Billy, Liz, and their students took the bus to the beach. The school could hire the bus cheaply, partly because of the agreement between Gerrard and Alex, but also because of a subsidy from community funds. The trip was in many ways, perhaps, a form of trade-off. Later the students would write about it. So, there they were—Scrap Metal music blasting on the stereo, eskies of food and cool drinks, fishing lines—all chattering and laughing. The new, and somehow soft, bus seemed incongruous with the hard light, the dust, the shimmering trees and bush, and a track that always jostled and shook you up.
They stop just once, for a tree that had late bush apples. Something like a radish, but injected with air. Like a Chinese Apple, like a red heavy tough bubble, stick-bashed out of a scrubby tree. Billy enjoys the collecting. A kid in the bus shouts out. The bus stops and whoosh! everyone’s off to get bush apple. Figures all through the bush. Appearing, disappearing. A shadow in coloured shirt fits from trunk to trunk; a flurry of them become the kids throwing sticks up into a tree and, in virtually the same motion, plucking the bush apples from the air as they fall, and briefly bounce.
In the bus, shimmy-shammying through sand and rustling leaves, the kids check each tree is where it should be, and read the tyre prints to see which cars have been where, and name sites. There’s rock paintings in there, I think. They stop for a bit to look.
We climbed and climbed and we went right up to the top of the rock. From there you look out to the sea and you can see all the beaches and feel the wind. It is a lovely view. We told Sir and Miss if they wanted to see some better rock paintings so we took them right around the rock. They liked them. Then Jimmy went into a cave and we saw paintings of people, animals, tools, and Wandjinas. We also saw some bones of long time ago. But then we thought it might be a Law cave and we were frightened. So we got out, and we did want to go to the beach anyway.
At the beach everyone dispersed along the shoreline in small groups. Except Francis of course. And he’s not right, you know. He’s been a little bit sick ever since he was a baby. And maybe he’s a bit spoilt. He’s different; big thick glasses, little bit deaf. He sat on the beach in the shade of the bus and listened to AC/DC on the Walkman that Moses bought for him.
Billy and Deslie went together. Billy was hoping to learn something about fishing. Walking calf-deep in the tepid water near some mangroves Deslie grabbed Billy’s arm. ‘See, Sir? See? See. Stingray. Good eating sometimes, them ones.’
Eventually Billy did see. A stingray, some fifty centimetres across, was motionless between where they stood and some rocks before them. ‘You watch it, Sir. I get stick.’
Deslie crept back from the mangrove’s edge with a thick stick the length of his forearm. Billy pointed unnecessarily to where the stingray remained. Deslie slowly raised the arm holding the stick. He threw it, moving rapidly toward the stingray as he did so. Billy saw the stingray as if flying on the surface of the water, splashing, straining, racing toward open sea. Deslie snatched up the stick from where it was bobbing in the water. He ran through the deepening water in the direction of the stingray’s retreat, the stick above his head. He threw it again, picked it from the water and, running and splashing hard in the thigh-deep water, he threw it a third time. He stopped where the stick had landed, looking around him. He bent over and, with his back arched awkwardly to keep his head above water, began feeling around in the sand. ‘Here somewhere, Sir.’
Billy looked away, a little embarrassed for Deslie’s sake. It had escaped. His eyes followed the shoreline a few hundred metres to where the others had gathered on the rocks not far from the bus. They were fishing there, and some gathered oysters before the rising tide made it impossible to do so. Billy turned around and Deslie was walking toward him. He held the tail of the stingray in his teeth and his left hand gripped its jaw. His right hand broke off the barbs at the base of its tail.
‘Deslie, you’re fantastic.’
‘Good eating, Sir, these, when they’re fat.’ He held the stingray flat and belly up on a rock, and cut a small opening with one of the barbs he’d saved. The skin opened as if from a scalpel, showing white flesh. Deslie poked it with his finger. ‘This one no good.’ He dropped the stingray back into the water and kicked at it. Sluggishly, it swam away.
They walked further around the coast. Deslie asked Billy to work out compass directions using the sun and his watch, the way he’d shown them at school.
Billy hesitated, ‘It’s only approximate Deslie, and I need a protractor to reckon it accurately.’
Deslie laughed. ‘I don’t need to do that, eh? Do I, Sir? I don’t need to make those reckonings. I know this country, I’m here, I’m Deslie.’ He pointed to the ground beneath him and rapidly stomped his feet, and they laughed and stomped together, as if dancing in their joy.
Billy maybe felt a little bit silly then. He was meant to be the teacher. And walking back, under Deslie’s direction, through the twists and curves of the mangroves and the tide rushing in again, he thought of how Deslie no longer used his childhood name because someone of that same name had died in the recent past, and of how Deslie was not of this country, really, any more than Billy himself was. Yet Deslie seemed so confident of who he was. At least, more so than Billy; take away his job at the school and what’s left?
They all crouched in the shade of the bus and lunched on fish, oysters, sandwiches from school, cordial. ‘You ever hear them spirits, them devils in the mangroves, Miss? You know ’bout them?’ asked Margaret. ‘They got long long hair, and the men, long beards. You hear them, when it’s quiet, if you careful. ’Bout sunset time. Little sounds you know. Them men ones sneak up behind you and steal you away. The women try to whistle, warn you. You know Walanguh, old Walanguh? They took him when he a baby and he did stay with them. That be why his hair all white.’
They were all watching Billy and Liz, hands frozen in the act of delivering food to their mouths.
‘True? Is that true?’
‘Yes, that what they say. It true I think, you hear them. My daddy he saw one, one time, at Murugudda.’ They all quietly agreed.
They were in the bus, with its motor idling, when Deslie remembered he’d left his fishing line on the rocks near the mangroves. He ran to collect it. They watched him running back to the bus through the soft white sand, grinning at them. Behind him the rich blue sea suddenly erupted. A huge manta ray burst into the air close to the shore, and they could see the ocean cascading from its back and beneath it the torn and foaming whorl it had left. For a moment it hung, impossibly, in the air, then fell with a great splash. They could breathe again. Liz felt the bus should have burst into cheering. Deslie looked at them, behind him, at them, and ran faster, not laughing now.