That Deadman Dance (20 page)

Another whale season

Bobby Wabalanginy—a boy beneath a brow of granite, just a boy sheltering from a wintery westerly wind—watches whales and boats so far away they might be toys and playthings.

Kongk Chaine and the rest push the whaleboat onto the water, splashing, leaping in as it jumps from the sandy shore. Kongk at the stern, steering, the others pulling at their oars, finding a rhythm. Bobby picks them out: his uncles Wooral and Menak and Wabakoolit, and Killam and Skelly and Jak Tar, too, right up front and ready to throw his spear. His harpoo-oon (in his mind Bobby stretches the word out, makes it long and—closing quickly—sharp). The boat speeds past the rocky point, past the island close to shore, and heads for the misty forest of whale spouts out at sea.

There’s a ship out beyond the whales (who they on that ship?). Three whaleboats leave it, and immediately its sails fill and it moves away to head off the whale pod.

They will help us, thinks Bobby, watching. His limbs mime the rowing. His back arches. He’s with his family and friends, rowing, and he’s with the whales, too. The ship will help keep them whales in the bay. Keep them at bay. Oh, too many whales.
(More whales, Jak always says with a laugh, than peas in a pod!)

One boat heading from shore, three boats approaching from seaside.

They’ll drive them to us, thinks Bobby, lightly leaping up and down with excitement.

Already, one of the ship’s boats has fastened to a whale. Bobby sees the boat lean to the water and thinks it will capsize, but then it rights itself, the men lift their oars into the air and bend low, and the boat skips away.

Nantucket slay ride
, Bobby has heard men say. (Where’s Nantucket? What’s a slay?)

Another boat fastens to a whale, suddenly speeds toward the horizon. Bobby sees the bucket thrown overboard, the sail flung into the water but the boat doesn’t slow down.

Our boat, Bobby thinks, hasn’t even reached the whales, but nearly, nearly, nearly … The many remaining whales continue, seemingly unhurried, closer to shore, closer to the whaleboat.

The ship also approaching.

Bobby turns to see the foreign ship’s third whaleboat accelerate and disappear from sight behind the island. He returns his gaze: the ship has sailed between our whaleboat and the whale pod. He sees men waving angry fists. Can only imagine the curses they shout.

Galeed.

A whaleman’s word: galleyed.

The whales turn away.

Save one.

So: the pod of whales heading out to sea, the ship, and between it and the shore a single whale, a single whaleboat and Jak Tar standing ready to throw.

Bobby, up on the headland, throws an imaginary harpoon and sees the whale dive, Jak Tar fall and the boat lean over on its keel, one gunnel almost under water, and then speed off in pursuit of the ship and the whale pod. The boat skimming the surface, white water at its bow, men doubled up and leaning forward, oars in the air.

Oh! Like everybody—whales and whalers—just wanna be together. One happy mob. One big family.

The other whaleboat appears from behind the island, rowing back into the bay. Musta come unstuck, thinks Bobby, then realises our whaleboat’s heading—oh so fast!—straight for it. And now here comes yet another of the Yankee whaleboats speeding back from out near the horizon and the white wave at its bow, its skipping speed, shows their whale has still not tired.

Excited, Bobby stands tall as he can and dances from foot to foot as he watches two charging whaleboats rapidly converging on the slow one—the one powered only by men desperately working their oars. Even the mother ship seems slow and clumsy and as likely as not to be hit.

The whale pod is swimming faster now. Leaving the bay their misty exhalations, caught by the wind and flung with rain and sea spray, are barely visible.

The Yankees lean back on their oars, and the steersman stands tall and our whaleboat wants to go one way but the whale pulling it musta turned the other way so …

Bobby sees the crash, expects to hear the collision but it never comes, there’s only wind in his ears, rustling vegetation, the crashing surf as Kongk Chaine’s whaleboat rides over the stern of the other—the steersman leaps a moment before—and the boat rises into the air and men spill like seed pods, and then the boat is falling, seems headed beneath the water … Wallows, the bow rises. The boat bobbing on the waves.

Cut the line! Bobby calls out. But they’ve done that already, haven’t they? Because there’s the boat, and heads in the sea also bobbing. Bouncing on the balls of his feet, Bobby sees the men in the whaleboat offer their hands to the men swimming in the sea, and Chaine shouting orders.

*

Wooral shed his clothes, and the dying sun lit the drops of water on his dark and greased skin. He shook his head and his hair sprung up in exclamation marks all round his face. He laughed, teeth bright in his beard. Look at him! Full with ocean, wind and rain, the energy of it, the size and the strength of the whale! Wooral can hardly swim, and yet he speared and seized a whale right out at sea.

Killam was sullen as ever. As soon as the boat was hauled onto the sand he, with trousers rolled to just below his knees and plucking his shirt away from his shoulders the way he did, went looking—Bobby knew—for his grog.

Even in this failing light Skelly ran his hands over the bow of their whaleboat, looking for what damage had been done. He could not believe their luck or the strength of its timbers, and said so repeatedly, limping around the boat, admiring it, patting it like a pet.

Menak stood apart like he so often did, this time between two smaller fires Wooral lit for him in addition to the one they all shared. Only Jock seemed able to get through to Menak, make him smile like a human being these days. The dog yapping and wagging his stump of a tail, ignoring Wooral’s entreaties, waited for the signal to jump into Menak’s arms.

Only Wooral and Jak Tar looked to Bobby, only they stopped to listen to what he’d seen. Jak Tar put his arm around Bobby’s shoulders. You’ll be wiv us soon, he said. But his eyes were searching beyond Bobby, looking for his woman.

Chaine said, Six men, seven. And a boy. We can barely man a whaleboat, not really enough.

He looked to Menak, but Menak turned away.

Killam came walking back to the fire, cup in his hand.
Galleyed
, he kept repeating. They have no right. British Law stands here. The scars on his back were stitches binding his anger. A man would be a fey idiot, he went on, to fish while foreigners can enter our ports unchallenged …

But Chaine believed they were right to have picked up those Yankees, helped them back to the ship. He wanted to have a talk with this captain, too. They might work together, we could help them top up their ship with whale oil. See how they are for fresh meat, and whether they like kangaroo. His men had a lot to learn yet, he’d seen how the others were so quick to fix to their whales. He thought the boy might be trained up to take steering oar. He had more important things to attend to himself, other ventures.

Killam swore and turned on his heel.

*

The Yankee ship anchored in the shelter between island and headland. Beyond, the sea was all shifting troughs of darkness and the inside of ocean bleeding at each crest.

Furling its sails, the ship seemed to withdraw into itself even as it sent a smaller boat to shore and as the Yankee—Brother Jonathon, Chaine gave him the same name as the one before—spilled onto the sand Chaine was splashing there, reaching out a hand in welcome. Oh loud voices and laughter, these two men. Chaine, arms around the shoulders of Brother Jonathon, led him to his shelter high in the dunes while Jonathon’s men drifted away with Skelly and Wooral to the cooking camp and their rum. Killam was nowhere to be seen, Menak was camped in the dunes near where the creek halted, barred from the sea, and Jak Tar had slipped away to join Binyan, Bobby’s sister.

Jak had made many visits with Bobby to talk with the family of Binyan and her deceased promised-husband’s brother, himself a very old and frail man. Jak had taken axes and knives, a sheep; he’d taken sugar and rum and flour. He continued to tongue-stumble over the words Bobby taught him. He could not keep his eyes off the girl, but she stayed apart. He made a dress for her from an old shirt, and she put it on in his presence. Possess her completely, he told himself. Yes, he would.

So Bobby found himself standing by the boat, on the sand, at the sea’s edge. Stranded. He’d studied along with the Chaine’s own children back at King George Town, slept under the one roof; he should surely stay with Chaine now.

Geordie Chaine had set his camp apart from the others, and made a shelter of oiled canvas draped over a whale jawbone he’d had the men drag from further in the dunes—God alone knows how it had got there. He found it more than tolerable to stand tall under a roof of canvas, and have plenty of dry space behind him still. He kept a small fire burning at the front.

I’m new to this game, he told Brother Jonathon, thinking the man young to be a whaling captain. You’re younger than I, he went on, but I must learn from you. The man frowned, smiled. Even young Bobby knew sweet-talking Chaine was flattering the captain.

You’re one boat short, you need men …

And so the two men toasted their agreement with rum and the whale jawbone, arching against the stars, gleamed with firelight.

A few more whales and Captain Brother Jonathon would have all the oil he could carry. That wouldn’t take long, not with three boats working between ship and shore. Chaine could have all the bone; there was still a market for the fine structures from their mouths, stays and bustles for the fashionable ladies. Captain Jonathon accepted Chaine’s assurances that the natives told him countless whales entered the bay this time of year. Once he was ready to head for home Captain Jonathon would offer Chaine equipment he no longer required. All the more room onboard ship for oil then. Chaine had a list of what he wanted: try-pot, whaleboat, harpoons, lances, line …

The try-pot floated to shore, as unsteady and strange in the water as a top hat Bobby had seen floating in the harbour at King George Town. Chaine’s team waded out to it and Bobby could not help but dive into the water, listen to their muffled voices and hear his own heartbeat loud. He rolled his back, being a whale. It was whale blubber kept him warm.

Over the sand he skipped, barely touching but helping roll the try-pot out onto the rocky point, just in the lee of a small granite headland which sloped gently at its base and touched the ocean, calm in the solid shelter. Killam and Skelly built low walls for a furnace beneath the try-pot, then larger walls and a roof to keep the rain off, stop it spoiling the whale oil. Jak Tar, noting the boy’s interest, explained it all to him. Chaine reckoned on melting down a lot of blubber. His grin became a grimace. He told his men how it would be: whales would arrive on the most wintry of days, days when they’d struggle just to get the boats out from shore through the surf; men would fall overboard, get seasick, harpoon one another as soon as a whale; mountains of ocean would rise between boat and whale; rain would bucket down, spill into and spoil the oil, kill the furnace; and always, men would want more rum.

Realism, not pessimism: good planning meant anticipating what might go wrong, and hardened the resolve.

He talked it through with Mrs Chaine, and Bobby listened. Whaling was better than attempting to work this land with its topsy-turvy seasons and poor soil, and there’d be trouble with the natives, farming. The best land was their best land, too.

And they are so many more than we.

Bobby heard his words, and had repeated them to himself. And said, That’s true, too: we are.

Whaling was better than arguing with everyone in King George Town, Chaine moaned. And it was easy enough enticing young blackfellas to help.

True again. Menak and Wooral had welcomed those curious few who came to the camp their first few days here and Bobby had them laughing in next to no time, showing them the pitch he was spreading across a boat’s hull under Skelly’s instructions. They carried some of the sticky stuff away when they left, holding it gracefully in a curve of bark and careful not to let it spill. Took some knives and axes, too.

Chaine said he’d try his luck this winter, then maybe bring Mrs Chaine and the children out this way. Set up a proper house. Who knows, he might be able to persuade some of these whalers to call here rather than King George Town’s harbour. It’d be a damn sight easier for them sailing from here, especially with summer’s prevailing easterlies.

But Bobby never knew how Chaine’s mind, his plans and dreams, ran away from all of them.

*

Late in the night, a yellow moon appearing in the sky from further around the long curve of silver beach, Bobby stood on the sand, whalebones beneath his feet, whalebones in the dunes at his back. He turned, saw Chaine’s fire at the crest of a dune, behind it the arc of a great jawbone silhouetted against the stars and his sleepy mind saw whales rising and rolling, following a trail from way out in the ocean to the right of where this moon and the sun also rises. Whales butting into the wind the way a sail cannot go, and spouting bubbles and spray and scribbles of white water like hordes of older brothers.

All them Brother Jonathons came from that way, too, from the ocean horizon somewhere.

Bobby saw the whale spouts sunlit on the grey sea, showing like blossoms, and flowers were appearing, too, all across the dunes behind him, the undulating land beyond. Whales came, and creeks rushed to the sea to meet them; kangaroos put their backs to the wind and their heads inland, toward sunrise; frogs rose from the ground, pulses calling.

Diving into the ocean today, Bobby heard the whales singing. They sang for him.

Glistening

Well, Bobby was happy to be back playing with Christine and Christopher Chaine; happy even doing lessons. You know … If it was writing, one of them would hide another’s chalk or pen; if it was reading aloud, the others would be asking questions, or correcting them. Or might whistle, eat a lemon even, so the reader’s mouth went funny and no way would the words come out right.

There were games with a ball. Games with cards. Games with a spinning top, with bones, with rope. Bobby knew a game of throwing spears at a rolling disc of bark, and games with string, but the Chaine children had a hoop. Just the edge of one plane of a circle, it was all open air inside. Christine spun the hoop around her wrist, threw it in the air, and caught it again. All this Bobby could do, too, and run with it spinning on a short stick. Christopher said it was a girl’s game and refused to play. He went to his books and his model ships, the magnifying glass and the pins that held his dead insects. Bobby delighted in the models, but they were delicate things, as Christopher explained, taking one from his hand. The magnifying glass was also a wonder, the lines and whorls of your skin like tree trunks or even some rocks he knew, and the tiny circle of sun you could draw with it and use to make fire. But it was precious, too, and fragile, and the only one that Christopher had. There was no other like it here. Christopher cut leaves from trees, flowers, too, and hung them to dry or placed them inside his books.

Christine spun the hoop around her ankle, one leg going up and down. She put it around her waist and moved her hips around and around in circles, and when her arms went up high, her cheeks flushed with concentration, she made Bobby think of those dancers at Close-by-island, the young women around the whale.

They played hide-and-seek, just the two of them. At first Bobby hid behind doors, under a table, or ran outside. But he struggled to find Christine, and too late found she was hiding beneath the bed or among the bedclothes, or standing up straight in among hanging dresses and coats … When Bobby hid, Christopher never found him, but with Christine he would come out into the open as she approached because it was good to laugh, to lose and let Christine be the winner.

In among the bedclothes, or among hanging dresses and coats when their bare skin touched that of the other, or he felt the warmth of her body leaning against him, Bobby felt confused and excited.

Christine was curious. You go naked, Bobby, when you’re away from here?

Well, yes, but he never even thought.

The girls and women, too?

He taught her the words
mert
, the male thing;
tert
, female. Down at the river, by the welling spring and still so far from the sea, he sang her songs of ocean and air. The song to the whales: carry me far; the song to the dolphins: carry them to me; the song of the soft down on the fairy penguin’s breast: comfort us. Bobby’s voice, soft, almost like a whisper but imbued with something brimming, some great depth.

He taught her the word for kiss. There was a song, too, he said, that his old grandfather taught him, long gone now but everybody sang it, they all sang it now. He was up on a hilltop, watching his girlfriend run away with another man, a young man:
boonjining
, Bobby sang, lips pouting and tongue tip just moving between his teeth as he made the words,
boonj, boonj, boonjining.

Christine learned the word, if not the song, learned to make her lips move outwards, make that kissing pout. They sang the song together, faces close, lips reaching out.

Christine met Bobby down at the pool when he had been away from the homestead and was glistening with the cold, dark water before he dried and put on his Chaine clothes. Jak Tar had a little hut there where Bobby left his good clothes and some other things.

There were always games, so many games.

Christine did not hear Bobby knocking when she was at her bath, and he came in the door and there she was, flushed and glistening, too.

They found one another, glistening.

Another time, he hardly knocked and rushed in almost at the same time but it was Mrs Chaine in the tub, near the fire, with her hair up and her mottled skin pink and glowing. Her eyes widened and she crossed her arms across her chest looking straight into his eyes, hard. Bobby backed away, closed the door softly.

*

Binyan joined Jak Tar in his hut at Kepalup, came with Manit and Menak, who took away the gifts Jak provided: the exotica of clothing, the utility of axes and knives and glass, the supplies of food. He made a hut not far from a spring which ran into the river, the other side of which Skelly had erected a rough pen for Chaine’s sheep. The next time Manit and Menak arrived the old woman walked right past Binyan, stood very close to Jak Tar and told him straight to keep sheep away from that water. No hut near tears welling, he thought she said, confused. Manit and Menak called Binyan away, and together they laid reeds and rushes and leaves all around where the spring issued from the rocks. To please them Jak Tar built a rough fence of bushes each side of the trickle of water, and around the spring itself. He wondered why he bothered; Menak’s eyes passed over Jak Tar as if he were not there. When they left he let the sheep in to drink again.

Binyan took the sheep away, and Jak Tar could not find her for days. Angry as he was pursuing her, he found himself apologising soon as he found her. Chaine never noted their absence, and yes, it seemed one sheep could be spared every now and then.

Jak showed her how to milk the cow. Knelt beside her and together their hands worked the teats. He sprayed her with milk, and they sucked the liquid from each other’s fingers. Binyan made the cow, and the milking of it, her responsibility. The very early mornings were no trouble for her, she would stake the animal out and move it during the day, telling Jak that it looked at her with those big eyes asking like a child that could not speak.

So Chaine had got himself two workers for the price of one, or less than that because Jak Tar worked for not much more than his keep, and shelter from the law. Binyan could shepherd sheep without him, and so more often than not she went alone with the sheep for a day while Jak worked on an old whaleboat Chaine had salvaged. Jak thought that once done, he’d slide it in the downriver side of that stony barrier—which in a way worked a bit like a lock in the rivers at home—and sail it around to the whaling grounds.

No way did Jak want Binyan shepherding sheep all the way to the whaling grounds at Close-by-island; let Skelly do that on his own, or find someone else to help him. Skelly’d take a black woman any time he could. If Jak had his way he wouldn’t even be going to the whaling grounds, but Chaine said sail the boat there soon as it was completed, and wanted him away from the homestead. Chaine’s wife and daughter couldn’t be expected to put up with seeing a white man living like man and wife with the natives. So be it. Jak would go, but he was taking Binyan in the boat with him, and Bobby, too, come to that. They’d be all the hands he’d need. Let Chaine and his missus fret all they like.

Oh, he fairly puffed himself up sometimes, did Jak Tar. Thought he could take on the world. He sewed clothes for Binyan from canvas, using a sailor’s skills. He wanted her clothed properly, and undressed for his eyes only. And whatever he thought, for Binyan it was something novel and exotic, to drape herself in cloth, and gave her a greater power over the man.

Word was Killam was already at the whaling grounds, having learned a few tricks from a Chinaman. He reckoned they’d have a fine vegetable garden ready this season for any Yankee or even Froggy whalers that turned up. Skelly’d be there also by the time Jak Tar arrived.