Brown Skin Blue (2 page)

‘You're not much one for talking, are you, Barry?' Boof says to me now the first day's over.

I shake my head.

‘Barry...?'

‘Mundy,' I mumble.

‘Barrymundy?' he says one long word.

I shrug.

‘Barramundy. That's who you are then, boy. Like the bloody fish. You got a ride home?'

I wrinkle my nose. I haven't got a ride. No home, neither.

‘Carn then,' Boof hitches his strides up over his bony hips, but the pants just fall back to the widest part of his skeleton frame. ‘Get on in.' He points to the Land Rover. He takes his hat off and smooths back his hair, which is greasy from
the day's work and wet from the humidity. He smells like oil and dirt. He needs a shower and a lather of soap, but he seems intent on giving me a lift. I don't smell much better. Probably worse. And I'm a skinny runt, too. Boof leans back against the door of the car and crosses his ankles. He puts two fingers in the corners of his mouth and lets fly a loud whistle. ‘Carn Bait,' he yells and his chest nearly pops out through his blue singlet as he forces his voice low enough to sound serious.

Bait's slow on his feet, and close to the ground. He doesn't look like the kind of dog that should sit in the back of a four-wheel drive and when he gets to the car he wags his tail at Boof's ankles. Boof picks him up and puts him in the back seat. Bait's got sticky tan-and-black coloured hair that grows in different directions, like a checkerboard. I patted him this morning, after lunch, then just after closing time. Had to wipe my hands on my pants each time. It's like running your hand over a bristly oil slick.

‘You comin' love,' Boof yells to Cassie who's still in the office bent over the till.

‘Who do ya think's gonna fix things up then, hey?' she yells back. She has no trouble making her voice sound serious or low. She bustles around the counter and sticks her face out the door. ‘Oh,' she says, softening her tone when she sees me with my arms folded, still standing where I was when Boof said to get in the car. ‘Oh. You need a ride?'

I shrug again.

‘Righto,' she says in Boof's direction, waving her hand and turning back, her plait flicking around her. ‘Come back an' get me.'

Boof opens the passenger door. I can't think of anything else to do, so I get in. The seat on the passenger side is pushed as far back as it can go on the frame and my legs – long as they are – have plenty of room to stretch out. Cassie must need all the leg room. Boof 's seat is closer in to the steering wheel. He hops on in, shuts the door with a bang, straightens his legs out and turns the key in the ignition. His arms are dark in patches from dirt and smoke and any other muck from the day's working and they stick out to the sides as he handles the wheel. He's like a stick insect, limbs at angles as he jerks and turns. He grins at no one in particular out the window, checks the rear-view and winks at Bait (who's up on the seat behind me slobbering against the sticky heat). Boof waves out the window – a flick of his fingers and an incline of his head – then leans his arm on the window frame, lights up a cigarette, and gets on to the get-to-know-me business.

‘You an Abo, Barramundy?'

I swallow and scratch my head. Shrug. ‘Na.'

‘Ah,' he says, his eyebrows raising and his lips curving down like he's pleasantly surprised.

We're driving through the wetlands on a road that's raised above the line of the land and there is an irregular chessboard of green grassy patches and mirror-like blue for as far as you can see. Birds are dropping in here and there, flying off and dancing in the sky. There could be crocs in there, too. Lying low, hiding in the shallows.

‘I don't mind Abos,' he says, ‘don't get me wrong there. But you've got to admit they don't do much to help
themselves as a general rule. It's just the bludgers I don't tolerate. I've had a rough life and I still work for everything I have. No one has to give me a hand-out.' Boof spits out the window and the muck hits the ground and he swerves over a ditch in the road.

I've heard it all before. The blokes at the last place I worked weren't quite so careful about how they put it. There's always reports and stories about how screwed up the whole system is. How Aboriginals have wasted the government's hard-earned money, trashed the houses they've been given. Flushed their money down whisky bottles.

I had plenty of mates who were Aboriginal when I was a kid, their skin much the same as mine. We all wanted the same thing, too. A pocket full of marbles, a fist full of lollies and someone who cared enough to stay sober. From where we played in the dirt, it was the colour of money that could ruin your day, not the colour of skin. My mum was whiter than any other mum in the town and she drank more than most. But you don't hear people going on about how white people, with no self-respect, bludge on the dole and drag their kids through the mud. It should make me feel better, I suppose. But it doesn't. Just makes me feel like a fake.

‘But even if you were – Abo,' he adds, ‘you're not the full choc, are ya?'

‘I dunno,' I offer.

‘Where's your dark skin come from then?'

I shrug and sniff.

We're on the main highway now and Boof swerves a few times to miss a couple of kangaroos that bound across the
road. That kind of thing happens up the Top End because the bush and urban areas don't have fixed boundaries.

Roos jump all over the countryside, like a bleeding menace. They don't hide under the water. They're not stealthy and suspicious and patient or ugly. They hop all around with their mob going here and there for food in broad daylight. They sleep in the shade when the sun's high and bright in the sky and go foraging for food when it's cooler. They don't stick to any particular places, and roads or fences don't mean anything. A lot of bonnets up the Top End have kangaroo dents. The government hasn't worked out a way of keeping roos to their own territory like crocs.

There's always a story or two each year or so about someone being taken by a croc. But that's usually because they don't have the sense to believe the warning signs around the water. Like this one at Berry Springs.

There's always a smart-arse who looks out at the water and thinks they'll be right. And to be honest, I know what that's like. We all want to beat nature.

I remember thinkin' things were all right once. That it was safe. That a man would know what it was to be a man and stay in his own skin. His own territory. I can see why
someone would look at the water all smooth and beautiful and think that nothing bad could happen in something so nice. And why the sight of it'd tell you one thing even if the warning signs told you something else. But if a croc gets you, there's no second chances. You can't death roll with a beast that has already survived a million years and live to tell the story.

It's hot this night. Hotter than usual, anyway. The kind of heat where it doesn't matter if the window is down or up, because the air doesn't help chase the humidity away. I'm used to the heat, and most of the time I don't notice much. It's just a part of the way life is. But tonight it's like I'm wrapped in plastic. I don't know why I said Boof could drive me home. Except that maybe nodding is easier than trying to say no. I had no other means of getting home, except walking, but I've done plenty of that before. Not that I have anywhere to call home, either. I've been wandering from place to place for about a year or so, working odd jobs and moving on when I feel too restless to stay.

Boof is like my first croc up close. Something down deep telling me to run for my life. Get the hell out or at least keep my distance. Preferably on the other side of the bank. But something else draws me in. The need to see what they're really like. Do they all bite?

I don't get too close to people, as a rule. I keep my distance. Boof is the first bloke in a while I've come this close to since I was old enough to keep my own distance with people. After McNabm Blue, I don't like men. Don't trust them. And the problem is that I'm almost one myself.

Some nights when I can't sleep, I hear his name in my mind, over and over, like it's hanging above me.
McNabm Blue, McNabm Blue.
And here's another thing I've learnt. The more I say his name the more I hear it echo back to me. And even though he's dead and buried and his body is under the ground, his spirit is as restless as a tropical wind and it rattles under my skin. His name is unusual in itself for any man, even a bushy. But even before he did that thing to me, his name had grown horns. It sounded bad. People shook their heads ever so slightly when they heard it. Everyone knew what he was like, but no one did anything more than swallow hard and scuff their feet in the dirt. He was like everything people couldn't fix or change, or even understand. A big black hole. He was dark, alright, but he wasn't Aboriginal. Not that he laid claim to, at any rate. He could have been a mixture of any dark blood. Asian, Polynesian, Spanish, Black Irish. His outside was not much different from any other bloke around our place.

It's not always that simple to whack a label on the way someone looks and say, ‘He's a so-and-so. I'm a such-and-such.' Dirt and waters muddy where I'm from (just take a look at the Adelaide River). Skin could be white or black or red or brown or blue or just plain dirty from a hard day's work in the sun or a long night drinking and spewing in the dirt. And then there's the colour that comes from years of shitty living. Fellas laying into women and kids getting caught in the middle. Bruises, cuts, sores and pain changes what a person looks like. I've seen yellow and green skin. Blue grief that clings to a person's eyes. And no amount of water or
bathing or scrubbing can get rid of it. And come night-time, when there's no light anyway, everyone looks dark.

I know I've got dark blood, 'cause I've got a blue patch on my bum. Mongolian Blue spot, it's called. Like blue ink squeezed out of the blood vessels in the cleft of my arse, staining the skin around it. When I was a kid, Mum used to scrub it so hard it would turn red. I still remember it. Then, once, when I was at the doctor's, he explained to Mum that it was nothing to worry about. It wasn't anything nasty or dirty, just what happens when you get brown blood in your genes. Lots of people have it, he said. Sometimes it fades as you get older. Mum seemed to relax a bit then. And she knew it didn't come from her.

‘Come on then, Barramundy,' Boof says now that his Abo speech is over. ‘Tell me a bit about yourself.' On either side of the highway, for as far as I can see, the land is flat and dry, scattered with eucalyptus trees and termite mounds. There's no sign of the river – winding its way – over the horizon.

I open my mouth a few times and turn my hat through my fingers. I listen to the tyres whizzing over the concrete and the small rocks flicking against the sides of the car, but nothing comes out.

‘I see,' Boof says as he turns on the radio. ‘Well, that don't matter much. I like a bit of P and Q.'

I look over at him. I don't know what he's talking about.

‘Peace and quiet,' he says, laughing and tapping the steering wheel in time to the music.

I turn back to look out the window, watching the sun setting over the flat and listening to Boof talking non-stop over the music. His idea of peace and quiet. Termite mounds rise up from the ground like brown uneven camel humps. The sky is a firecracker of pinks and oranges and reds, and trees stand like silent soldiers waving their green flags in the breeze. ‘Ahh, look over there,' Boof says pointing out of the window to the scrub beside the car.

Suddenly over the space of what seems like a metre the leaves have disappeared, the grass is gone and tree trunks stand black-naked against the sky.

‘Another bloody fire's ripped though the place.'

That's another thing about the Top End. Fires and floods. And cyclones. Bush fires rip through, leaving trees to stand like tall black sticks and the grass in stumpy shreds like whiskers on a bald bloke's head. And then it rains so much in the wet season that the rivers flood. Storm can build up over the ocean, just off the coast, move in and tear everything apart. Like Cyclone Tracy did back in 1974.

If you live up the Top End of Australia, you don't get close to nature, nature gets close to you. And if you want to make a good life up here, you've got to learn to respect her. This guy I knew when I was a kid used to say,
Mother Nature needs lovin' like a good woman. Bit of respect, bit of space and a whole lot of understanding when she's hormonal. And as a bloke you've got to know your limits. There's only so far you can push her towards your own way of thinkin'.

‘I reckon you're gonna turn out real good. We was just talking, Cassie and me, about getting a bloke, and you
come out of the scrub. Must have been meant to happen,' Boof continues. ‘I can always tell right off the bat if I'm gonna like someone. Always been like that, ever since I was a kid.'

Boof drops me off outside the Humpty Doo Hotel. I tell him my place is just around the corner and it's easier for him to stay on the main road. I manage a smile and a quick wave as he drives on past, his wheels skidding on the loose gravel at the edge of the bitumen. He stops, reverses back, and hangs his head out of the window. ‘You right to get to work tomorrow?' he says.

I hadn't thought that far ahead. I shrug.

‘It's on my way. I'll pick you up here at six. Okay?'

I nod.

Boof waves and takes off again. I'm wondering why he seems keen to help me out. I don't know if he's being too friendly for a reason I can't as yet understand.

I turn around to face the front of the hotel. Above the door is a huge buffalo horn which swirls out to the sides like
a stiff moustache. To my right is a stretch of doors along a concrete path for motel rooms, and to my left is the main bar and outside beer garden. I turn left and walk past the beer garden – this is really just a concrete slab, a few timber top tables and a knee-high brick wall around the edge.

It's still light outside, even though it's past six o'clock, but already the bar is full. Blokes with long, scraggy beards, webbed eyes poking out of their facial hair. Big sun-tanned bellies rolling over the top of stubby shorts. Some blokes have thongs on their feet but most are barefoot, and there aren't many shirts to be seen. The air is full of laughter and swearing.

There's a jukebox against the inside wall, near the door. I can see the edge of its casing and the coloured lights flashing. A group of blokes are huddled around it, their faces lost in their beards. It's only their eyes that give their expressions away, but I'm not close enough to read them. The bloke at the back of the group sticks his elbow in another guy's back, and then there's a scuffle. Beer mugs held high, sloshing and spilling over the sides. The smallest fella at the front – who's as bald as Uluru and almost as red – turns and holds his hands up towards the wrestling pair behind. ‘Calm down, mate,' he says, ‘let it go, will ya.'

‘Shits' and ‘bloody pooftas' fly out the door as I walk past, lowering my eyes to the ground. There's the clacking of billiard balls from the pool table beside the jukebox and a cheer goes up.

I've got a canvas bag slung over my shoulder but it's pretty empty. One change of clothes and a pair of thongs.
I've got my only boots on my feet. I had the sense to buy them in the last town I was in, just in case I came across a place I could see myself working at. Most jobs for a bloke like me need hard-tipped boots. Labouring jobs. Fetch-and-carry, stack-and-pack, box-and-load kind of jobs.

There weren't any crocs hiding in the shadows for a few hundred metres either side of the jetty, at the Croc Jumping set-up, but I was still proud of myself for thinkin' I'd need my feet protected to find good work. I stood at the jetty this morning, after Boof and Cassie had said they'd take me on, hands in my pockets, lookin' at the water. Thick and brown and muddy like weak chocolate soup. Moving slowly in little waves, a gentle undercurrent washing the water past where I stood. I wriggled my toes inside my boots and felt safe as a joey in a roo's pouch. It's strange what gives a bloke comfort. The thought of standing at the water's edge with my toes wriggling loose around the nub of my pair-a-thongs was scary. Like my little piggies would be chomped off there and then by a mighty set of teeth. But with the little porkers tucked inside a sturdy pair of workman's boots, the crocs would stay away.

I'm not shy of hard work. In fact I like it. I just find it hard to stay put in one place for too long. There's no time limit in my mind, like it's a definite part of who I am, I just get this feeling like a hot, dry wind inside. And it stirs me up and I'm all agitated until I move on. My mum had the same thing. Only when it was time for her to move on, she'd flash her leg at some bloke and ask him to hook the van up to the car. Then, if she was feeling pleased with his efforts, she'd ask him into the van for a moment to pay him back proper.

When I was little, all I knew about that kind of payment was that the van shook and squeaked, and the bloke'd sound like he was hot and bothered about something. But as I got older I knew she opened her legs up and let the bloke do things to her. I never asked her about it. But I was angry with her for a long time without knowing why. I didn't know why she let a bloke do that. And now that I'm old enough to understand what was going on and why, it still doesn't help because I'm torn between my own human desires and the mess of what she did and what had been done to me. Some days it's all I can do not to imagine a woman against my body because I've got my own desires rushing about inside me, too. But I've got the feeling of iron bars around me, like Blue locked me up with what he did, and the sound of a squeaking caravan in my way. I worry if I'll ever be free enough to touch the flesh of someone beautiful and enjoy it. The best I can hope for is that it sneaks up on me quickly and I've only got time to think it through after. I have this fantasy that everything angled and prickly about the boy of me might disappear when I become a man. Just like when your voice finally learns how to stop being squeaky and settles into its own deep sound. I'm hoping for that kind of resolution.

I decide to sit on a chair at the edge of a table in the beer garden. I'm bloody hungry. And thirsty. But I've only got a small amount of money left in the front pocket of my bag.

Next to me, beside the hotel at the back, is a big scratch of dirt. A short wire fence separates the bush from the dust and there's a handful of chickens clucking and pecking on
the ground, running haphazardly over the dirt, their necks wobbling as they look around. A group of barefoot kids are chasing them. One large kid grabs a chook and holds it for a while till its wings stop flapping. I turn on my chair so I can see him properly. The kid flips the chook on its back and holds it firm in his hands. He starts stroking its feathers slow and even from the chin to the breast. He flicks his head and the smaller kids move back. They all crouch down as the chook is slowly laid down on the ground, belly up. I expect the chicken to flap and squawk and run away as soon as it's loose, but it stays there. Dead still. The kids stand up in a circle around it. The largest kid folds his arms lookin' smug. ‘Told you I could hypnotise a chook,' he says to the others. ‘Putty in my hands,' he adds.

It takes what feels like a minute before the chicken rouses. Then it flips over, looks around for a few seconds before running off. The kids shriek and jump.

‘Come on you kids. Back home,' comes a mother's voice from a house nearby. There is a scattering of small houses down the small side street beside the hotel. The kids trail off behind each other in the direction of the voice. The chickens run for the corners of the fence.

My mum's almost as much a mystery to me as my father. I've never understood why she lives the kind of life she does and she's never understood why I don't live the same kind of life she does. For her there might be no tomorrow so she puts everything into the moment of today. But I can't
help feeling like each day's a stone in a path onto something better. It's like I'm living for the very thing she's given up on and, for now, the only map I have for where to go is a small scrap of paper with five names scrawled in pencil. It's only now, that I've been gone awhile, I can see what these names mean to her and why she can't understand what they mean for me. For her they're something in her past she can't shift, move or change and maybe they remind her of what she lost or what walked out on her. But for me they just might be a clue as to who I am.

Well, Barry,
Mum said in her scratchy cackle voice, raspy and thin from years of grog and tobacco. She laughed then, her eyes off in the distance somewhere as I held my pencil seriously over the paper.
Teabag Jones. Could be him. Toucan Bunter, yeah, he was around then. Stumpy Johnson.
She smoked an entire cigarette at this point while she racked her brain for the rest.
Lovejack Smith or ...
she looked me up and down at this point and sighed.
Na, he was whiter 'an me. Boomboom Green,
she said finally and folded her arms.
That's it, boyo. Couldn't be anyone else.

I wonder how many other people have a list five names long of the men who could be their father. Knowing Mum, I should be lucky it's only five, I suppose.

I drew a line beneath
Boomboom Green
and put my pencil in my pocket.
And I'll tell you this, son. Not one of them had to pay for it, ya hear!
She stormed out of the van and shut the door with the force of a nor-easterly wind. I sat for a while holding the piece of paper. It was more information I had ever known about my father in my lifetime. Teabag.
Toucan. Stumpy. Lovejack. Boomboom. I left that day with a small smile on my face. I'm not one for smiles or scowls, or any show of emotion for that matter. But while my mother, heavy and white, skin like crumpled paper and a voice like a husky galah, walked right back inside the van, I left for good. I remember thinkin' that, by the sound of the names she gave me, I could have been fathered by pirates, for all I knew. She couldn't understand why I wanted to know, so I didn't bother trying to tell her what little of it I even understood myself. I just knew I wanted answers to some of the things in life that could be answered. I had to get out of there. I had to find a road to lay down my own feet, one in front of the other, because her life could only take me so far.

I don't really know how far I've walked or bussed since then, and I don't exactly know how long I spent in each place and each job. I just felt the road keeping on in front of me and I followed it. It was only the river that stopped me still in my tracks. There at the Croc Jumping Cruises. For no reason I could understand, it was the end of the road. That river, rushing past me, moving on without any hesitation or question had me stumped. Fish jokes aside, I seemed to belong to it. The river of crocs had me.

I'm sitting here at the table of the Humpty Doo Hotel beer garden, lookin' at the paper and now I'm thinkin' that by the sound of those names, I could have been fathered by crocs.