Best Australian Short Stories (11 page)

“Why ain’t you?” demanded Waldo.

“Because the old woman’s got it in for me about old Poulter,” said Bill.

“Hard scran,” said Waldo, taking out a threepenny piece and spinning it in the air. “I was just going down to Sin Kum’s to shake for fyshang toffee.”

That put interdictions a trifle out of order, though Bill kept strictly to the letter of their ruling by writing on the paper:
Meet you down the flat in five minutes.

The flat and the Chow’s camp were regions safe from an inspection of affairs; and the dice favoured them to the extent of six cakes of fyshang toffee on a stake of threepence—the market price of this delicacy being a penny per cake or four for threepence. Chewing away at that rare compound, which was of a rubber-like consistency, and strolling at leisure, they met Butcher Crowley and minions; so that an exchange of stones on sight was a mere formality in forces at feud. No harm in that and no possible relation to an inspection of affairs, even when a stone went through old Mrs Robbins’s window, which was purely an accident of war relating to a civilian residence in line with the enemy’s fire. But old Mrs Robbins told Waldo’s mother and Waldo’s mother told Bill’s Ma.

So there was a disturbance on two counts; breaking an interdiction and breaking old Mrs Robbins’s window, and the market value of a shining front went down below par. Then bang on top of that, the affair of The Ivory Faced Cards.

This exposure had best be prefaced by presenting Bill and Waldo darkly conversing in the culvert behind the Wesleyan Church paddock—not to take their ease there, though it was a good stinking sort of place to loll in, but because they had a deadly business on hand which required privacy. Peter and Bulljo Peddlar stood off and on at a stated distance, but peering along the edge of the culvert to sight these elders in conference. When elder brothers talk in secret, small ones go mad to find out what illegal thing they discuss.

Said Bill to Waldo: “Strike yer breath you don’t go back on it.”

“I strike me breath,” said Waldo, which was done by blowing on one hand and thumping himself on the chest with it. He also wetted both thumbs and spat on his boots. Satisfied by these pledges to a steadfast purpose, Bill put his head out of the culvert to shout, “Time’s up for you kids to come.”

They came, feverishly bounding, and held up expectant noses at Bill, who said austerely:

“Waldo an’ me’s made up a resolution. We’re going to leave home for ever. Goin’ to clear out for good an’ all.”

This was tremendous news, and Peter and Bulljo gaped at it. “Cripes, where you goin’ to clear to?” they asked.

“We’re goin’ to clear to Captain Moonlight’s cave up Mount Bundigong,” said Bill. “It’s a bonzer cave, an’ a bloke could live there easy, doin’ a bit of bushranging, an’ knockin’ over rabbits an’ that.”

Bulljo filled his mouth with saliva and made a bubbling sound with it, indicating pleasure at this fine prospect He then chirruped, as encouraging a proposal to include himself in it Small and tubby and pug-faced, he was given to the practice of suggesting motives which marks the subtle mechanist of affairs.

“This is where me an’ Pete comes in,” he said ingratiatingly. “You!” said Waldo scornfully. “You’d funk it howling first night out.”

“By cripes I wouldn’t; by cripes, what price me fallin’ off a fir-tree dead on me head never howled a minute? Proves I don’t funk it.”

“Cripes, we wouldn’t funk it, Waldo,” implored Peter.

“Well, we might let you come,” deliberated Bill. “They’d come in handy mindiu camp when we’re away huntin an all that,” he said to Waldo. But mind!”—Bill was very stern here—”No goin’ back on it Once gone, we never return. We’ve had enough of our old woman taking a bloke’s cards and givin’ him a hidin’ when it’s an absolute injustice a bloke can’t stand. So you got to take the oath an’ strike your breath never to return.”

Bulljo and Peter took the oath. They then gripped each other’s heads, and plunged exultantly. Not misanthropy, but joy, would send them forth as outcasts from the home.

Ma and a pack of cards had brought this dark resolution to crisis. Putting aside Bill’s previous list of injustices done by the home, Ma was an intimate friend of God and the cards were a present from Pointer Brindle, of the Bull and Mouth Hotel, and that was a combination to expect trouble from under any terms. The cards were dark with the grime of thumbs and beer, but they were marked on the packet “Best Ivory Faced”, which made them a great rarity. Bill valued them highly. He was a born property-owner; everything he possessed became instantly valuable because he possessed it. As the owner of these cards he required to extract their value while it was new and rare, so he and Waldo played euchre almost continuously for several days. They played anywhere and at any time; down the diggings, up in Bill’s tree-house, on top of Waldo’s father’s stock of cow fodder, in the culvert, under the railway bridge— with trains thundering overhead to exhilarate a diversion in itself exhilarating; and they played in Bill’s father’s stable.

There lay their error. The stable had a small cobwebby window looking into the back paddock, which gave entrance secure from detection by the home. So far so good. But games demand a good deal of strenuous shouting, and though Peter and Bulljo were told off to keep watch against intrusions by Ma, or Maggie Trimble, or even old Martha the cook, who sometimes visited the loft for eggs, their atention to the game made them a trifle lax in outpost duty, and thereby involved them also in a scandal. Debauched by high play for alleys, buttons, and used nibs, Bill and Waldo smoked cigarettes and quarrelled incessantly, and when they quarrelled they yelled at each other. Moreover, Waldo was a hasty and vainglorious shuffler, and much given to dashing the cards about when losing, for which Bill had great cause to complain of him. “You don’t seem to know these cards are the Best Ivory Faced,” he said; but Waldo, refusing to be admonished, did a high-speed shuffle and shot the cards into a loose-box, where Bill’s father’s horse trod on them. He did not seem to know they were the Best Ivory Faced either, and trod on more cards the more dementedly Bill tried to push him off them. “Dam’ yer, you’ve done it; me only perfect pack of cards!” he roared.

“That young Bulljo jogged me elbow,” bellowed Waldo, and punched his brother’s head; a contemptible vindication which Bulljo justly retorted with a curry-comb, the while Bill was feverishly grabbing up his ruined cards, and in his grief, casting them again about the stable, yelling, “Look at them. Dam’ yer, will yer only look at them!”

It was an invitation very terribly acceded to, not by Waldo, but by Ma, who was looking at the whole affair from the stable door.

“Come out of that stable instantly,” she said, and Bill’s passion wilted straight into his boots, taking all the skite out of his backbone. In that enfeebled state he was so ill-advised as to come out of the stable with a cigarette reeking under his mother’s nose and thereby endorse a notable list of crimes.

“Smoking!” said Ma, in awful tones. “Swearing! Gambling! Leading your young brother astray! What vile conduct is this?”

As is well known, there are no answers to conundrums of that sort, which makes conversation with mothers so terrible. Bill stood in the yard lumping and scowling; he had to lend that much dignity to the career of profligacy which his mother went on talking about in tones of abhorrence. A good mother, she knew all about disgraceful matters. Waldo and Bulljo and Peter crouched behind the chaff-bin, hoping that this exposure would fall entirely on Bill. That was not to be

“And
you
, Walter Peddlar, are equally depraved, setting such an example to your younger brother. Come out of that stable at once, sir.”

Stealthy sounds emerged from the stable, but not Waldo. Who could come out of a stable for a special exposure of infamy?

“Do you hear me, Walter Peddlar?” said Bill’s mother in such tones of doom that Waldo was forced to appear, pallid with apprehension. The ordeal of passing forth before Bill’s mother was almost beyond the capacity of his legs, which teetered him feebly around the stable door as far as the horse trough. This gave him moral support to reach the groom’s room, around which he sidled until it was necessary to crumble across the yard, presenting a back humped to sustain its load of ignominy.

“You may well crouch, sir!” said Ma. “I shall see that your mother hears of this conduct.”

Of all disgraces, this is the worst, to have your mother put shame on your friend. Even though that friend has ruined your Best Ivory Faced cards, it cannot be endured.

“You let Waldo alone, you nark!” shouted Bill, adding blasphemy to his list of crimes.

“Such words to me!” said his mother.

Waldo reached the gate, and by a lightning recovery from decrepitude, bolted for home. Bill was cuffed into the house, where The Rod was produced, a small section of buggy whip, with which he was walloped in the passage, and ordered to his rooms and given no tea, and very basely treated.

Yes, there was much cause for revenge on mothers, for the mother of Waldo and Bulljo had been induced to do some dirty work with The Rod too. Swearing and smoking were capital crimes, and gambling an offence to God, whatever that might be. Revenge would be subtle, for its motive was to reverse the evil that begot it, and visit on these mothers the grief of unjust beatings. An outcast life would begin first thing tomorrow, as it was Saturday, and there was no school to include the meagre crime of wagging it with the generous doom of an outlaw.

In the chill of dawn, Bill and Peter were hissing whispers in the pantry, where they were filching provender into a schoolbag.

When they scaled the back fence and made off down the flat, they carried these goods: one loaf of bread, one tin of jam, one half-tin of cocoa, one candle, a tomahawk, a muzzle-loading pistol, and a length of hessian to act as blankets. In Peter’s estimation, they were provisioned for life. It was thrilling, too, this going forth in the dawn, because the town was a mystery, with no one alive in it. No one except Waldo and Bulljo, who were very much alive by the sounds of contention that issued from the culvert, where they awaited their fellow outcasts. No doubt they had left home united in a resolution to suffer as one Outcast, but that was to reckon without fraternal brigandage in a confined space. Bulljo, it seemed, had brought away with him a stuffed lizard, no doubt to solace the leisure of an outlawed life. It was not his property, nor was it Waldo’s, but belonged to their joint brother Bags, though that did not count, as Bags would have required to be present in person to make valid a claim to his own property. At present, the issue in the culvert was not one of ownership, but possession, and pending its settlement, the brothers were holding the lizard equally between them. Despite the seeming air of affability which is suggested by the spectacle of two people holding one lizard in a small culvert, their faces were black with passion.

“He’s sneaking my lizard!” yelled Bulljo, the moment Bill and Peter appeared. Waldo said nothing, as he was busy adjusting a foot to get a leverage on his brother’s stomach, which move Bulljo countered by shouting, “By cripes, you push a bloke’s stomach, I break this lizard.”

“You do; you break that lizard!” said Waldo ferociously.

He lowered the foot and measured Bulljo for fresh reprisals.

These were now to assume an air of great friendliness for Bulljo. “Good old Bulljoko,” he said.

Bulljo marked him instantly with suspicion. Then said Waldo, with the false unction of condolence, “Hard luck a bloke loses his best French agate.”

That got Bulljo. He let go the lizard to snatch in a frenzy at his pockets, which bulged with much treasure. Waldo at once got out of the culvert and stuffed the lizard into his shirt, as it was the wrong size for pockets. “Time we made a move,” he said, and walked off briskly, as leaving Bulljo to live out the remainder of his existence as an outcast in a culvert.

But Bulljo’s profession of outcast was in abeyance just then to a passionate inventory of portable property. A bellow of rage went up from the culvert; he had found a priceless French agate missing. With that discovery Bulljo himself shot out of the culvert like a small human projectile, and came whizzing after them, bearing aloft a sizeable lump of rock. Waldo did not wait to inquire what his brother proposed to do with this mineral specimen, but bolted straightway across the diggings with Bulljo in hot pursuit, the pair bounding over holes and mullock heaps with a fine effect of exhilaration in the chase. Bill and Peter ran too; when Bulljo’s temper was up, stirring events would follow.

The stirring event for this occasion took place behind a mullock heap, with a terrible howl from Waldo. When they arrived he was plunging on his back, kicking and catapulting, and giving a very creditable exhibition of a dying outcast, while Bulljo looked on with an impartial air, as one who has administered a corrective in the best spirit of altruism.

“Teach a bloke to leave a bloke’s French agate alone,” he said to Bill and Peter.

Waldo went on catapulting till he was within leaping distance of Bulljo, and there abandoned dying for an active performance of murder. So there was the whole business to be done again, with Bulljo in the character of dying outcast, and Waldo the altruistic corrector of blokes who hit blokes on the back with rocks.

But the stir being now extracted from the event, Bill said firmly, “No sense in wastin’ too much time here, so it’s up to Waldo to give back the agate if he takes Bags’s lizard,” which arbitration was agreed to, with some grudgings from Bulljo, who said he would even up the deficit of one lizard by taking Waldo’s Trinidad stamp. In such sort the fraternal spirit of outcastry was restored, and the expedition moved on again.

Six miles away the Bundigong Ranges pinked faintly in the dawn, and there lay the cave of Captain Moonlight, the bushranger. In this hallowed spot the outcasts were to abide, as of old hermits dwelt at the shrine of a saint. At the same time, six miles is a long way to go on an empty turn, so they veered across the diggings to Puddler’s Dam; a pothole of clay-coloured water sunk among the tailings of old rotten deep sinkings. A fine place for breakfast, with the splendid sun coming up over Chinaman’s Flat, and turning the quartz heaps to glittering pinnacles. Here an investigation of the common stock of food discovered a slight tendency to monotony of diet, for the order of Waldo and Bulljo’s contribution was: one loaf of bread, one tin of jam, one piece of uncooked ham. Still, even uncooked ham is a pleasant innovation on an existence otherwise supported entirely on bread and jam, and Waldo commended himself highly for having brought it. So four exactly equal portions of bread and jam were rationed out, and four outcasts munched with gusto. They had cocoa to drink, but, by a slight oversight, no pot to make it in, so four portions were measured out and eaten as a relish.