Our Sunshine: Popular Penguins Read online

  Only after the third police volley did he and the Gang return fire. He caught sight of a sergeant he knew, Steele, an eager Englishman stationed at Wangaratta who’d hunted him for years. Steele was shooting at the inn like a madman. What a pleasure to aim back at him. Oh, he had to hold the Winchester at arm’s length to get a sight. His smashed left arm couldn’t support it properly, so he fired it like a pistol, shooting at the flashes of Steele’s gun in the clouds of gunpowder smoke. But he couldn’t hold it steady and his bullet hit the earth ten feet in front of him.

  Then in the smoke he saw Hare arriving just over there, Hare! Thank Christ, reloaded (hampered by the armour), aimed a chest shot careful as he could with only one good arm, and shot him in the hand. Heard him cry, ‘Good gracious, I’m shot!’ Saw him leaving – no! – saw him shepherded away to safety, saw him disappear into the fog.

  SOMEHOW HE’S back by the pub verandah, by the crashing glass and massed shrieking. Waiting. Bullets plopping past him into the wooden walls. People with contorted faces scuttling like mad hens past the lit windows. He’s shouting again, ‘Put out the lights and lie down!’ Still they’re crisscrossing and blubbing. His voice is deafening, reverberating inside the helmet, but no one seems to hear. A film comes and goes like skin across his eyes, his breath booms like a boiler in his ears.

  Joe’s standing quietly near the back door in the darkness. He’s removed his helmet and is leaning on the bullet-pitted doorframe. Now the first barrage seems to be lessening. Only desultory bullets patter through the front wall of the pub. You can hear the lion again. ‘We could take off,’ Joe says.

  He shakes his head. He says he’s signalled the Peak contingent. They’ll be here any moment now. The Mob, their friends, his Mick soldiers. He must go and meet them, lead them in.

  He moves off into the smoky dark, rolling with the armour weight, boots crunching frosty gravel. The frost is clamping down the mist and gunsmoke clouds close to the ground. Bullets snaking low, hissing through the dewy grass. Some shots nick his boots. Someone shoots him in the chest. It ricochets off. He shoots back into the fog and disappears into it himself. Fierce police fire starts up again and – can it be possible? – an even greater pitch of screaming.

  MOONLIGHT PIERCING the cold smoke. Acrid milky blue tendrils reaching around trees and men and the heads of frightened horses pulling on their tethers. He can just pick out a white handkerchief. A prisoner is waving a white handkerchief out of the pub’s parlour window. Immediately it’s hit by bullets. Dan’s voice tells the shaking woman waving the handkerchief, Emma Reardon, that she must get her children out.

  ‘Make them scream, and scream yourself,’ Dan yells.

  She does. She steps out onto the verandah, screaming. Her children screaming.

  From the blue mist beyond the verandah, an arm with a gun, a face, appear. ‘Hands up or I’ll shoot you like bloody dogs,’ Sergeant Steele says.

  Emma Reardon tucks her baby under one arm, raises the other and steps off the verandah, followed by her husband Dick and four more children. Steele fires into the family. A bullet scorches into the baby’s blanket. Panicked, Dick turns back with the kids. Steele fires again at the woman. When she falls he shouts, ‘I’ve shot Mother Jones in the bum!’ Then he orders the oldest Reardon boy to throw up his arms, and shoots him through the shoulder. ‘I’ve wounded Dan Kelly!’ yells mad ecstatic Steele.

  Coming and going, lumbering and invisible, deflecting and absorbing bullets – he may as well be made of smoke – he sees all this. He sees especially an empty moonlit sky above the Peak. Still no answering flare. No silhouettes of men on horses coming down the slope. Beyond the pub the police train sits at the railway station, then empty fields and bush spread back to the silent hills.

  Joe too is watching the general scene from the verandah. Not bothering to shoot now, bullets pinging off him. He goes into the back bar and asks how everyone is. Then he strides up to the bar, rests his rifle on the counter and pours himself a tumbler of whisky. Puts a foot up on the bar rail. Fuck this for a joke. Takes a swig, notices his foot up on the rail allows the smallest gap – what, half an inch, three-quarters? – to open between the armour plates. So what? And a single bullet zips into the room and precisely through the gap in the armour without even tipping metal and rips into his groin. He raises the glass for a toast, frowns as if considering what’s appropriate when fate’s bullet has burst your balls through the only gap in your armour, through the femoral artery, blood already pounding and fountaining like Aaron’s. Well, this will have to do. ‘Many more years in the bush for the Kelly Gang,’ Joe cries, spins around twice, topples and dies in the clanging fall.

  Steve and Dan are staring out. Dan seems to have the shivers. What now? They’ve stopped shooting at the police. All Dan is doing is calling for him, there but not there, in and out of the fog. Abruptly Dan takes off his helmet and whistles his dog out, c’mon boy, coaxes it, trembling, from under the bar, crouches down, who’s my old boy, pushes his face against the muzzle, the dry nose, dry jowls, inhales dry dog breath, my old boy then.

  Wants the dog to breathe more on him, fill his lungs, smother him in breath and slobber. Hugs the dog so hard it yelps and pulls away.

  Out there Sergeant Steele is still shooting. Now he decides, good idea to shoot their horses to prevent a getaway. Picks them off one by one. In a lather now. Doesn’t stop after four, shoots all the local horses within range, all the prisoners’ screaming nags, then the circus ponies too, and five shots into the camel – two head, three hump shots, sounds like shooting sheepskin rugs on the clothesline – just in case.

  Thank God he’s hidden Mirth behind the saplings, removed her from all this.

  Steele’s running up to the circus wagon. He’s wearing a deerstalker hat, brogues, leggings. He’s poking his rifle through the bars, shooting the lioness roaring in her fear – shooting her!

  ONLY WAY to end all this is to find Hare. Understand you’ve been looking for me. Here I am. Stop this business or we’re both dead – you first. So, turning back through the blur to the railway station, the special police train – and surely this is fantasy now.

  Women in dressy clothes and reporters are helping Hare on to the platform and into the V.I.P. carriage. The officers have brought their ladies on this outing! He can’t get near him. Hare is pale and brave while the ladies fuss with bandages. Trussing up his sore wrist for him. Opening a picnic hamper and helping him to some sherry through the window. The reporters shouting to the engine driver to hasten him and his wound to Benalla for treatment.

  He’s leaving. The engine getting up steam. The ladies, too, suddenly deciding it might be best to leave this dangerous troublespot, and climbing aboard. The engine shunting towards Wangaratta, then reversing and disappearing rapidly with the ladies, leaving Hare’s unconnected and stationary carriage behind.

  He’s immobilised watching this circus. Giddy at the sight of Hare indignantly quaffing sherry. Reporters rallying around his carriage window, the gentlemen of the press shouting for a pilot engine to come and pick him up. The pilot shunting up and laboriously connecting with Hare’s carriage. Hare finally disappearing, his white and noble profile framed in the carriage window, Hare chasing after the rest of the train, leaving the scene, off to the doctor’s, joining the ladies, chuff-chuff.

  Why are parrots pecking his shins? Lorikeets scaling his legs, parakeets dancing up his calves, hanging from his kneecaps. Feathery body heat rustling in his pants legs worse than mice. Hot beaks nibbling at his veins, claws gripping. Any deeper and they’ll be pecking his bone marrow. Creeping up and ripping his foreskin off, Holy Mother! In the rising light he gets to his feet, whacks and whacks his shins with his rifle butt to smash the little pecking parrots.

  The agony brings him round but bashing his legs has made them bleed again from shin to thigh where they’re peppered with shot. They’ve also picked up bullets on his treks back and forth across the lines. The blood loss from the wound in his left arm
has turned it numb and both arms are pocked with shot as well. He’s soaked with dew.

  Dawn is coming but the glen around the pub still lies in foggy shadow. Intermittent shots still bring moans and occasional screams. The native birds are silent but, tentatively, a rooster crows.

  Once more, slowly, he rounds the hotel to the back. Dan’s voice, raw and high, still calls for him. Time to get the boys out, although the way they just stood there giggling and farting when the eagle tried to carry him off before, just lounged there cackling, still makes him angry. Can’t rely on anyone. He’ll have words later.

  He raps on his breastplate with his revolver butt and calls their names. Dan’s dog hears his voice and barks. At this noise the police step up their shooting again. Dan peers out. ‘Joe got it in the balls,’ he says.

  Now he’s dreaming, standing. Dreaming of being shot himself, of shattering into a thousand pieces. While he’s propped, feet apart for balance, to support the great weight on him, his soul’s iron burden, new bullets pop and zing around him, at him, hit him. Somewhere a dog is barking. A dog’s head is poking through the side of the hut, as if the wall were air, snout and black lips curling inches from his face. (Joe’s snoring, oblivious, in the next bunk. Where is this, Bullock Creek?) Hello, boy. Why’s the dog’s pointed muzzle wrinkled in this snarl of the greatest evil? Long teeth edging closer. Fear cold as a knife blade flat against his neck.

  Listen to me, his mother says, they’ve all got it wrong. It’s not you that’s the very devil, truly, this is it. Shoot the dog.

  Muzzle to muzzle, he shoots and the blast turns it to air.

  Talking to her in his head like this, concentrating so deeply, he gets a tingling in his scalp and forehead that fills his skull. This is hard work, he says to her, sounds like a gulf roaring in my prickly head. One more thing, am I playing at being dead, or am I?

  It’s not him that is. In the back room of the pub it’s Dan and Steve lying side by side full-length on the floor with bags rolled up under their heads for pillows and their armour laid to one side. Beside Dan lies his dog, also shot through the head.

  THE BONFIRE they danced around, he and Jane, comes in handy. When, after three hours, some officer finally decides the surviving prisoners can leave the pub, and the last sobbing woman has reached the police lines, a nervous constable rushes up and grabs a torch from the embers, and scrapes up some dry grass and gum leaves, and in a few minutes smoke and flames are rising from the splintered weatherboards of the verandah.

  They think he’s inside. He sees the flames engulf the pub and turns away. With difficulty he stands. He advances. Stamps through the weeds behind the burning inn, revolver in his right hand, his left hand hanging. Sun well up and glaring. His armpits running with some moisture, his thighs, this copious seepage from his iron skirt. Surely he didn’t piss himself. Where’s Mirth?

  Mirth passes by in an aimless canter, reins trailing. He tries to whistle her, turns after her, and Steele is in his shadow, running up behind, swinging his twelve-bore like a club. He points the revolver at Steele but nothing happens that he notices except that Steele is now aiming point-blank at his knees. Steele firing again at his hands, his legs, peppering his extremities, undermining him with swanshot, tipping him. He’s pealing like a church bell full of hornets. Sun piercing his eyes as he spins. The inevitability of this final jolt to brain and spine, the jarring clamour of turning turtle.

  There is a loud intake of breath from the crowd as one of the blacktrackers drags Joe’s body out on to the smouldering verandah. Joe is hardly burnt at all, just a little smudged. There’s a train at the station. The crowd begins to mutter as the police roll Joe onto a plank, carry him to the train and push him into the guard’s van. There is shouting. Hundreds of local farmers, railway workers and people from nearby towns are pressing against the police cordon around the pub and moving around the stationmaster’s room where they’re guarding him. He recognises faces trying to peer through the window.

  When the blacktrackers rake out Dan’s and Steve’s remains there is a deep gasp, then a sweeping ‘Ohhh!’ By now the Mob has defined its attitude. ‘They’re ours!’ the Mob cries of these charred lumps not more than three feet long, not recognisably human. It surges forward and tries to take the bodies from the police. ‘They’re ours! They’re ours!’ Men are struggling, women too. Fights are breaking out. The police size up the situation and surrender them. The lumps are wrapped tenderly in blankets and quickly spirited away.

  A doctor treats him while his bleeding wrists and ankles are tied. A priest hears his confession and anoints him. Maggie and Kate are allowed to kiss him. Then four police carry him on to the train for Benalla. Six more with drawn pistols guard him, around them another ten with rifles.

  Before they set off the fireman comes down for a stickybeak at his notorious passenger. Seeing the sooty face peering at him, he starts as if from a nightmare. As if the creature had come to drag off his burned body. ‘Send the devil away,’ he says.

  When he next opens his eyes an officer is looking down at him. The bottom half of the carriage window is purple ranges streaming past, drifting leached-grey trees; the top half is white sky. The officer pours himself a brandy, then pours him a shot and holds it for him while he sips. ‘You’re ours,’ he says.

  They want him looking like an authentic outlaw but Joe’s refusing to hold a pistol for them, keeps dropping it on the ground.

  All day Joe’s been outside in the street, busy with the latest trainload of photographers from Melbourne. The pressmen have persuaded the police to hang his body from a pulley in front of the police station in a manner intended to simulate life. A rope around his chest and under his arms is hidden by his jacket. The difficulty is in getting his feet just touching the ground. They don’t want him looking as if he’s, well, hanging. All day they’ve been laughing and bantering and hoisting Joe up and down the wall to get him standing just right.

  In the Benalla lockup they’ve put Joe and him in adjoining cells. When he woke, Christ, there was Joe propped up on the bunk, winking, one eye open and looking straight at him through the bars. A draught from the corridor ruffling his hair. A bemused and pleasant expression on his face, arms bent stiffly in front of him as if he was carrying a heavy load of firewood inside or as if his hands were sore. (He’s slightly singed about the fingers.) A little self-conscious about his black-crusted pants.

  Long shadows falling. Any moment now they’ll have to pack up their tripods and cameras. Soon they’ll bring stiff Joe back into his cell. Well, he’s done his dreaming but it’s a long night ahead.

  Bear with me, Jane, I ramble. These were well-laid plans and I want to do them justice, capture the mood and describe them right.

  As I said, a storm blasted down from the Woolshed Hills. This was only two or three days ago but already seems an age away. Anyway, we took its violence as an omen, a clearing of the sullen air, fresh days ahead. The moon, as you can see now, was approaching the full. The Broken River south of town was brimming from the storm. Everything was – is – on our side.

  We made our final plans in a shack off the Yackandandah Road. People and supplies arrived. My sisters sewed the linings for our armour. We tried out our new guns at targets. I sent Steve riding off to pass the word to our friends that we were ready. (I can’t mention names, you understand.) Dan and his dog stood on a hill keeping an eye on everyone who came and went. Joe? Joe was pretty calm.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This book is about a man whose story outgrew his life. Although it concerns some people who did exist and touches on actual events, it is a chronicle of the imagination. It owes more to folklore and the emotional impact of some photography and paintings like the famous Victorian photographer John William Lindt’s Joe Byrne’s Body on Display at Benalla and Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series than to the bristling contradictions of historians and biographers.

  I drew on the Cameron Letter and the Jerilderie Letter, both written or at least com
posed by Kelly (with Byrne’s help), and now held by the Public Records Office of Victoria, as an indication of Kelly’s feelings of persecution.

  Other insights came particularly from The Inner History of the Kelly Gang and Their Pursuers, by J.J. Ken-neally, Moe, Victoria, 1929; Australian Son, by Max Brown, Sydney, 1948; and The Kelly Outbreak 1878–1880: The Geographical Dimension of Social Banditry, by John McQuilton, Melbourne, 1979.

  The paragraph on page 50 about the corpse fostering anxiety paraphrases a saying attributed to André Malraux.

  I would especially like to thank my wife Candida Baker for her constant encouragement as well as her invaluable assistance on equine matters.

  R.D.