Mullumbimby (26 page)

Later, dismounting at home, stroking Athena's neck in a useless gesture of guilt and regret, Jo slowly put two and two together.

By going up the fire trail directly opposite Chris's place, Jo realised, she must have strayed over near the far top corner of Starr's property. There had been cut timber in the back of his ute. Fresh cut branches and an orange Stihl chainsaw, yellow sawdust on the tray. He had clearly been cutting wood at the top of the hill, not far from where she'd halted Athena on the trail. Either that, or the arsehole was illegally harvesting rainforest timber out of the World Heritage. Either way, that orange Stihl chainsaw was almost certainly the sound that she'd heard.

There was no need, after all, for superstitious panic about mooki and ridge singers.

The relief Jo got from this revelation was huge. She unsaddled Athena with a far easier mind, putting extra molasses in her feed, and brushing her gently until the mare eventually settled.

Losing your temper's not the end of the world, Jo told herself guiltily as she went inside. Horses in the wild have violent, fear-ridden lives. Mares regularly fight each other for dominance, not just the stallions, and a boss mare constantly has to prove her position to the lesser members of the herd. Athena probably just thinks I'm showing her who's in charge. And anyway, horses live in the moment. You haven't forgotten about hitting her, but she has.

‘How's Aunty Chris?' Ellen asked from in front of World of Warcraft. Telstra must be having a rare good day, Jo observed.

‘Dunno. I got distracted and ended up on the other ridge,' she said slowly. ‘And is your homework done?'

‘Yep,' Ellen lied cheerfully. ‘Annie Bowden rang to see if you're still coming over.'

‘She must really want to sell me a stockhorse,' Jo answered, buttering slices of bread with the last scrapings of the margarine container. ‘Maybe she's taking lay-by. Fifty cents a week for the rest of my life.'

‘Can I come too?' Ellen asked, looking up. If there were new horses to be bought, she wanted to be there.

‘Yeah, but don't get excited. It's not happening.' Jo shot Ellen a look, remembering how desperately hope outweighed rationality at thirteen. She pointed to the bright red rates notice on the fridge. ‘That's how much hope there is of me buying a registered stockhorse.'

‘My paintings'll sell for megabucks one day,' Ellen promised, making Jo smile sadly. Ah, if only. The jahjam hadn't yet realised that the world didn't want Aboriginal art by pale Goorie girls on the east coast. Buyers wanted exotica, dots and circles, red dust and people of Twoboy's colour – the real Aboriginals, cos they, the dugais, said so.

Sitting in front of the ABC news with a cheese jaffle, Jo suddenly remembered that young Sam had been in Rob Starr's ute. The kid
seemed to spend his life hitchhiking around the shire ... Had he simply accepted a lift from Starr? Denied the chance of dancing with DJ's troupe, she mused, a fatherless lad might have latched onto Starr's redneck toughness instead. And if a harsh, judgemental Christianity at home makes for a lonely, wandering teenager, then the uncomfortable question arose: Just what sort of middle-aged farmer wanted to take a young boy out into remote bush paddocks in the late afternoon where there was nobody else around to see or hear?

Jo hoped she was wrong, but there had been something in Rob Starr's bearing as he drove past that spoke to her of a hidden darkness. A shying away from scrutiny. This line of thought, and the difficulty of saying anything useful about it to anyone, had her tossing uneasily again before she slept that night.

Jo wandered around the makeshift art gallery inside the high school hall, and quickly realised why Granny Nurrung and not Aunty Sally Watt was doing the honours on the judging panel. Fully a quarter of the exhibits were signed by Watts, Bullockheads or Browns. Nervous at this unwelcome discovery, Jo looked around for the owners of these dangerous surnames. Yep, there was Oscar's missus, sitting with Johnny and a scattering of teenagers she didn't know, Byron and Piccabeen High kids no doubt, over on the far side of the basketball court. No sign of Sally yet, though, nor of Uncle Oscar himself. Maybe an art show inside a dugai institution was too much of an ask for the big culture man. It had certainly been too much for Twoboy, who reacted to any mention of mainstream schools as though Jo was pressing him to pick up a brown snake and begin a polite conversation with it.

Jo felt that the pivoting heads and low unimpressed mutterings of the seated Bullockhead mob probably had something to do with her. She turned her back on them coldly, and went in the opposite direction to where Ellen, Chris and Uncle Pat were parked next to a barefoot DJ. A high school auditorium jam-packed with dugais
wasn't somewhere that trouble was likely to start – but then again, with a mob who carried weapons in their cars, who knew? Jo felt a lot less vulnerable standing beside the calmly neutral Wiradjuri presence that was DJ.

‘What's the verdict?' Chris asked as Jo came up.

‘Some of them are really good, eh.' Jo nodded in affirmation. Ellen's eagle was the standout, but a few of the other students were talented as well. There were the inevitable black hands grasping white ones in friendship, but there were also several excellent renditions of Chincogan in oils and in charcoal. One older boy had produced a fine painting that drew heavily upon his Yamatji ancestry on the far side of the continent, and this framed picture already bore a bright red dot of success. Ellen's painting bore a sign saying Not For Sale, and Jo had proudly heard more than one punter stop and wish that it was.

‘You've done well with em, brother,' Jo told DJ as she kissed him hello. ‘We all know how much work you do with our jahjams,' she added – then he was mobbed by his adoring dancers and dragged away to perform the opening.

‘Lot of the blokes are real jealous of him, eh,' Chris told Jo, ‘cos he actually lifts a finger to help the boys.'

‘Typical,' Jo said. ‘It's a lot easier to run other Goories down than to get off your arse and do something. I wish we could clone him, we need about fifty DJs.'

The mike squealed and squawked from the stage, demanding attention. Jo, Chris and Ellen turned to face the head, who stood alongside the three judges. DJ's boys danced, uncertain at first but finishing stronger, to loud applause from the parochial crowd of two hundred. Then Granny Nurrung stepped up to do the welcome to country.

Behind her, DJ and his boys stood semi-naked, painted in white ochre, and with bright scarlet lap-laps around their hips. Most of the boys had scarlet headbands on, proudly stating that they were youths on the way to manhood, and several had bright red, black and yellow beads on arms or neck, too.

‘Geez, get some jumpers on them boys,' Jo whispered to Chris, ‘before they all catch bloody pneumonia. And if that old lady makes us pray for the Lord's guidance, or tells us that the fucking children are our fucking future, I'll scream out loud right here on the spot.'

Chris stifled an irreverent giggle.

‘Welcome, everybody,' said Granny Nurrung in a high strong voice that made Jo wonder if she was a lay-preacher. ‘I'd like to welcome you all here to the combined art show, by our very talented Goorie children. I want to begin by acknowledging that we are on Bundjalung land here today, and I really do also want to thank our Lord Christ Jesus for bringing us together here on this occasion. I'm sure you'll all agree that our young ones have been blessed with a great lot of talent, as you can see. I'd like you to give them all a big round of applause, one and all, whether they've won a prize for their art tonight or not. God bless.'

Duty done, Granny Nurrung stepped back into the line of dignitaries. There had been no direct praise of the heathen DJ, Jo noticed. The entire speech was brief and low-key, she thought as she clapped, very modest, just like the conservative clothes the old lady had chosen for the event. In stark contrast to the dancers, and to most of the Aboriginal people in the crowd, Granny Nurrung wore no red, black or yellow. A paisley scarf in brown ochres was draped around her shoulders in a kind of gesture towards the occasion, but her skirt and jacket were bottle green with a blue trim, suitable for any CWA meeting in the land, and the silver cross around her neck was easily visible from the floor of the hall. As the old lady stepped back out of the limelight, her trim black court shoes stepped on tiny lumps of white ochre which had fallen from the dancers, grinding them into the floorboards. Not for the first time, Jo reflected on the different paths that Goories had taken over the years, the different strategies for survival that individuals and families had found.

‘At least she didn't say the bloody Lord's Prayer to kick off,' she
told Chris, ‘cos I would have walked out, truegod, and probably the Singhs would have come with me. You couldn't blame them.'

‘Shush,' said Chris, ‘the prizes.'

Participation certificates were distributed, and then the two highly commended awards were given out. Jo began to feel a thrill of jangling nerves, and shifted anxiously where she stood.

Third went to the charcoal drawing of Chincogan. A shy pale girl with a big smile split off from the Bullockhead table and walked up to receive her fifty-dollar voucher, beaming at the floor.

‘Sally's granddaughter,' Chris whispered.

Second prize went to the Yamatji boy and his boab trees. Holy crap, thought Jo, meeting Ellen's anxious eyes.

‘And first prize,' announced the head to the hushed crowd, pausing for full dramatic effect, ‘goes to Ellen Breen, for her painting,
Goorie Life.'

Jo, Chris and Uncle Pat erupted in cheers, holding each other in a triangle as they bounced up and down for joy.

Filthy looks and a hastily quietened boo from the Bullockheads couldn't spoil the moment. When the head handed Ellen her art-supplies voucher worth three hundred dollars, one of the white teachers leaned over and told her she was the most promising young artist in the northern rivers and not to stop painting, whatever she did. So that's it then, thought Jo later, when Ellen reported this. The dice is thrown and my daughter's future is sealed.

‘Talent will out,' Chris said happily on the way home, coasting down the tunnel road to save juice and because the Econovan rolled faster than it drove.

‘Just don't think you'll make a living out of art,' Jo lectured Ellen sternly, ‘cos in this philistine country you have to be able to kick a football or run like Cathy Freeman to make any real money.'

‘Uh-huh,' Ellen contradicted, waving her voucher joyfully in her mother's face till Jo batted it away in proud irritation. Be good, she reflected, if it was a voucher for Fred Henry's garage in Billinudgel and not for the Lismore art supply shop. Having a three-hundred-dollar
voucher was one thing, having the petrol to get over and redeem the bloody thing was quite another.

‘You done good,' Jo smiled at Ellen. ‘Real good, bub.'

‘Well, I don't need to ask who won!' Twoboy laughed when they ran inside, Ellen literally bouncing for joy as she showed him her voucher.

Jo kissed the man in front of Ellen and Chris, delighted that he had turned up without warning on a weeknight. The sight of the Commodore parked in the drive still thrilled her as much as it had the first time. It had her singing as she threw her bag into the bedroom. Maybe it really was
love, love, love ... luh-huv...

‘Hers was the best by about a country mile,' Jo skited, opening the fridge. A fresh carton of Tooheys stashed there. She ripped three stubbies out.

‘Want a drink?' Jo asked Ellen, awarding Twoboy another brownie point because he'd thought to bring soft drink for the kid.

‘Shoulda heard how many people wanted to buy it,' Chris added proudly, winking at Ellen.

‘You can get some really good paints with that,' Twoboy told her, handing the voucher back. ‘Canvasses, too.'

‘Don't want paint,' Ellen disagreed, ‘I'm concentrating on drawing and pastels. Can I have a beer, Mum?'

‘No bloody way. Have a coke or a cuppa tea.' Jo frowned. Now she'd need to keep a closer eye on how many stubbies were left in the fridge in the mornings. ‘Your brain's still growing and it don't need grog.'

‘Whereas yours is shrinking and it no longer matters?' asked Ellen. Jo raised her palm and gammoned she was about to slap the child to the ground.

‘Was old goonah guts there?' Twoboy asked, draining two-thirds of his beer in one long draw and, winking at Jo, surreptitiously backhanding the remainder to the kid. Ellen quickly disappeared with it to her room. Chris grinned while Jo pursed her lips. Grog was for adults, not kids.

‘No,' Jo answered, ‘but there was a dozen Bullockheads. None of them too happy when they realised who Ellen was and that she'd done them out of three hundred bucks.'

‘They try anything on?' Twoboy asked, suddenly tense. Jo shook her head.

‘Nah, just a few dirty looks. The joint was packed fulla white parents, anyway. But I was glad Chris was with us when we walked out.'

Jo ran a finger around the mouth of her stubby. It was difficult to know just how worried to be about the Bullockheads. Whether to accept Twoboy's analysis that they were basically all talk, or, alternatively, keep in mind the memory of Oscar and Johnny on the Devine bridge, approaching with a blunt instrument and only too happy to use it. Sally Watt, Twoboy then revealed, hadn't been at the art show because she'd been in Brisbane that morning, fronting the tribunal with her concoction of half-truths about her family tree.

‘Half
-truths?' Jo asked. She was weary of multiple barely understood family trees, and the suspicions that they aroused. ‘How do ya mean, half-truths? Have they got a claim or haven't they?'

‘Sally's Oscar's second cousin, right?' Twoboy said, as he ripped the scab off another stubby and threw it into the recycling bucket. His look said he'd been through this a million times before – why couldn't Jo seem to keep it straight in her mind?