Daughter of Australia (37 page)

Meredith and Clare neglected their morning duties to scope out the lot, pointed at the faces most handsome, the bodies best sculpted, and scoffed at the ones who weren't so endowed. Leonora joined them at the window and the women hushed their giggles.

“So, these are the shearers,” Leonora assessed.

“Just arrived.”

“Whew, they're a lot of them.”

“Near thirty I'm guessin'. Gonna need more flour.” Meredith ticked off the list in her head. “Sugar. Baking powder. Cheese.” She rolled up her sleeves as if she were ready to knead bread. “Men work only as hard as their bellies are full.”

The men flowed off the trucks. Leonora's mouth opened slightly as James and Tom walked up to meet the men. There were hearty shakes, arms that pointed to the different directions of the land, rubbing of chins, bent backs of laughter, slaps upon shoulders, cigarettes rolled and shared, hats adjusted and hands shoved into trousers.

The women were silent and stilled with the shift and quantity of men in tight trousers. They were rough men and tough men with swaggers and long, tan arms and sharp eyes. The three women exchanged shy glances, then covered giggles with their hands.

Leonora's eyes clung to James's figure and a great heat swarmed her cheeks. She cleared her throat. “Suppose they should be fed straightaway.”

“Yeah, good idear.” Meredith cleared her throat in equal response. “They're lookin' 'ungry already. Gonna be thirsty for somepin cold.”

Clare giggled and covered her mouth. “Me mouth is waterin', too.”

Meredith elbowed her, tried to hide her grin. She clapped her hands. “Orright, off we go.”

Leonora hung to the window while the girls pranced to the kitchen, their voices high with excitement and loud enough to filter out with clarity.

“Gawd, did yeh see the lot of 'em?” Meredith huffed.

“Got m'eye on the tall one wiv the blue tie round his neck,” clicked Clare.

“Naw! Yeh don't want that one!” scoffed Meredith knowingly. “Dandy bloke. Seen 'em b'fore. All prim an' proper. Kind who prides himself on restraint. Knew a bloke like that once. Used to slather his hand wiv lanolin so it's soft when he's touchin' himself.”

“Och!” Clare erupted in giggles. “Been wiv a shearer or two an' no man's got hands like 'em. Got muscles in their fingernails, I tell yeh! Hands like steel.” Clare paused and seemed to reconsider. “Course, the milkers a fair match wiv their hands.”

“Problem wiv the dairymen is they ain't sure they're pleasin' yeh until they got milk squirtin' outta yer tits!”

Leonora covered her mouth and laughed.

“Ain't that the truth!” cackled Clare. “Swear I was wiv one milker who wouldn't let go till he heard me mooin'!” Pots rattled against snorts and snickers. “Still like the one wiv the blue tie.”

“Stop droolin' into that dough an' start bakin' it. We got boys t'feed!”

 

James led the shearers by horse. The men followed in the trucks set in low gear. The quarters were new and clean and the men whistled with the new bunks. “How many head yeh say yeh got again?” asked the head shearer. The man was the oldest of the lot, but his skin shone with health and his face held the deep lines of years rich with humor.

“Twenty thousand,” James replied.

“Good. Take us 'bout a month at most. Men'll like it 'ere, shame yeh ain't got more to shear.” The man pushed his hat to the back of his head. “Came direct from the Gillabong Station. Won't work that piece o' shit place again. Quarters infested wiv fleas. Me an' the boys slept under the stars every night.”

“Everything's new. Tools, stalls.” James pointed to the shed behind the quarters. “If you find a flea in this place, one of your men brought it in.” He slapped the man's shoulder.

The shearer beamed and rubbed his hands, already itching to get started. “And how's the help round here?” the man asked with a sly wink.

James knew what the man was thinking. “Only got a cook and a maid at the big house. I'll let you be the judge of them.”

 

The smell of shorn fleece rode upon the hot breeze, permeated the air until even human skin smelled like wool. The shearers kept out of sight except for the trucks swaying with piled bales that left every morning at sunrise. Little puffs of wool escaped from the wire mesh and floated off into the sky like feathers from a plucked chicken.

Meredith and Clare slunk in late every morning, carried in eggs or brooms to pretend they had been hard at work. But their footprints were still clear in the dirt from their early-morning walk from the shearer quarters, their cheeks still flush with the secrets of their night.

When home from the mine, Alex spent his day at the shearing shed watching the men work. He'd often take his dinner with them and stay late in the evening sharing drinks and helping the men gamble away a day's wages. He'd return to the house well after midnight and climb into the bed smelling of sheep and alcohol and stale smoke. With his weight upon the mattress, Leonora curled to the edge of the bed. He hadn't touched her in months, but the fear was still there that he would. She kept a basket of yarn next to the bed and on top lay the long knitting needles. She would never let him touch her in that way again, never let him take her as a husband takes a wife. She would gladly pay the whores herself to keep him occupied.

Leonora rarely saw James, but he was never beyond her thoughts. He stayed out in the paddocks with the horses or the cattle, left before dawn and returned after dusk. The few times she had seen him at the homestead, they hadn't spoken, but their eyes had held tight until Alex inevitably appeared, breaking their gaze, darkening James's eyes and hardening his face. But James was still here. And that was enough.

In a few weeks, Alex was taking her to Coolgardie for the mine's annual party at the Imperial Hotel. The new dress he ordered from Milan came this morning via post. She would meet the wives of the head managers. She and Alex would stay in the Imperial's only suite. Leonora looked at the knitting basket. She would pack the needles.

This was her life. But as long as James was near—as long as she caused him no harm and she kept the Aborigines safe—this life was enough.

A
lexander Harrington leaned against the back wall, his arms folded at his chest. Three men sat at the table, their bodies tilted toward their boss, their eyes alert to his expression. They did not offer Ghan a chair.

“So, fever's contained?” asked Alex under dark, cocky brows.

“Yep.” Dr. Middleton pulled at his waistband and flared his nostrils like there was a bad stink in the room. “Burned half the camp. Everything else got scrubbed down with disinfectant. Supervised it myself.” The doctor winked at no one in particular.

“What about the sewer?”

The puff went out of the doctor's chest. “Getting to it. Men don't want to touch it.” He clicked his teeth and drew out a sigh. “Complain about the fever and then complain about cleaning up the shit that caused it in the first place. Go figure.”

Alex turned his black eyes on Ghan. “Men tell me you're doing some listening for us. What's the mood?”

“Sour.” Ghan set his gaze on one bastard at a time. “How the 'ell yeh think the mood is?”

The men at the table stiffened, shot furtive glances to Alex, but he only chuckled. The men released their bound shoulders. “You're pretty pissed off, aren't you, Mr. Petroni?”

Whistler's blue, hard face flashed and Ghan fought against the rage brewing inside his limbs. “Yeah, I'm pissed,” he said coldly. “Babies dyin'. Mothers too sick t'hold 'em. Men worried 'bout gettin' fired if they don't show up for their shift. Yeah, I'm pissed!” he growled at the doctor. “Doc don't show up till fever workin' its way out. Men complainin' 'bout cleanin' up the sewer, yeh say? Damn right they're complainin'! The mine put that pipe in. Mine's the one that let it crack an' fester. Now yeh askin' the camp men t'clean it up—askin' men who lost their babies 'cause the mine's too bloody cheap to fix the gawddamn pipe.” His lip curled and he blinked back the hate that stung his eyes. “So, yeah, I'm pissed.”

Alex unfolded his arms and tucked his hands in his pockets, stared at his shoes. The other men clenched lips and twisted them and waited. “Martin,” Alex addressed the man at the center. “Send the engineers to the camp and get that pipe fixed. Then clean it up. All of it. No camp men, either. Find some swaggies or black men or Chinamen. I don't care. But you get that mess cleaned up even if you got to use your own hands to do it.”

Martin nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“All right, that's settled.” Alex turned back to Ghan and asked pointedly, “Now tell me, Mr. Petroni, are the men going to strike?”

And there it was. The question. Ghan knew the answer. A strike was coming sure as the sun was going to rise in the bush. Then the scabs would be brought in and the fighting would start. And once the fighting started, it would grow and spread like the fever.

The strike was coming. The hate and the fighting were coming. And here they were, these clean-shaven bastards with warm beds and full bellies asking the question—looking for a heads-up. If they knew about the rumblings, they'd pluck out the men like roo ticks stuck in the skin and scorch them with a tip of a match. They'd round up the Italians, sever them, send half of them packing back to the motherland with barely their shirts and send the other half back to the shaft shivering with gratitude they still got a job and a filthy tent to sleep in. Then they'd rough up a couple of the Aussies, make them a little bloody, beat the rage out of them before they cut their pay. A few weeks later, new Italians come in without a clue and it starts all over again.

Ghan let the steam leave him slowly for effect, the boiler still pumping inside. “Naw. Men ain't talkin' strike.”

“Really?” Mr. Harrington cocked his head, incredulous.

“They're pissed. I'm pissed. We're all damn pissed.” Ghan slumped his shoulders. “But fever left 'em weak. Mind an' spirit. Men ain't got no will t'fight. Just want t'feed their kids. Even the Aussies seem t'got the wind knocked out of 'em.”

The men watched him carefully. “I was sick,” Ghan continued. “Never been so bloody sick in m'life. But then I woke up, felt the typhoid leavin' me. Couldn't believe I was still livin'.” Now Ghan watched the men. “An' yeh know whot my first thought was when the fever left? Know the first thing that popped in my mind?” The men waited.

“I wanna work. Gotta get up an' go t'work.” Ghan shook his head. “Ain't gonna be a strike. Somepin broke wiv that fever. Men just wanna work.”

 

The ugly news traveled quickly through town overnight. Good news pools and ripples, takes its sweet time as it passes from one smile to another. But not the black news. Black news rolls like a tsunami, ripping at ears and sucking anger into its bowels in a greedy swell. And the wave grows and growls and doesn't stop until it has flattened everything in its wake.

By morning, the angry news spread across the miners' camp, reeked between the tents with a gaseous infusion and seeped into the canvas, under the flaps and through the holes of the rusty metal. And the ugly news grew and twisted, the facts pulled apart and added to until the news no longer was a mix of words but had become a life.

The news reached Ghan as news does in a camp, riding upon the lips of a man passing by and added to by shadowy whispers under tent poles.

Fights spilled as freely as whiskey in mining towns. But the news of this fight, Ghan knew, had layers and terrible depths that made an ordinary brawl morph into a war. Two miners, an Italian and an Aussie, threw punches and broke bottles on each other at the Lamb's Eye Pub. Who started it depended on the ethnicity of the man telling the story. But somewhere along the line of the fight, that Aussie got cut straight into his eye to his brain and died. The police came, and before they had the blood sopped up that Italian lay shot in the face along the street. That was the birth. But the details were lost now, unimportant. A new beast had usurped the birth.

Ghan tied the stringy bark tight around the peg leg and wrapped it in loops across his stub. The air was heavy, thick with the hate that had hardly just bloomed with dawn. Saliva wet his mouth and it didn't taste quite right. Outside, men drank black and bitter coffee and their eyes reflected the black bitterness.

Here it is,
Ghan spoke in his head, and frowned. The blindness had set in. Men on all sides were growing blind as men do. And these men walked through the rows, knocked shoulders against other men and snarled as dogs and sniffed as dogs do. Forget the strike; this was bigger. They'd call it a strike, use the word that would support and praise their anger and disguise the riot. But this war would have nothing to do with cut pay or scab labor or immigrants or typhoid. This war was because the taste of blood had replaced the craving for sugar on the tongue.

Ghan passed the Italian tents and shacks. Dark eyes watched his movements; speaking lips grew quiet. Green, white and red–striped flags were pulled in and folded ceremoniously. Women set their jaws and shuttled between the blind men. They brushed the ground with brooms, their eyes absent, and they left little crevices in the dirt from sweeping the same spot over and over again. For the women saw what the blind men could not and their faces paled. They saw the change, saw how the anger would turn a husband, a provider, to a growling animal and they, the women, would be left picking up the pieces. And these women felt the anger, too, but theirs was directed at the blind, stupid,
stupid
men.

Ghan cut through the simmering lines to the Aussie side. As it was closer to town, the news had come here first, boiled longer. Voices rose within tents. A ring of men clustered near the camp cook, warmed their thick hands next to the fire. Ghan placed his coins in the open can and took his coffee and eggs to a spot behind the men. He sat on the bare ground, his good leg bent under him, the peg leg sticking out like a broken wing.

Two men came near with their tin plates. They plopped down on the dirt, their shadows edging his own. “Whot yeh bringin'?” one man asked the other, his voice low as distant thunder.

“Knife. You?”

“Fists.” The man stretched out his hand over his plate before grabbing the fork. “Like t'feel the bones crunchin' under the knuckles.” His face was pockmarked, the holes opening and scrunching with each bite. “Timing couldn't be better, eh? Wiv that manager party at the hotel.”

The other man laughed. A piece of egg fell slobbery onto the ground. “Give 'em a party t'remember, eh, Hugh?”

“Bloody hard t'hold back till then. Men want to wait till the party starts, wait till the streets dark. Still, hard t'hold back.”

“Shhhh.” The slobbery one wiped his mouth. “Careful. Cripple's listenin'.”

Ghan shoveled in his eggs without tasting them, tried to keep his face even.

“He ain't gonna say nothin'.” Hugh raised his voice. “Ain't that right, peg leg?”

Ghan chewed slowly, kept his eyes straight on the food.

Hugh chuckled. “Told yeh.” He rubbed his hand over his scarred skin, his eyes severe. “Heard 'Arrington's gonna be there.”

“Heard right. Bringin' that wife of his wiv 'im.”

“No shit? Whores gonna miss their favorite customer.” The men laughed, snorted again.

“Ain't been wiv a woman so damn long, I'd take half a whore at this point.”

“Fair dinkum.” Hugh scowled. “Ain't seen my wife for three years. Like t'get my hands on that 'Arrington lady, I tell yeh. Teach her whot a real man feels like.”

The other man stuck his fork in the air. “Why don't yeh? Might as well grab some fun while the men gettin' worked over.”

“Whoa-a!” Hugh clapped his hands. “Hell, we all deserve a good turn! Get the other blokes fired up just to talk 'bout it. By Gawd, Angus, yeh got somepin there! Pass the lady round so everybody gets a smack.”

The food lodged in Ghan's throat. He stopped chewing, stopped moving. His stomach cramped. The air pressed against his body like walls.

“Hey, cripple!” Hugh hollered. “When the last time yeh been wiv a woman?”

Ghan raised his eyes over the plate but did not turn his head. “Go ask yer wife,” he spit.

Hugh's face contorted and one lip jutted, but Angus erupted in laughter, slapped his friend on the back. “He's pokin' yeh, mate!”

Hugh's lip settled, curved up; he laughed a little too hard. “No worries, mate. We'll get yeh a turn!”

Angus plowed in a mouthful of eggs and spluttered, “Yeh comin' wiv us tonight, ain't yeh? Kick them E-talians out once an' fer all? Teach 'em managers a little lesson?”

Ghan stayed silent and the men's eyes darkened above their smiles. “Either wiv us or against us, mate,” warned Hugh.

Ghan wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, stood to go. “I'll be there.”

 

Torn. Ripped between two parts. Ghan walked. He walked in one direction and then another. He walked toward the sun until it seared his nose and then he walked against it until his back sweated through the shirt. And with the walking came the listening—murmurs and plans, impatient and idle knuckles cracking. If he ratted out the strikers, the Aussies and Italians would beat him; if he kept quiet about the strike, the managers would beat him; if he didn't do anything and some woman got manhandled, he'd beat himself. There was no middle road, no gray. He had to choose one way and then run as fast and far away from the dogs at his heels.

Ghan missed Whistler fiercely. The anger that crowded around the camp made him weak. Whistler had felt it first, tried to warn him. And now it was here and he was in the thick of it. He knew too much.

Ghan cursed that breakfast with grinding teeth. Wished he hadn't heard those men talk, wished he hadn't listened to their poison. He was sick with it now. Thinking about that woman; thinking what they wanted to do to that woman.
The managers be damned. Harrington be damned. At this point, let all the men be damned, white and olive. But not the woman. Not a woman, for God's sake. Man's never got a right to hurt a woman. Didn't matter who this woman was, good or bad, mean or nice, ugly or pretty. A man don't ever touch a woman like that.

Ghan crawled inside his tent. He lay on his back, stared at the filthy ceiling. Shadows of resting flies dotted the underside of the canvas. He could go to the police. They'd come out with clubs and warnings and stomp through the camp. Men would pout, look dumb.
Ain't no trouble 'ere,
they'd say. But they would wait. The anger would wait and grow. Outcome was still the same, different night, different day.

Ghan let the heat of the trapped air sink into his brain, soften it. He could go to the managers. Tell them the strike was coming. Rat the whole crew out. Ghan shook his head sadly.
But the managers . . . that Harrington . . . they're a cocky crew. They'd go to the police. Or they'd want to fight the miners themselves. They would hold their party. Miners just maggots to them. A rich man with a line of police ain't got no fear of maggots.

Ghan pulled himself up on his elbow. He put the last of his money in his pocket and climbed out of the tent with an exhale of the inevitable, his decision made.

In town, Ghan crossed to the telegraph office, saw the two men from breakfast stationed in front, watching everyone who passed, listening for loose tongues. Ghan turned back, tried to get his thoughts straight again. Three worn bicycles lined the messenger's office. A lanky boy crouched in the corner between jobs. Take a biker half a day to get to the Harrington place, Ghan guessed. Besides, you couldn't trust those boys, their tongues as loose as their pedaling legs. His eyes moved to an old, roofless ute. A black man slept in the front, his legs hanging out the window, his bare feet covered in dirt. His hat covered his face.