Father Paul came to see Billy and Liz. He was leaving very soon, and the mission was letting him go, letting him know he was dispensable, even if only for a little time. But perhaps Father Paul was thinking he might not be able to find this place again. He might not come back. Did he know this already? He was, maybe nowtoolate, speaking to people and reaching out to listen and share. He wanted to speak, like when he was a younger man, about God. He was reluctant to, almost, with Billy. Billy was awkwardly reluctant, almost, to listen.
This Saturday morning they sat under a mango tree in Billy’s front yard: Billy, Liz, Father Paul. They sat in the blue shade. Spots and strips of sunlight lay across the grass, creeping, growing, dying as the sun moved across the sky. They could see the steam rising from their tea, and when they first began to talk the sun sparkled white and hurt their eyes.
The teacups became dry, stained, lay in the grass like bones, and still they talked. The shade beneath that mango tree was narrower, and they sweated and breathed shallowly in the hot air.
Oh, they spoke of many things. Father Paul and Liz remembered when Liz had first gone to mass there. ‘I wondered when you were going to turn up,’ he said.
‘How did you know?’ she asked.
‘You can always tell a Catholic,’ he laughed, and turned to Billy.
‘I’m nominally a Catholic. In name only. My father went to New Norcia actually,’ said Billy.
‘Oh,’ Father Paul looked long at Billy. ‘I wouldn’t have thought that. I wondered ... You know that we are, or were, of the same Order as New Norcia? Many part-Aboriginal children were sent there...’
‘I know. He hated it.’
Lapsed Catholic Liz and Father Paul spoke of contraception, liberation theology, needless suffering, and Billy was mostly silent.
Father Paul said he was glad to be going on sabbatical. He was tired. He was tired of his role here. He was just running a business. He had expressed such doubts to the archbishop who had said that was where his talents lay; he served God in this way. Father said he wanted to be more of a priest, to be more personal, to do more counselling. But in a community like this, especially considering the history of the church and Aboriginal people, especially here ... It was difficult. We must work to protect our vested interest, to preserve our institution, for our business, to preserve our God perhaps.
‘I think God is changing. He must to stay alive in these people. Perhaps we need to think of Him as a great spirit, a creator spirit, an artist. A creative force behind the world, living in the world, and giving ceremony and the land. What am I saying?
‘I don’t know. See, even communion. It should be, ideally, more intimate. More even like what we’re doing right now.’
‘And this is such a small community,’ said Billy.
‘But is it a community?’
‘Perhaps not,’ said Father Paul, ‘without common beliefs...’
‘You, at the mission, have,’ said Liz. ‘The people here have...’
‘They have no real beliefs left, I think. Superstition perhaps. Still, you could say the same for most people. Maybe they, we, will end up with a new God here, some sort of major spirit from the Dreaming or whatever, who named everything and us—or should I say the Aborigines?—and created this special relationship. People, creation, the land.’
‘Or just nothing. People shrivelling in this inhospitable land, within an inhospitable, wider society.’ Billy had said little, and he mumbled this. Was ignored.
‘And meanwhile, at the mission, we argue about logistics, detail, pragmatics—especially with lay missionaries who come here for a short time.’
‘And this small community, like an island. Are there forces representative of a wider community, you think? Can we talk of it as if it was in a story? Is it a microcosm?’
Father Paul snorted. ‘A microcosm of what? Our society? The whites here work hard. The Aborigines play cards, fight. What else? Incest, child molestation, violence, wife bashing. Alcoholism. Petrol sniffing. The church is dying.’
‘Still, the church does exist here, after a fashion, which may be more than it does elsewhere.’
‘Alex, you, Billy, battling to make your school work, and is your education relevant? The people here, sharp, learning to play government departments against one another; looking for handouts; out for what they can wheedle from the next crew of white do-gooders, government busybodies, investigators...’
Father Paul sighed, and shook his head. ‘I must be tired. I need this sabbatical. Even the people here like to get out, for a break. It’s a small community all right; intense, in a big land and space.’
‘But the people come back again, they get homesick,’ offered Liz.
‘Is this place real? You wait and see. I’ve been away for a couple of years before. When you’re away you wonder if this place is real.’
Oh, it need not be real. It is not this reality that we are homesick for.
But one time, not long before Father Paul left, he maybe sensed such a thing. Briefly. He and Billy were fishing, in Father Paul’s big boat. They had come across a school of bait fish trapped on the surface and almost inert, perhaps in fear. The men tried dragging lures around the edge of the school, but nothing. In desperation they went right through the centre of the school. The small bait fish were packed solid. They parted before the boat, and reformed, solidly, behind it. They could see the sharks there, fins scything the surface; not in a frenzy, just regularly, back and forth. But still, nothing attacked their lures. There were few birds even. It was so still. It was a mystery to them, seemed somehow dangerous and deadly.
Suddenly one of their lines was hit. The bait fish started leaping. Sharks, speeding. Billy stood at the front of the boat, Father Paul struggled with his line, there were birds squawking diving from the low steel-grey sky, the water boiling and bloody, dark and silver flashes in the depths. God’s grandeur! called Father Paul, God’s grandeur. His rod bowed, reel screaming. The water dark and churning. Things thumped into the boat, leapt from the water. A shark attacked the spinning propeller.
Then it was as suddenly quiet again. The birds wheeling away in a group. The water brown and blood-red, but calm, in a pool around the boat. The birds gathering again in the distance. Father Paul reeled his line in easily now. Just a large silver gaping fish head at its end, the body bitten off.
And about this same time, Gerrard and the builders had some trouble out in their little boats also. They left soon after that. See? We made them.
They were fishing, plenty of them, in their dinghies, and drinking their beer.
Then came the whales, way up here in these warm waters. They were on their little boats and the whales came up beside them, very close.
This was exciting of course. But the whales came too close, like to bump them. Made big splashes. The men shouted, hit them with oars even. Those big whales did bump the boats, they made them rock and the men slipped, fell in their little boats, shouted at one another. Now they knew they were frightened. They thought the whales was going to smash them.
Start the motor, pull pull quickly, and go, get away.
Elsewhere, they laughed about it, and started fishing again. Then again it happened. The whales bumped them, and roared like monsters, pushed their little boats. Moving closer and closer, more and more, big and bigger.
They raced away.
They got back to their camp and talked about it, guffawing, privately wondering. Oh sure, it was an adventure. They filleted all their fish, and when Brother Tom visited they laughed about it with him. They said they were all half pissed, no worries.
They gave him all the fish skeletons to take away for the Sisters to cook up in a stew to feed the old people. Not the good meat, not the boned flesh. Just the skeletons.
But they were frightened all right. And so they, too, were going. And glad of it.
The builders had almost finished for the season, and would have left anyway. But Gerrard, he said he was also leaving this place, as soon as he could. He was meant to be here to help us, his wages come from us, from money the government gives us. But he was no good. He made money from us, and if we borrow some he would not give us our own money until he had been paid back. We pay him back all right.
Gerrard took some good fish to King Alex and his family. He told them about it, half joking, and a good story it was. They listened closely.
So they will go soon too. They too must go from this place because for sure they do not belong.
It is not reality we are homesick for. And not just us Aborigine ones either.