Mullumbimby (19 page)

‘No you don't, wait up,' Jo told her, clinging tightly onto her black mane as Athena pulled away in protest. She wanted to ride bareback around the paddock and check the fenceline before work. It was a long-neglected job that couldn't be avoided any longer, not since the neighbour's young bull had started knocking fences down across the road, having tired of playing with the water pump cover. While part of Jo applauded him – bring it on, knock all the fucking fences down you like, pal! – the larger part of her knew that everybody's cattle in the valley needed containing and that hers were no exception. But Athena careered away, belting through the steers at an extended trot that scattered them left and right with indignant moans. The boldest came straight over to the empty feedbin and plunged its nose in. The others clustered around, begging Jo for pellets with baffled moos.

‘Whadda you lot bloody looking at?' Jo snapped as she flung away a handful of Athena's mane, ‘Go eat some grass.'

She traipsed back inside past a large pile of dirty washing on the laundry floor. Tension was lodged tight in her rigid neck and shoulders. It was school holidays, and Ellen had been at her father's for seven nights now. In her absence, the washing wasn't doing itself, just
as the fence line remained uninspected and the car still unserviced. It can wait, it can wait, it all has to bloody wait, Jo told herself, changing into her least dirty work clothes.

As she snatched the ute keys off the kitchen wall, Jo spotted Aunty Barb's fishing rod resting unused in the corner. Jo's shoulders bunched. All the light seemed to have gone out of things. She felt as though, if one more tiny thing built up on her have-to-do or can't-afford-it lists, she would fall down in a heap right where she stood.

‘Suck it up, girl,' she ordered herself sternly, ‘just suck it up.' The fishing rod rested indifferently in the corner, a long strand of cobweb draped around it mimicking the line.

If she hadn't promised to go to Therese's bloody stupid Buddhist thing this weekend, she could have gone fishing instead.

‘That wall's crying out for graffiti, eh.'

Jo and Twoboy were driving past the high concrete retaining barrier which separated Devine's Hill from the mangroved edge of the river. He grinned agreement, and proposed a midnight art project for Ellen sometime soon.

‘She's got to do some proper art for school first, unless she already finished it at Paul's ... Hey, you got a message.' Jo picked up his phone from the console.

‘Graffiti is “proper art”. Who's it from?' Twoboy responded.

‘Christ!' said Jo, her face changing abruptly. ‘What's this shit?'

‘Eh?' Twoboy replied as they passed the Burringbar exit and headed into another mobile deadzone, on their way to retrieve Ellen from Coolangatta airport.

Jo read the message aloud.

Twoboy laughed, but not before Jo had seen it: his jaw clenched tightly shut for a brief second.

‘Just Oscar and his pack of inbred rellies. That's the second one he's sent.'

‘You worried?' Jo asked, hastily putting the phone back down as though it might burn with its vitriol.

Twoboy forced another laugh.

‘Old fatguts couldn't fight his way out of a brown paper bag. And them boys of his aren't as tough as they think they are. Nah, Bullockhead mob come after us they'll get a real fight, don't ya worry.'

‘You should go to the cops.' Jo's brow furrowed. ‘Get him charged.' She spoke knowing that this would never, ever happen. The day a Goorie man took his private black business to the gunjies was the day he'd officially lost his balls, whipped them off and put them on a platter for Her Majesty to sample. It was bad enough having to submit to the bullshit and humiliation of the Native Title Tribunal.

‘Maybe Bullockhead mob should go on your Buddhist retreat, eh,' Twoboy joked. ‘Chill the mad fucks out a bit.'

‘Did you answer the first one?'

Twoboy shook his head.

‘If I don't answer, they don't know whether I've got it, see? And information is power. C'mon, darling – ya don't need to look like that. You know I'm Captain Goorie!'

Jo summoned half a smile for her very own dreadlocked superhero. Into her guts, though, next to the insomnia and the unpaid bills, and Twoboy's response to Carly, and the never-ending memory of poor drowned Comet, a new worry now crept in and made itself a warm, comfortable nest. While she was on the retreat, Ellen would be at the farm with Twoboy in charge of her. And what if the Bullockheads really did mean business? What if they knew where to find her man, in the depths of Tin Wagon Road, and what if they stumbled upon Ellen there as well? Jo's heart hammered with potential catastrophe. She felt like buying a shotgun. Two shotguns. Buy
them with what, she didn't know, but how comforting would it be to know that a .404 was resting in the corner of the bedroom when a convoy of Bullockheads arrived in the night to dispense some homegrown justice? Tendrils of fear spiralled inside her, filling her emptiness with their poison.

Twoboy cheerfully clapped her on the thigh.
It'll be right.
Jo took his dark hand and held it tight in both of hers, wishing futilely for peace in their time. Her arms felt like they were made of boiled spaghetti, flopping uselessly as the enemy circled around her daughter. The idea of taking on the Bullockheads terrified Jo.

‘You're worried about Ellen, eh?' Twoboy asked. Jo nodded, reaching a decision.

‘I'm staying home with her. Bugger the retreat.' she said, making a mental inventory of the weapons on the farm – stockwhip. Pitchfork. Shovels. Star pickets. Some could be locked away and some kept close for use in an emergency. Jo pondered ringing Kym and Jason, and asking them to drive down. But no – that would just put the boys in harm's way.'

Twoboy sighed and smiled at her.

‘Darlin – if you're gonna take someone out, you just do it. You don't send them texts first. Oscar's a big talker in a white man's court, but get him on the street and he's weak as piss.'

‘He might bring a mob though,' she countered. Twoboy was tough and, yeah, he was big, but there was only one of him. Laz was still needed in Brisbane most weekends and had been looking after his boy when he wasn't doing research. In stark contrast, Oscar Bullockhead, who'd lived on Bundjalung country all his life, had half-a-dozen nephews to call on in Piccabeen alone.

‘They only know my Mullum address,' Twoboy reassured her. ‘They won't come looking for me at the farm.'

Jo hesitated. Seeing her waver, Twoboy slowed and pulled the Commodore over onto the shoulder of the highway. He turned to face Jo.

‘Listen up, darlin. Them tiny words on a gammon screen mean
fuck all. Mob or no mob, anyone touches a hair on Ellen's head they'll have sixteen different kinds of shit coming down on em from me. So you go on your retreat, darling. I've got your back.'

Jo's heart swelled for a love that stood alongside her, near as fierce and protective of Ellen as her own. She wasn't alone now after all, it seemed, in keeping Ellen from a world of hate and harm. She leant over and kissed Twoboy square on the mouth, her eyes bright.

‘Course, if I'm wrong, you'll have to come and bail me outta lockup. If you can
get
bail for triple homicide,' he added with a twisted grin.

‘You might have to bail
me
out, pal,' Jo said, talking tough to keep down the whimpering puppy that had taken up residence in her stomach. ‘I can hold me own.'

Twoboy laughed and put his hands back on the leather-covered steering wheel.

‘Funny sort of Buddhist you're gonna make,' he observed, as he pulled back into the stream of traffic headed north. He took his phone and surreptitiously turned it off. The text Jo had read aloud was the fifth that day from Oscar Bullockhead, and the least vicious of the lot.

Jo wheeled her council barrow past the rainforest grove, where the leaf mould was building up nicely into a thick layer of rich pungent mulch, providing homes for beetles and bugs galore. The cemetery's resident brush turkey paused in its scratching as she passed. Its brilliant red, black and yellow colouring always struck Jo as unnecessarily lairy, the bird constantly dressed for a land rights demo. There was some purpose to it, she supposed, some natural selection that meant bright primary colours were the order of the day. What was the proper word for turkey?
Kalwun.
No, that was lyrebird. It was something like that though ... Jo stood and puzzled for the missing word a few moments longer, before admitting defeat. Ah, fuck it.

Jingawahlu turkey.

Things could have more than one name. Things could have lots of names.

On the far side of the clustered jali jali quandong and bungwall, Jo reached the dead gum branches that she had earmarked for firewood earlier in the week. She eyed the mother gum they'd fallen from to see if another heavy branch was about to come down and crack her on the skull while she worked. Assessing that she was safe, Jo slipped her earplugs in, chainsawed the fallen branches into manageable lengths and then stacked the barrow high with enough timber for this week's cooking fires. With a sweat sheen on her face and arms despite the coolness of the day, she manoeuvred her wobbly load back towards the storeroom. She stacked the wood in the ute, then upended the barrow inside the storeroom, handles resting against the wall to save space, and cleaned the chainsaw, before flicking the kettle on and performing the increasingly useless ritual of ringing Trev.

‘Any luck with that part yet, mate?' she asked, trying hard to keep a note of optimism in her voice. A weary chuckle was her reply.

‘Try me again next week,' he advised her. ‘The Honda rep's gone on long service leave now and there's a new one coming on Monday.'

Jo shook her head in amazement, rang off and gazed out the window that was fogging with condensation from the kettle. Muffler or not, the hill still needed mowing – the hill would always need mowing, it was a given, she was Sisyphus with earmuffs – so after lunch she would fire up the trusty Hondaroonie, hope that the neighbours could stand the racket once again and that industrial deafness wouldn't blight her old age, should she live so long. Jo made a cuppa and took it outside to the narrow wooden bench beneath the Piccabeen palms –
jali jali Piccabeen.
She opened the zen book Therese had pressed on her the other day. The ideas of the teacher were interesting, but playing insistently through Jo's mind as she read was the clear bright memory of Twoboy kissing the back of her neck as she got dressed for work that morning, his hands reaching up beneath her t-shirt to clasp her breasts, and gently insisting that she come back to bed, the warm, warm deliciousness of early morning bed, just for a little while.

Jo smiled and touched her neck, remembering. Sometimes she didn't mind being late for work.

‘You coming?' Jo stood in the doorway, offering a beanie. Outside was another fabulous royal-blue day of sunshine and birdsong, and she wanted to make sure the wood box was stocked to overflowing for the freezing nights that were about to hit.

‘Gimme a couple more minutes,' Twoboy answered, deep in the AIATSIS catalogue.

Jo sighed. She knew full well what a wild-goose chase he was on. Twoboy had recently rediscovered the precious recordings of an old great-great-uncle from Piccabeen and was painstakingly cross-indexing them against the brief wordlist his mother's father had left behind. Piccabeen was a bloody long way from Tin Wagon Road, true, but linguistic clues travelled far. There were words on Brisbane street maps that Goories still used every day, and a clutch of terms like
binna
and
jinung
had currency across the entire east coast. Twoboy had been told by the lawyers that he had to piece together the cultural jigsaw that had been exploded by his family's diaspora, or else accept defeat. The court wasn't interested in the gaps, only in the complete picture: songs, sites, family trees, language, ceremony. Especially songs. His case had to be watertight, strong enough to counter the automatic power that Oscar had, just from being born here and living on Bundjalung country all his fat, corrupt, deceitful life, without actually contributing anything of worth to the culture or to the Goories he claimed to lead.

‘There's months of work in these bloody language lists,' Twoboy said. ‘I dunno when I'm supposed to get to the Native Police records in Sydney and see if Grandad's name's there.' He raked through his dreads with his hands, scratching at his scalp in frustration.

‘Well, I'm done waiting.' Jo tossed the beanie on the desk beside the computer. ‘If you want us, we'll be outside, actually
working
on our country insteada
reading
about it.'

The back door banged, not quite a slam, but not far off it either. Twoboy rolled his eyes at the sound, and stayed put. He played the uncle's recorded language clips over and over, finding and comparing his transitive verbs with the murky pencilled phrases left to him in his grandfather's unschooled hand.

An hour later, Jo stood beneath the giant tallowwood holding a heavy armful of powdery-barked branches, hoping that a huntsman spider wasn't about to crawl out and start exploring her face. She staggered forward a few steps, toppled the timber into the almost-full ute, and then slapped its side twice to tell Ellen to drive on. Her daughter carefully put the car into first gear, and then kangaroo hopped over toward the beehives in the dip.

‘Watch out for the bees, eh,' Jo called in alarm, imagining the mayhem if Ellen ploughed into the twenty white boxes and their savage inhabitants. The kid had only been driving the paddocks for a little while, and at nearly fourteen had as much immunity to advice on this as any other topic.