Milton’s battered and coughing Hilux left from one side of Billy’s yard as Jasmine, having walked through the school grounds, arrived through the opposite gate. She greeted them, and her eyes followed Milton’s smoking vehicle. He didn’t appear to look back.
‘He reckons it’s not worth leaving it here any longer,’ said Billy.
‘He’s probably worried he’ll bump into me,’ said Jasmine.
Their heads turned to her like those of puppets on shared strings.
Oh.
‘You know I’ve been with him, sleeping with him.’
Oh. We thought. We knew.
‘I’m pregnant I think. I’m out of here.’
They went into the roaring house, pleased to share this information. They must have tea, coffee, some ceremony. Find out more.
‘I’ve decided. I just want a baby. A black baby.’ Oh yes?
‘I like Milton, but ... He’s married, kids. His family’s giving me a hard time. I’ve gotta go.’
From outside the house you wouldn’t hear their voices, just see mouths moving. All you hear is the air-conditioner roaring.
Jasmine’s bangles slid up and down her forearms. She brushed the hair from her face, wrinkled her brow. Sighed. Lit a cigarette. Looked at it.
‘Have to give these up.’
Smoke above them now like spirits quietly watching.
‘Is it true you kept the women here the other night?’
Oh. Yes. But.
‘I’ve gotta go. I’m out of here. Tomorrow. With Gerrard, he’s driving out while he can, before the rain. Otherwise it means the expense of flying all the way to Perth.
‘Bloody old Samson, you know he scored Gerrard’s fishing net? He gave it to him.
‘Tomorrow. I’m going home. Live with my mother, me and my baby. I hope he’s dark, dark like they are here.’
She got to get away but. She wants to own one, herself, safely. Maybe she right.
Jasmine says, ‘And Bill, what has happened with your baby?’
Puzzled expressions. She continued. ‘Can I say that? You were so keen early in the year, I thought. Your writing, you know, you were going to collect stories from Fatima and that.’
Oh yes.
‘Yes, but ... Just for school. And I have no time. They don’t read well, not without a lot of editing.’ He shrugged his shoulders in resignation, bowed and danced a little defence.
‘Another failed project. You’ve gotta have failures.’ Liz’s intention was encouragement, and she leaned to him.
‘It’s problematical, see. I write for the kids, but I edit. So, do I change it too much? Do I write only for the kids here? Who speaks? Have I the right to...’ He almost clasped his hands in front of his face, almost looked melodramatically offstage.
‘Piss off, Bill.’ Like a club smashed on the table. ‘You’re making excuses. Excuses. It’s simple. Look at me.’ Jasmine patted her stomach. ‘You just do it. That’s all that matters.’
She seemed so fertile, and so healthy now, glowing and growing before them. She sat, already, like a heavily pregnant woman, with her knees apart and her shoulders back. She held her head high and angled, mocking Billy.
Billy felt crowded and closed in. The two women exchanged glances like lovers. He was scrawny, already wizened, hollow within, and Jasmine was expanding, suddenly not the nervous and bothered woman of such a short time before. Liz moved closer to her, and Bill had to go.
‘Anyway, my fishing time. Only a few hours left ’til dark.’
‘It might rain.’
‘We should be so lucky. I’ll walk down and hope for that.’
Billy went diagonally across the schoolyard, heading for the river. He saw Sebastian and Gabriella slowly approaching from one side of the yard, Fatima and Deslie from the other. The five of them met. If you were to see this from above, to trace the footprints of the walkers from the moment they entered the school grounds, their combined paths would form an arrow, pointing to the river. The stem, a single set of footprints, would appear weakest. The tip of the arrow-head would be where they met, and now stood, at the gate exiting the school and closest to the river. They were not, at the time, aware of this design, but they saw the coincidence, and smiled just because of that.
‘Are we all heading in the same direction?’
‘I want to see you.’ Sebastian was puffing. ‘Not come in school, other time, never.’
They detoured into the workshop, because Sebastian had wanted to borrow a tool, a wood plane.
‘Goin’ fishin’, eh?’ said Deslie.
‘Yep.’
‘Good time. Hot, rains coming soon. Soon be barramundi time. Maybe you lucky!’
‘Hope so,’ said Billy.
‘We all call them barramundi, eh?’ said Sebastian. ‘Same, it’s Aboriginal word. Not ours but, we say...’ He laughed, and, looking at Deslie and Gabriella, said it was almost like they were doing a naming ceremony here. ‘Young men,’ he said, ‘come into a circle of old ones, after they been in the bush a long time, and they say the true names of things.’
He grinned, and nodded at Billy. This was important. This was advice. This was true. ‘We show them, on a stick, the picture, tell them the name, they eat some of that one. Name for this; we tell them the word. And they say the word, touch that carved stick in the proper place, eat the food. Then emu, kangaroo, goanna; same thing all the time. Give him the power, see.’
Gabriela observed intently.
‘Soon, he do that, maybe.’ Sebastian indicated Deslie who, standing against the brightly lit window, was dissolving at the edges.
‘It’s not right to speak too much. You, Gabriella ... Me, I don’t do that now, I’m a Christian, see.’ For a moment he looked nervous, guilty.
‘But sometimes that’s the same, little bit, isn’t it?’ asked Fatima, but it was not really a question.
Sebastian looked particularly small and frail today, and was shaking even more than usual. ‘Maybe you. You do that. You could maybe be Aborigine.’
‘Maybe. Like one arm of me is.’
‘That not everything. You believe you is, you feel it, you can be Aborigine all right. You believe, you belong. But, yes, maybe too late for you.’
Yes, Sebastian was visibly shrinking.
‘I’ll have to learn a new language,’ said Billy. ‘That’s a lot of words, just for food, eh?’
Gabriella continued the tangent, ‘That’s like what I said to my tutor the other day, “You people have too many words”—speaking about English.’
Deslie nodded his agreement.
‘Maybe.’
‘Those stories,’ Sebastian asked, ‘you want some more?’
Billy shook his head. No. Yes. But. No time.
‘You sing a story like Walanguh could,’ said Fatima, ‘that’d be a proper powerful one. Write about it all here. I’d help you. What you say?’
Sebastian nodded for Billy, and mumbled approval. He meant to say, ‘The old people, they couldn’t read or write, but they had their stories in their mouths and they had them in their hands. They danced and they sang all their stories...’ But his words came out broken and jumbled, perhaps because he was shaking so much. He had shrunk, and Billy felt himself looking down upon him as if he was a child.
‘You look tired,’ said Gabriella to Billy.
‘No. A bit. Some time by the river, fishing, will help me.’
Sebastian had become solid again. ‘Maybe catch you a barra, eh? Some people are lucky. After all this time, now you know the word.’