‘Well, what could I do?’ said Will, although no one had accused him of anything. ‘Yeah, I went back to the school. Dad was thinking of the best for me, and for Mum.’ Will believed there was no place left for him in this story, and that it was Chatalong who must continue. Will said he didn’t know this stuff, it wasn’t for him to say. He had just ignored whatever people said, held his head up, walked carefully, gone to school, kept on. Most of the time he lived just like anyone else in the town, really. He kept to himself, he said. They kept to themselves, just the family. They knew who they were. A little family.
‘Nah, I can’t. It’s the law. I can’t employ any Aborigine under sixteen years old.’
Why, you know, that could be years into a man’s working life.
‘And, even if he was old enough, I’d need a permit. It means more trouble. More money.’
School had left Chatalong, and that meant he must find something to do that somebody else wanted done. That was the way of things.
But what? There wasn’t much; not clearing not anything, not even for anyone thinking he was a white man so what chance a boy, a dark boy.
At least with the rabbits—more and more of them all the time too, and moving beyond the fence put there to stop them—there was extra food. The rabbits and the new people, moving toward one another.
‘Tell you what, Harry,’ offered the senior Starr, a storekeeper branching into farming considerably east of Gebalup, where he hoped to become one among a pioneering community. ‘Tell you what, I want you to get work as much as anyone. Why, I remember when you were just a boy. And, of course, I want you to pay back what you owe me at the store. Business is business. I could hire you, but if you agree to have the others here’—his hand swept around to Harry’s family, extended to old Sandy One, Fanny, Chatalong, Kathleen—‘working with you; then we could do a deal. I’ll pay you generously, of course. You know that. But, of course, apart from yourself and ... Well, you’re the only one I can expect a man’s work from. I want to help you, see. And him.’
Mr Starr waved his hand in Sandy One’s direction, shook his head ruefully. ‘I remember better days.’
They camped on Mr Starr’s property. It was the only way to try to raise some money so Harry could develop and improve his own land in the way he had to, when he could get back to it. Since there was no school even the children could help.
Propped in the shade somewhere—against a tree or under the rickety wagon—Sandy One oversaw it all.
They picked wool from dead sheep. Or plucked the stones and sticks from the soft soil, their legs aching from the effort to lift their feet from its clutches. They wore leather aprons with a pouch, which they repeatedly filled and then emptied at a growing mound of stones. Chatalong thought they might be building their own memorial.
His back ached from the bending the bowing the carrying the weight, and after a few hours it was silent work, even for him. Words dried up, windswept sand stung their eyes, dust coated their lips, and the skin wore from their fingers which, in the evening, they soaked in the methylated spirits Mr Starr supplied. ‘It’ll toughen them,’ he said.
It was clear Chatalong shared his Uncle Sandy’s gift with horses.
The horses snorted like trains, and their heavy muscles rippled. Some mornings there was frost on the chains, and Chatalong had to resist the links fusing with his fingers.
He followed the horses back and forth across rectangular paddocks, cutting the earth. His heavy feet appeared misshapen and roughly hewn, as if they were no longer toes or bones but were torn from the earth itself, and he was some weak sapling growing from them.
He leaned with the horses and they pulled old stumps and vast networks of mallee roots from the soil.
Starr offered Kathleen a place working in the house, but she wanted to stay with the rest of her family. So, well; there were plenty of others more than ready to do the work.
They tried hunting possum again, staying east of the Great Southern Railway Line. It was good country there. They pegged the skins out on the ground and scraped them with the glass of broken bottles. Sometimes, the children scraped and scraped until, suddenly, there was the ground coming through the animal’s hide and into their daydreaming.
The scraping, and then the sun, cleaned the skins sufficiently for them to be sold to a man with the piece of paper, the license required to deal in possum skins.
They piled the wagon high with skins. Harry had worked like this before, made money enough to help get that block of land, but the money was not there now, not with no license.
Fanny and Harry dressed up for town and the annual agricultural show. All the kids, too.
But that policemen, and a partner, visited again.
‘You need licenses for possums, if you’re selling. Oh, kill as many as you want for food, for yourself. It used to be your country.’
The police took away pieces of wire and rope which might be used for snares.
Smiling, they took Harry’s gun. ‘It’s the law.’
They shot the dogs.
‘This is private property,’ tried Harry.
‘So’s that of your neighbours, their land’s private too, and your dogs are trouble to them.’
‘You get two pounds a scalp for them dogs. Who gets that money?’
‘You can’t be too hurt, if you’re talking about money. Anyway, we’re the police. The law’s the law. These dogs, they been killing sheep.’
The second policeman came and stood very close, chest to chest with Harry. He grinned.
‘Yeah, we’re your protectors. Just helping you.’
‘They got wheat, now, my neighbours,’ said Harry. ‘How dogs worry them?’
‘They have valuable sheep. Poultry. And the white ladies, they don’t need to be upset by the likes of you. They don’t want to see you.’
Harry had once organised whole teams of people to work for him; clearing, picking sticks and stones, even cutting wood. They might have tried stripping the bark from trees, as once they had. Sometimes the farmer would go halves in the money you made; others might let you collect it all. You stacked the bark and ignored the startlingly naked trees at your back.
But suddenly, no one wanted bark any more. The whole of a tree was going, all of it. All of them. So there was nothing. And now acres of wheat rippled closer and closer toward them.
Starr reminded Harry that he still had a problem with credit at the store. Harry owed Starr money.
What could Harry Cuddles do? There were more and more farms all the time, more and more people, and those farmers worked on one another’s property, and Nyoongars had to work for next to nothing—for shelter, and a bit of food.
These new people, they were growing a community like they grew their crops. They focused on money and time, on cause and effect, and knew they would have to modify what was around them if they were to grow as they wished. They were not of this country but, looking outward, believed they understood its potential. It was necessary to believe that the land’s people and ways were inferior, and to ensure that there was proof of that.
Starr’s customers certainly believed they knew all about those others, those dark ones camped on the fringes of towns, edging closer and having to be chased away; away from the school shops and oval, off the footpath, off the fence, away from the water trough, away to the tips.
Starr’s customers had words; darkness, shadow, savage ... and they made sharper ones, harmless to their own ears. Boong. Coon. Nigger. Just the launching of them gave satisfaction, inflicted pain. And if they curled their lips, maybe laughed and sneered, believed what they said then their very sincerity itself could cause pain.
Once you shared this tongue, you could taste it. Evolution. Light out of darkness. Pyramids and pinnacles. With such a language, it is hard not to accept such concepts.
Harry couldn’t get a loan from the bank. It was the law. His property wasn’t securely his. ‘What if you should die,’ smiled the bank manager. ‘It’s nothing personal,’ he added, after a pause. ‘It’s the law, it’s the colour of your skin, Harry. Who your mother was, and your father too.’
Mr Starr called again to see him. It was about that debt at his store in town, and, well, really. Something’d have to be done.
Harry looked to Chatalong and Kathleen. Could they work for him, work off the debt?
‘No,’ said Starr. But he looked at the girl for a long time. ‘No. Too long, too big a debt, too difficult with their age, and the law and all.’
‘The law? The law? How long’s there been this law? That says I’m a lesser man than any of you?’
Mr Starr never got angry, not any more. ‘Oh, ages Harry. Nearly ten years now. The 1905 Aboriginal Protection Act. A new amendment, just a few years ago.’
‘Protection Act? I don’t need it, I don’t need that. Just fair treatment same as anyone. That’s what I want from a law, any law, new one or old one just the same.’
‘I know, I know. Anyway, why worry, we know you’re all right. You got an exemption, haven’t you? But you don’t want to let the others drag you down, Harry. You don’t want that. Look, I tell you what I can do.’
And Mr Starr said Harry could mortgage his property to his store. ‘It’s like a loan. It is one. As a reserve sort of thing, in case you can’t clear this debt. Plenty of time, say a couple of years. Just till things got sorted out.’
Mortgage it for what was owed.
The policeman came demanding payment, or Mr Starr would be forced to put the land on the market.
‘You his boy, are you?’ said Harry.
On the allocated Natives Shopping Day at a nearby town Harry, Sandy One and Fanny went to a solicitor to arrange for the land to be transferred to Sandy One. They held their token white man between them. Could Sandy, as they understood, take out a mortgage with the bank to pay out their debt at the store.
Possibly. It would take some days to arrange.
The bank manager was puzzled. ‘Will he be able to sign? Is he fit...?’
Fanny fingered the vertebrae of Sandy’s back, and the old man nodded his firm assent and understanding.
The police came, and gave them fourteen days to move.
Starr had sold the land to one of his sons.
The local magistrate, when a reluctant but Harry-harassed Aborigines Department made its enquiries, agreed that it was not justice. The Starrs had got the land at well below market price by using family as dummy buyers. But it was legal. And he didn’t think Harry would cut much of a figure in court.
‘Stay here,’ Harry told Chatalong as he pulled up outside the pub.
Harry scanned the bar. Faces turned to him, then away. No words.
Mr Starr sat around the elbow of the bar, facing the door. His face registered a little surprise, and then he nodded—once, sharply—at Harry Cuddles.
The barmaid would not serve Harry.
‘It’s the law.’
‘I got an exemption.’ Dog tag, he thought. Dawg.
There was a pause.
‘Oh,’ a man said from within his glass. He drained it, then placed it before him like a tiny column. ‘Listen mate, you might have some bit of paper but we know what you are. You don’t belong here. Not with us.’
Harry glanced around the room. Most eyes were on him. Starr was looking into his glass.
‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ said Harry to the first man. ‘You don’t know me.’ He held out his hand. ‘Harry Cuddles.’
Harry saw his own hand trembling in the unfilled space between them.
And then he was striking the man’s face, throat. The man was down. A roaring, there was thunder in his ears, and voices from all around, leaping back from the walls and ceiling.
His arms were held, and bodies were all about and close. Boots, fists.
A screech. The blows stopped. A man held each of Harry’s arms.
A policeman’s uniform stood in the small space before him. The policeman nodded his head and the men let their hands drop from Harry’s arms.
The policeman spoke into a new silence.
‘You’d be best to leave. I’ll turn a blind eye.’
‘Why? I got an exemption.’ Harry’s voice was husky, and shifting so that even he could not trust it. He didn’t want to whine.
‘Not anymore. Inciting trouble. Associating with natives.’
The policeman gestured at Chatalong, who bent forward on the wagon the better to see through the doorway.
‘You want to lose your kids as well?’
The room waited.
‘We don’t need police to sort this out,’ said the man Harry had struck.
‘You’re under arrest,’ said the policeman.
Uncle Harry let himself be led from the door by the bandy-legged, uniformed one. As they passed before the wagon, he pushed his captor aside and ran into the middle of the street. It was recently paved and the town was proud of it. Harry swung around to face them.
The policeman dusted himself off as he got to his feet. A few men were shoving one another to get through the door. Starr finished his beer, remained seated. He saw only the backs of men mostly too old, weak or disabled to go to war.
Harry threw off his coat, stamped his feet, and put his fists up in front of him, sparring. He forced his feet to move like those of a boxer, rather than in the frustrated dance of a child’s tantrum. His pulse throbbed.
Sometimes the world moved so slowly; nothing changed.
‘I can go where I like. I can go where I like. Wadjela. You wadjela. You think I’m a dog (a dawg), or what?’
The policeman scurried at him, and Harry hit him quick and hard, just the once. Harry picked up some stone, some piece of the reformed earth, and dared the others to come get him. They smiled at him from the door.
The cop was up again, shaking his head as if reluctant in his duty, as if disappointed. As if superior.
It was Starr who moved forward.
‘Harry, this is no good. There’s nothing can be done.’
He put his pale hands on Uncle Harry’s shoulders. Harry looked over the storekeeper’s shoulder, and taunted the red-faced policeman.
‘You fight for yourself? Like a person, like a man?’
The veins in Harry’s neck were like ropes and his eyes were moist. But he was quietening. He looked into Starr’s face, flicked the storekeeper’s bloodied hands away, and turned and walked. The little policeman trotted after him.
Some of the townspeople spoke up for him in court, including Starr. Uncle Harry smiled wryly almost the whole time, as if to himself only.
He said nothing. His family were not allowed in court. He said nothing. He looked at the floor somewhere in the centre of the room, sometimes at a dark jarrah chair with red upholstery, occasionally out the window. He seemed calm, or bored.
He said nothing.
Harry Cuddles wore a three-piece suit with wide and expansive lapels. Its stripes were bold and straight. He wore spats and held his smart town hat in his hands before him, and looked down, around; into a different space.
Six months disorderly conduct.
Three months resisting arrest.
Six months assaulting a police officer.
He said nothing.
Fanny and Chatalong loaded up the wagon. They wanted to take everything, but were given so little time that they couldn’t dismantle the huts and Fanny suddenly found herself grateful to be able to take even the tent frames. They had hidden Sandy One among the luggage, and hoped that no one would ask after him.
Chatalong mouthed the policemen’s clipped instructions, mocking them, and Kathleen and he grinned at one another. They left in silence, with the police riding behind, and when they were approaching the edge of the next town, obeyed the policeman’s instructions and turned down a small track just before the railway crossing.
Mt Dempster’s reserve was between the rubbish dump and the sanitation depot. Whatever the time of day you breathed the town’s shit.
There were tiny huts, shabby tents, shelters made of packing cases, of flattened kerosene-tins, of hessian-cloth-boughs-bush. They were scattered as if they’d been thrown, or had fallen from the trees which shaded them. There were a couple of hessian-covered pit toilets at one end of the reserve, and Fanny, Sandy, and Kathleen and Chatalong were obliged to camp close to these. The Cuddles family had to find room at the other edge of the reserve.
Like some of the white people said—not all meaning quite the same thing—there were too many people at the reserve already.
The old people were apart. Their grandchildren—with no school to go to—ran within the reserve and even into some of the bush surrounding it, and thought that they were free.
There was a lack of space. Fanny managed to keep her small brood together, and they all slept in one small shelter.
There was no water on the reserve, and so they braved the dogs and pilfered from the rainwater tanks of the houses closest to the reserve. There were horse troughs in town, but it was a long walk back with an improvised bucket banging your leg, or carrying a sloshing pair on a pole across your shoulder.
‘Who is that old fellow, paralysed one. The white man?’ someone in the reserve asked of their campfire partner.
‘Dunno. Where is he?’
‘Dunno. Can’t be far.’
But despite the knowing laughter, Sandy One was quite some distance away, and bouncing around in the back of a cart, his limbs flopping loosely with each jolt. Fanny held his head on her lap and had stacked hessian bags beneath him. Chatalong was at the reins, and they followed a trail north and around the ranges. Going home.
They had kissed Kathleen goodbye and left her in the care of the Cuddles family. They would be back for her. With old Sandy as he was, and only the small cart to put him in, there was just no room.
Fanny needed to get closer to home and to see Harriette. As bad as it was it was still home, and if they broke their ties there, what good could ever come of it again? It was home. She held her husband’s head on her lap. He was alive; she regarded him almost as a hostage. There was a law and this man meant that they might escape it. Their almost-a-white-man.
The old man’s eyes showed the sky, and the bumpy ride kept his limbs in constant motion, as if he were restless and fitful. Chatalong told him again and again that he understood. How could he possibly be still? He understood.
‘But not yet,’ Fanny said to Chatalong. Not yet, they could not go into the town yet. Not even for a daughter who would help her. They turned the horse for the coast, running south-east of the ranges.
Next morning, when they stopped, it was in that bay where the land ran out and dissolved into the sea. Chatalong thought of his mother, the kangaroo shooters, the rifles and the rum. He realised how the men had treated him, how they had disregarded him.
Fanny lifted a small thin shard of rock from where it rested at the base of a wide, flat depression in the granite. She drew water from the waterhole beneath it, and replaced the lid-like rock.
She held the cool water to her husband’s lips. ‘Not far. Remember?’
Water welled in his mouth, ran into his sandy-grey beard. People died not so far from here.
Sandy One coughed; he made little eruptions. Snot bubbled and ran from his nose. His limbs jerked as they had in the wagon.
They were miles away—had passed their old mine, and were almost at Gebalup—when the cart bucked. It balanced upon one wheel, and Fanny threw her weight—you would have to say the wrong way—and then over it went.
A wheel continued spinning, but the one beneath the wagon was broken, and the wagon itself had split and collapsed at one corner. It wasn’t a wagon anymore. The horse was already small in the distance, and the traces trailing it could no longer be distinguished. The sound of the horse’s pounding hooves became the rumble of the one wheel and that sound continued to diminish until, eventually, even it stopped.
They propped Sandy One against the wreckage and, after considering the cart’s shafts and planking, cut two strong limbs from a tree. Fanny wove bark and twine between the poles to support Sandy, then they each took two ends and set off along the thin track.
The trailing end of the poles bounced across rocks and indentations, but they flexed enough to allow the old man a reasonably comfortable ride, and Fanny had pulled his hat over his face to shelter him from the sun.
Chatalong looked back at the parallel lines the two poles had scratched in the earth. He was reminded of the railway, and these lines led back to a heap of junk with one motionless wheel at the top.
Harriette stayed in the house, and Chatalong led Daniel out of town to where Fanny and Sandy One were concealed among the scrub. There was no moon, and on such a cold, clear night the stars were insistent. Sandy One would have been watching them for hours, perhaps feeling the night condensing upon his cheeks and lashes. Licking his lips.
Fanny and Harriette embraced silently in the house, even as they felt that space closing in about them. Daniel watched them with his lips pressed tight, and Chatalong had long ago learnt that when Daniel said shut up then...