimy cement floor, and was unfurnished. Deslie stopped at the end of the short passage and, putting only his head through the doorway, peeped into the living room. He tiptoed back toward me, his finger to his lips and his eyebrows raised expressively. He disappeared into a room and re-emerged with a blanket. I saw him step quickly into the living room and throw the blanket like a cast net. There was the sound of a dog snarling, and the snarling turned to yelping as Deslie, kicking at a fourlegged blanket, entered and exited across the frame provided by the doorway. A deep male voice called out, ‘Gedoutmongrel!’
Deslie looked back, a grin splitting his face, and waved me into the room. The dog, now free of the blanket, was cringing outside. The entire floor, apart from in the kitchen area, was taken up by sleeping bodies. Bruno lay propped up on one elbow under a grimy blanket. He nodded at me, and then rolled over to face the wall and return to sleep. It must’ve been he who yelled at the dog when Deslie came in kicking at it.
Sylvester was in the food-spattered kitchen. He stood before the stove watching a blackened saucepan warming. It moved me, oddly, seeing this tall boy, his face still emerging from his dreams, look at me with surprise and even something like fear on his face. He was very rarely late for school.
‘Come on Sylvester, you should be at school, mate.’ I spoke softly.
He put on a show of confidence and replied in a croak, ‘Just makin’ tea, Sir.’
I began to move around the room lifting the corners of blankets from over heads. ‘Oops, sorry mate, you’re not one of the school kids.’ Eyes closed again gratefully. ‘Sorry mate, I’m looking for school kids. But you should be at work by now anyway, eh?’ The faces lifted and frowned, smiled sleepily, closed eyes, and returned to the horizontal. Alphonse walked into the room looking dazed. He nodded a greeting, mumbled something about no sleep, and lay down in a corner.
Deslie stared at him for a moment, then continued looking through the bodies under the thin blankets and coats. He whispered loudly, ‘Sir, here’s Franny. Get up Franny! School. Sir’s here.’ Deslie was happy.
Sylvester looked into my face. ‘I thought it was early still.’ I patted his elbow. ‘For you, no worries. But you gotta get there now, eh?’
I stepped over the bodies to where Deslie and Francis were. ‘Come on, Francis. Time for school, mate, you should be there.’ I had to speak loudly because of his poor hearing. He fumbled for his thick-lensed, smeared spectacles. ‘We’ll give you tea and something when you get there.’ I tried to be stern, but it was ridiculous really. And upsetting. They might have been up all night, dropping in and out of sleep. Watching videos. Or playing cards. Or, a large group like this, just talking and telling stories.
It was better walking back to school, in the warming sun, with the boys waking and starting to want to talk and help me spot other kids who were late to school. Deslie whispered, ‘Alphonse been with Araselli, Sir.’ His eyes were large.
You see them. Teacher out front and them boys sleepy walking behind him sort of in a line waking up. He turn his head back and talking soft to them. He get ’em there. He’s all right that fella, good teacher. He Nyungar, or what. Is he?
Someone, maybe Geoffrey, might yell out to him. ‘Hey you! Sir. Teacher. Mr Storey. Billy! Beatrice here.’ Or, ‘Jimmy here. Get to school you!’ He laugh, and say, ‘Well you get them to school then.’ He might point his thumb at them big school boys with ’im and say, ‘I got my flock.’ Them boys smiling then too.
Walk past that Djanghara mob, they all sitting there and Albert, he not at school no more, he yell out, ‘Sir! Cyril here!’ and Cyril he act grumpy and don’t wanna go to school. He walk out soon enough, walking slow but, and get in that anykind line and he nearly smiling by then with everyone watching him like that. They get to school, and Sebastian he’s seen ’em, they’re not lined up, they’re all round that teacher bloke then, talking touching ’im, that Bill.
His missus, she go and get the big girls sometimes. That other teacher, boss one, he gets the little kids when he goes with ’em on the basketball court and does exercises. Run around the camp singing out for the lazy ones with all the kids running behind him singing out too, copying him. Noisy ones, them.
Ah yes. And that Alphonse and Araselli. You know, Alphonse, that tired one back there. Deslie see him. It’s no good, they been together. Everyone know, even young ones like Deslie. She be getting big belly.