Walkabout - James Vance Marshall [15]
He took them shyly: wonderingly: not knowing what they were for. He put the worwora down, and examined the gift more closely. His fingers explored the elastic top. Its flick-back was something he didn’t understand. (Bark thread and liana vine didn’t behave like this.) He stretched the elastic taut; tested it; experimented with it, was trying to unravel it when Peter came to his aid.
‘Hey, don’t undo ’em, darkie! Put ’em on. One foot in here, one foot in there. Then pull ’em up.’
The words were meaningless to the bush boy, but the small one’s miming was clear enough. He was cautious at first: suspicious of letting himself be hobbled. Yet his instinct told him that the strangers meant him no harm; that their soft, bark-like offering was a gift, a token of gratitude. It would be impolite to refuse. Helped by Peter, he climbed carefully into the panties.
Mary sighed with relief. Decency had been restored. Her missionary zeal had been blessed with its just reward.
But Peter looked at the bush boy critically. There was something wrong: something incongruous. He couldn’t spot the trouble at first. Then, quite suddenly, he saw it: the lace-edge to the panties. He tried his hardest not to laugh – his sister, he knew, wouldn’t approve of his laughing. He clapped a hand to his mouth; but it was no good; it had to come. Like a baby kookaburra he suddenly exploded into a shrill and unmelodious cackle. Then, giving way to uninhibited delight, he started to caper round and round the bush boy. His finger shot out.
‘Look! Look! He’s got lacy panties on. Sissy girl! Sissy girl! Sissy girl!’
Faster and faster he whirled his mocking fandango.
Mary was horrified. But for the bush boy, Peter’s antics supplied the half-expected cue. He knew for certain now why the strange gift had been made, knew what it signified: the prelude to a jamboree, the dressing-up that heralded the start of a ritual dance. The little one had started the dancing; now it was up to him to keep it going. He did so with wholehearted zest.
The joyful caperings of Peter were nothing compared to the contortions the bush boy now went into. He leapt and bounded around the billabong with the abandon of a dervish run amok. It was a symbolic combat he danced; a combat in which he was both victor and vanquished; a combat between life and death. He had no emu feathers in his hair, no moistened ochre streaking his face and chest; but he snatched up a stem of yacca-yacca for spear and a splinter of ironbark for club, and jabbing, dodging, feinting and parrying he fought his pantomime self to exhaustion. It was the only dance he knew: the war dance; the natural and inevitable sequel to dressing-up.
Brother and sister watched his act, first in amazement, then in unrestrained delight.
‘Kup, kup, yurr-rr-rr-a! Kup, kup, kurr-rr-rra!’
The bush boy’s war cry started like the yap of an attacking dingo and ended in the bush-dog’s throat-shaking growl. He became utterly lost in his battle; the pantomime became reality. First he was the triumphant attacker; in and out the yacca-yacca darted like the jab of a fish-barbed spear; round and about the ironbark flailed, battering, parrying, crushing. Then he transferred himself to the receiving end. He clutched at his chest, wrenching out the imagined fish-barbs; he smote his forehead, smashing himself to the sand; dazedly he staggered up. But with an ear-splitting howl of victory his assailant was on him. The spear stabbed through his heart. With a choking cry the defeated warrior toppled from the crest of a sand-dune; in a grotesque, stiff-limbed somersault, he slid to the desert floor. Then he lay still. The battle was over; but the victory parade was still to come.
Like a phoenix rising, the victor sprang from the vanquished’s body. His fists he clenched and knotted above his head – like a boxer self-acknowledging his prowess. His feet he pulled proudly up in a high-kicking march of victory – an ebullient, primitive goose-step. And after every so many paces he leapt high into the