Our Sunshine: Popular Penguins Read online

  Jerilderie has five pubs, one for every fifty people. First and last in the main street is the Woolpack Inn, a bloodhouse where Mary Jordan runs the bar and keeps track of local police movements, the whereabouts of Sergeant Devine and his constable, Richards. Joe sweet-talks her while we drink and eat, still in pairs and incognito, Joe and Dan together, Steve and me, pretending not to know each other. Until we join up outside just before midnight.

  A hammering on his door. Wake up, Devine, wake up. There’s been a murder at the Woolpack!

  Devine weaves onto the verandah, blinking awake, Richards hurrying to join him, grumbling and buckling on their belts. Some bastard on a grey horse doing the yelling. Jesus, come quick!

  Christ, not the Woolpack again, Devine says.

  Then three men suddenly behind him, pointing guns. The horseman wheeling his mare and coming at them fast, levelling a Colt. Kelly! Devine says. Correct, sergeant. The Gang handcuffs them, pushes them into their own cells with the Saturday night drunks.

  Steve, still hungry of course, orders Mrs Devine to cook us a meal. Then I take first watch while the others sleep. In the night a tired voice from the cells: Thanks for rooting my career.

  SUNDAY IN Jerilderie. Ninety in the dusty shade, the hot air suspending specks of harvest chaff. All blinds drawn in the sergeant’s residence to discourage heat and visitors. In the darkened sitting room the chairs and sofa wear stiff covers; no one ever sits here. In a corner a big glass case of brightly-coloured stuffed birds of the region. Sergeant Devine’s hobby is trapping them with nets and birdlime. Another is collecting pistols, some of them with funny enough calibres and barrels to hang on the wall: muzzleloaders, a twelve-shot .38, a Winburn single-shot .65 percussion pistol, a Tranter six-shot .45 with octagonal barrel, a .41 revolver like Ben Hall’s. The way she twitches and wrings her hands, she wants us out of there. I say I’m just checking none of these trinkets is loaded. Just stay out of the sitting room and I’ll cooperate, she says. No, don’t open that. Don’t let that hot wind in on the parrots!

  Something else is bothering her. She always prepares the Courthouse for Mass – no Catholic church here – so Dan lends a hand, carries the flowers across the street for her. Poppies, carnations, bunches of maidenhair and stag ferns. Helps arrange them, comes back looking soulful with a carnation in his lapel.

  Steve, meanwhile, has the oven stoked, the leg of lamb coated with lard, salted and peppered and sitting in the baking dish. He’s peeled and sliced the potatoes, pumpkin, carrots and parsnips and shelled the peas. By now he’s sweating, dripping on the table, leaving a trail across the floor and food, and chopping mint leaves for a sauce. Where’ve you been? he says – chip chop – I’ve been working my fingers to the bone.

  Joe and I can’t stop laughing, almost splitting our uniforms. (Devine and Richards are built narrower than us.) We’re dressed up as police, having given Richards an empty revolver and gone on his peacekeeping rounds with him (especially noting arrangements at the Bank of New South Wales), telling everyone we’re special reinforcements sent to guard Jerilderie against the Kellys. We’ve visited the blacksmith and had our horses re-shod, charged it to the police account and shouted Rea, the blacksmith, a drink at the Royal Mail Hotel. An important drink. The Royal Mail abuts the bank.

  MONDAY. AT noon Jerilderie’s a street of slow-moving shapes. Horses, carts and occasional verticals crossing obliquely from shade to shade. Still in uniform but this time with revolvers unholstered, we return to the Royal Mail, round up the manager, staff and customers, herd them into the bar-parlour and leave Steve guarding them while Dan watches the pub’s street entrance. He gives any thirsty customer a sharp count of three to jump the counter and join the prisoners.

  Then Sergeant Byrne and Constable Kelly stroll next door into the bank and hold it up. No trouble from the astonished accountant, name of Living, or young Mackie, the clerk. The manager, Tarleton, is missing. Living says he’s upstairs changing after a dusty business journey.

  Well, Tarleton’s soaking in his bath and shocked and shy to see us. When we come through the door – Joe and me with guns and the two bank johnnies, all crowding in the bathroom – he sits up in a flurry, eyes wide and white, grabs a flannel to cover his bobbing whatsis, then looks around for weapons and brandishes an uncertain loofah.

  Hope that sponge isn’t loaded, Joe says, heh heh.

  It takes a pair of trousers, a dressing gown and smoking cap to make Tarleton managerial. Downstairs in the bank he insists there’s only six or seven hundred pounds in the safe. He’s only underestimated by five thousand. While he’s dickering, the local schoolteacher, Elliott, comes into the bank and when he’s recovered I get him to hold open a sugarbag while I throw in all the sovereigns and sterling and all the other gold and silver coins. Then get him to write out a notice giving the children a holiday in honour of my visit.

  The bloody bank’s as busy as Flinders Street Station. Next the town’s leading citizen, J.D. Rankin, comes in with Samuel Gill, the newspaper proprietor, and a storekeeper named Harkin, and raps on the counter for service. From Tarleton’s office I call out, I’ll be right with you. Then I jump out, banging my revolver butts down with a clatter. Don’t move! I catch Rankin and Harkin, but Gill jumps over Rankin and runs away. Take the others to the Royal Mail with the other prisoners. I need a drink, need to tie up loose ends.

  By now we don’t need to point guns at people. In the bar I clap a revolver on the counter, swearing if anyone tries to shoot us or send a telegraph, Jerilderie will swim in its own blood. Then I call the barmaid for drinks all round. My shout, Lovely. Just take it out of these new sovereigns here.

  Leave my gun sitting there on the bar. People leave it be. It’s as if it were a person, sitting there with its own air space around it. Wouldn’t be surprised to see someone buy it a drink.

  TYING UP loose ends takes time. Joe’s sticking up Jefferson the postmaster, checking all the telegrams sent this morning, cutting the wires on the switchboard. I leave the pub to chop down two telegraph poles, am looking sideways at a third when a local man named Charlie Naw volunteers to chop it for me, and goes on to chop another six. Wires springing and tangling everywhere in the street. Buy willing Charlie a drink while I’m waiting for Joe. One thing’s still bothering me: the newspaperman, Gill.

  I’m told he lives across from his printery, so I front up to his doorstep. His wife denies he’s there, says he’s probably lying somewhere, dropped dead with fright. Can’t see anything ever frightening her, or interesting her either. Looks just to the side of me, not straight on, as if I was a scurvy sore, perhaps, a bad case of cowpox. I say there’s something I want to give him. Joe and I have been working on it for three months. I hand her this bag of papers I’ve been carting around ever since. Will you pass it on? It’s important to me. Not possible, she says. I thought it might be interesting, I say. It’s begging to be printed. Afraid not, she says, looking somewhere over my shoulder as if at approaching inclement weather.

  So we leave. Take our new treasure, mount up and ride out of town in four directions to confuse them.

  What I wanted to give her news-hound husband was this story of my life.

  He must stay awake, keep moving about, listen for the train. With all the planning, killing Aaron, the long ride here, the taking of prisoners, the entertainment, the waiting, none of them has slept or even lain down with his boots off for three nights. Dropping off for only a moment on the verandah step just now, he instantly dreamed he was lounging with friends on a fine, clipped lawn.

  Around them, strolling strangers chatted and took the air. He found himself beginning to dig tunnels in the neat lawn and undermining it. All these mild people strolling past fell into the holes, which filled quickly with water. But he and his friends ran for the high ground, a grassy hill topped by a timber, bark-roofed hut, and were safe and snug there. They felt lucky and gifted, especially as all the people in the holes quickly drowned.

  But then there was a kno
ck on the door. With some apprehension he opened it and there was his father as a young man, tall, red-headed and green-eyed, and all lit up by a crown of bright white light. ‘I have to talk to you and Dan,’ he said, and they sat quiet and obedient while he spoke.

  ‘Ned will have a child,’ he announced, ‘but none for Dan.’ And, his flare gradually fading, his father described for them a vision of a little girl, long-haired and pretty, swimming in a quiet creek, and she immediately appeared to him too, and he knew that this was his child-to-be. But a dark mass rose abruptly from below the creek’s surface, spreading and growing around this paddling child with her straight, streaming hair, and the mass engulfed her and she was gone.

  MAYBE I dwell too much on dreams. They say the trouble with the Irish was that they relied too much on dreams and not enough on men and gunpowder. Whereas the English were shy on dreams as usual but had plenty of the other.

  Well, we’ve got them all.

  I have something to say.

  I have something to say.

  At this stage, ladies and gentlemen, we might remind Mr Curnow to consider that tonight in the Glenrowan Inn, in the warmth and hospitality of the parlour of Ann Jones’s pub, he is privileged to be a witness to history. And how many schoolteachers, Mr Curnow, dream of that?

  Any moment, when that train arrives from Benalla, the order of things in this country will explode to smithereens and be changed forever. Call it the opening blow.

  Eh, Mr Curnow? Mr Stanistreet? And you, of course, Constable Bracken? Won’t you join us, gentlemen, in charging your glasses and drinking to the new Australia?

  Thank you, Mr Curnow. My spirits exactly. Joe, Dan, please assist Mr Bracken to join the toast. Blast him to his feet if necessary. And then to Kingdom Come.

  That’s better.

  NOW I’M in full flight, the bloody cockatoo won’t stop chattering. Old misty-eyed Martin Cherry and his mates are starting up again: Ned, Ned, he’s saying your name. Who could tell in all that squawking? Now it’s woken up Mrs Reardon’s kids. Fixing its warty eye on me, shrewd as a witch. Tongue like a .44 bullet peeping out. The only word I can make out is bastard. Grizzling children and drunken fawning smiles everywhere I look.

  Jesus, I’ve got to depend on these people?

  Steve picks up my mood – and the cockatoo. He stuffs it in its cage, covers the cage with a coat. Cherry and his mates grumble, the bird flutters but wisely goes quiet.

  I have something to say! My friends and Messrs Curnow, Stanistreet and Bracken, your attention please!

  Is that a noise? No.

  I have an announcement, penned in the quiet of a recent hideout, that I wish to read. Lying low in caves, eating uncooked food, being tracked by blacks and hunted by police, gives you words and aims and concentrates your mind. Listen close and spread the warning wide.

  Ahem.

  A Statement on Treachery, with Consideration to Recent Events.

  By the light that shines, this is my warning:

  Being pegged on an ant bed with your belly opened, fat stripped out, rendered and poured, boiling, down your throat, will seem the coolest of all pleasantries compared to that pleasure of pleasures I will give persons taking blood money from the police.

  Fair notice to my enemies. (You know who you are.) Sell out your property, leave the State, give ten pounds of every hundred to the widow and orphan fund.

  Neglect this warning and the consequences shall be a thousand times worse than Drought and Grasshopper Plague and Rust in the Wheat.

  I am a widow’s son outlawed, and my orders Must Be Obeyed.

  While God gives me strength to pull a trigger, if my people don’t get justice and the innocent aren’t released from prison, I’ll revenge everything of the human race.

  It will pay the Government to give those selectors who are suffering in innocence their justice and liberty. If not, I will open the eyes not only of the police and the people but also the whole British Army. There will be no peace while the police are empowered to arrest a man and refuse him land because of his associates or utterances. I warn the authorities: beware your railroads. And your coppers and your banks!

  Because the police spies are afraid – or ashamed – to wear their uniforms, so every man’s life is in danger from me. As I was outlawed without cause, and cannot be held in worse regard, and as I can only die once, I seek revenge for the evil name given to me and my relations.

  Horrible disasters shall follow if Fitzpatrick’s lies are not righted. Fitzpatrick shall be the cause of greater slaughter to the rising generation than St Patrick was to the snakes and frogs in Ireland.

  If I had robbed, plundered, ravished and murdered everyone I met, my character could not have been painted blacker. But my conscience is as clear as the snow in Peru.

  A sweet goodbye from Edward Kelly, a Forced Outlaw.

  THANK YOU, thank you, thank you – How did that go over, Joe? – Drinks all round, Mrs Jones. And please nail this epistle over the mantelpiece.

  ‘Jane! … Now I want a moment’s peace to talk to this elegant young lady.’

  – If I were game I could just say that.

  Or, ‘Jane, come outside and take the air with me. Don’t you think it smells of jungle?’

  Jesus, in gaol all my wild-oat years! Never kissed or touched a woman younger than me. Face so shyly blushed and smooth. So strange and sisterly, seems wrong, but no. I think I’d prefer this less blatant hunger, a mouse’s earhole for a change. No more eyes lined with shrewdness, drink and compromise. Those sinews and soft muscles working visibly. She flows, and every move’s a dance.

  Liquid moves, fresh eyes, shining hair, clear spittle on her tongue, pink gums. This changes things. Jane Jones.

  TO JANE (while sauntering, taking the air) I’ll quietly ask: Did you like the part about the ant bed? It came to me while hiding in a cave in the Wombat Ranges. And from an adventure yarn I borrowed from Scott, the Euroa bank manager. (Plus a few other things!) This Apache tribe liked torturing white settlers with ants. They’d stake them out on ant beds in the desert sun. They didn’t care to learn their secrets, they just fancied the idea.

  Have you heard of that before? With all the ants we’ve got I think it would work well here. Ha, ha.

  Lying low like we are now, having to live in caves, you can’t help watching ants. (I’ll go on in this vein.) You learn small creatures’ lives. Eventually you can read rocks and soils like books. I’ve watched gravel fade, dust settle into crust and the second-by-second variations in the shadows. I’ve seen drips of water turn to stone that defied gravity and reason and assumed the shapes of lacy shawls and giant rashers of bacon. My buttocks (pardon me) can clock the different temperature changes in granite and sandstone. True, I can forecast the weather with my arse. (Whoops!) I’ve seen a hundred shades of lichen, the different moisture grades of moss. I’ve lived so quiet in limestone caves that owls and bats ignored me and spiders were impressed with my calm spiderness.

  I’ve turned blood-red with cave mud until I looked like some underground formation. I’ve drunk groundwater so full of iron I pissed red. I’ve been a bloody rock.

  I’ve spent a day watching a caterpillar die. Fell from a gumtree onto the rock beside me and I flicked it into a patch of sun among some sugar ants. I could’ve pushed it into the safety of shade or under a leaf but I was curious about its fate among ants. Well, they were in a frenzy in a second. Do you know that an ant kills a grub like a lion kills an antelope? Jumps on its back and bites it on the neck. Well, this grub twirled and spun in agony, and finally spiralled away into a pile of leaves. But here a new tribe of bigger ants were hunting. They were delighted with their luck but those other ants scurried in a bewildered way. Couldn’t get over it. Where’s our lovely grub gone?

  Sorry for the caterpillar? Funny question. Maybe. But not enough to save it.

  You know ants panic when a storm is coming? They up stakes and shift their camp. Friday night, the night before Aaron died, they swarmed
into our blankets so we knew we were in for a storm. It struck quickly – hailstones like eggs, lightning, fierce winds. Branches splintered and trees toppled over us, roots and all. You could say the ants forecast Aaron getting it.

  What do you want to know about that for? A sweet one like you. You knew Aaron? He didn’t miss many around here. And now he’s got a widow even younger than you.

  Well, if you really want to know …

  WE LIKED the idea of a full moon. So it had to be Saturday 26th June, this weekend. The timing was important. Aaron had to die early in the evening. The rails couldn’t be torn up until after the last passenger train passed through Glenrowan at 9 p.m. We expected the police to reach Beechworth with the news of Aaron later than night, and Hare’s police special to pass through here this morning, Sunday, the 27th.

  That was the plan. Stage One. Well, it’s nearly midnight, Sunday. So where is it, Jane? Tell me why it isn’t here.

  JOE HAD to be the executioner. Aaron was his schoolmate, his gaolmate, almost his brother-in-law. (I guess we were all that!) Police Agent Sherritt shopped us all to Hare, but it was worse for Joe. They were like brothers, comrades, all the rest. Chased girls together – and caught them too.

  It takes a certain type of friendship to share a woman turnabout. A barmaid named Maggie who Joe was slipping out at night to see also caught Aaron out. When Aaron got married and still came bouncing round to see her, Maggie told him she didn’t go with married men. Cut him to the quick. This night she knocked him back again, and later in the evening caught him drinking with one of Hare’s detectives and glaring in her direction. While Aaron was out relieving himself the detective suddenly asked her about Joe, when she saw him and where. When Aaron came back and saw him questioning her his face went tight and sober and pale around the mouth. He looked like a man who’d made the mistake of his life, Maggie said.