Mullumbimby (34 page)

‘The waterhole,' Jo whispered. ‘At the base of the ridge.'

‘Yowai,' Granny agreed. ‘It needs looking after. It needs my Sammy here, and it needs your girl, too. She the next one.'

Jo shook her head in wonder, frowning.

‘You could have just said. I would have stayed away.'

‘Yeah. You mighta stayed away. Or maybe not. And then how about your man Twoboy?' Granny Nurrung asked, her tone hardening. ‘He pretty good at staying away, is he?'

Jo locked eyes with the old woman. So she knew Twoboy, and somehow knew as well how far the man was prepared to go for his Native Title. She bit her lip hard.

‘Mmm. Didn't think so. Looks like he'll be getting his Native Title now after all, but my young cousin's still got a lot to learn.'

‘Your
cousin!'
Jo blurted, dropping her drink on to the pavers where it fizzed and leaked unheeded in a large brown puddle. She stared
in disbelief. Yes, Granny nodded. Her second cousin. And Humbug's too, of course.

‘But why didn't you tell him?' Jo asked in amazement. All the time Granny had known who Twoboy was ... All this time, all those hundreds of hours the Jacksons had spent trawling through archives and records, searching for evidence to make up for the lack of bodies, the lack of stories, the lack of proof. All Twoboy's madness about recording the talga. The fight over Ellen's hands. The agony of not being able to pinpoint Grandad Tommy and claim his Native Title the way the white court wanted, and all this time Granny and Humbug had
known?

‘We never grew him up,' Granny Nurrung said bluntly. ‘We don't know him. He our blood, yeah, but he don't know this place. Not like we do. And he's a proppa cheeky bugger, too, stirring up all that trouble with Aunt Sally. For Native Title! We're not interested in blooming Native Title! What's the good of Native Title? A bitta paper from the government if you're lucky. And a punch on the jaw on the Durrumbil bridge if ya not,' she added, making Jo suddenly stare.

Granny Nurrung laughed sardonically, and went on.

‘I'm on the pension. And this one–' a nod here at Humbug – ‘he nearly sixty. He gonna go get a government job? Wear a nice ironed shirt every day, and use a computer? No, I don't think so. We all looking after the country the proper way, and when Sammy big enough, then it'll be his turn. More better when there's a jalgani and a man both, but anyways, he'll look after that rockhole when the Lord takes me home.'

‘But what if Rob had to sell up or something?' Jo was deeply sceptical. ‘The new owners can just lock you out. Who'll look after the rockhole then?'

The old lady glanced over at Rob Starr, who was smiling gently, and examining the tops of his R.M. Williams as he listened.

‘Robbie, now,' said Granny. The man lifted his grey-eyed gaze to the others. The old woman pursed her lips and tilted her chin at Jo.

‘You reckon this one needs answers. You tell her.'

‘It's not my farm,' Rob Starr said quietly to Jo. ‘I still live there, but
I haven't got any kids of my own, so I signed it over to Sam a few years back. The papers are in the bank in Mullum.'

Astounded, Jo looked over at fifteen-year-old Sam Nurrung, sitting there patiently while the adults talked about him and anticipated his future. No wonder he's got that straight back. He's a young Bundjalung noble, she breathed to herself.
Landed fucken gentry.

‘What about the singing, though, and Ellen's hands?' Jo went on after a minute. ‘What's that all about?' The old lady laughed, but didn't answer. Rob Starr and Sam Nurrung both smiled at the ground. Jo realised with a flash of anger that she wasn't going to be told everything. Some things would always remain unknowable unless she figured them out for herself. As she wondered how to reconcile herself to ignorance, Granny surprised her.

‘Her hands? Well, that's just the Lord's way of bringing your girl home to country.' Granny looked hard into her own palms as she spoke. ‘You might call it a miracle, I suppose. As for the talga, that high country is proper strong kalwunybah, girl. You got any lingo, you know what that is?'

Jo frowned and shook her head. She didn't care very much anymore how ignorant she seemed. It was becoming obvious, anyway, that she had lived for years on land she had barely known, barely even
seen,
for all that she was local and had title deeds that bore her name. For all that Ellen had worn the country on her hands all her young life, until three days ago.

‘Place of something,' she answered, ashamed of the few pathetic scraps she knew.

‘Kalwunybah. Liarbird place,' said Granny Nurrung softly. ‘That talga you bin hearing, that's the liarbird singing out to you, calling you. He telling you that you found the right jagan there, you and your girl. Telling you you're home.'

Jo gasped with relief as her mind flew to the small earthen clearing that she had lain in after her fall. Of course. A lyrebird's dancing ground. She felt the hard burden of superstitious fear inside her
evaporating. Tin Wagon Road was
the right place.
After all this time, finally, she'd found something like a home.

‘So it's not mooki!' She laughed joyfully. ‘Just lyrebirds! Jesus Christ, I was so scared of that talga for so long.'

Sam snorted, and shot her a scornful look, as though she had said something silly.

‘What?' Jo asked, confused.

‘Who do you think taught them liarbirds that song?' Granny Nurrung quizzed Jo. Oh my God, Jo realised. The hair on the back of her neck stood stiffly to attention. The old people. Singing beside the rockhole, doing ceremony, the same ceremony Rob and Sam had been doing at dawn. The lyrebirds were repeating the song they had heard, and passing it down through hundreds of generations.

‘That talga been sung there forever and always,' Granny Nurrung went on. ‘Protection for the water, see. Then, Captain Cook time. Our old people seen the dugai come in, seen the way they were. Greedy. Breaking their own law, the ten commandments of the Lord God himself. Went too wild, shooting us mob. Chopping jali jali, killing the rivers. Stealing the jahjams away. Our old people saw the dugai couldn't be stopped, and they knew what they had to do. Our mob mighta started wearing trousers, and working for the white man, yeah, but first they made sure they left their talga in a safe place where no dugai could ever take it away.'

For the first time that day, Granny Nurrung smiled a smile of real happiness.

‘See, it looks to all the dugai like only one thing happened here, on our budheram jagan,' she told Jo. ‘But no. Something else happened too. Cos lotta Goorie mob dead now, or taken far away, but our little family still here. We still singing our special place. And Sammy boy, he gonna be manager for that country both ways. Dugai way
and
Goorie way.'

Jo sat, stunned into silence, assimilating the old woman's story. There had been generations of resistance to bring them to this point, sitting outside the hospital in the shadow of Chincogan, with Ellen
inside slowly healing, waiting to take up her part in a long, unbroken chain. Looking at Granny Nurrung, and Humbug, and Sam, it gradually dawned upon Jo that to destroy the talga of the rockhole, the dugai would have to kill every last Goorie who knew it. They would have to clear the World Heritage forest, and then they would need to destroy every lyrebird in the valley as well, probably every lyrebird for hundreds of miles around. But unless they did that, unless they went so far in their savagery and their madness, then the talga would always be sung in the nooks and crannies of the bush where it seemed like nobody at all was listening. And the ancient song would always be heard on the other side of the ridge, now, too, on Rob Starr's farm that was really Sam Nurrung's. And she herself had come home, just as the rockhole had found its second keeper. They would all live, now, with the knowledge of their sacred story place,
budharum kalwunybah.
Just as the old people had wanted.

Two weeks later Twoboy parked on the footpath outside 287 Tin Wagon Road. He looked sick with anxiety as he walked up the drive to where Jo was sprawled eating her lunch in the backyard.

A few paces away, Gift and Athena tore gleefully in unison at the short sweet grass beneath the clothes line. First one yarraman ripped and chomped at the overgrown lawn, then the other quickly echoed it. Together, their eating made a double syncopation that reminded Jo of her own heartbeat.

Oh my baugul yarraman, you're the heart of me and you always were.

‘That's the way to mow a lawn,' Twoboy called bravely as he reached the mango tree. Jo looked up.

‘Well, look what the cat dragged in.'

His heart in his mouth, Twoboy came over to her. He bent and took Jo's face in both hands as he kissed her. Jo smiled as she kissed him back.

‘How's tricks?' she asked, tossing last fortnight's
Echo
aside. She had read the front page story of Uncle Oscar's death a dozen times, and was no closer to deciding if the prang had been an accident. Rumour
had it that Oscar was being investigated for child abuse when his XR6 left the highway at Piccabeen and ploughed into a large casuarina grove. In the days beforehand, half-a-dozen victims had come forward. His own niece was going to stand up in court and testify against him.

What goes around, thought Jo grimly, comes around, sure enough.

‘Yeah, it's all good. Mediation's done the trick. Sally mob and us mob are now officially co-claimants!' Twoboy produced a bottle of champagne and two glasses from his backpack. ‘Mum's happy, I'm happy, and Laz and Uncle Cheezel reckon they can both live with it.'

‘At last,' Jo said, relaxing into a grin, ‘I'm just glad your Mum's still around to see it.'

‘Yeah,' agreed Twoboy. ‘Funny thing, though. She's been tuning in and out a lot. Last night she was pretty sharp, hey, and she told us about a conversation she overheard as a kid. She reckons she heard the adults whispering, saying there was a sacred site along this road. A cave, or a spring or something – and they were talking about who should look after it when they were gone. They all shut up real quick when they saw she was listening. And she never remembered a bloody thing about it till yesterday.'

A curious smile played over Jo's lips.

‘True?' she asked. ‘Just as well your Native Title wasn't riding on it, then, eh.'

‘I reckon!' Twoboy widened his eyes in alarm at what might have been lost. ‘So we still going to this barbie?'

‘Yeah. But can ya show me those chords first? I want to play something for the guest of honour. Granny Nurrung.'

‘You might wanna start with something a bit easier,' said Twoboy doubtfully.

‘Oh,' said Jo, hiding her mirth, ‘I reckon I'll pick it up.'

‘Grab the git then,' Twoboy said, easing himself down onto the grass beneath the clothes line and gazing up thoughtfully at the ridge. Native Title was on its way at long last. Sally mob had agreed to stick south of Tin Wagon Road. As the oldest Jackson, he, Twoboy,
would become the recognised blackfella owner for the valley between Middle Pocket and Crabbes Creek. Yet there was still a song up in the high country there that he hadn't heard even once; a song that still waited for him. Twoboy sighed. Patience was needed, a lot of patience. Until the ancestors were ready to reveal themselves,
Redemption Song
would have to do.

Jo stood up. As she went inside she noticed a blue-grey flash over by the young jali jali billa. Bluey was building a nest in the big camphor laurel which overhung the dam. Jo had noticed mulanyin flying to the scrub on the ridge and returning often, lately, with a suitable stick in its beak. Her face softened as she went inside to the kitchen, where Ellen bent with gauze-covered fingers over her sketchbook. The girl was drawing a set of Babushka dolls which began on the outside fair-skinned and blue-eyed but grew darker and more Goorie-looking the deeper you got.

‘Wanna see something funny?' Jo asked on her way back outside, holding the Maton aloft. ‘I'm gonna let Twoboy teach me to play this.'

Ellen grinned an evil grin.

‘I'll be there in a sec.'

The child clasped a fine-tipped ink pen in her damaged hands, ignoring the pain in her quest to make something of beauty and meaning where none had been before. Then Ellen remembered.

‘Mum! Danny from the Co-op said to ring Farmcare. Something about a muffler.'

Jo burst out laughing. She rested her hands on Ellen's shoulders and wound a strand of the girl's dark hair around her finger before tucking it behind her ear. It is a fact universally acknowledged, she thought, bending to kiss the top of Ellen's head, that a teenager armed with a Nikko pen is a wonder to behold, a precious, precious thing that we all must keep close to our hearts, and protect by any means necessary. And if it isn't, then it fucken well oughta be.

In this novel, Jo speaks a mixture of Bundjalung and Yugambeh languages, interspersed with a variety of Aboriginal English terms. Readers wanting to learn more may refer to
A Dictionary of Yugambeh and Related Languages,
or the several dictionaries of Bundjalung, all of which were compiled by Dr Margaret Sharpe with the guidance of Aboriginal informants.