Mullumbimby Read online

  ‘No such thing as a painless divorce, my sister.’ Kym’s eyes crinkled kindly, knowing all about it from her own first marriage, which had given her a blond, blue-eyed son and years of misery before meeting Jason at the Brisbane NAIDOC Ball.

  ‘Nah, specially when you hook up with a dickhead. He marries a black muso from the sticks and then decides he wants a white city accountant for a wife. Anyone who marries outside their own culture wants their fucken head read, onetime,’ Jo observed tartly – ‘Me included.’

  ‘Seeya later Timbo mah man,’ she cried, leaping upon her nephew and tickling his ribs till he squealed. Then she picked his little body up and threaded him headfirst through the window into the front seat of the Pajero.

  Kym pointed at Timbo’s seatbelt.

  ‘Use safety belt, countryman,’ she instructed, going all retro on his five-year-old ass.

  Timbo sighed and strapped himself in, the ghost remnants of his tattoos still visible on his narrow little forearms. Jo twisted her mouth in wry amusement. What other thirteen-year-old kid in Byron Shire would know what a living wage was, for Chrissake? Her daughter absorbed information like a sponge. An angry Aboriginal sponge, demanding knowledge from every quarter. Speaking of which.

  Ellen’s head popped out of the donga.

  ‘Seeya, Timbo,’ she called to her cousin, who promptly made squashed faces against the car window at her. In return, Ellen stuck her tongue out and finger-dragged a gargoyle grimace.

  ‘Thanks for having him, hey, preciate that.’ Kym gave a wave and drove crunchily away over the gravel.

  As the dust from the Pajero’s wheels settled, floating oh-so-slowly back to earth under a three-quarter moon, Jo stood and stared into the glowing coals, remembering. Her biceps were hard, yeah, but her fingertips were soft as butter now, and inside her chest there wasn’t a flicker of whatever it was that made you stand in front of a mob of punters and see them wild for your song. She doubted any of her guitars were even in tune, those that did have six strings. No, she was no musician, no more, no more, I ain’t gonna sing no more, she chanted aloud to the fire. The music had left her as quickly and mysteriously as it had arrived in her teens, and there was’t a lot anyone could do about that.

  Jo glanced over at the headstones.

  ‘You mob might try and help a woman,’ she told them matter-of-factly. ‘Sling a bit of inspiration this way, eh?’ But nothing happened. Jo went inside and closed the metal door. She shut out the mooki and the winter chill; she even managed to push down the annoying, unanswerable, and ever-more-present question worming away in her brain: If you aren’t a musician after all, Jo Breen, then who the hell are you? And what exactly do you think you’re doing here?

  ‘I’m going to town,’ Jo told Ellen the next morning. ‘Need anything?’

  ‘Free money,’ said Ellen, absorbed in a charcoal drawing of a woman’s face. It was completely realistic except for the faint suggestion of horns nestled underneath the curls.

  ‘No wurries, I’ll stock up on gold bullion while I’m at it, eh?’ Jo tilted her head at her daughter.

  ‘Dog food and some chocolate.’

  ‘Got it. Wotcha drawing?’

  ‘Fifty dollar notes.’

  ‘I dunno how I ended up with the only raging capitalist in the whole Bundjalung nation–’ Jo shook her head – ‘but you may as well draw some for me while you’re at it. I thought you were going up the paddock?’

  ‘Sore leg. I’ll go up with you later on.’

  Jo swung into Burringbar Street with the radio blaring Country Sweethearts, the best thing about any Saturday morning in Mullum. She liked to drive slow as through town, checking out the locals. Just to drive slow was relaxing in itself, she was fond of telling all and sundry, no need to hurry everybloodywhere, now was there? Just stick ya elbow out the window and putter along nice and easy. Muttika therapy. Let the tourists fang it over the dodgy backroads; Jo wasn’t burning any extra juice for anyone, not with The Waifs on the radio and the April sun so pretty in a blue sky – you’d swear you lived in paradise, for all that you worked hard for a crust and made yer yumba in a tin can.

  Jo pulled into the car park opposite the Which Bank, where the lilli pillis had finished fruiting months before. Walking past, Jo greeted them. ‘Jingawahlu baugal jali jali,’ she whispered, touching the trunks with a soft hand. No call to ignore someone just cos they don’t have a feed for you. Respect is a fulltime job, twenty-four seven. The way to behave in the world so that nobody’s pride gets trampled, so that anger doesn’t get a chance to ripen into disaster. Aunty Barb had shown her that: noticing that Jo had binung and mil that worked from time to time, she had taken Jo aside for instruction, not long before the accident. You are a blackfella 101. A lot of it forgotten now, or pushed aside in the daily grind of paying bills, but, ah, some things remained. Some things remained.

  Jo fingered the delicate pink new growth on the trees, marvelling at their softness. The leaves gleamed in the bright morning sun: British Racing Green for the older growth, palest whitish-pink and bronze for the new. When the berries on these particular trees arrived again in September they’d be the intense hot pink that said they were tasty and soft, worth stopping for. This is the world you live in, Jo told herself, so look at it. Sit, and look, and listen, them things that lie at the heart of being proper blackfella. Dadirri. Sit still long enough and you see everything clear, bub, Aunty Barb had promised, a fishing line welded to her aged hand. Sit until the superficial bullshit falls away – but, ah, sit still long enough, you make yourself a target at the same time. That dadirri be a two-edged sword, my aunt.

  As Jo stood looking at the ads in the real estate window, a ruined white Econovan drove past, beeping madly, with a barking black collie hanging out the passenger window and shedding dog hair down the length of town. Jo grinned and yelled back as the woman rounded the corner opposite the Middle B too fast, almost cleaning up a redhaired teenager with his face in a pie – sweet Jesus, that’s not a magical zebra crossing, lad, Jo winced, look where ya going. Chris swerved around the kid and braked, horn blaring some more.

  ‘Where ya going, ya mad gin?’ Jo yelled through megaphone hands.

  ‘Got to get to the library before twelve! I’ll come and see ya later on.’

  Jo gave Chris the thumbs up. She was better, then. What had it been this time, two weeks holed up in the backblocks of Tin Wagon Road? Three? The Mullum hills were full of mental health stories, and Chris with her depression was one of them. When she was well, she was a normal, happy, vital woman, and then when the illness struck it was like someone had sucked the soul from her body. Chris was constantly hopping between naturopaths and snake oil salesmen with different theories to peddle. Hurling her tiny sickness pension away on miracle cures and dodgy diagnoses ... but right now Jo’s mate was well: she was out and driving around, enjoying the end-of-April sunshine and the spectacle of Mullum doing its Saturday shopping. All the people – the town and the country, young and old, beautiful and otherwise – on display in their autumn clothes, heading for the markets to stock up on fresh vegies and Stokers Siding honey and chili jam and–

  Jo stopped dead in her tracks.

  –and speaking of the beautiful people, she goggled, who was this coming out of the bookstore twenty metres away, looking very fine and very fit? The dreadlocked man was a footy player or such by the look of him, considerably darker than she was herself and very obviously a blackfella, and fuck me sideways he’s carrying a book – and he’s not a local, and how can I find out his name and nation and marital status and sexual preference right now, Jo was thinking, with a kind of bemused astonishment at her own interest, which had gone seriously AWOL ever since her divorce. Was he here for the Blues Fest? A tourist just passing through? Or a new arrival in town, joining every other bastard on the east coast for the sea change they thought they had to have?

  The Koori man glanced down the street towards Jo, developed a sparkling cheeky grin as if to say Here I
Am and There You Are Sistergirl, and Ain’t Life Grand? and then carried himself and his new book down towards Mullum Medical, where he promptly disappeared. Jo literally rubbed her eyes. It was an apparition, right? She had hallucinated herself a spunky blackfella because now, after nearly two years of celibacy, she was ready to find another bloke ... that was all this was. Except she knew better; she had her fair share of madnesses to draw on, and then some, but visual hallucinations weren’t one of her party tricks.

  For a moment Jo contemplated going into the bookstore and asking Denise what the man had bought, hoping – please, oh please – that it wasn’t Armistead Maupin, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Get a grip, Jo, she ordered herself, you’re thirty-five, don’t you know better? Aren’t the flash-looking ones always trouble? Cos for sure he’ll be married up or have a good reason not to be. Back in the car she turned up Morcheeba to push gorgeous black men out of her head, while she tried to remember what she needed to get off that miserable, fat Italian bastard Tony at the co-op.

  ‘Halters and leads.’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘Lunge rope.’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘Chaff.’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘Let’s be wenting, Cisco.’

  At the agistment paddock at Main Arm, Jo stood and watched as Oliver repeatedly trotted a handsome chestnut filly and then turned her into the rail in a cloud of grey dust. He was teaching the horse how to gather her haunches beneath her, pursuant to spinning on a dime when she started campdrafting. The trainer was an ugly battered gnome who looked and sounded like an evil troll, but with horses he knew how to be supple, if not soft, and he rode like he’d been stitched into the saddle. Jo made several unflattering mental comparisons of his skill with hers, before remembering to interrupt her self-loathing. The man spends eight hours a day on a horse, she told herself, and I’d be lucky to spend eight hours a month lately. She focused on the filly’s movements. Excellence of any kind was enchantment, and she could ignore, if not actually forgive, Oliver’s bright red neck when he was working a stockhorse.

  Impatient for her attention, Comet nickered over the steel railing, raising a front hoof at the prospect of a feed. Handsomest yarraman. His black-tipped ears were sharply pricked in her direction, looking for the chaff.

  ‘I detect cupboard love,’ she answered him. ‘But you’ll work for ya tucker today.’ She slipped a halter on him, and tested his mood with a fingertip instruction to shift sideways. Hmm. Not bad. The horse was learning to listen to her intently. Her: the herd leader, the Boss Mare. The one who really did the work and kept the show on the road, while the stallion galloped around, tossing his mane, looking important and strong and sexy. Making babies and looking for fights. Ha.

  ‘See ya,’ said Ellen from on top of Athena, Comet’s mother. ‘I’m going up to Holly’s.’

  ‘Okay, watch out for that bull,’ said Jo, assessing her daughter’s posture on the horse and giving it a giant mental tick. ‘I wish you’d use a bloody saddle but.’

  Ellen made a loud fart with her lips at this, and Comet startled sideways against Jo, his eyes wide in alarm. They laughed.

  ‘He’s never heard a human fart before,’ said Jo.

  ‘I find that very hard to believe,’ answered Ellen, grasping a handful of Athena’s black mane and cantering away.

  ‘Smart-arse!’ her mother yelled. ‘Be careful!’ And don’t come running to me when you break your neck.

  She picked up the lunge. Coiled the long flat cotton rope in her left hand and swung the other end in a circle from her right fist. Comet’s left ear tilted inward, conceding to her authority.

  Walk on.

  The colt stepped forward instantly, his packed brown rump forcing the clean-boned legs forward, and his back hoofs overreaching the marks left by his front ones.

  Baugul yarraman...

  Can you jump? Jo wondered. And if you can, does that mean you’ll buck under saddle? Her right hand swung the end of the lead a little faster.

  Trot on.

  If I had the money, my friend, Jo told him silently, you’d win royal sashes, but who’s got a horse float? Not me, boyo, not me. So we’ll just ride these hills and, once Ellen leaves home, we’ll hit the National Trail and really have us a time ... She frowned and increased the tension on Comet’s halter.

  Git up there! None of that...

  The colt was snaking his neck towards the ground, testing to see how serious Jo was about this trotting in circles nonsense. She gave the lunge a sharp snap. His head dipped low again and his back heels flicked up in irritation at having to follow orders. I know that feeling, bunji, Jo told him, but you’re outta luck. The whole point of lunging the horse was not to exercise him, but to teach him to yield to her authority, her voice, her rope, and her fingers. If she worked well enough, the colt would eventually obey directions made with a mere flick of her eyes. She had seen Oliver do it. Whether she had his skill and patience was another matter altogether, but it was something to aim for. A second sharp tug saw Comet return obediently to the circle, blowing loudly out of flared nostrils and steadily trotting with his neck arched, inside ear pricked to the Boss, patient now with this rounded business that the human creature found so important.

  Goooood booooy ... baugul yarraman ... Woah.

  She halted the colt, worked him in the other direction, threw a few tarps around to get him used to the noise, and then left him tied to the railing to teach him about the waiting game.

  Oliver was still spinning his magic with the now foam-flecked chestnut. She wandered over to watch.

  ‘I’ll chuck a saddle on that colt next week if you want.’ Oliver spoke out of the side of his mouth.

  ‘Does the pope shit in the woods?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing, bad joke. That’d be great.’

  ‘Will he draft, do ya reckon?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s been watching my cattle, so I’d say so. Could probably do just about anything, that colt.’ Oliver halted the chestnut merely by shifting his weight backwards in the saddle, leaving his reins untouched. Jo beamed. He thinks Comet is good enough to draft. I done good. I bred him – yeah that’s right, me, Jo Breen. Ah am the Greatest–

  ‘But he’s too good for you,’ Oliver added.

  Jo stopped beaming onetime. Rude old redneck fucker.

  ‘You wanna sell him on to a pro like Annie Beaumont,’ he advised, dismounting.

  ‘That horse is not for sale!’ Jo said. ‘Even to Annie. I’m doing the National Trail on him.’

  ‘Well, I better ride him next week then.’ Oliver led the chestnut away and left Jo steaming in his wake.

  ‘How’d the old girl go?’ Jo asked when Ellen rode in the gate twenty minutes later.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Holly home?’

  ‘Yeah. She had homework, so I didn’t stay.’

  Ellen was an oddball in many ways, but a typical Goorie in at least one: she spoke around half as much as a white child her age. Learn by watching and listening, using your mil and binung, was the centuries-old habit, and not by asking bloody silly questions all the time.

  Jo couldn’t help it. Oliver was going to ride Comet next week. Her face and her heart opened, she grinned fit to beat the band, and for once her freckled, green-eyed daughter softened and smiled back.

  Baugul jahjam.

  JAGAN

  land

  Two

  The sun was creeping above the slash pines, and its early slanting rays bathed the twenty acres with a brilliant golden sheen. To her left, Bottlebrush Hill gazed benignly down over the old farmhouse and paddocks. To her right, the heavily forested ridgeline made a thick green barrier between her and the rest of the world. Few trees stood out distinctly on that high ground, but in one thinly wooded eastern section, Jo saw, a large eucalypt – a mountain ash perhaps – raised its curiously heart-shaped canopy in outline against the lightening sky. She slowly breathed out a stream of cold white breath
and contemplated an astonishing fact: from where she stood in the middle of the big paddock, she could take off running in any direction and be winded before she’d left her own land.

  That was something for a Goorie woman to think about; something to hold onto and savour.

  The bottom dam was hazy with mist. White wisps lingered among the dark knotty pines beside it. The morning felt miraculous, as though this was the First Day after some tremendous upheaval which had somehow left Jo standing unscathed. It seemed to her, facing the dawn, that anything might be possible now, and as if the day – this morning, this sun upon these hills – called for a kind of reverence that she could barely express. She kicked off her dirty runners and let her bare feet meet the earth. The grass she stood on was moist with autumn dew. The cold of night still lingered in the soil beneath, especially here in the shadow of the enormous tallowwood tree. Jo stepped away, out into open pasture where the sun could fall directly on her skin, and, as its warmth reached her face and chest, she lifted her arms high in supplication. Black Old Sun. Oh I musta done something right, someday, somewhere, to be still standing up alive here on Bundjalung land. She turned in a slow circle, arms still high, watching the ridgeline. Here I am, my budgeree jagan. Here I am. Know me for who I am, a Goorie jalgani, jinungalehla here, poor and ignorant though I might be, I’m here at last. Jo closed her eyes and saw Aunty Barb perched on the rotting veranda at South Golden in a canvas deck chair, fishing line in the canal and a durrie in the ashtray wisping smoke around her creased brown face.

  Sit ning and listen, JoJo. Gotta hear the world around you, bub. You just sit ning and you’ll soon work things out.

  Jo’s face suddenly felt cold as something came unexpectedly between her and the heat of the sun. When she opened her eyes she laughed aloud in astonishment. No more than twenty metres overhead, level with the top of the tallowwood, a wedgetail was circling with its enormous dark eye cocked to observe her movements. Jo could clearly see the precise curve of the bird’s killing talons, and the blackness of its diamond-shaped tail. The eagle’s motion was silent, other than the occasional slow flap of its giant wings. Transfixed, she let her arms drop and watched the bird watching her. The sun had made it right over the top of the pines now, and as the dew on the grass dried and her feet lost their chill, Jo realised that she was being ringed by two distinct but joined circles: that of the bird in the air, and the one its shadow was making on the earth below. An unfamiliar sense of great peace descended upon her as she remembered: