Only Killers and Thieves(15)

Tommy went to the open door, passing the few meager belongings Joseph had left behind: a blanket, a ball of dirty clothes, a necklace of braided leaves. Tommy shied from the sunlight. It was past midday, the sun high overhead; he shielded his eyes as he stepped outside and followed the wall to the back corner of the building. There was a dunny thirty yards away, in among the scrub, the door closed.

“Arthur?” Tommy called. “You in there? Ma sent over some food!”

“You don’t have to bloody shout.”

He was sitting in the shade against the back wall of the bunkhouse, shirtless, wearing only a pair of ragged shorts, his long, thin legs crossed beneath him, slumped in such a way that his beard covered most of his chest and his stomach was creased in deep folds. He squinted up at Tommy through straggles of gray hair, a faint smile in the corners of his eyes. He looked like a man at the grog but Tommy doubted it. He’d rarely ever seen Arthur drink.

“Howya, Tommy,” the old man said. He patted the ground beside him. “Come and get yourself a seat.”

“Ma sent some food,” Tommy repeated. He held out the parcel, wrapped in a red-and-white-checked towel. Arthur took it from him, shuffled upright, and Tommy noticed on his bare chest and shoulders a series of scars similar to those Joseph had worn, so old and faded he must have missed them before, long-ago etchings worn smooth by the years.

Tommy slid down the wall and sat beside him in the dirt. Arthur carefully peeled back the folds of the parcel in his lap. Inside was buttered bread, meat, some cheese. He raised it to his nose, sniffed and sighed.

“Tell her thanks, won’t you. You hungry?”

He offered the parcel. Tommy hesitated, took a strip of salted beef; Arthur began on the bread, still warm from the oven, the butter melted into the crumb.

“What you doing out here anyway?” Tommy asked.

“What d’you reckon: enjoying the view!” Arthur waved at the dunny and the barren scrub beyond, then broke into a rattling laugh. He backhanded Tommy on the leg and took another bite of the bread. “Too bloody hot inside, no air, gets that I can’t hardly breathe.”

“So you’re just sitting here?”

“He doesn’t want me working. Said to take a spell.”

“He tell you we’ll be mustering with you? Me and Billy, for real this time?”

“Well, he doesn’t have much choice now, does he? We’d have a job with just two men.” Arthur’s smile sagged, then he brightened and said, “Who’s gonna make my tucker, though? Who’ll boil up the tea?”

“Still me, I reckon. I was hoping Joseph but . . .”

Tommy trailed off. Arthur waved a hand, dismissing it. Sat there chewing his bread. Tommy asked him, “You think he’ll ever come back?”

“Nope.”

“You don’t seem too worried?”

“Brave for a youngfella, going off like that, no horse, all them police about, but he wasn’t nothing to me. Moody little bugger, actually. Glad we wasn’t kin.”

“What about the scars, though? Joseph had the same ones.”

Frowning, Arthur followed Tommy’s gaze to his chest. “These? We’ve all got ’em, Tommy. Different ones for different mobs. Kurrong have their own ways, but I’m not Kurrong.”

“Where are you . . . I mean, who are your people, then?”

He smiled at Tommy warmly. “Ah, my lot went bung a long time ago.”

“How?”

“I never told you?”

“Don’t think I ever asked before now.”

Arthur considered him while he ate. There were bread crumbs in his beard. He shrugged and bit into a strip of beef and said, “Well, alright, then, since you’re all grown these days. But don’t go passing this on. Blokes don’t like hearing blackfella talk.”

“What blokes? Daddy?”

The food parcel slid from Arthur’s lap. He caught it before it reached the ground.

“Nah, your daddy’s a good man. What he said out there to Joseph . . . he was angry, didn’t mean it, not all of it anyway.”

Arthur offered the parcel again, but this time Tommy refused. Arthur put the cheese and bread together, took a bite, and stared into the scrubs as he chewed. Tommy waited. Finally Arthur swallowed and said, “It all started when I went to the Mission—”

“You were on a Mission Station?”

“Course I was. Where d’you reckon I learned to speak so good?”

“What about those other stories? The snakes and the birds and all that?”

Arthur moved his hands like he was weighing the two out. “I read that bloody Bible again this morning, first time in years. It’s horseshit. You know what I reckon, Tommy: one’s about as likely as the next, probably both a crock. This place . . . God might have made it, or some giant snake, or maybe it was just always here.”

He sighed and leaned his head against the wall.

“Anyway, I was young like you back then, bit older maybe, but our mob was dying, getting sick, every time we saw a whitefella they’d chase us with their guns. Then one day this new fella came with no gun, talking about God and this station they’d built, plenty food, give us work—even had a bloody school. Them old buggers, they told him to piss off, but I was just a youngfella so I went to take a look. I liked it. Turned out they were mostly Germans but all whites seemed the same to me. I fell in with the blokes that looked after the cattle and sheep, learned how to ride and all that. All we had to do was follow whitefella ways and say prayers in their little church. I didn’t mind. Told ’em I was Christian the first day I got there, never had no trouble since.”