Walkabout - James Vance Marshall [29]
The girl didn’t know when he died. For she had fallen asleep. Her head had drooped, until her cheek rested on his, and her long golden hair lay tumbled about his face.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THEY buried him close to the billabong. The little boy was surprisingly matter-of-fact and practical; he insisted on the Aboriginal being christened at the same time as he was buried – ‘otherwise he mightn’t get to heaven’. Mary said nothing. She had a vague idea that it was too late for christening now; but that was something her brother need never know.
It was noon before they had finished – for the desert sand was hard to dig with boxwood branches and sharp-edged stones – and the children were tired and hungry. They had two yams left over from the night before, and these they ate: raw. Then they sat in the shade of the boxwoods and looked at each other.
It was Peter who took command. After a while he got to his feet.
‘Come on, Mary’, he said. ‘Kurura!’
‘Where to?’
‘Over the hills, of course.’
The girl looked doubtful.
‘You sure that’s the way, Pete?’
‘Sure I’m sure. The darkie told me. Over the hills there’s food an’ water.’
‘All right’, she said. ‘Let’s go.’
They started to follow the stream: the dear pellucid stream that tumbled down from the hills in alternate rapids, waterfalls and pools. All afternoon they kept close to its banks. And the ghost of the bush boy was with them in every passing plant and stone. For both children had fallen into his ways. They walked now with the bush boy’s easy, distance-eating lope; their eyes – like his – were ever questing ahead, studying the terrain, picking out the most promising leads; and every now and then – as he had done – they plucked and ate the pea-sized water-containing pods that dangled from the straggling belts of bush violet: nature’s thirst quenchers. It was the same that evening, when, an hour before sundown, they made camp. His ghost was in the yacca wood they picked for their fire; in the sun-warmed desert stones they chose for their hearth; in the roots of the wondilla grass and stalks of sugar cane they ate for supper. They lived as he had lived. Like his shadows. Adaptable as adults could never be, they made the desert their home.
They hadn’t mentioned the bush boy during the day; but now, with the flames a-flicker and the stars aglow, they missed him more; missed him with an added poignancy. Peter looked at the Southern Cross, aflame like the jewelled hilt of a sword.
‘Mary,’ he whispered. ‘Is heaven way up there? Way up beyond the stars?’
‘That’s right, Peter.’
‘You reckon the darkie’s there?’
‘Yes, Pete. I reckon he is.’
She said it automatically: to comfort her brother. But in the same moment that she said it, suddenly and unexpectedly, she believed it. More than believed it Knew it. Knew that heaven, like earth, was one.
When the children woke next morning they were hungry – they had had no meat in the last thirty-six hours, nothing more solid than vegetables and nuts. Mary woke first. She stirred the fire, tossed on a fresh supply of yacca wood, then went wandering down to the stream in search of fish.
A little above their camp, the stream widened out to form a shallow, mud-banked pool. It looked a likely place for fishing, and the girl approached it warily. A few yards short of the bank she stopped: listened. The sound of splashing was unmistakable: loud and playful. She crept forward and peered cautiously through the rushes.
In the centre of the pool three of the strangest creatures were playfully gambolling over the water. The girl looked at them in amazement – they might have come from another world – then she ran noiselessly back to fetch her brother.
Soon the two children were watching the platypus at play.
There were three of them: mother, father, and half-grown child. The adults were about twenty inches long; four-footed, fur-covered, and with enormous duck-like beaks. They were aquatic mammals – a link with the prehistoric past – web-footed egglayers; teat-less milk producers – the lactic fluid being exuded