That Deadman Dance Read Online Free

That Deadman Dance
Book: That Deadman Dance Read Online Free
Author: Kim Scott
Pages:
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one another, neither could quite relax in the other’s dialect.
    The men led them away from Cross and his friends and they sat between small fires talking. As the shadows shifted, they performed aspects of what they recounted.
    An old woman embraced Menak. She laughed and patted Wooral almost like he was a child: pinched his nose, and held him playful-like. Her smile washed over Bobby like sunlight when he was cold, shade when he was hot. Bobby thought of old Manit, Menak’s long favoured companion. It would be good to have her here now.
    Nitja wadjela. Your friends? the old woman said, no longer so friendly and playful. Tjanak! Devils! Smile to your face but turn around and he is your enemy. These people chase us from our own country. They kill our animals and if we eat one of their sheep … they shoot us. Baalap ngalak waadam! The very smell of them kills us.
    Not this one with us, Wooral replied. He is our friend. He needs us.
    But Menak listened carefully to what was said.
    Wooral and one of the other men took turns throwing a spear at a rolling disk of bark, using the spears of different men in the group until the disk began to fall apart. Bobby was surprised; the other man’s spear struck the bark many times. They ate, and Menak, particularly, was given the choicest of what was available.
    In the afternoon, Dr Cross and his friends took them to a piano in one of the huts, and the music rose and fell over them like a waterfall, like a wave that kept rising and yet fell so surprisingly gentle and made them feel fresh. The pianist’s hands danced across black and white, and that hand-dance made the music and did not just follow the sound. They drank tea from small cups and sat in their soft chairs, and the talk all around them, the furniture, the spoons and cups: sharp sounds, tinkling. As is only right, Menak and Wooral sang and danced in turn; they didn’t do the Deadman Dance, but. Too special altogether that one, and a dance for home only. Bobby explained a little of what the dances were about and sang some songs Cross had taught him.
    Their audience afterwards agreed they had found it very entertaining. The young boy’s command of English was remarkable—a tribute to the good relationships at King George Town—and he was confident and charming, quite precocious, in fact.
    Dr Cross’s words passed among the crowd: there is land available at King George Town. Good land at King George Town.
    *
    Cygnet River Colony was a strong wind blowing all morning from land, the rest of the day even stronger from sea. Menak and Wooral were rowed out to where the anchor-snared ship jumped and pitched like an angry beast but soon the sails fell and swelled and the ship was away on the wind. Shore was windy, too, was grit in your teeth and the terrible glare of white stone. Bobby stayed with Dr Cross and together they followed the long brown river inland among scowling, rocky brows back to the buildings and the horses and sheep and cows.
    Bobby, a child-stranger at Cygnet River, saw people looking at him from a distance and caught smiles intended for Dr Cross. Sometimes there was handshaking. Bobby kept at his lessons and stayed in a hut, just as if he was Dr Cross’s own family. Such a closed-in life made Bobby ill, and for a long time he saw the trees and sky only through the frame of a window or doorway. He could not breathe properly, and the wind moaned with a voice that might almost have been his ailing own, circling in his head. He wrote down the sound, wiirra wiiiirra wiirrn … Sleeping, his thoughts and breath bounced from the walls. The paper of his lessons was old skin beneath his fingers.
    Waking in the night, the darkness all around him was unformed spirits pressing for his attention and reaching, ready to snatch him away to where he’d never get home again. Sometimes Dr Cross’s kindly face floated before him, a lock of red hair hanging beneath his hatbrim, his eyes like tiny pools of ocean, his handkerchief at
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