Joe Wilson and His Mates [17]
after an uncle godfather; but we called him Jim from the first --
(and before it) -- because Jim was a popular Bush name,
and most of my old mates were Jims. The Bush is full of good-hearted scamps
called Jim.
We lived in an old weather-board shanty that had been a sly-grog-shop,
and the Lord knows what else! in the palmy days of Gulgong;
and I did a bit of digging (`fossicking', rather), a bit of shearing,
a bit of fencing, a bit of Bush-carpentering, tank-sinking, -- anything,
just to keep the billy boiling.
We had a lot of trouble with Jim with his teeth. He was bad
with every one of them, and we had most of them lanced --
couldn't pull him through without. I remember we got one lanced
and the gum healed over before the tooth came through,
and we had to get it cut again. He was a plucky little chap,
and after the first time he never whimpered when the doctor
was lancing his gum: he used to say `tar' afterwards,
and want to bring the lance home with him.
The first turn we got with Jim was the worst. I had had the wife and Jim
out camping with me in a tent at a dam I was making at Cattle Creek;
I had two men working for me, and a boy to drive one of the tip-drays,
and I took Mary out to cook for us. And it was lucky for us
that the contract was finished and we got back to Gulgong,
and within reach of a doctor, the day we did. We were just camping
in the house, with our goods and chattels anyhow, for the night;
and we were hardly back home an hour when Jim took convulsions
for the first time.
Did you ever see a child in convulsions? You wouldn't want to see it again:
it plays the devil with a man's nerves. I'd got the beds fixed up
on the floor, and the billies on the fire -- I was going to make some tea,
and put a piece of corned beef on to boil over night -- when Jim
(he'd been queer all day, and his mother was trying to hush him to sleep) --
Jim, he screamed out twice. He'd been crying a good deal,
and I was dog-tired and worried (over some money a man owed me)
or I'd have noticed at once that there was something unusual
in the way the child cried out: as it was I didn't turn round
till Mary screamed `Joe! Joe!' You know how a woman cries out
when her child is in danger or dying -- short, and sharp, and terrible.
`Joe! Look! look! Oh, my God! our child! Get the bath, quick! quick!
it's convulsions!'
Jim was bent back like a bow, stiff as a bullock-yoke, in his mother's arms,
and his eyeballs were turned up and fixed -- a thing I saw twice afterwards,
and don't want ever to see again.
I was falling over things getting the tub and the hot water,
when the woman who lived next door rushed in. She called to her husband
to run for the doctor, and before the doctor came she and Mary
had got Jim into a hot bath and pulled him through.
The neighbour woman made me up a shake-down in another room,
and stayed with Mary that night; but it was a long while
before I got Jim and Mary's screams out of my head and fell asleep.
You may depend I kept the fire in, and a bucket of water hot over it,
for a good many nights after that; but (it always happens like this)
there came a night, when the fright had worn off, when I was too tired
to bother about the fire, and that night Jim took us by surprise.
Our wood-heap was done, and I broke up a new chair to get a fire,
and had to run a quarter of a mile for water; but this turn wasn't so bad
as the first, and we pulled him through.
You never saw a child in convulsions? Well, you don't want to.
It must be only a matter of seconds, but it seems long minutes;
and half an hour afterwards the child might be laughing and playing with you,
or stretched out dead. It shook me up a lot. I was always
pretty high-strung and sensitive. After Jim took the first fit,
every time he cried, or turned over, or stretched out in the night, I'd jump:
I was always feeling his forehead in the dark to see if he was feverish,
or feeling his limbs to see if he was `limp' yet. Mary and I
often laughed about it -- afterwards.