Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea (10 page)

I am overjoyed when Louis tells me that we're going fishing with Uncle Stanley Bushman. But although I have been sailing on yachts in open water with my older brother Keith and love nothing better, I feel a gnawing sense of apprehension when I see the rough little tin boat that Louis turns up with from down the road. We then pull up at Aunty Ursula's place and I sit on the big green turtle shell in the front yard that has been polished by countless arses sitting on it while we wait for Uncle Raymond to re-coil the pull-start rope and put the outboard motor back together again. Then we're off to the barge landing where Mario and Uncle Stanley Bushman are waiting with the rest of the stuff. We dump it all on board and I jump up the front because I'm the lightest then Mario fires the motor up and we're off.

Speeding over the waves I forget about my initial concerns about the boat. After all, it's not taking on water, so I settle back to enjoy the scenery. We take a course towards Paru on Melville Island and then past Buchanan Island before heading in a south-easterly direction towards Cobourg Peninsula. We cruise around a bit while they show me landmarks such as the place where an old dugout canoe sits on the edge of the bush on a beach, and where there is a permanent supply of water even in the dry season. Then we reach a reef where uncle says he goes turtle hunting and we pull up and drop our lines. They all catch a fish and I don't care that I don't because it's wonderful out here on the waves under a cornflower-blue sky.

But when we're ready to move on and Mario fires up the motor it only sputters and dies. No worries, we've only run out of fuel, but when Louis reaches for the fuel can and discovers it's empty I feel a gnawing apprehension in my stomach. Some dickhead has loaded an empty fuel can into the boat instead of a full one and no one is owning up because they know they'll be thrown overboard for their stupidity. I personally think it was Mario but he's a master of excuses and has made sure that his artfully woven account of the lead-up to the boarding of the boat ensures no blame can be laid at his door.

Despite our predicament the blokes are quite jovial. I still can't work out why these things don't piss them off because they really piss me off, but if they are pissed
off they certainly aren't showing it. They continue to fish. No rod and reel here, just hand lines with hooks for my brothers and a stick with fishing line wound onto it for uncle. The crude implements haven't been a problem though as they've caught some beautiful jewfish and a scrumptious-looking coral trout.

Louis is part-way through consoling me because I haven't caught anything yet when he gets a tug on his line. He stands up to stretch his legs and starts to wind in his line, but then it goes limp. He winds in the slack and leans to ash his cigarette over the edge of the boat when there is an almighty tug and Louis goes head first into the water. He comes up grinning, wet cigarette still in his mouth, and is about to pass the reel to me when a look of shock passes over his face. He throws the reel into the boat and literally flies out of the water. ‘
Tartuwali
,' he gasps and his eyes point to somewhere beyond where I am sitting in the bow. My blood freezes and my head shoots around expecting to see a mighty fin cutting a wake through the sea straight towards us but all I see is empty ocean. I turn back and am about to swear at him for giving me a fright but the look on his face tells me that he's deadly serious.

The two remaining lines are quickly wound up and all eyes are now focused on the water.

‘There,' says Uncle Stanley Bushman. ‘Tiger shark.' I can't see anything as I'm now sitting on the bottom of the boat with my eyes closed, cursing them for getting me
into such a mess. I've seen
Jaws
and I don't want to die today. Then I open my eyes only to see their gaze slide across the boat as our big toothy friend swims below us and out the other side. Their eyes follow it and then Louis says it's turning again. I am about to tell him I don't need a running commentary when I see a big triangular fin cruising gracefully past in an anti-clockwise direction. It is perfect and strangely beautiful. Mesmerised, I watch it circling for another half-lap of the boat until it glides under the water and disappears. Suddenly there is a spine-shuddering jolt as it bumps against the side and we briefly list to the right before our trusty old tinnie stabilises itself. I feel a bit shaky now. Some seagulls fly over and I wonder if this is going to be one of the last things I'll see and look down only to find the dead fish looking at me instead. Crap.

Uncle Stanley, Mario and Louis sit quietly but I notice their eyes are wary as they roll cigarettes and pass the tobacco pouch to the next person. Although I've never smoked in my life I'm tempted to ask Uncle Stanley if I can have one too, just so it distracts me and gives me something else to do apart from shit myself. But I stay silent. I'm guessing that the shark could take a big bite right out of the middle of the tinnie if it wanted to and there'd be nothing we could do about it. I wonder if it can detect our beating hearts in the boat. Four hearts beating a wild primordial drumbeat while the world continues to
turn oblivious to our predicament. I'm wondering if It is a He or a She and if it attacked us would I have a moment to touch this creature before everything I knew was gone. I would want to feel its skin and look it in the eye if I could, just to let it know that I wasn't succumbing completely.

Nobody says anything, we just wait. I don't think I could say anything anyway as my throat has constricted to the point where nothing much is getting in or out. Then Louis is explaining to me that it's only checking to see if we're alive and edible, when it does it again, but this time harder and I feel the front end of the boat lift out of the water and then slap back down again. Things are getting decidedly uncomfortable and Uncle Stanley crosses himself. This relieves the tension and I try to laugh but only manage to croak instead while the others tease him about not seeing the inside of a church since he was baptised. But our levity is short-lived as the whole huge fin and the top of its back breaks the surface only metres from us. It's striped and it's longer than the boat by at least a metre and a half and then after a few more laps it glides into the depths again. We all freeze and hold our breath waiting for the worst to happen but it must have gotten bored with us or has spotted something better to eat and it doesn't come back.

I'm getting burnt to a crisp but there's nothing I can do except keep my arms wet with sea water which stings like crazy and put the fishy-smelling bucket over my head to
stop the sun from frying my brains. Suddenly Louis cocks his head to one side like he's listening. He can hear a boat coming. I strain my ears and then I can hear it too. We look in the direction of the sound and there in the distance we see it heading our way. As it nears, the blokes start waving madly. The people, countrymen from Melville Island, wave madly back and cruise straight on past.

‘Come back!' we screech in disbelief to their dwindling boat, but to no avail.

‘They must be smoking that
wupunga
,' says Uncle Stanley in disgust. I smirk to myself. From what I hear he doesn't mind having a puff of the stuff himself.

Dusk is falling and Uncle Stanley has given me the last mouthful of our drinking water. It has been sitting in a plastic soft-drink bottle in the sun all day and tastes like formaldehyde but I don't care as I savour its wetness. We can't play ‘I Spy' anymore as we've run out of things to spy, unfortunately the choices to be made in a boat drifting in the ocean are very limited even in two languages. Then we hear a boat approaching from the south. It heads straight for us and it turns out to be the boat that passed us earlier. It heaves to and its driver explains that they had gone to the Cobourg Peninsula to rendezvous for an illegal grog run from the mainland then they were going to come back for us. No wonder they were in such a hurry. I can see Uncle Stanley biting his tongue because he'd love to give them a good telling-off for not stopping when they saw us, but
when they pull out a beer everything is forgiven. We tie our boat to theirs and then we pile into it and off we go again. Drinking our beer we tell them about the goings-on of the day, full of bravado now that we're not shitting ourselves and afraid we're going to die. They tell us they are doing a grog-drop on Melville Island first and then heading to Nguiu. Now that we're being rescued, we don't care what they do as long as we get home.

The trip to the rendezvous point is uneventful. By now Uncle Stanley, Mario, Louis and I are roaring drunk as our dehydrated bodies absorb the beers that we pour down our parched throats. They locate the designated meeting spot to hand over the illicit cartons as a torch flashes from the beach and grog runner number two flashes back. It's all a bit like a Famous Five or Secret Seven adventure and I'm loving it.

‘How do they know it's not the police?' I ask Louis.

‘Who?' asks Louis. In his befuddled state he can't hear me properly.

‘The police!' I yell in his ear.

Next second the grog runner driving the boat guns the throttle and the boat takes off at high speed with our little dinghy whipping wildly behind. I nearly get flung out as it hangs a big U-turn but luckily I land in Uncle Stanley's lap. Not so lucky for uncle though who cops a crushed testicle (I know enough Tiwi by now to understand the strangled expletives), or Louis who gets whiplash. We
pull up a bit further down when they realise they aren't being pursued and Louis tells them we were talking about the police, not warning them, and they all heave a sigh of relief. As owner of the boat if he had been busted he would have had his boat confiscated and a jail sentence. Everything sorted out, we return to the meeting spot to find two very irate countrymen who thought they were getting diddled. Cartons of beer and money exchange hands and we're off again.

It's freezing cold in the boat and I'm snuggled into Louis. Somewhere along the way I fall asleep until I'm woken by a change in speed. We are nearing the drop-off point where a car is waiting down from the barge landing to pick up the rest of the grog. After another round of beers Louis, Mario and I get a lift to mummy's darkened house where we see the glow of her cigarette on the veranda.

She is furious. Mummy is so angry that she can't speak. She sputters and stomps around kicking things while Louis and Mario and I look at each other with worried faces.

‘And what about me?' she screeches. ‘I gave you milk from my breast! What wrong with you?'

I'm about to answer but think better of it as she stalks past again waving her walking stick in our faces. Mummy is angry because we are so drunk we can barely stand up but we didn't bring back any beer for her. Unfortunately it's a Sunday and mummy hasn't had a drop all day because the club is closed. Louis and Mario stagger off leaving me
to console mummy while they try to locate one of the grog runners and get some beer. I listen to her admonishing me and her other ungrateful offspring until Louis finally turns up with two beers. He hurriedly disappears into the night and I head off to bed while mummy gives me one of her looks and opens a can.

We're sitting drinking tea on my mum's front veranda and watching the world go by when Aunty Marie Evelyn and Uncle Stanley Bushman pull up in their ute. They call me over and hand me a bundle of vines that grow on the sand dunes at Tarntippi beach. The ones that have lilac-coloured flowers and that the green ants travel along between their nests to go visiting their mates and sniffing out food. Mummy beams like she has just been given a million dollars and tells me to get her rocks. She sometimes uses these rocks to do her washing. One flat one that she lays the dress or whatever on and the other one that she beats the crap out of under the running tap. No soap, just sheer determination. And it works too, my mum's clothes are lovely and crisp and clean and smell like sunshine. I get back with her rocks and she has a sheet
laid out on the floor with the vine lying on it. She places the stem of the vine on her flat rock and starts hammering away, flattening out the acrid-smelling stems and bruising the leaves and crushing flowers as she works her way along. I'm a bit apprehensive – is she going to make me eat this, I wonder? Will it taste like spinach or brussel sprouts or chewy salty beach vines?

When she's finished she motions for me to move her rocks away and then carefully begins to wind the vine around her right leg from the knee down to her ankle, neatly tucking leaves in here and a flower there and poking in loose ends. After that she produces a roll of bandage and winds it over the vines to keep it all in place. Job done, she goes back to her cup of tea. I've noticed that she rubs this leg and limps occasionally and she uses a walking stick. I've never bothered to ask why but after this strange ritual I am curious to know what's wrong with her leg. She opens her mouth and the word flies out and pierces my heart like a spear. Leprosy.

I am shocked because I thought lepers only existed in the Bible and lived in poor countries like India and Africa. I thought they walked with bells around their necks warning people to keep clear and lived in colonies where they couldn't infect anyone and where their limbs and appendages dropped off. I slide my ill-informed thoughts into the rubbish bin and slam the lid down tight, angry that our First World country can live in ignorant bliss of our
Third World problems. I am angry that my mother could even catch leprosy in the first place in this wealthy country because it is a disease of poverty and this makes the reality of her situation even more ugly and unfair. I bet there wouldn't be too many white people afflicted with leprosy in Australia because if there were it would be front-page news.

Under the bandaging my mum's afflicted limb looks just like its twin, black and bony with some weirdly shaped toenails sprouting off the end like sculptured windswept rocks jutting out of a barren landscape. And then my brain starts firing off questions. How come she didn't tell me straight away when I met her? Is she infectious? Did she think I'd abandon her if I knew?

Louis comes home for lunch and I pull him aside into the kitchen and tell him my thoughts. He says not to worry. He tells me no one else in our close family has leprosy and he tells me the vine helps with the pain. Pain? My mum lives with pain? And she doesn't even whine or make a fuss like normal people do. I think of when she has asked me to go down to the mangroves with her to get mud crabs and I've declined and watched her limp off, preferring instead to lounge on my mattress reading a book or arsing around with JJ. And I've let her go off to the shops by herself as well and carry home the groceries. Guilt gnaws away at my stomach like a hungry rat.

A few days later Aunty Marie Evelyn comes over and asks mummy if she wants to go get mud crabs and my mum
bounces up all excited and rushes off into her bedroom to get ready like she's about to go on a date. And this time I'm going with them to help her. I'm still feeling bad after finding out about her leg and I've made a resolution to not be so lazy in the future.

Although my mum always wears a petticoat and dress, her mangrove attire is an old pair of jeans with a man's paisley tie threaded through the belt loops to hold them up, and a long shirt. Aunty is wearing a long skirt and long-sleeved shirt as well. They look like a pair of dick-heads but I don't say anything.

The bush at the edge of the mangroves is beautiful and there is a narrow strip of white sand before the mangroves and the black mud begins. There is already a spot where a previous fire has been and mummy adds a bit of new wood to the charcoal and gets it going again, and right in front of us there is an old custard apple tree with ripe fruit that we eat with our tea. I haven't tasted one of these before and they really do taste like custard and apples. I see how far I can spit the shiny black seeds but stop when aunty, halfway through a sentence, tilts her head to the side, puts a finger against one nostril and shoots a stream of snot about twice the distance of where my furthest seed landed. She then goes back to talking again. I am shocked but try to keep a straight face. I was brought up to use handkerchiefs that had been washed in bleach and then ironed before reuse so all snot was carefully contained and kept
out of sight. I take careful note of where the offending glob landed so I don't walk in it.

The sandflies and mosquitoes that live at the airport are a drop in the ocean compared to their relatives who live in the mangroves and I curse my bare arms and legs as they drill their way through the insect repellent. The mud is up to my knees in some parts and trying to manoeuvre my way along behind mummy and aunty and around trees is quite a problem. They don't look like they're having any trouble though as they wander along poking at likely-looking places and holes under tangled and buttressed root systems. Their feet must spread out like a camel's foot does in the sand, I think, as I yank my foot out of the mud and put it down again only to feel it come to a squishy standstill. The mud makes popping noises and other weird sounds and with the occasional reverberation of a bird call it's all beginning to feel quite eerie. My foot goes down into the mud and I feel something move underneath it. It must be a crab's leg or something, I think, the excitement mounting as I pull my foot out slowly so I don't startle it. I peer into the hole of my footprint. I am going to catch this crab for my mum and I'm going to make her proud of me. But it's not a crab, it's a red, black and white striped root of a tree and it is so, so beautiful. Who would have thought that hidden under the ugly mud were exquisite jewels like this. I put my hand into my footprint and touch it but the bark doesn't feel like I thought mangrove
root bark would feel like. It feels smooth and almost scaly. Maybe roots that are exposed to the tides develop scales just like fish – that makes sense.

‘Mummy,' I call out, ‘Look what I found!' She is at my side in an instant, a smile on her face, but the smile fades as quickly as it takes for me to realise something isn't quite right here. I look back down and the ‘root' is slowly but surely moving. ‘Go that way,' she says, pointing towards aunty while she backs up the way she came. I don't need to be told a second time and my heart is in my mouth as I lurch as quickly as I can to where Aunty Marie Evelyn is standing with a sack for the crabs we catch.

Mummy tells me it is a poisonous sea snake of some sort that sometimes slithers into crab holes when the tide goes out so it can eat mud skippers and small fish that are trapped. When the tide comes back in it swims off again. I feel scared and wonder how many times my feet have inadvertently stepped close to or on one of its family.

I want to go home but they decide to move to another spot and I have no choice but to climb along from tree root to tree root after them. I'm not going in the mud again. We get to a spot where the mud is a bit firmer and where they find six crabs in quick succession while I fretfully watch the surrounding area for signs of striped sea snakes. I know my movements in this place are restricted and I wouldn't be able to escape very quickly if I had to. Mummy shows me how to flick the crabs over with the
digging stick and then smash the place where their little mouths are situated. This is to disable them but to keep them alive until we cook them. It makes me feel queasy.

Despite my whingeing to go back, we walk a bit further and aunty and mummy find some mangrove trees that have fallen over and died and start to hack into the wood with their tomahawks. ‘Look,' says mummy showing me tunnels that have been dug through the wood. She hacks back a bit further and then grabs what appears to be a little piece of shell and pulls it. It comes away and stuck on the end of it is a worm. A very long worm. I am terrified of worms and stand there frozen in fear of this thing she has pulled out. She then squeezes it between her forefinger and the next one to force the mud out of it, and pops a decent length of it into her mouth before handing the rest to me. I scream and drop it into the mud where aunty retrieves it, wipes it on her shirt, then sticks it in her mouth and swallows with a grin on her face. This really craps me off and I look away, balancing on my mangrove tree root and clinging to the trunk with my eyes closed so I don't see them greedily cutting out mangrove worms from the wood and eating the fuckers. The sack is near me and I hear the feeble scraping of the crabs' legs in it. I am being bled dry by mosquitoes and the itching from sandfly excrement is so terrible that I feel like I want to rip my skin off. I lose it. ‘I want to fucking go home now!' I scream at the top of my lungs and both mummy and aunty stop what they are
doing and look at me in surprise and then start laughing. ‘Now! Fucking now!' I scream but they laugh even harder. I can't imagine what they are laughing at – is it the sight of me covered in mud, hair everywhere clinging onto the tree, is it because they get a kick out of other people's suffering? I see a tomahawk lying on the ground. I lunge for it and brandish it at them. The belly-laughs stop in an instant then mummy and aunty look at each other, back at me again and then in one beautiful fluid movement turn and bolt. I am too surprised to say anything and I stand there watching aunty's red-skirted arse and mummy with her gammy leg glide through the mangrove mud like two figure skaters on ice and disappear from sight. There is silence. The popping of the mud and the bird calls have all stopped and I notice the pounding of my heart. Thump, thump, thump, thump, and I realise I'm afraid.

Mummy wouldn't really leave you here, I try to tell myself, but another voice is telling me not to kid myself. I wait a bit but I know they aren't coming back. My mouth is getting dry. I know I have to follow their footsteps to get myself out of there so I pick up the sack of crabs and reassure myself that if I get lost I can eat them. I try not to think about the fact that I have no matches to make a fire to cook them, or water to drink and if I get lost I'm probably fucked because with the tide will come the crocodiles and then night will fall and if that happens I will be really, really fucked. With the tomahawk clutched firmly
in my other hand in case I have to defend myself from violent predators I take the first step in my life that I have ever truly taken alone.

The footprints aren't too hard to follow and I can see by the fresh-chopped wood where mummy and aunty stopped for another feed of mangrove worm, obviously unconcerned about my welfare. It's too hard to step from root to root with a sack and tomahawk in my hands so I stagger through the mud as best I can and try not to think of what lurks beneath waiting to kill me. I can hear the waves in the distance so the tide must be coming in now. Because the mangroves are so flat the tide rushes in quite quickly, but I mustn't think of that and I look up instead at the green canopy overhead. But I see a tree snake, whip-thin with a pale blue head and neck and a lemon-green body and my legs go a bit wobbly. Absolutely beautiful any other day, but not today. I look straight ahead, the faster I can go the quicker I will be out of the mud. Grieg's ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King' (at the bit where the trolls chase Peer Gynt) echoes through my head with every squishy-squashy footstep and spurs me on. I hum it out loud and I'm alright now as I try to avoid keeping my eyes focused on one point for too long in case there's another nasty surprise to unravel me a bit further. And then I realise I can smell smoke and without any warning there it is, the white clean strip of sand and the bush. The fire is still smoking. Careful
not to walk where aunty emptied out her nose earlier I sit down for a breather.

Mummy and aunty are playing cards when I get home.

‘You cook dem crab,' asks mummy expectantly, not even looking up from her hand of cards. ‘Yeah, we left im fire for you to cook em,' says aunty, looking at me like I'm supposed to say thank you or something. Although I went today to help mummy because I felt sorry for her crook leg I am not in the mood for their flippant remarks. I dump the sack of crabs on their pile of cards and stalk off, with their howls of indignation for messing up their card game echoing in my ears. And I realise that I don't have to feel sorry for my mother, she managed very well without me, and my sympathy certainly isn't going to make her leg better.