Читать книгу The Mystical Swagman - Gary Blinco - Страница 15

Chapter

5

T here were no regrets. Brennan had never really liked the noise, the bustle and the smell of the city. His

favourite times had always been when he was alone with Ede, or when he was visiting with Sly Joe. Now he walked with a new purpose and a light heart, each step taking him further away from the city.

The further he walked, the fewer houses he saw. Gradually the streets had become a series of quiet lanes as the city slowly gave way to the country, until at last there was just a single road leading deeper into the bush. He felt his heart racing. As he walked through the tall trees, he breathed in the freshness of country air that was laced with the scents of the wildflowers and shrubs adorning the roadside. This, he realised, was where he wanted to be – on the road and as free as the birds in the sky. For the first time in his life he did not care how old he was or where he had come from originally; he just knew that he loved the sweet perfumes of the bush. And so, as he tramped along the narrow road that led him away from the dirty, crowded city, he was happy.

Once he’d left the busy streets, he’d also noticed that there were fewer and fewer people on the roads until all that remained were the occasional bullock team or some country farmers on their way to the city markets in wagons and sulkies. Their vehicles were loaded with farm produce of all kinds: bags of grain, bales of wool, piles of fresh vegetables and fruit or loudly protesting animals of one kind or another. Most of these travellers had afforded him little more than a polite nod as they’d passed, as for the most part, he’d kept his eyes lowered. He had not wanted to be questioned about his intentions, where he had come from or where he was going.

It was late in the afternoon when he came upon a winding track which led away from the main road. Answering an unspoken call, he left the highway without hesitation and began to follow the meandering track between the towering gums that crowded the roadside. The shadows lengthened as he walked, and the lane grew dim in the deepening twilight. The swarms of bush flies, his travelling companions most of the day, had departed; now a few grey mosquitoes whined about his ears as he walked. When night fell a fat moon marched out among the stars in the heavens. Brennan was not afraid as he tramped along the track in the gloom, but he was tired and hungry.

As he crossed a narrow wooden bridge over a small creek, he was surprised to hear music coming from the scrub off to his left. Peering through the bush, he spotted the glow of a nearby campfire dancing among the trees near the water’s edge. He left the track and walked towards the camp, the fatigue, hunger and thirst he had been ignoring all day suddenly surfacing and demanding his attention. His nose twitched and his mouth watered as he smelt tea brewing and damper browning in the coals of the fire. A short stout man with a round tummy and the thickest, widest beard Brennan had ever seen probed in the fire with a long stick. He was lifting a black billy of tea from the flames just as Brennan walked into the circle of firelight.

Another, older man had been sitting off to the side, his back resting against a log as he played a slow, sad, and mournful tune on an old concertina. As he stretched and compressed the bellows, his short fat fingers danced about the buttons of the instrument like wriggling worms. The music rose up among the branches of the trees and mingled with the whisper of a little breeze among the leaves and the tired evening songs of the birds.

The man stopped playing as Brennan approached, looking up without surprise at the boy who now stood before him in the flickering firelight. “Lookee here, Happy Jack,” he said without rising, “your cooking has attracted a dinner guest, a young man from the big smoke, I’ll vow.”

The cook flipped two plump dampers and some johnnycakes from the coals with his stick before turning to stare at Brennan. “So it has, and that’s the truth,” he said cheerily, holding his big arms wide as he beckoned to the boy. “Don’t be shy, lad, come and join us; we are about to have our tea, and there’s always enough for one more.”

Brennan smiled as he walked over and sat on the log. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m very hungry and thirsty; I’ve been walking all day.”

The man sitting against the log laughed and went back to playing the concertina, very softly this time; the notes hung gently on the night air like the subtle perfume from the gum-blossoms. “We been trampin’ for twenty years, lad,” he said happily. “Yer git useta it in time. Bad times and the big drought gave us a reason to go on the tramp back then; there was no work about so we went looking for a living on the track. When the drought ended, the reason became an excuse, because we’d discovered we liked the life. Now we don’t much care how we justify our lifestyle; we’ll tramp the road until we die, like as not.”

He glanced over at Brennan, who was quietly eyeing the food as he listened.

“My name’s Josie,” the old man said. “They call me the oldest swagman, so you must be the youngest. The little fat bloke doing the cooking is Happy Jack. They call him that because he’s as mad as a magpie, but he makes the best damper on the wallaby track, and his johnnycakes can bring a tear to a strong man’s eye.” Josie stopped playing the concertina and struggled stiffly to his feet. “Roll out your swag, my boy. Then you can sit on it and rest against this friendly log while we eat. Here, I’ll help you, for I’ll wager this is your first night waltzing Matilda.”

Brennan did not object as the old man helped him unroll his blanket. He had packed in a hurry and his meagre possessions spilled untidily on the ground. Josie clucked his tongue. “Tsk, tsk,” he clucked. “Come the mornin’ and we’ll have to show yer how to set a swag, lad.”

“My name is Brennan,” the boy said. “I walked from the city.”

“Brennan it is, then,” Happy Jack said airily. “But where you come from and why is no business of ours. We all have a secret or two on the wallaby track, so we don’t ask questions of each other. What we want known we tell; the rest we keep to ourselves.”

“What’s the wallaby track?” Brennan asked quickly.

Happy Jack laughed, his eyes twinkling under the thick crop of grey hair about his head. “Humping the bluey, waltzing Matilda, tramping the wallaby track; they’re all the same thing, Brennan, my little swagman.” He laughed again, holding his round tummy while the thick white whiskers danced about on his chin. “Or perhaps we should call you the swag boy, seein’ as how yer so young. Come now; let’s eat these cakes and damper. There’s a fat young rabbit baking in the camp oven as well, and I’ll vow old Josie’s got a tot of rum to warm an old man’s heart. But yer too young fer rum, Brennan; yer’ll have to settle fer a strong pannikin of billy tea.”

They sat in the dancing firelight and ate the damper, the johnnycakes and the crisp baked rabbit. Brennan gulped down several mugs of tea before lying back contentedly on his blanket. Josie began to play the concertina again while Happy Jack finished off the rest of the food. One could not see his mouth; he just shovelled the food into the dark hole that opened in his beard as he ate. His whiskers bounced wildly as he chewed, his eyes half-closed with the pleasure of eating. No wonder he was so fat, Brennan thought as he watched the little, round man devour the food with relish.

Josie was as old, scrawny and haggard as Happy Jack was rotund and ruddy. His back was stooped and his joints creaked as he walked. He too had a thick beard, though not so grand as Happy Jack’s. The rest of his hair was sparse, sprouting in tufts from his shaggy head. But his old eyes were full of life and he played the old squeezebox beautifully, pausing frequently to swig rum from a bottle he kept at his side. As he played, he began to sing in a deep, rich voice that sent little shivers up and down Brennan’s spine.

When he reached the chorus, Happy Jack joined in, having finished eating and rolled out his own swag. Sighing contentedly as Josie finished his song and started on something new, Happy Jack took out a long-stemmed pipe and began to pack the bowl with dark tobacco he cut from a plug he kept in an oilskin pouch. When it was full, he stuck the stem into the hole that opened up among the hairs on his face and began to light the pipe with a burning twig from the fire. Thick clouds of pungent smoke billowed about his head before the pipe was burning to his satisfaction, pulsing redly as if it were a living thing.

“I can’t smoke a cigarette like old Josie there,” Happy Jack said when he saw the boy staring at him. “I’d set me jolly beard afire for sure.” He laughed again, then closed his eyes to listen to the soft, sleepy melody that wafted from the concertina. Brennan lay back on his swag and stared at the stars through the canopy of trees. After a while Josie set the instrument aside and curled up in his own swag, and his deep snores soon joined those of Happy Jack. From somewhere in the bush came the haunting call of a mopoke. A dingo howled a long way off, and some ducks and frogs quacked and croaked along the creek. As a little breeze stirred the trees, Brennan finally slipped off to sleep.

He awoke to see Happy Jack stoking the fire and making a billy of tea, pleasantly surprised to find that the whole night had not been a dream. Josie came up from the creek with a fat fish flapping at the end of a green line. “Breakfast,” he said, handing it to Happy Jack to prepare for cooking while he rolled up the swags. Then he showed Brennan how to roll his swag so that it was small and tight, neatly packed and easier to carry. Afterward they sat on the log and ate the fish that Happy Jack had fried in mutton fat, making little fish sandwiches with some leftover damper, and washing down the meal with mugs of sweet tea.

“Where are yer headin’ today, little swag boy?” Josie asked kindly.

The question caught Brennan off guard. “I don’t know,” he said awkwardly. He had somehow assumed he would go with them.

The old men exchanged glances. “Do you have any money?” Happy Jack asked idly. When Brennan shot him a suspicious glance, Josie laughed. “Do not worry, lad. We wouldn’t steal yer dough. We was gist wonderin’ how yer was set, is all.”

“That’s right, boy,” Happy Jack said. “We cadge a feed here and there, a bit of tea, sugar, flour and terbaccy, maybe a leg of mutton now and then, but we don’t steal.”

Brennan felt his cheeks flush with shame. “I have a little money that Aunt Ede saved up for me before she died,” he said, rummaging in his swag to draw out the oilskin pouch where he had stored his cash. He tipped the money out on the ground and stared at the notes and coins. He had not had much to do with money before, and so it meant very little to him.

Seeing his confusion, Josie began to count the money, whistling softly at the total. “Ten and a half quid,” he said slowly. “Why, a man can work all week for most squatters for a half quid, fifteen bob, and his keep at best. Yer got a tidy sum there, lad, and that’s the truth.”

Happy Jack saw the new cloud fall over the boy’s face and said quickly, “Now old Josie, he don’t steal; so don’t you worry ‘bout yer dough thataway. But he ain’t no saint neither, the old bugger; he’s got a coupla tricks up his sleeve that are a bit suspect. F’r instance, they call him windmill Josie sometimes.”

The boy creased his brows. “That’s a funny name. Why would anyone call a man such a name?”

“Well,” said Happy Jack, giggling like a child, “Old Josie here ain’t content to cadge a bit of tucker and terbaccy. Sometimes he wants a bit of work so he can get a few bob to buy his rum, or a new pair of boots, or the like.” He was wheezing between giggles now, clutching his wobbly belly. “So what he does is he gets to a selection and camps nearby in the bush. After a while he sneaks about and busts a windmill or two, then creeps back to his camp and just loafs around for a few days. By and by, after the tanks have been drunk dry by the stock, old Josie goes up to the squatter, as bold as you like, and asks if there is any work. ‘I can do pretty much anything,’ he says. ‘But windmills is my speciality,’ he says.” And Happy Jack laughed until his whiskers almost danced off his chin.

‘Can you really fix windmills, Josie?’ Brennan said slowly, thinking the whole thing a bit dishonest.

“Only ones what he broke hisself,” Happy Jack said before Josie could answer. “Got caught out once, too. The squatter’d fixed the windmill what old Josie broke, but there was another one over the rise that Josie didn’t know about. Old Josie had to pull up the whole workings with a winch so he could fix the foot valve, a hunnert feet down it was; took him two weeks, the old villain,” Happy Jack laughed. “Yer’da thunk that would’ve learned him, but he still pulls the stunt from time to time.”

“Taint true,” Josie said in mock protest. “Even when I bust ‘em up a bit first, I still give ‘em a good overhaul, so the squatter gets a good deal. Don’t you listen to that old rascal, Brennan.”

Brennan looked at the two old men and smiled. “If you let me toss in with you, I’ll share the money,” he said. “I don’t know how to live on the track; you can teach me.”

Josie rubbed his chin reflectively. “Well,” he mused, “a man can walk where he pleases in this land, so you don’t need our permission to tag along. But there is a lot to learn about survival on the road, and Happy and me can sure learn yer that. We are a bit short of a quid, come to mention it; a share of yer kitty would be a fair cop fer a bit of bush craft trainin’, I s’pose. We are too close to the city to get much of a handout; people are darn unfriendly until yer git ter the outback.”

He stood up and rubbed his old limbs. “All right, Brennan me swaggie mate, yer can toss in with us. We’ll poke down this lane to the next village and stock up with enough tucker and stuff to get us further west, and while we’re there we’ll kit you out with a proper swag too.”

The three of them shouldered their swags and set off towards the road just as a family of kookaburras raised their voices in mirth among the treetops. As soon as they left, a flock of warbling magpies descended on the campsite, eagerly cleaning up any scraps left behind by the departing humans. Brennan stepped out with a bold sense of purpose, wondering what unknown force had caused him to follow the small track the night before. In any case, he was glad that he had heeded his instincts, making it possible to meet these two resourceful and friendly old bushmen.