Taboo Page 19

  Beryl stood close with her back square to the two men, and peered intently back to the bus.

  ‘Where is . . .’ Dan began, but Beryl answered before he had finished.

  ‘Aunty Nita’s coming now.’ Relief in her voice. They watched the old woman manoeuvring herself down the steps, Kathy and Ruby moving their hands in the space around her, assisting.

  The dogs sprang to Dan; one leaned lightly against his leg, the other stood between his boots.

  Tilly shivered; a shadow crossed the ground, and she looked to the sky. High above, an eagle.

  Nita approached slowly, flanked by her cousins.

  ‘Speak,’ said Milton. ‘She’s blind.’

  ‘Nita,’ said Dan.

  ‘Aunty Nita,’ his brother said.

  ‘Mrs Coolman,’ Dan began again. ‘Welcome.’

  ‘Hello, Mr Horton. And thank you. I guess you don’t want a Welcome to Country then?’

  Dan and his brother smiled nervously, and then Dan spoke up. ‘It is an honour to have you here. Sad as this place must be for you, it has been our home. Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  Now she and Dan shook hands and, when Nita held out her other hand, Malcolm took it greedily. But she did not let go of their hands. The brothers held their uneasy smiles; they did not want to resist, but did not know what to do. They looked at the others; confused, not quite pleading.

  ‘Come closer, Mr Hortons,’ the old woman said. ‘My eyes don’t work so good.’ Shadows flitted across the ground. Clouds. The sun was covered, then brightened again.

  ‘I know you’re not to blame for what happened here all those years ago,’ Nita said. She released her grip.

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘Our grandfather prayed that God would make a property available, and to bring up his family, so . . .’

  ‘I never been here before,’ Nita said. ‘This is my first time, and likely my last too.’

  Milton lifted a hand in the sort of gesture used in a blessing. ‘It’s our homelands, our ancestral country we’re reconnecting with . . . Being here, it’s like an awakening, even if it is a sad place, a very sad place. But we’re walking over ground that our old people . . .’

  ‘God answered our prayers,’ Malcolm said, and Dan continued, ‘God wanted our family to be here. It’s a precious place for us too.’

  Beryl spoke up, ‘That thirteen-year-old girl your granddaddy raped was my granny . . .’

  ‘Great-great-grandmother,’ said Wally, who had finally left the bus.

  ‘Grandmother,’ continued Beryl.

  Nita lifted her chin, turned her head. Listening or sensing the air? ‘What about we move this way a bit. Away from – a building, is it? Maybe some shade? Gotta tree we can sit under, Mr Hortons?’ The little group moved to a nearby tree and stood within its circle of shade. Beyond, light shimmered shallow over a wide span of dry, broken, intricately crossed stalks of grass.

  ‘Your grandfather was killed because . . .’ Nita began.

  ‘Our grandfather’s brother,’ interrupted Malcolm. ‘There were three brothers.’

  ‘One of your grandfather’s brothers was killed because he was messing around with teenage Aboriginal girls. The wrong girls. Girl. That’s why he got stabbed, that’s why he got killed. Assassination. That was the law.’

  Dan gave small, quick nods; was impatient to speak. ‘The information board, at the Peace Park, we wanted it to be worded from both sides . . . My wife was working with them, and we would like it so no one is offended.’

  ‘This is a massacre site,’ said Nita.

  ‘That’s a word that hurts us . . . There were lives lost, yes, absolutely . . .’

  ‘Raped; and so then he had to be killed. The old people already gave them other women. Marry them in, see; they was gunna be the go-betweens, not this one . . .’

  ‘She might . . .’

  ‘Not her; she was wrong way for them. The other women were given, were gunna bring them together, them and their kids, see, but she was promised other way and they didn’t know your people thought every woman was theirs to take . . .’

  ‘The police came, and shot four culprits,’ said Dan. ‘That’s documented.’

  ‘Shot more than four!’

  ‘Our grandfather’s other brother, went out on a horse to try and talk with the people . . .’

  ‘Went with a gun!’

  ‘They tackled him. He fired a shot and killed one, and they kept coming, kept coming and he fired a shot and killed another one, and then they fled . . . They left the area and apparently after that there was never any more conflict . . .’

  ‘Bullshit. Nice if you can believe it, nasty even like that. You listening to yourself, mister? They burnt the camps – there was a baby, and they took him away to be raised. That’s this one’s’ – she indicated Wally – ‘ancestor. And two sisters, one of them our old granny or great-great and . . . I know for a fact that white people poisoned the waterholes, and they took turns going out with the gun . . .’

  ‘Can’t see that gun on display in the museum and have a Peace Park,’ added Wilfred.

  ‘Shot down like rabbits,’ said Milton.

  ‘We took that gun down from display years ago. It’s gone. I’m sorry.’ Dan dropped his head.

  ‘White people won’t accept, they won’t acknowledge . . .’

  ‘My wife said that.’ Dan looked at his brother. ‘Janet.’ He looked back at Nita. ‘She was in the Historical Society. She’s the one made them put the gun away, that it was wrong.’

  The little group was quiet.

  ‘All jokes aside, white man robbed the black man ever since he put foot on the ground. Ever since then black man’s getting punished,’ Nita said vehemently.

  ‘There are so many stories, on both sides.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nita. ‘True.’

  ‘Things happened, and it’s terribly hard to come up with the truth . . . but we’ve been working on the Peace Park, and your people want . . .’

  ‘Not our people, we never been in these talks about the Peace Park. Them ones weren’t the original family, they’re the pretend people,’ said Milton.

  ‘There’s a lot of them about these days,’ added Beryl.

  ‘We seen what you written.’

  ‘But you have joined us now, we know who to talk with and we’ll tell them . . .’ said Malcolm.

  ‘My dream,’ began Dan. He looked at Malcolm. ‘Our dream is, because we’re Christians and don’t like bickering and bitterness . . .’

  Nita snorted.

  ‘We’re all people,’ Dan persisted. ‘We’re all descended from Adam and Eve. Let us all be together, as people . . . Like, it’s history; mistakes were made, and we’re very sorry about it all. We wish it wasn’t like that. Let us get together and reconciled so we can enjoy each other . . .’

  ‘Like your great-uncle did with our girl?’ muttered Milton.

  ‘My dream, and I’m dead keen,’ Dan continued, and Wilfred wrinkled his brow. ‘I’m dead keen for there to be a Peace Park, a memorial plaque, for us to be together to open a place in recognition of the Aboriginal folk that lost their lives here. I want to see it happen, I really do, and so did Janet . . .’

  Silence.

  Nita broke it. ‘I said I’ll never come here. But then again I do like to walk where my family been. Hundreds and hundreds of generations of them been here, until not long ago really.’

  ‘Please feel free to have a look around,’ said Dan, waving his hand, his eyes shifting from his guests.

  ‘Well don’t wanna look at the house, or that bed where the killer slept,’ said Beryl. ‘I’m sticking around here.’

  ‘I’m gunna go down the creek see his old grave again,’ Gerrard told his brother, and he went off alone, leaving the track and crossing th
e dry slope. The wind had dropped again, and if he’d known how he might have heard more than only his own footsteps crackling the grass, and felt the soil adjusting incrementally to the imprint of more than just his solid, boot-shod feet, here, today.

  The group under the tree splintered, moved apart as if its holding centre had collapsed, whether that was the old brothers, Gerrard, Nita or some other altogether, and people roamed in singles, in twos and threes, around the barely groomed ruin and wreckage that represented this farm’s history.

  *

  In the shearing shed Tilly smelled dust and sheep, long fleeced and gone. It was a very grand shearing shed, with massive, patchily rendered stone walls, rough timber floorboards and a very high roof. It was also untidy; drums, boxes, hessian bags and various implements were heaped in dark corners, and coils of wire and half-filled boxes and bins spilled onto the floor. A corner of the big room was fenced with timber railing, and a door there, if opened, would allow through only ghostly sheep. On the wall, a horse yoke hung, battered and torn, covered with a thick layer of dust. Closer still to Tilly, a large noose was suspended in the air. Light spilled through the huge doorway, dissolving its edges, and yet the corners of the building, like the distant roof timbers overhead, were hard to discern.

  Tilly sensed movement behind her and, still blinded from the wash of sunlight, she turned and saw an old woman clawing toward her from the darkness, speaking in the old tongue, calling her name.

  ‘Granny Nita, you scared me.’

  ‘Thought I was a ghost? Plenty of them around here, Tilly, but they’re not gunna hurt you.’

  And then there was a crowd in the room.

  *

  The barbeque sizzled in one corner of the old shearing shed. The brothers had a number of chairs – plastic and canvas – and a tablecloth covered a table. A long board balanced across several tins of paint against a wall was further seating. There was salt and tomato sauce, sliced bread, paper plates and bottles of cordial. The barbeque smoke drifted out through the open doorways and window.

  ‘Gerry,’ said Dan. He had taken the twin aside.

  ‘Gerald,’ this twin said.

  ‘Gerald, I want to present your people with some grinding stones we’ve collected over the years. Do you think that will be alright?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Gerald. ‘I’ll check.’

  Discreetly asked Nita, Wilfred, Milton and Kathy. ‘Well,’ he heard, ‘they can put what they got on the table. Doesn’t meant we’ll accept it.’

  Gerald reported this to Dan, who nodded his understanding.

  They ate, together.

  *

  Dan stood near the doorway, light eating away at him like acid. He held up a shaking hand to gain their attention, and placed a bundle on the table. Something wrapped in an old bag. They could read the faded lettering: superphosphate . . . something.

  ‘I just feel it’s been a wonderful time together. I’m sure my brother Malcolm . . .’ Here, his voice broke. He looked at the ground, swallowed; continued: ‘Malcolm feels the same. How good to chat with you, how we love you could come on our property knowing its history.

  ‘As for me, Kokanarup, this place, it’s very special because it’s my whole life since I was a baby . . . I was born here – well, the hospital in town – and my family . . . Well, it’s a special place for us too.

  ‘What I’ve got, now, you can have a look . . . You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to, but over all the years we’ve been here . . . No. Not here, the stones come from upriver, really, that property we bought late sixties, sixty-seven, thereabouts, since about then . . . Over the years, what we’ve found, what I’ve got right here . . .’

  It was uncomfortable for everyone, how nervous and emotional he was.

  ‘My wife was very keen on keeping them, and I’m very keen – now that she’s passed on – your ancestors were the original people in the area and this is part of them.

  ‘I feel it would be absolutely lovely if you people could take this as a memorial, back home, to remind you that your ancestors had these and so I’m going to unwrap this now and you’ll be able to have a . . .’

  His hands were shaking. Unwrapped, a large bowl of fist-sized stones. Smooth. Different colours: grey, brown, black, almost white.

  ‘These grinding stones? Our family picked these up over the years, mainly along the river down at this spot. I can take you there. We loved being in the bush. Please, at least have a look . . .’

  This circle of people moved in from the walls, left chairs scattered across the floor, became a tight group, shoulder-to-shoulder and two- or three-deep around the table. The stones had small hollows, sharp edges, so smooth and comforting they asked for human hands.

  ‘Because my wife’s gone,’ Dan was repeating himself, offering variations of what he’d already said. ‘She loved keeping historical stuff – I feel, in my heart, that I’d like to see you folk, because you know you’re descended from people who had these . . . and I don’t know if those helping with the Peace Park . . . It’s up to you, they’re here for you if you feel you can take them.’

  They hefted the stones, caressed them, passed them one hand to another. Remembered that crevice in the ocean shallows, stones this size, rocking in the ocean swell. But these were chipped and worked by human hand, carried here. They were warm.

  ‘I’d like you to take them,’ Dan said. ‘Like I said, most of these we got upriver, but there’s other . . . sites I guess you call them, I’d like to show you. Easy to get to, close, you can bring the bus . . .’

  Wilfred interrupted. ‘We might give a couple to the town’s Historical Society for the museum. You return ’em to us, we lend ’em the museum.’

  The old men – Dan, Wilfred, Milton – piled into Dan’s vehicle. Malcolm stayed behind, and the rest followed in the bus. They drove down the slope, back the way they’d come upon entering the property, and came to a stop only a few hundred metres away, beside the riverbed. Dan led them across the sandy bed, and onto a sheet of rock. He stood beside the little brimming well he had previously shown the twins and Tilly.

  ‘You already know this place?’ Beryl realised.

  As they were about to drive off another vehicle arrived; Doug. He pulled up beside the driver’s door of his father’s vehicle, and must’ve raised his voice because some of the passengers heard him say, ‘Showing them our sites? Good on you, Dad.’

  He looked at Gerry. ‘Thought I’d have a look at that car of Mum’s.’ Dan blanched. Doug looked again at Gerry, speaking softly now, ‘Not trespassing, am I?’ Laughed.

  Dan drove on, the bus followed on past Doug’s wide smile.

  The rutted track ceased after a kilometre or so at another water source, a small soak among reeds and with a low stone wall on three sides. ‘Aborigines must’ve helped them build this one, maybe. I never thought about that until lately,’ Dan told them.

  He led them along a narrow dirt path that wound between trees to the base of a sloping sheet of rock. Wilfred gave the old name for rock waterholes, and asked the twins to lift each of the two slabs of stone that lay on the rock. Beneath, each deep, barrel-sized rock hole held water, clear and cool. Tilly, too, sipped from her cupped palm.

  ‘It’s symbolic,’ the old farmer said, ‘that we do this.’

  They drove back to the homestead. It was agreed that tomorrow, before the Peace Park opening, they would visit the Hortons’ other property, further upriver, where the stones had been collected. Dan had some other artefacts they might be interested in too.

  As they drove away from a waving Dan, Milton said, ‘Nice to get those stones, but if he give us the farm, that would really mean something!’

  NAIVE

  Half an hour the other side of Kepalup, they turned onto a gravel road and, after a time, a road smaller again, past a small office, and came to halt at a gazebo constru
ction in the middle of a camping area that held a basin, running water and a small gas barbeque. Fruit and cold drinks were laid out on the table. The bus would just get bogged on the sandy track to the fishing spot, so Gerald would ferry everyone the ten minutes there. It would take two, maybe three trips. The cab seated five, though more could fit, and there was room on the tray. Those left behind as the crowded vehicle rumbled away waited around the rough, wooden table. Some took out cigarettes, some their phones.

  ‘That was lovely of Dan, giving us those stones,’ said Angela.

  A man astride a lawn mower rushed around the park and campsites. The mower spat dry grass and weeds, snarled closer and closer in its loops. It circled the gazebo. The driver stared at them, but looked away each time his gaze was held.

  ‘How long before Gerry gets back?’

  ‘Hello, just passing through are we?’ The woman was lean, middle-aged and sun-lined. She wore jeans, boots, a denim shirt, a wide-brimmed hat. Her blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail. No one had seen her approach.

  Wally and Ruby got to their feet. ‘Yes,’ said Wally.

  ‘I’m Ruby.’ Ruby had her hand out. The woman shook hands grudgingly. ‘We’re just waiting for the motor to come back, take us fishing at Lake Parndi.’ Ruby tilted her head in the direction of the lake.

  ‘How long will that be?’

  ‘Not long.’

  ‘Because, you know, really, this place is only for people staying here.’

  No one spoke for long seconds.

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, well . . . I’m sorry, but we do have a business to run, you know.’

  ‘We’ve been coming here for years,’ said Beryl, ‘since Mr Wellstead was just a boy.’

  ‘Well that may be – though you look a lot younger than him – but anyway we bought the business from Mr Wellstead nine months ago.’

  There was another silence.

  ‘We’re the Traditional Owners, you know. This is my country,’ said Gerrard.