Mullumbimby (10 page)

Next morning, Bottlebrush Hill was shrouded in mist and cloud. Both of the dogs had helpfully left trails of muddy paw prints all over the veranda, in their canine version of a weather report.

‘More rain coming,' declaimed Jo as she put three hot cups on the kitchen table, ‘how bout we make fences while the sun shines, people?'

‘I don't roll on Shabbos!' Twoboy called from the bathroom.

‘Pass,' added Ellen hastily through a mouthful of toast and Vegemite, ‘I've got an assignment to finish and then I'm going up to Holly's.'

‘But who shall help me
eat
the loaf of bread, cried the little red hen?' Jo pouted as she sipped her first coffee of the day.

Twoboy looked at Jo's large brown eyes, and at her sculpted mouth, which he had not yet done with kissing.

‘Okay, I'm in,' he said, winning a huge smile from the other side of the table. ‘But how about we ring up for reinforcements?'

‘More the merrier,' Jo said, ‘but we've only got an hour clear I reckon by the look of that sky. It's gonna piss down by the time anyone gets here.'

‘Fair enough,' said Twoboy, ‘and hey, whose guitar's that in the spare room?'

From beneath her fringe Ellen shot her mother a look that spoke volumes.

‘Oh, Ellen mucks around with it a bit,' said Jo, giving the look back to her daughter with interest. She told Twoboy she didn't mind if he had a play with it, hoping this didn't mean a morning spent playing music and no work done on the fence. The man came back to the kitchen and eased himself down with the Maton comfortably positioned against his broad chest like a ukelele. A few chords to test the tuning, a bit of finger picking.

‘This isn't a cheap guitar,' he noted with approval.

‘Ellen's dad bought it,' Jo said, allowing him to think it was a gift from father to daughter. Technically, Paul had bought it – when she was still married to him.

‘I woulda killed for a Maton when I was thirteen,' Twoboy told Ellen, his eyebrows raised at how easy she had it.

‘Don't put ideas into her head,' joked Jo. ‘She's already sallying forth and taking up the neighbour's bloodstock.'

Twoboy lowered the guitar into a normal playing position and began to sing ‘Redemption Song'.

His voice was strong, and he played pretty well for an amateur, Jo assessed. Good song, too. Oh pirates, yes, they rob us mob, alright. But the likelihood of Ellen outing her as a muso made her uneasy. She headed to the veranda the instant the song was over.

Jo didn't know why it mattered that this part of her remained private. There was no easy answer, except perhaps that the bloke was already very much at home here. Some part of her needed to remain off limits. To her intense annoyance, Jo was thinking about Twoboy at odd hours of the day and night; dreaming about him; smiling goofy smiles as she remembered moments they had spent together. Wondering, even, how long it was going to last, for Chrissake.

Twoboy looked at Jo through the window, as she unceremoniously pulled her dirty gumboots on.

‘So, I guess the show's over then,' he said. ‘You're a hard one to impress, Jo Breen.'

‘The way to my heart is through a kilometre of fencing wire,' she answered, ‘and if I want music I can turn on the radio.'

‘And here's me thinking I found the way to your heart last night,' Twoboy smirked.

‘Oh, way
way
too much information,' wailed Ellen, jamming her fingers into her ears and fleeing, both from Twoboy and from the imminent danger of being asked to wash up, ‘lalalalalalalala!'

‘Do you have to?' Jo asked, pretending parental concern to banish any lingering idea that Twoboy had ever had – or would ever have – anything to do with her heart. Perish the thought.

Half an hour later, Twoboy gestured to Jo, who was standing a hundred metres uphill holding a piece of string. A few spots of rain dotted her hoodie, but the full onslaught of the low black clouds was yet to hit.

‘Left! No, back the other way a bit. Bit more. That's it.' Twoboy gave her the thumbs up and Jo used the head of the sledgehammer, grasped sideways, to bash the tall star picket easily into the soft ground. A long row of pickets now guarded the hill, from the house to up near the big tallowwood, passing the top dam on their way.

‘What's the idea here, anyway?' Twoboy wanted to know. Jo explained that this line was the first of four sides of a horse paddock, replacing the damp Small Paddock where Comet was being held isolated from his mother and the steers. Once it was built, he'd be visible to Jo from the back door of the house, and dryer as well, less prone to footrot and greasy heel disease.

‘He's stuck in solitary, poorfella,' Twoboy observed.

‘Well, he'll be out on good behaviour dreckly,' Jo answered. ‘But for now he needs to be away from his mother, to bond with me.'

‘We done a good job here. It must be just about smoko time, eh?' suggested Twoboy, looking at the blur that was the sun and then clapping Jo firmly on the arse. She ignored both provocations and began methodically snipping foot-long lengths of plain wire to attach the barbed wire to the pickets.

‘Nope, not even close.'

‘Shit, speaking of smoko.' Twoboy thrust a hand into his black-and-grey camo trouser pocket, and checked for mobile coverage. A relentlessly blank screen looked back. He shook his head.

‘Not even a bar. How do you like living in the Pleistocene era?'

‘I like it very bloody much,' Jo grunted as she picked up the heavy roll of barbed wire by its protruding wooden handles. ‘It's a–' gasp – ‘piece of–' gasp – ‘piss. And–' gasp – ‘if you was a real–' gasp – ‘black–' gasp – ‘fella, you wouldn't even worry about–' gasp – ‘shit like that.' She carried the awkward wire to the top of their fenceline, and then fed the loose end downhill so it passed each of the twenty stakes they'd just banged in.

Twoboy pretended affront.

‘The reason I need coverage, madam,' he retorted, ‘is so I can get onto Uncle Cheezel and get him down to town to testify for us next week. Otherwise Oscar Bullockhead and his pack of lying black dog southern cunt rellos are gonna do me out of my land.
Our
land.'

His and Laz's land, Jo knew he meant, and Mum Jackson's, and that of Justice and Yabra in Melbourne, and the small horde of nieces and nephews and cousins who were scattered the length and breadth of the east coast. Jo couldn't prove a damn thing about her family, which meant that she – and Stevo, and Ellen – would find no place in any Native Title tribunal in the land. The Breens were, and would likely remain, the acknowledged traditional owners of three-quarters of nine-tenths of sweet fuck all.

‘Give it here,' Jo said, heaving for breath, her hand outstretched. ‘No, put the message in first–'

‘What's the point?'

Jo swivelled her hand and made an impatient face, until Twoboy, sighing, entered the text and passed the phone over. She then instructed him to turn and face the house. The man folded his arms, tilted his head and gave her a deeply sceptical glance.
Now come on.

‘Humour me,' Jo insisted.

Twoboy rolled his eyes, but reluctantly obeyed.

‘Can I turn around yet?' he nagged after ten seconds.

‘Not yet. Wait ... Okay – now.'

‘And?' he said.

‘I've sent it.' Jo told him. ‘It's gone to Uncle Cheezel.'

‘Bull
shit.'

Twoboy scrolled down to Sent Items and discovered that Jo was telling the truth. Yet there were still no bars showing. He squinted and carefully tightened the rubber band holding his dreads back. Then he rubbed his mouth slowly with the back of his hand, torn between a strict cultural imperative never to betray surprise, and an overwhelming urge to know how she'd done it.

Jo cracked up at his quandary.

‘Did I forget to mention I'm a cleverwoman?' she teased.

Twoboy stared at her in deep alarm, as though she really might be, and
then
what would he have gotten himself into?

Jo laughed even harder, and held her hand out again for the phone.

‘Better see if he's answered, eh. Oh look – no bars. So sad.'

She held the screen up so he could see the ongoing absence of bars. Twoboy pursed his lips. He resented being the butt of whatever joke Jo was pulling.

‘Can we just finish the bloody fence?' he said.

‘But don't you want to know if he's answered it?' Jo taunted, waggling the phone beside her ear. ‘Isn't he your star witness next week?'

‘If we can do it without all this fucking around, yeah.' Twoboy folded his arms.

Jo grinned, enjoying her power.
Sure we can.

‘Watch and learn, grasshopper.'

She tossed the mobile, end over end, high into the air, spinning it fast, four, five, six metres straight up, and then catching it silently in two careful hands when it fell. She repeated this, then on its third flight the phone beeped shrilly from the top of its orbit.

Airily, Jo flipped the phone back to Twoboy, who nodded in grudging admiration as he checked the inbox.

‘He's still on for Wednesday. Ya had me going for a minute there,' Twoboy admitted as he pocketed the phone.

‘I really am a deadly cleverwoman, but,' Jo insisted with a grin. ‘And don't you forget it.'

‘Yeah, and I'm the Dalai Llama's underpants,' Twoboy answered through a mouthful of wire ties.

Soon they had two full-length strands of wire fastened tautly to all twenty pickets.

‘You know what Amanda said to me the other day?' Jo asked him quietly. An insect fluttered in her belly.

‘Yeah, cos I'm psychic,' Twoboy grunted, tying more wire.

‘She goes, Are you sure that bloke isn't just chasing after you for your farm?'

‘That's it – she's onto me! I wanna marry the cockie's daughter...'

Twoboy hooted with laughter and wound his forearm around Jo's waist, pulling her in close to him. Then he seized her by the shoulders and kissed her full and enthusiastically on the mouth.

‘Ouch, shit, careful!' His hand had clamped on her wounded arm.

Hastily he let go, sorry, sorry, and then drew up close again, this time more careful, his hands resting each side of her head and neck. Glossy dark brown curls spilled beneath his fingers. He gently nosed her forehead. Jo felt herself melting.

‘You don't trust me. Well, why should you?' he murmured.

‘It's just ... I dunno.' Jo's farm wasn't Crown Land, but there was more than one way to skin a cat – Amanda's suggestion had sent chills down her spine.

‘Newsflash, darlin – dugais don't get it,' Twoboy said. ‘Whitefellas always think any little gammon bitta land's good enough for Goories. Not that it isn't beautiful here,' he hastily amended, seeing Jo's face cloud over with insult. ‘But for fuck's sake, I don't just want a hobby farm. I want the recognition we never had growing up without two fucken cents to rub together –
useless boongs.
Laz n me didn't leave our good jobs to claim your twenty acres, Jo. We moved back here for the whole bloody lot, and to live like blackfellas should – on Grandad Tommy's country, and practising his Law.'

‘Well that's good to hear. Cos this little black duck does want a little farm – and now I've finally got one,' Jo told the man, kissing him fiercely before picking up the fencing tools. Her heart was hammering from Twoboy's touch, and from getting up the nerve to raise Amanda's question, too. ‘And if you fenced like you talked, Lawman, we'd be done by now,' she added, handing him the lengths of plain wire for attaching the third strand.

‘I do fence like I talk,' he replied, walking down the slope and gesturing at Bottlebrush with a soft upward flick of his fingers. ‘Straight and true. Cos the old people are watching us. Watching to see we get it right.'

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.' Jo glanced around at her paddocks, which
according to Twoboy were crawling with spirits: good, bad and indifferent. ‘Well, I hope them old people like looking at camphor laurels and crofton weed. That moll at the real estate told me this place had so many weeds on it cos it was close to organic certification. What a crock.'

‘Well,' Twoboy said cheerfully, taking hold of the third strand of wire. ‘Remember what Goebbels said – if ya gonna tell a lie, make it a big one.'

The world was nothing but water in the air and water in the streams, water in the swelling dams, and the narrow black snake that was Tin Wagon Road awash with a thin transparent skin of water feeding into the brown, churning, rising creek. The harsh roar of rain hammered on the tin roof, drowning out all other sound except for the thunder of the frogs. It rains here, thought Jo, entranced by the spectacle, as if the gods are trying to wash away some terrible story, wash away the blood in the rivers, wash away the names of the true owners of this place. Maybe that's why our connections are so weak, so tenuous, me and Kym and Stevo. They took our ancestors away, and it's pissed down so hard ever since then that the floods have washed away all their footsteps, washed away half our belonging. That's me – a
washed-up
blackfella. She stared at her sodden paddocks. It was one thing – and a bloody big thing – to buy your country back off the landgrabbers. But how do you buy back a tribe? Where do you shop for a mob to call your own?