That Deadman Dance (11 page)

You in the wrong port now, Doctor.

Tongue and paper

As he waded in the warm shallows at the south side of the harbour, each of Wunyeran’s shins momentarily became like the bow of a boat pushing a tiny wave before it, or the point of a spearhead. As his weight shifted onto the foot, the water eddied, and suddenly there was no wave, no bow, no spearhead. He stopped, wriggled his toes and sank deeper into the sand. Calves, ankles and feet were slightly to one side of where they should be. Below and above the sea’s skin did not quite match. As if there were two people, not quite the same, one visible only below water, one visible above. These legs, so dark and thin, might be spears, oars, gun barrels, even.

Wunyeran weighed the spear in his hand. He was wading in seawater, and yet there was land all around except the one small gap way over there toward where the sun rises and the boats slide through onto the white sandy beaches like lost whales. And those boats come and go, come and go with their oars and gun barrels and oh the things they bring.

From up on the hills this land-encircled ocean looked like a lake, a plain of glass: a great pane of glass, a looking glass, even. And Wunyeran, up close now, motionless, waiting for the water to settle, saw part of his reflection but also, behind the reflection, that the sand was not white, but coloured like bark or ochre. Why? Because the water is dark. Why? Is the bush staining this shallow part of ocean? Or is it the smoke, colouring the light and therefore the water, too? The questions you ask, learning a new way of speech. How it drives your thinking.

He had begun to collect leaf, feather, bone and, pressing some of them between sheets of paper, to mark the days by them. Why?

Smoke, way up there: someone hunting along the ridge between him and the open Southern Ocean. More wind up there, and his brothers would be poised at the edge of tendrils and thick loops of smoke, the fire roaring and crackling in the scrub, and bodies crashing, rushing to meet their spears.

And why he not with them?

He had run across the hot burnt earth in boots, with shirt and trousers sticking to the ochre and oils and sweat of his skin. Naked now, but. Barefoot and wading in sunlight and salty water with the weight of a spear in his hand.

He gazed at the rippling water, the ribbon weed barely swaying at his feet and sometimes the sandy ripples marking the ocean bed. Lifting his eyes, he saw high above and in the smoky light the clouds spread across the dome of sky in the same pattern as the sand beneath his feet. But the clouds were edged with blood. All the things you can’t collect and press, that won’t slip between sheets of paper. Today the light was smoky, and the water, and so, too, the sandy floor of this shallow ocean with its shape of the water’s movement made solid enough to look at and study. But the sand could no more record his passing than could the water, the air or clouds.

His footprints disappeared.

And these words hold barely a trace of Wunyeran’s voice, yet so much of the others who came as strangers and were surprised more than once at what marks could be found and what could be realised from them. Just as no mark of his passing remains in the water, so there remains little trace of his tongue in the air, or these hills around him and sky, these clouds … But surely if we paused, listened long enough …

Wunyeran and his brothers, his fathers and uncles, waded here at night and, separated by darkness, the light of their firesticks shimmered and danced on the water; laughter bubbled, a fish plashed. Sounds—a tiny voice, disembodied, an invisible dog barking—skimmed across the surface from the far shore, that scatter of tents, the huts of timber and pale mud, the boats straining at their ropes. Here, Wunyeran and his family were held within the hum of fire, within the sputter and cough and tiny tongues of flame. The lapping and chuckling ocean ripples.

Today there was sunlight and high open sky and space all around Wunyeran—like being in a boat at sea but for the rhythm of his step and his breathing. The land was close behind him, its tall trees and stony ridges keeping the wind mostly high overhead, but every now and then it swoops down, whispering, ruffling the water’s surface.

They call this place
harbour
, this body of ocean surrounded by hills and held within earth hollowed like a grave that their boats sail into. They collect on the other shore, blown there by the wind.

Boats, clothing, dogs and guns … Even the food they eat. Interesting. Wunyeran’s lips and tongue shaped their words now, and their songs, Oh where have you been all the day …?

Heads snapped up when he sang like that. Surprise, and hurt, too, shows on their faces when we walk like them, fold our arms, cross our legs. Speak their way. When we be like a looking glass, and show their way back at them.

Across the lapping sea, at the mouth of a harbour, Wunyeran saw the fine mist, silver in sunlight, of a whale’s spout.

Something moved across the patterned sand at his feet.

Kitjel don
.

His spear missed.

Death and spirit

The Noongar would come and go; for weeks on end there would be no one, and then suddenly Cross’s hut was full of Wunyeran and his brothers. This time, Cross heard Wunyeran’s coughing well before he ever saw him. He stayed a night, went away and returned a few days later, almost carried by Menak and that young boy with them again. For several days he lay beside the fireplace, shivering but hot to touch. Now and then he spoke very rapidly, or sang, but not to anyone in the room with him. And sometimes there were several there to listen, because elderly men of his own community and even some of the soldiers came to see how he was, show they cared.

Cross tended him as best he could, while Menak watched closely. Menak wanted to take Wunyeran back to his own people and, presumably, their own wise people’s attention, but he could not travel just yet.

Early one afternoon he rolled his head to gaze at Menak and Cross. And said something, Wabalanginy, perhaps? Then his head lifted from the pillow just a little, and his eyes rolled back under their lids: one moment alive and focused on Cross and Menak, the next like glass. Was that goodbye?

Dr Cross watched as Menak, sighing deeply, placed his palm against his brother’s cheek. He arranged the body: raised the arms and crossed the hands near the neck, tilted the head forward, drew the knees up to the chest. Finally, he pulled the lower legs and feet closer against the thighs, rolled the body onto its right side and wrapped the blanket completely around it.

Menak turned to him demanding, Peer, peer.

It took Cross a moment to understand; Menak wanted to spear someone as payback for his brother’s death.

Of course, Cross could not allow that. After all, who might he wish to spear?

Menak signalled the sun’s path across the sky to show he would return the next day,
benang.
He wanted the body to remain just as it was, until the burial. Then he left.

Cross remained by his friend and prayed that a merciful God might admit so refined a soul through the gates of heaven, despite the many—not knowing him—who would say heathen, and insist he was but an uncultivated savage. What good was Cross’s science when it could not save his friend? What good was it to be civilised, when he could offer no more help than could this poor fellow’s own brother? Wunyeran had returned here to die, not to be healed.

Did God watch over them all?

Cross stayed by the body for hours. He prayed, he read the Bible. He sipped rum. Prayed again. Got to his feet and stood swaying. He could not stay beside this body, all that remained of he who was Wunyeran.

A little boy peered around the corner of Cross’s wattleand-daub hut, clad only in an adult’s cast-off shirt, and mouthed the very prayers he heard mumbled. He slipped away from the doorway a moment before Cross stumbled through it, and even though it was now dark, and many of his own people would’ve been wary of leaving their campfire, Bobby followed Cross’s assistant to the hut and so saw—his lips parted in horror and wonder—the man straighten the limbs and lay the corpse out flat, in the European way.

Bobby was there again in the morning, learning the curses Cross uttered as he tried to return his deceased friend to his original position. But the limbs no longer moved the way they had, and the body was not as it should be. Cross wept. Cross swore and cursed and sobbed so that his body shook and the sounds came from deep within. Watching, the boy moved his limbs like a dead man, tried that style and so began his mastery of the Deadman Dance.

He was a good man, Dr Cross. But no wonder Wunyeran’s spirit never departed the proper way.

Morning. Soldiers carried Wunyeran up the slope and deep into the shadow of the hill where the rising sun had not reached. They gently laid the blanket-wrapped body upon the ground, and soldiers’ shovels, directed by Menak, cut the earth to make a sharp-edged hollow the size of the oldest Noongar graves.

Menak had them shovel the soil to the southwest corner and, when they stood back, he crouched and carefully shaped it with his hands. Bobby looked at the harbour further down the slope and the hills on the other side; looked from harbour to grave and back again. One echoed the other.

Menak got the soldiers to fetch certain bushes, and he and the Noongar men put these in the grave, and then laid Wunyeran’s body on its side upon this bed of bush, facing the sunrise. Menak pushed soil from the lower, northern side of the grave and it spilled over the body until the grave’s surface sloped gradually for the morning sun to warm it and the cold wind to pass over. It was like a good camping spot, although a small one.

Menak swept the grave with a branch and laid a broken spear upon the smooth surface. Pushed a spear thrower upright into the earth. Made a little fire. He and the other Noongars sang in the smoke, the white men stood with heads bowed, mumbling as the shadow finally receded and sunlight flowed onto the grave so that the flames disappeared and the smoke looked so thin … Everything there and not there, all at once.

They went back to the Captain’s hut, soldiers and Noongars together, and ate ship’s biscuit and a little salt meat.

That boy? Cross asked, seeing him all of a sudden though he’d been there all along. Bobby?

Yeah, Menak said, Wabalanginy mummy daddy they finish. That grave one now? He uncle him.

That was how people said the words, then. Them days.

There were small piles of clothing where the Noongar had been. They had shed their English dress; were gone.

The soldiers had their barracks, the prisoners had theirs. One was of wattle-and-daub, the other of canvas, and although this should have made it the lesser construction it was the prisoners who had erected both under the supervision of William Skelly, and perhaps the tent was the better protection. Skelly thought so. So, it would seem, did some of the blackfellows, since one or two of them would sometimes share its shelter.

No Noongar had slept there for a long time, though. Skelly, for one, didn’t mind, and was glad not to have to listen to the soldiers boasting how their blackfellow friends were ready to share women. He reckoned they lied, and tried not to think about women, anyway. But even a hinge, even drilling or fitting timbers together could bring women to mind.

He was working now, though he’d got himself well out of the rain, and was happy to turn a blind eye to Skelly’s workmates also keeping clear of work when they could. It was Skelly who’d command them when he needed their help. He worked, even in the rain, sheltering in an old oilskin he’d won in a card game with one of the drunken soldiers and then managed to hold on to, despite the man’s protests next day, with the support of many—soldiers and prisoners alike—who’d witnessed it. The oilskin helped, but the rain still reached him so that after a few hours he’d be chilled if he didn’t keep working hard. Might’ve been the rain that made him notice them, as much as anything, since he thought they must surely be very cold, out in this weather. And just the two of them. They’d appeared almost as if they’d dropped with the rain, Menak and that very young boy. They were both in kangaroo-skin cloaks and Skelly, out in the weather himself, noticed how the cloaks were turned fur inward and how large drops of water caught in their hair; the grease they use, he told himself.

Then he realised there were white men trailing behind them. He pushed himself back from the window frame he’d been making, but they didn’t notice him. Menak winked, but never turned to face him, and the heavy-footed men he led just kept walking, a couple of thin horses with their heads held low bringing up the rear. The other men never even saw Skelly, and wouldn’t have said hello to the likes of him even if they had.

He went back to pushing twigs into the rough timbered wall frame he’d made.

Cross joined the commandant to talk with the little group of men who had arrived overland from Cygnet River. Sun-bronzed and foot weary but arriving in persistent rain, they said they’d made good time and come across excellent grazing country. The land awaits development; there is fine hinterland. We had heard of your natives here, they said, and indeed if not for them … and skated over the tensions within their group and how they had become so confused as to their direction. We were helped on our journey, the black people led us here. They are friendly, indeed.

Good grazing country, they said, repeating it among themselves. And they rested, dined and made plans to explore the country all around this port. Land would be granted here, too, they insisted, to those with capital and without need for the purse strings of government. Men like themselves, with initiative and courage. There would be no military outpost and no prisoners but it would be a self-sufficient colony.

Dr Cross had not heard anything of such plans. He would have to leave or stay and consolidate his presence. He declared himself unwell, and retired early.

Bobby Wabalanginy was with Menak and Wooral when they had led the white men into the settlement. They had called on Dr Cross, but could not find him and so they talked with the soldiers and were welcomed. Menak and Wooral let them be, to make themselves known to one another in whatever way they had. Bobby came looking for Dr Cross again the next day. It was mostly young men who came to the huts, not boys, and especially not one as young as Bobby. But Bobby came in, alone.

Where is Dr Cross? he asked a soldier, and the soldier, recognising the boy, tried to explain.

Dr Cross is unwell … We had visitors … They did not lay down to sleep until sunrise this morning.

Then came Dr Keene, one of the visiting expedition party, a medical man like Dr Cross. They shared a name because of that. Dr Keene had a red face; blood vessels rose above the skin of his nose and his breath was like a soldier’s. Oh, you are the boy Bobby? he said. It was not really a question. Dr Cross is unwell, he also said. Could he help? He spoke the same language as Dr Cross, and Bobby knew they were of the same people, but it did not always seem so. Bobby did not really know this man, Doctor, but told him his uncle, someone like a brother for Menak, was sick. Snake bite him. Doctor said I can help, I heal sick men. He was not the one Bobby came for, but he kept on and on wanting to be taken to the sick man and so Bobby took him for a walk saying, Oh I think it was here, or here, oh I dunno now, and they walked and walked and walked but Bobby could not remember where his sick uncle lay. Sorry. He was only a boy, after all.

Could Bobby really trust this stranger, Dr Keene, who grunted and barked when he spoke?

Dr Cross was at his hut later, and Menak joined them as he and Bobby set off, saying he was glad because he had been coming to get Dr Cross, too. Menak easily led the way to where Uncle was and of course then Bobby Wabalanginy admitted he remembered it. But Dr Keene could not come because this time he was the one unwell. Lying on his bed he’d smelled like those soldiers who fell down on the ground from rum-drinking. A group of men sat with Uncle, and two women were at a campfire just a little walk away.

Doctor said he was sorry and he sat beside Uncle with the other men and Menak lay beside the sick man with one hand under his head, comforting him. Seeing the mark of a snake bite on Uncle’s hand and how sick and tired he was, Cross said soft words. I think you know the problem better than me, he said, because I do not think I can help this man. But he bandaged the hand, anyway.

*

Dr Keene came with them the next day, and could only get down on the ground with difficulty; he was a man whose belly overbalanced him and whose legs would rub together as he walked, so he moved with his feet wide apart, rocking like a sailor. He took Cross’s bandage from Uncle’s injured hand, and rubbed the hand vigorously. Vigorously, he said, you must rub it vigorously. He looked at everyone sitting around and again said the hand must be rubbed to take away the poison. But none of them understood this way of healing, and people were crying because this was not as they would do it. Why had Dr Cross brought this man to help? Dr Keene gave Uncle something from a small bottle, and Uncle sat up straight, breathing deeply and casting glances at all the people around him. So it seemed good.

As they walked back to their own huts, Dr Keene talked to Dr Cross angrily. He said these people do not seem to care enough whether the man lives or dies, and his family cannot be bothered to take a little trouble or expend the energy required to heal him. He didn’t seem to care that Bobby trailed along with them some of the way and might be hurt to hear such things.

In the morning Dr Keene again came with Cross to the sick man’s camp. Bobby joined them along the way but when they arrived Cross knew no one there. It surprised him, because the Doctor had told Menak and the others to sit by the patient’s side, give medicine and rub his hand. Once again Keene took off a bandage that was tied very tightly, more on the wrist than the hand. Then Cross followed little Bobby, walking for an hour or more until they reached Menak’s side.

Why, Cross wanted to know, had the sick man been left alone?

Menak told him Uncle would not take the medicine, though they tried and they tried. After a little time he suggested, to reflect the view of those who were closest to Uncle, that the medicine might work good for you people, but it was no good for a Noongar. And my cousins said they would sit with him.

Cross decided to return to the sick man, and Menak and some of the others went with him, moving quickly along a well-worn path. They had not yet reached their destination when a cry—very lonely it sounded—halted them. Menak called out straightaway, and when that was answered everyone but Cross and Keene broke into a run. Stumbling after them, Cross saw a man at the head of an approaching group throw himself to the ground, and the others stop beside him until Menak’s party reached them. By the time Cross and Keene arrived, people were crying and wailing, and already bleeding about the head from hitting and scratching themselves.

Fat Doctor cried out, For the love of God we have no time for this, take us now to the man, we do him no good to dally!

But Cross knelt quietly beside the man lying on the ground and sobbing into the earth and said his name. Menak. And those two men clasped hands. And our Bobby Wabalanginy stood with a hand on each man’s shoulder. Menak’s woman, Manit, noticed, and though she was upset and known for her temper, she gently pulled Bobby away and left the two men to share their sorrow.