Mullumbimby (27 page)

‘Only second?' Jo asked, surprised. Yes, Twoboy sighed.

‘According to Mum, Sally's great-great-grandmother Mary Mullet was born in Piccabeen, but her great-grandfather on the other side, Albert Watt – who's Oscar's great-grandfather too, of course, and Steve's and Patti's and Shane's and all them lot – he was from Newcastle or Sydney or somewhere else way the hell down south. He might even have been from Westown, the lawyer told me today. So Sally might –
might
– have a real claim through her maternal line, but for some fucking reason she's saying her links coming from the great-grandfather Albert. Same bloke Oscar's claiming through, but it's all bullshit.'

‘Why would she do that?' Jo asked, deciding that she liked the
effect of the beer far too much to stop at one or two. Fuck it, she was going to get bombed on the windfall of Twoboy's carton. She'd gone to work with a hangover before. ‘Why not just go it alone on the great-great-grandmother line and not have to deal with Oscar's mob at all?'

‘She's running scared,' Chris interjected. ‘Oscar's got all them mad cousins that are forever in and out of jail, and he's a bully from way back, always has been. Even as a teenager he was a bloody prick. I remember him bashing the tourist kids one Christmas at the Piccabeen pool. He's standing over Sally to lie for him in court, I betcha anything.'

Jo opened a packet of two minute noodles, and considered this idea. It made a lot of sense. Aunt Sally had always struck her as a decent woman, someone who genuinely wanted to hold the community together with the scant resources she had at her disposal. But good intentions were no match for the brute force of Uncle Oscar. Sally, Jo reflected, had little more than her white husband and her own straight Goorie backbone to rely on when it came to countering the nephews and poly pipes that Oscar could summon with a snap of his fingers. Maybe, given the choice of going Oscar's way or getting nothing at all, Sally had decided to trust the thin trail of blood that they shared, and treat it as the path of least resistance. Jo upturned the Mi Goreng into a bowl and broke the hard wavy mass apart with her fingers before putting it on the bench.

‘Yeah, you're probably right,' Twoboy agreed, crunching noodles. ‘I used to like Sally alright, before all this shit came along. But she's picked her side. Just bad luck for her she's gone and listened to old goonah guts and jumped onto the wrong team. Cos he ain't winning jack shit at the tribunal with his lies, I'll tell you that for free.'

‘I dunno...' Jo tossed her empty stubby into the recycling. ‘Have you seen his birth certificates and everything?'

‘I seen enough,' Twoboy responded tartly. ‘He was born here, more's the pity, and so he reckons this his country! But that fat old prick's from freshwater mob, ya can see it in his ugly mug. He
wouldn't know how to find the beach with a fucken GPS. Put him up on the hill at Ocean and he'd go, oh daw, what's the big blue wet thing? Yeah, the fucken jang can flap, but he got any story for this country? He's gammon, he got nothing!'

‘Well, I hope the tribunal sees it that way,' Jo said, finally convinced that Twoboy knew what he was talking about when it came to the Bullockheads and their scorched earth campaign. With a new beer open, she put it to Twoboy that, really, if you looked at it objectively, Sally Watt was being shafted, the same as he and Laz and Mum Jackson were: cos if Oscar managed to convince the tribunal to hand him the powers of a traditional owner, there'd be no way in hell Sally would share in whatever bounty followed – she'd quickly find herself
persona non grata
in Oscar's stronghold of Piccabeen, and might would once again have been made right, the same as it always had been when it came to blackfellas and the dugai law.

‘Are you asking me to feel sorry for Sally Watt?' Twoboy asked, folding his arms and drilling Jo with his black-eyed stare. ‘Christ almighty.'

‘Maybe.' Jo felt like being stubborn. ‘She always had time for me, before you came along. We got along pretty good.'

‘She's worked her ring off for years to keep the blackfellas around here at peace,' added Chris.

Twoboy ignored this, and addressed Jo instead.

‘Listen, pollyanna, this might look like a fight with lawyers in a fancy courtroom, but really it's a
war.
You got that? A war, not a game, over the same thing that war's always been over anywhere in the world – country. And the sooner you realise that, the sooner you'll work out where I stand, and why.'

It sounded like he was saying,
where you stand too.
‘Like there's ever going to be perfect justice come out of a white man's court. Us mob are at war over the scraps off the white man's table, and once you decide to play that game, it's no holds barred–'

But Jo still couldn't get the picture of Johnny and Oscar on the bridge out of her mind. Something had been bothering her about
that day, something that didn't quite fit with Twoboy's avowals of war. She suddenly remembered what it was.

‘Well, if it's all a war, if real justice doesn't come into it, then why'd ya chuck Johnny's pipe in the river that day, instead of just smashing him with it?' she countered, before adding tartly, ‘and don't fucking call me pollyanna, thanks. I've been around the block a couple of times.'

‘Assault with a weapon,' Twoboy told her, ‘gets you double the jail time as ordinary assault. Johnny Bullockhead might be fucken stupid enough to go down for a three-year stretch in the middle of a Native Title case, but I'm not. I'm playing the long game, girl.'

‘You really thought of that, with him standing there ready to smash you?' Jo asked, disbelieving that anyone could be so cool, half-completed law degree or not.

Twoboy looked away briefly. Then he unfolded his arms and braced his hands on the top of the kitchen bench. Chris and Jo watched him.

‘Listen. Strength lies in unity, not in numbers. Oscar thinks cos he's got a big mob of family, all them hardheaded nephews, he's got the advantage, and to an extent that's true, especially right now. But Oscar's really just a fat old cunt who's got where he is with pure rat cunning, not strategic intelligence. And come one week, two weeks, three weeks time, Johnny – who's no fucken rocket scientist, mind you – he's gonna be sitting in front of the telly, or driving the kids to school, or on the bog having a shit, and he's suddenly gonna go:
Hey! Uncle Oscar wanted me to go up against Twoboy on the bridge that day, when he had the weapon, and I had seven-eights of fuck all.'

Twoboy's eyes gleamed with the pleasure of anticipating this revelation on Johnny's part.

‘And at that second, at that exact moment, Oscar's biggest advantage is gonna flip, and become his weakness. Cos Johnny's a fucken dickhead, but he's not so dumb that he'll put his arse on the line for Oscar time and time again once he realises he's expendable. Won't be long, Oscar's gonna be spending more time keeping them boys of his in line, than thinking about how to win the case. And then,' Twoboy concluded with a small grim smile, ‘I'll have him.'

‘Divide and rule,' Jo mused.

‘An army's opportunities come from exploiting the openings in the environment caused by the enemy's weakness in a given area,' Twoboy recited. ‘Sun Tzu. Han Dynasty. If Oscar had read it, I might be worried, but he hasn't, or if he did he didn't pay much fucking attention. So when we win in court, it'll be all over red rover for Oscar and every other Bullockhead. The whole mob of em can go and rot in hell, for all I care.'

‘Hang on,' Jo said slowly, looking at Chris and aware that now she perhaps
was
being a little bit of a pollyanna. ‘I thought you Lawmen were supposed to take care of everything on your country. No exceptions.'

‘And?' Twoboy looked blank. The idea that the Bullockheads were a part of his country had never once entered his head.

‘Aunty Barb always told me Law meant taking responsibility for the whole bloody lot.' Jo went on, remembering how adamant the old girl had been on this point. Chris nodded. Everything was connected, and nothing could be ignored, however inconvenient.

It finally dawned on Twoboy what his woman was on about.

‘Shit. You looking for Saint Twoboy again, are you?' he asked sarcastically.

‘I'm just looking for a bit of consistency,' Jo argued, digging in. ‘Either everything on country's connected, or nothing is.'

‘Well, once they lose the case and fuck off, they won't be on my country,' Twoboy said breezily. ‘So the problem won't exist.'

‘But you just said Sally might have a legitimate claim!' Jo retorted as she opened the fridge door.

A momentary pause.

‘So, I contain multitudes,' Twoboy threw at her with a boyish grin. ‘Sue me.'

You charming handsome bastard, thought Jo, softening. You get me on that jag hook every time.

As Chris's old bomb sputtered and backfired into life in the drive-way a few minutes later, Jo opened another stubby and looked at Twoboy through frosted beer goggles.

‘I might be a little bit drunk,' she confessed.

‘I think you might be right,' he twinkled.

Jo decided that standing in front of her was absolutely the most gorgeous man she'd ever seen, let alone kissed. She told him so, and Twoboy laughingly agreed. He scooped Jo up and into the bedroom, where they proceeded to make a great deal of noise. Lying in the rumpled bedclothes, Jo reminded Twoboy of what he'd said earlier in the week.

‘You know how you said you're big and black and educated, and nobody thinks you're a good idea?' she asked.

‘Mmm,' he responded, half-asleep with his arm around her neck and his dreads spilling chaotically over both pillows.

‘Well, I think you're a good idea,' Jo told him, curling into his shoulder. ‘I think you're a bloody good idea.'

Twoboy smiled gently, and promptly lost consciousness. Soft snoring filled the room.

‘I love you,' Jo whispered anyway.

‘So we finally gotcha over to the wilds of Burringbar,' Annie teased. Jo stood on the dusty concrete apron of the Produce Store at the End of the World. Outside the huge metal shed, Ellen was making a noisy fuss of Annie's Irish wolfhound, Doofus. Annie clambered down from her antediluvian forklift, which stank of burning brake pads, tossed her cowboy hat onto the counter, and hugged her visitors. From his reclining lounge chair in the depths of the shed, Dicko boomed a greeting. Nothing new there then, thought Jo drily, Annie doing all the hard yakka while Dicko nurses his depression and talks shit to the few customers he can actually stand.

‘How's business?' she asked, comparing Annie's prices on the wall to those at the Co-op. Slightly cheaper. They'd want to be, since the Produce Store really was at the end of the world, out along a beautiful but isolated bush road dead-ending at the western foot of Bottlebrush. If it wasn't for Annie, Jo often thought, nary a soul would make the
trip to this out-of-the-way valley. Personally, she wouldn't have gone to the end of her driveway to buy feed off Dicko.

‘Yeah, not too bad. The salt-licks are flying out the door, they keep us going.' Annie nodded at the salt-licks custom-made onsite that she sold all over the east coast to the owners of glossy show horses desperate for an edge in the ring.

‘Remind me to grab one when I go,' Jo offered. It was payday, her petrol tank was full, and the rates were finally taken care of. She'd have thirty dollars spending money this fortnight, after the indulgence of the salt-lick.

‘Well come and see me nags.'

Annie opened the five-bar gate to her stables, carefully back-heeling a Scotch thistle into oblivion. Ellen and Jo followed her through a narrow lane to the stalls, where six handsome equine heads were looking out eagerly for their dinners. Three of the nickering horses were good-looking chestnuts, yearlings out of Annie's foundation broodmares, which grazed, fat-bellied with this season's foals yet to drop, beside the stables.

‘Your mares throw true to type, eh,' Jo noted.

Annie nodded at the yearling carbon copies.

Another pair of stabled heads were bay fillies, reeking of quality. They had just been trucked back from the home of a prize-winning stallion down south.

‘Remember this one?' Annie said, removing the hood from the taller of the two fillies. ‘You liked her blaze. We registered her as Burringbar Whatnot.'

Jo remembered seeing the horse almost two years ago. She'd liked the question mark crescent that curved down the middle of the filly's forehead before dribbling to an end just short of her nostrils. Jo put a hand out for the horse to smell.

‘She's beautiful,' Ellen said wistfully.

‘Yeah, she's a cutey alright.' Annie's gruff manner did not quite mask how proud she was of the horses she bred.

Jo stroked Whatnot's neck, noticing how quiet all Annie's
yarraman were. Being a two-year-old, Jo estimated, Whatnot had already had a couple of thousand dollars work put into her, on top of the stallion's service fee of about a grand. Plus a fair whack for Annie's profit. Ah, wish. She's lovely, Jo told herself in a feeble attempt at consolation, but she's no Comet.

‘And now for the piece of resistance,' Annie announced, opening the door of the last stall. Jo's heart flew up into her throat and she heard Ellen's sharp intake of breath. Standing in the bright yellow straw of the stall was the taffy she had been ordered to come to see. The filly was stunning, with a fine classic head, small ears and clean straight legs ending in four black hooves. When she matures, Jo judged, she'll muscle up and really turn into something out of the box. And that
colour.
The horse's coat shone with the soft bronze of a stingray seen through shallow water in afternoon light.

‘Hooley dooley,' Jo turned to her friend, rapt. ‘She's something like a racehorse undersized!'