Mullumbimby (23 page)

Oscar's face darkened with rage. Twoboy had six inches and twenty years on him and was fit to boot. Oscar glanced contemptuously at his nephew.

‘Well?' he asked Johnny. ‘You gonna sort this gammon prick out, or what?'

Johnny swallowed. Clearly he hadn't signed up for a weaponless one-on-one fight with Twoboy, no fucking way had he signed up for that.

Jo wished futilely that retreat was an option for her man, but she knew it wasn't, and didn't waste her breath.

‘Walk away, Johnny,' Twoboy advised. ‘He don't care about you, man. Walk away–'

‘Show this fucken dog whose land he's on!' Oscar interrupted, on the verge of smashing Twoboy himself and bugger the consequences.

Johnny stood, crucified by his uncle's giant expectations and his own pride.

When no escape route presented itself, he grimaced, shaped up, and swung a roundhouse punch at Twoboy, hard and fast. Twoboy stepped marginally sideways away from Johnny's fist as he blocked it. Then his right hand shot up.

Jo heard a loud crack and a blurred Johnny flew backwards, over the railing. A heavy splash followed, seconds later.

She rushed to peer down into the water – if Johnny was knocked
out, he would drown, and Twoboy would go to jail for a long, long time. To her great relief, Jo saw Johnny begin dog paddling groggily in a crooked line to the deep mud on the southern shore. He was alive then, and conscious too, no thanks to his uncle.

‘You fucken black doglicker!' Oscar shouted at Twoboy, taking off at full waddle for the path by the river, which was also conveniently the path back to his XR6. ‘Ya pretty ghetto when it's an eighteen-year-old kid fronting ya, eh!' he shouted over his shoulder.

Jo shook her head in amazement. All of a sudden, the story of this encounter was being rewritten to make Twoboy the aggressor, and Johnny and Oscar the hapless victims. She'd bet good money that when it was described in the Piccabeen pub that afternoon there'd be zero mention of any poly pipe.

Twoboy was breathing hard and tying his dreads back into place, watching Oscar to make sure he wasn't coming back with another weapon or more backup. The two of them stood tall in the middle of the bridge, as Oscar flopped into the driver's seat and squealed away to retrieve Johnny from the mangroves.

‘Pissweak old cunt,' Twoboy muttered, before turning to Jo with a pleased grin. ‘But I bloody lifted Johnny, eh? He fucken
flew
over that railing! Must have seagull dreaming!'

Jo laughed weakly in relief, as the XR6 vanished along the road. Not so very deep down she discovered that she admired Twoboy for his flogging of Johnny. You savage, she told herself, you bloody Neanderthal.

Twoboy turned and braced both his hands on the rail of the bridge that he had just won from Johnny, fair and fucking square. My country, suckers, not yours. His bright red, black and yellow footy shirt caught the last slanting rays of the setting sun as he gazed happily downriver, where a trio of dolphins were making their way past the poly pipe, out to the ocean. The very last of the light gleamed off their smooth round backs as they looped along their ancient waterways, hunting the very same prey that Jo and Twoboy had fished for earlier.

‘If it was up to me,' Twoboy said, turning back to Jo with a
triumphant grin, ‘That's how we'd sort Native Title out all over Australia, onetime. Behind closed doors, just between us mob, fuck the tribunal. Like the old days.'

That's all very well, thought Jo, but for one thing we aren't behind closed doors – we're in full public view and every bloody dugai that drove over the bridge in the last five minutes has seen you and Johnny brawling, shame. And second–

‘Good strategy if you're young and fit,' she disagreed, ‘but not if you're old.'

Twoboy shrugged dismissively. War required warriors, strong and young and ready to die. That was a given. Jo narrowed her eyes. Survival of the fittest was a dugai law, not hers.

‘Well, what if it was just your Mum fighting for her land, without you boys around to help her?' Jo kept pushing.

‘But she does have us.' Twoboy was unmoved. He was a street fighter. Johnny had flown over the railing like a fucking bird. It was a beautiful fight.

‘Or, or, okay. Well, what about Uncle Humbug ... what if he had a claim?'

‘Humbug?' Twoboy looked at her strangely.

‘He's gotta have a country somewhere ... He told me it's here,' Jo revealed. Twoboy blew his cheeks out in contemptuous laughter.

‘He wants to stick to biting tourists and talking to that fucken snake,' he responded. ‘He wouldn't know what Native Title was if it come up and bit him on the arse.'

‘That's what I'm talking about,' Jo argued, the heat rising in her face. ‘He can't even read or write – so how's he gonna make a claim?'

‘Native Title's there for the taking. And if he ain't gonna take it, then all the more for us mob, eh?' Twoboy said – before being distracted by the sight of Johnny, who was out of the river now, looking like the creature from the black lagoon.

The lad was snarling over his shoulder and dragging his sorry wet arse towards the XR6, when Twoboy gave him a Queen-like wave of condescension. Johnny erupted at this, yelling and forking the
air in fury. Twoboy laughed aloud in triumph and shouted through cupped hands.

‘Yeah, keep walking, Johnny, ya sorry little black cunt!'

Jo stared at her lover. If Humbug was simply a crazy old Koori in the park, a cold and hungry southerner with some mad aspirations to being a traditional owner, then there was no serious problem outside of his own grizzled head.

But.

But what if he really was a traditional owner? What if he had a legitimate claim, and nobody was listening?

All through the evening, as Jo sat beside the fire feasting on Chris's bream, listening to Twoboy replay the fight again and again, questions spun her mental wheels. Questions about Humbug, and about Oscar, and about Aunty Sally Watt. Questions about Twoboy. Troubling, answerless questions about how far her lover might go – just exactly who in the community he might be prepared to shaft – to claim the land that he insisted day and night was his great-grandfather's.

If you're gonna tell a lie, make it a big one.

Jo stood at the counter of the Billinudgel shop with a litre of milk and a loaf of bread, hoping that the car-floor coins she held would cover it.

‘Five fifty, thanks,' said the girl behind the till. Jo stared glumly at the silver in her palm, and turned to put the milk back. Ah, not to worry, eyes on the prize. She'd got the farm, and nothing else mattered, not really. Milkless tea until payday rolled around wouldn't kill her, and luckily Ellen had always preferred her Weetbix with hot water, the weirdo.

‘Need a dollar, mate?' Annie asked, and Jo looked up into the soft brown eyes of the owner of the Burringbar Produce Store. She squealed with delight and hurled herself into Annie's lanky arms.

‘Long time no see, girl!' Jo told the tall woman as they stepped outside. Annie propped a boot on the wooden bench, felt Warrigal's ears, and caught Jo up on the state of all her stockhorses, which were in full Ekka preparation. Jo had intended to ride around to the Burringbar Valley and visit, she told Annie, before the tragedy of Comet happened, and then it was a week before she could even as much as look at a horse. She hadn't ridden at all since that hideous day.

Annie nodded. ‘I sent you a text when I heard,' she said, hooking her thumbs into her jeans belt loops and looking like a female Clint Eastwood. Annie knew all about losing horses. The year before last, her foal crop had been all colts except for one stunning black filly,
and she was the one that got dysentery and couldn't be saved. The tiny curved hoof prints that had lingered in the Burringbar mud all October were enough to break anybody's heart.

‘So ... come round
this
week, and see my young stock,' she suggested in her slow country-raised accent. ‘Got a real nice taffy I want to show you, she's just come up from Williamsville.' Jo smiled. Annie bred and broke and sold horses for a living. Of all the cowboys around these parts, it was Annie, with her long Kamilaroi legs, short bleached hair and horse-breaking muscles who could have pulled off carrying a six-shooter around. Jo could see it now: Annie's spurs dragging in the dust of Wilfred Street, having a noonday showdown with the local yokels. Jo pictured Darren Ferrier jerking backwards off his feet as a red cloud bloomed across his chest. Annie blew smoke off her gun barrel before holstering it.
No trespassing.

‘Shit, I got no bungoo for another horse, mate,' said Jo, ‘As you might have gathered.' She lifted the milk and bread and gave a wry smile. She didn't even have enough to put Annie's stallion over Athena and try for another foal. There wasn't any point in pretending.

‘I know that, geez. Come and see her anyway!' Annie sounded mildly insulted and took her foot down off the bench seat. ‘There's always one of us minding shop.'

Jo promised to drop round in a few days. As Annie drove away to her Ekka preparations, Jo turned to read a poster in the shop window that had caught her eye on the way in.
Combined Schools Indigenous Art Competition: $500 Prize Money.
Three hundred big ones for first prize! Ellen was a shoo-in, Jo anticipated with a fat expectant grin – until she read the names of the judges. Two were white high school art teachers, but the third, she discovered to her horror, was
Mrs (Granny) Rosemary Nurrung.
Ah, fuck me days, Jo spat. Ellen's got Buckley's chance, not unless she decides to paint an Aboriginal Jesus hanging on the cross wearing a pained smile and carrying a bloodied bible in each of his long-suffering hands.

Jo banged on the kitchen wall. Does he think I'm made of hot water? Of
any
water, when every single drop needs to be pumped up from the creek, and that means fuel at two bucks a bloody litre?

‘Leave some hot water for the rest of bloody New South Wales!' Jo shouted towards the bathroom as she briefly turned on the hot tap in the kitchen to underline her point. The shower continued for another three or four minutes, while she stood and fumed.

When Twoboy finally sauntered out towelling his sodden dreads she shot him a filthy look.

‘I'll be sending ya the bill, ya keep these fifteen-minute showers up,' she threatened.

Twoboy immediately pointed out that it cost him fifty bucks in juice every time he turned up at Jo's farm gate, but
he
didn't go on and on about it, not being a tightarse like her; she remonstrated that he'd been driving down here for the court case long before they'd met, that she furthermore had never-fucking-ending homeowner's bills to pay already, and invited him to reassess the merits of bachelorhood anytime he liked.

Half an hour later, Twoboy was still sullen on the computer, cursing the slow connection, and giving monosyllabic answers to Jo's tentative peacemaking questions.

Finally she gave up and went and sat in front of the TV with Ellen.
This.
This was exactly what she didn't miss about being married.

Luckily a re-run of ‘The Wire' was on, and she was able to distance herself from the sour figure bent over the keyboard in the next room. When the show ended, though, the tension of their disagreement lingered on. Jo got up and went to the doorway.

‘I'm going to bed,' she announced, hoping to find out whether or not she would sleep alone. Twoboy looked around and up at her. Well, that's an improvement on talking to the back of his grunting head, anyway, Jo thought.

‘I'll be in later,' he said tersely. ‘I think Laz's onto something at the archives.'

The man clearly wanted her to ask what it was, to come over and
get all interested in the never-ending details of building the documentation, but now it was Jo's turn to grunt and retreat. Yeah. Of course he has. The case, the case, the bloody case, twenty-four hours a day seven days a fucking week. The case that's gonna save the world, bring back the culture, appease the ancestors and restore this tiny corner of the Bundjalung nation to a mighty powerful force for good and not evil. Jo stalked away, slammed the bedroom door behind her and fell face first onto the doona.

Whatever.

When Jo woke next morning, Twoboy wasn't holding her close. He wasn't even in bed.

Her heart quickly sank as she remembered last night's disagreement. Had he gone back up to Brisbane without even saying goodbye? It was Monday, and Monday through Friday was normally spent at the archives, the State Library, or at the lawyers chambers. He could have bloody said goodbye though, Jo thought miserably.

But then a clatter of cups told Jo that her lover was simply busying himself in the kitchen. Her shoulders relaxed, and she propped herself up against the bedstead with a small smile, pulling the doona around her neck for warmth.

Outside the window, Athena stood looking at the house, her hot yarraman breath showing white against the morning air. Soon, old girl, soon. Just give me a few more minutes of warm doona and a hefty shot of caffeine. Christ, there's still a fair twinge in the old back, from that whipper snippering. Maybe she should think about going back to uni, Jo mused, and find herself a white-collar job that didn't need muscle strength, before she was too decrepit to manage the cemetery on top of the farm work. If the case was successful, Twoboy reckoned, there could be National Parks and eco-tourism jobs for both of them, for the whole mob, for Laz, Rhonda, Billy. For Justice and Yabra in time to come, even for Ellen if she wanted it. Real Goorie businesses in the valley. Proper jobs that couldn't be whisked away at the whim of unseen city bosses.

Jo ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth, imagining tourists swarming over the World Heritage, toiling up the ridge, and Twoboy yarning to them about the King Parrot Dreaming. He'd love it, she thought, he'd soak up the attention of the cooing Americans and the fascinated Japanese, would pose for photos with his arms around them when they came back down picking off leeches and head over heels in love with her man to the very last one of em. It was a vision of a better future, and it all rested on the case. Without that tick from the dugai court, Twoboy had no traditional rights to enjoy in this valley, and there would be no National Parks jobs, no eco-tourism business in the World Heritage, no legal hunting and gathering, no
nothing. He
would have to go back to uni and finish his interrupted law degree. Try to get work in some city office somewhere, in a suit. Jesus.

As Jo chewed over the implications, Twoboy appeared bearing two mugs. He'd discovered a forgotten plunger stored in the spare room, and the delicious scent of real coffee filled the room. Jo sipped gratefully at the muddy infusion and decided her fella was officially forgiven for taking long showers like she was a rich dugai with money to burn. A way to a woman's heart is through her addictions, and this, oh my bunji, is mine.

‘How's the surf report?' she asked, knowing full well that if it was any good Twoboy wouldn't be standing in front of her.

‘Flat as a tack. I'm gonna buy you brekkie in Ocean instead!' He began massaging her neck. ‘Since you've got the RDO. And listen. How about we get Kym and Jase and the boys and go up to Lake Majestic soon? Time we went bush and cleared our heads. This case is driving me round the fucken bend, and you, my darlin, are just as stressed as I am.'

Jo knew he was right. The wonderful calm of Sangsurya had worn off in a few short days. Now she was getting wild about trivia she should have laughed off. With athletics season over, and her nephews' latest clutch of medallions and trophies on display in their lounge, Kym had promised to definitely come down next weekend, cross her heart and hope to die. Maybe, Jo suggested, Chris and Uncle
Pat could come too, and how about Therese and Amanda, and if Ellen wanted to bring Holly along–

‘Whoa, whoa,' Twoboy interrupted as his thumbs dug deep into her shoulders. ‘Let's just keep it a bit contained, eh? Hard to hear the country sing when there's whitefellas stompin all over it and yak-yak-yakkin.'

Ah. There was an ulterior motive, Jo realised with a small stab of displeasure, a motive to do with Twoboy's real love, the bloody fucking case. If he couldn't conjure up her mystery talga by lurking on the ridge at dusk, he'd go further afield to the peaks around Lake Majestic and try there. It wouldn't be long, she mused, and he'd be sniffing around the power centre of Wollumbin itself, getting into all sorts of trouble with the TOs over on that side, and God knew what might happen if he woke up the spirit of the big mountain. Someone walked over her grave at the thought. She shuddered involuntarily, and Twoboy paused in his massaging.

‘You okay?' he asked.

‘Yeah,' Jo said, deciding to ignore the goosebumps.

‘How about Laz though?' She threw back the doona as the coffee revived her. ‘For someone who supposedly lives on country he never seems to bloody be here.'

Laz was flat out with Billy and with the research, plus he had no points left on his licence, Twoboy explained. ‘He wanted to bludge my last two off me last week.'

Jo laughed and shook her head. ‘Blackfellas.'

‘Yeah,' Twoboy said with a knowing grin, ‘and Rhonda's running on empty too, all cos of old leadfoot. He's thinking of taking Mum in to get a licence for the first time in her life, just as a backup.'

‘That feels better!' Jo pushed her empty plate to the other side of the table. Her tummy was rounded and full against the denim of her jeans. The unusual feeling of having the leisure to sit still and digest her breakfast made Jo stretch her arms high with delight. She waved
to the local woodwork teacher who was heading into Bi-Lo, then sat back, crossed her legs, and began to really savour a day off.

It was almost worth having to work, she reflected, just for the joy of taking your RDOs. Talk about simple pleasures: try this one – doing sweet fuck all and watching everybody else having to slave away as usual. Not to mention that supreme pleasure: quitting when the hideous saga of doing what the boss told you to do became too much to take. How many jobs had she left in her time?

Jo counted on her fingers: the car yard detailing at Tweed when she was sixteen. The bar work, the letterbox deliveries, the pizza-making in Fortitude Valley, the waitressing that turned out to be an unexpectedly satisfying vehicle for social revenge via the spillage of hot drinks and soup on arseholes who sorely needed it. The furniture factory in Nerang where she'd only lasted until the day she mentioned the word
union.
The Bundall warehouse where the boredom of filling cardboard cartons with sports clothes could have made her shrivel and die on the spot if not for the pleasure of arguing with the Jehovah's Witnesses who worked alongside her. Dozens of jobs, dozens of places. Some she'd quit and some she'd been sacked from, but none of them she regretted leaving in the slightest. Being the Mullum caretaker was the first one Jo had stuck at for more than a year, and the first straight job that she had ever found the least bit satisfactory. All that had been missing all those years, Jo mused, was a workplace where everybody but her was dead.