Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea (13 page)

Although the killing of the local fauna is an age-old method for filling the empty spaces in your stomach I've decided that I won't be a party to it any longer and I am going to become a vegetarian. But there isn't a lot of choice in the culinary shithole that is commonly referred to as the store. There are withered lettuce and tomatoes and potatoes and onions sprouting green shoots. In the dried foods there is Deb instant mashed potato. And in the canned food range there are baked beans which I have been eating for the past week, my guts haven't let me forget it either. So I am heading off to the store to see if I can convince the manager to be adventurous and widen the paltry selection on the shelves. Mummy and Theresa Anne think it's a waste of time and I should just shut up and eat meat like the rest of them, but I'm going to give it a try.

Getting in to see store manager is not an easy task. I thought I'd be able to slip unseen up the stairs with the ‘No Entry Staff Only' sign on it but my way is barred by the big bovine bookkeeper who, by the look of the car keys in her hand is off on an errand. She is married to one of the schoolteachers but speculation about her and store manager abound.

‘He's veery busy,' she enunciates slowly with a big frown on her face. She's only been here for a short while and like the uneducated masses thinks black people are all deaf and stupid with a limited understanding of English. This isn't my first encounter with her.

‘Wot?' I say with what I hope to be my most dull and vacant stare. I'm going to toy with this one like a cat toys with a mouse.

‘Bizzy,' she says a bit louder. ‘He reeeeely bizzy. He caaarn't seeee ennny wun.'

I frown and tilt my head to one side like I'm trying to fathom what she is saying. She is getting uncomfortable and shifts from one foot to the other, her mouth twisted in concentration.

‘No go,' she says pointing to the stairs.

I nod. Her fat arse wobbles out the door and in an instant I'm up the stairs two at a time. There is a window right next to the locked door but store manager doesn't see me as he sits leering at some calendar girl with big tits. I bang on the door.

‘Go away,' he yells. He obviously knows that it's not the bookkeeper because she has a key and wouldn't need to knock. I bang again.

‘Go away,' he yells louder.

I bang louder again.

‘Fuck orf,' he bellows.

A crowd of curious onlookers is gathering at the foot of the stairs, their shopping forgotten. ‘
Murrantani
won't let you in,' says a voice from the now swelling ranks. Obviously I'm not the first to attempt to breach the citadel. I fantasise for a few seconds about the building bursting into flames while everyone flees and leaves him to his fate, his fat arse glued to the chair and his eyes glued to big tits.

‘Open this fucking door!' I scream at the top of my lungs. I'm not used to being spoken to like this and I'm a bit pissed off that everyone has to put up with a prick like him.

Silence from within as he realises he's not dealing with someone from the downtrodden masses while downstairs everyone is holding their breaths and watching me. I hear fumbling at the lock and the door swings open to reveal Mr Store Manager himself. I've never seen him up close before, only in the distance when he's stood at the top of the stairs looking at us doing our shopping like we're strange beasts in a zoo or when I've seen him mowing his lawn at his unit over in Forestry. I am expecting to be told to bugger orf to my face but he invites me in. I shoot
a quick glance down the stairs at the surprised upturned faces, I feel like giving them the Queen's royal wave.

I am seated opposite our fine friend who has placed himself in such a way that his line of vision takes in a continuous sweep of my crotch to my breasts. His eyes briefly flicker to mine when I speak of ginseng roots and marinated mushrooms but apart from that I have a feeling that nothing I say is sinking in – there doesn't appear to be any sign of life in those eyes, intelligent or otherwise. They are cold like a shark's. He clears his throat and I wait expectantly for something to be said but am sadly disappointed as his eyes go back to doing laps of my body and his fingers go back to their twiddling of the handle of his cup with ‘Dad' printed on it. I am momentarily distracted by the thought that he must have impregnated someone and has offspring somewhere out there to have a cup like that. I hope for the sake of humanity that he/she/they took after their mother. But I can see I'm wasting my time and stand up to leave.

‘I can't do anything special for you unless you do something special for me,' he says in a surprisingly soft and melodic voice. This is so weird, the voice and the person just don't fit together. I sit down again. I am intrigued.

‘What do you mean?' I ask, as he focuses on my right nipple. I know perfectly well what he means, I just want to hear that voice again. It's uncanny, like he's moving his mouth like a ventriloquist's doll while someone else
is saying the words. He is about to speak when the door bursts open and the bookkeeper enters, glaring at the both of us. I thought I would have heard her lumbering up the stairs but I didn't.

‘We're organising something special,' I say before she can open her mouth. Her face hardens and flinging her keys on her desk she dumps her arse into her chair and angrily looks at her computer screen. I take this as my cue to vacate the office and leaving him to big tits and his cup with ‘Dad' on it I bounce down the stairs to where the whole store is waiting expectantly to hear what happened, and where Aunty Marie Evelyn is waiting to clip me around the ears for not taking her with me.

My Aunty Bertha and Uncle Fabian live over the road with their daughter Evelyn, her husband Solo Nangamu and their three kids. Mummy explains to me that Evelyn and Solo are wrong skin for each other and should never have gotten married because even though Solo comes from Elcho Island, they are brother and sister in the kinship system. It's a really touchy situation with them living there and there are always fights between Solo and Evelyn's family who totally disapprove but are putting up with Solo for Evelyn's sake.

Mummy wants to go and do some weaving with aunty so she warns me not to put my foot in my mouth and say anything about Evelyn and Solo, and off we go. Uncle is carving a
pukamani
pole with his son Fabian Jr and I sit there and watch them shaping it with chisels and machetes.
I tell them to be careful as machetes come perilously close to fingers and toes but they think it's a big joke and chop the wood a hair's breadth closer than before just to freak me out. I can't watch this caper so I head back to mummy, Aunty Bertha, and Evelyn and Solo's eldest kid who I notice has something small and pink wriggling in his hands. It's a tiny little joey.

‘Where's its mother?' I ask and aunty points to the big pot bubbling on the stove. Oh, of course, how silly of me. I stare at the pot before asking what they feed the joey. Aunty mouths the word
karekamini
and gives the hand signal for ‘nothing' and then goes on with her weaving and chatting to my mum. So no one is feeding the joey. They are just going to let the poor little thing die. I look back at the kid only to see that he's crammed the little mite in his mouth with its top half sticking out. Hoping that the joey does a big crap in the kid's mouth I lunge at him to grab it from his gob when my mum tells me to sit down and mind my own business. ‘Dat one him not yours,' she growls and gives me one of her withering looks. This doesn't sound right because if everyone shares everything then the kid doesn't own the joey at all. We all do. I tell mummy this and she and aunty exchange raised eyebrows like they are dealing with a simpleton and go on weaving. The kid now has the joey's head in his mouth. He pulls it out and smirks at me before twirling it around by its back leg. I clench my jaws tight and look at the sky. I really
want to get up and walk away but I don't want to give him the satisfaction of upsetting me. I turn my concentration back to mummy and Aunty Bertha's weaving but I can't focus and my mind wanders back to the joey. I just have to see what the little brat is doing to it now.

But the joey has finally stopped wriggling, although whether from the realisation that resistance is useless or because it's finally been released from its miserable life I'll never know.

Just then Solo and Evelyn turn up. ‘Look what he's doing to that joey!' I babble, anxiously waiting for one of them to take control of the situation. Solo is a nice bloke and he smiles reassuringly at me and then walks over and takes the creature from his son and tosses the little pink scrap of a joey into the midst of the dozing camp dogs. I wasn't expecting this and I get up and walk away in silence as the victor takes off with his prize clenched firmly in his jaws, chased by the other camp dogs, and while Solo's son screams his head off.

I am disheartened by the brutality of life in this place. It's everywhere. Dogs with broken legs that have never been set limping down the road, birds trying to fly with wings shattered by a kid's slingshot, big green turtles turned onto their backs and carved up alive, their hearts still beating, joeys tortured. For a few minutes I long for white middle-class suburbia where ugly crap is hidden behind doors and white picket fences where I don't have to see it.

But in all the crap there is sometimes a beautiful rainbow so I am really surprised when Mario turns up a few days later with a little bundle for me. It's a joey. I don't ask after its mother because I don't want to ruin the moment, I just hold the little darling on my lap and cry while Mario stands awkwardly by waiting for me to finish my tears. There's a
murantanga
, a white woman, who looks after orphaned joeys and possums he tells me, maybe she can tell me how to care for it.

We go to her house but she is deep in conversation with another
murantanga
on her front veranda so we stand at her gate in the hot sun and wait to be acknowledged. They glance at us but keep talking like their conversation is the most important thing in the world and we are inconsequential. I tell mummy I want to go and speak to her now but mummy says, no, it's bad manners. So we wait.

Eventually they finish their discussion about the weather and what's happening at the school and how the rubbish dump is a disgrace, and the visiting
murantanga
leaves. I watch her as she goes past but she doesn't look at us, she walks on by with a face of deep concentration like we don't exist. I ask mummy in my loudest voice if they're all rude like that. Then the other one comes over and asks us what we want. Mario does the talking, he knows her because like Mario she works at the school. She looks me up and down like I just crawled out of a hole and then reaches out for the joey but I hold it close and tell her it's mine and I just
want to know how to feed it. Although she looks slightly rebuffed she tells us to stay there while she goes inside. She returns a few minutes later with a baby possum clinging to her hair and gives me some formula and a feeding bottle and we head off home. I take one of mummy's dresses that I don't like and tie a rope around the bottom so the joey can't fall out and then hook the armholes on the door knob. I ask Louis to help me think of a name but he says I shouldn't call it anything in case it dies and we have to eat it. He takes off before I can punch him.

It's a gorgeous little girl and we quickly get into a feeding routine. She comes everywhere with me in her sleeping bag as I am afraid to leave her at home in case she comes to a bad end, and when her fur starts growing properly I notice that it's all patchy like she has mange, so I call her my little Mangey. And then one day mummy tells me it's time to let Mangey go as she's big enough to look after herself now and I know she's right. Mangey is under constant threat of dog attack or disappearing into a cooking pot and she should be free to live with her own kind.

We drive her to Fourcroy where Mario tells me she originally came from. I suspect he must have had a hand in her mother's death considering his accurate knowledge of where we are letting her go, but I say nothing. But she won't go, even when we find some other wallabies in the distance for her to join. She just stands there with her big brown eyes looking at me. I'm a mess and Louis tells
me to get into the car and then carries her off into the bush. He comes running back but Mangey is bouncing along right there behind him. Mario has a go as well but Mangey isn't giving up and she beats Mario back to the car and waits for him to catch up, looking very pleased with herself. So there is only one thing to do, we all pile into the car and drive off leaving her on the side of the road. Grief-stricken I take one last look out the back window only to see Mangey hopping madly after us. I don't look back again.

At the club I drown my sorrows and try to put all horrible thoughts about Mangey's future out of my head. I tell myself I'm being silly when my mind keeps playing images of her little skeleton on the side of the road where, worn out from hopping, she has waited faithfully for me to go back for her. I ask Louis if wallabies attack each other if they are strangers but he assures me that they aren't like humans and the other wallabies will welcome her. My mum tells me not to be so stupid and I drink some more. I loved that little joey and I wonder if she has a safe place to sleep.

The wounds haven't healed and they throb with renewed vigour when we go out to Fourcroy a few months later. We pass the spot where we let her go. Thankfully there isn't a little skeleton on the side of the road so she must have survived and I feel much heartened by that. It's a beautiful day and we go to Poanapi and the boys catch
some fish and we go to the old barge landing where there is an ancient beauty leaf tree. The trunk is as wide as the car and there is a branch sticking out horizontally that is so huge I can lie down along it. We drive beside the tracks and Louis stops every hundred metres or so to set fire to the grass or the dried fronds of a pandanus. This is to burn off the old and dead vegetation and encourage new growth. It also makes it easier to see the wallabies when they go hunting as they have less cover to hide in. I wistfully think of Mangey.

We drive some more and then somewhere on the Fourcroy road near Kukuni Mario excitedly bangs on the roof for Louis to stop the car. He pulls up and Mario points into the bush and wouldn't you know it, there with a small herd of wallabies is Mangey, all grown up now but still distinctive with her patchy fur. We jump out of the car and the herd bounds gracefully off, with Mangey in its midst. A bittersweet moment but she has found a family and I can finally put anxieties about the fate of my little joey out of my head. She is alive and free.

There were a number of sightings of Mangey over the next few years – sometimes with her own joey in her pouch or hopping behind her, and it was an unspoken rule that nobody ever aimed a rifle at her. The last time I saw Mangey I remarked to Louis that the other wallabies must have worked out that she was safe from gunfire as her herd, which nobody shot at in case a stray bullet hit Mangey,
had swelled to great proportions. Mangey was a legend. I don't know how old they live for but I think Mangey would have enjoyed a full and happy life.