A chair scraped across the linoleum. More water was poured into the teapot.
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘It means you’re still trying to get me into heaven.’
There was a silence. I tried to fill it by taking the plastic bath from the cage.
‘That’s unfair, Gwen.’
A teaspoon chimed against the side of a cup.
‘I don’t hold it against you, never have.’ I imagined Mrs Potter holding a fresh cup of tea to her mouth, talking through the steam. ‘But you know how I feel. If Arch and Phillip weren’t good enough to get in there’s not much use me going, now is there? Wouldn’t be paradise without them.’
We had some excitement here last night. Apparently our mountain, Mt Segum, used to belong to the Tanari people, the tribe that lives in the valley between us and the Kennesy Range to the west. The story goes that in the 1950s, before white contact, they lost the mountain in a war with the Dwanigi and, with the arrival of the mission, never got a chance to win it back.
I hadn’t been home long last night and had just started cooking tea when I heard a bunch of men over near the hospital shouting in Tanari, whistling and carrying on. I didn’t think much of it until I heard the sound of smashing glass. Grabbing my hurricane lamp, I rushed outside to see what was happening. A few of the local kids were jostling each other for a look in the hospital’s windows. As I approached, Micah tried to block my path, waving his arms, saying, ‘Rascali, rascali!’
I took a look through the window before going to the door. After the yellow light of the lantern, the hospital’s fluorescents were blinding, bleaching everything they touched. Up the back, near the storeroom and the shelf with the two-way radio, Dr Swinton was surrounded by about fifteen men, half Tanari, the other half Dwanigi. Hisiu was standing beside him, translating what a young Tanari man was saying. Dr Swinton was listening, his head bowed, a hand scratching at the shadow of stubble on his chin. The Tanari man, wearing a camouflage shirt, the sleeves ripped off at the shoulders, began yelling at him, flaying his arms in all directions, pointing at the floor, then accusingly at Hisiu.
Coming through the door I saw the remains of two glass beakers shattered on the floor. Lincoln was kneeling, cleaning them up, cradling the larger shards in his palm. Bending down to help, I noticed all the Tanari men carried bows and arrows or had bush knives dangling from their hands. A couple even had painted faces; war plumes jutting from their armbands.
Dr Swinton started speaking over the top of the camouflage man. Their voices competed for a moment, then the Tanari man fell silent. Dr Swinton, speaking Dwanigi, told him he had heard what he had to say but that there was nothing he could do. He wasn’t here when the mission was established, he said, but he knew that the mission founders had leased the land from the Dwanigi people, who were, at least at that time, its rightful owners.
The camouflage man started speaking again, repeating the same word over and over. Dr Swinton leant forward and placed a calming hand on the young man’s arm. Pointing to the door, addressing the crowd, he said he had work to do. The Dwanigi men pressed the Tanari towards the door. The argument continued outside, moving further and further away until all I could hear were the echoing whistles of the Tanari as they wandered down the mountain.
Turning from the window where I had watched their procession of torches descend and disappear into the darkness of the valley, I asked Dr Swinton if he was all right. Distracted, as if struggling to understand the question, he eventually said, ‘Fine, fine, they’re just looking for a fight. Happens every year. It’s nothing to worry about, is it, Hisiu?’ Hisiu agreed, but standing beside me, still staring out the window into the night, Lincoln shook his head.
‘What did they want?’ I was looking at Dr Swinton, but addressing all three. He struck a match and held it above a Bunsen-burner. The hissing gas popped, fluttered yellow like a tattered flag, then settled into a clean, barely visible, blue flame. Waving a test-tube of urine through it, Dr Swinton said, ‘Ask Hisiu, he understands them.’
‘Hisiu?’
‘I don’t really know,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Who can know the Tanari — they are crazy. Now they think those men from the Government Health Office, the two who flew here, they think they are Mines and Energy men. They say they came to make deals about land.’
‘You told them the truth, though?’
‘I tried, but the Tanari cannot listen. He believes Mt. Segum is made from iron, that white men will come with mountain-moving machines and that they will make the Dwanigi rich.’
‘Is it? Is Mt. Segum full of ore?’
I didn’t think he was listening, but Dr Swinton looked up and, drying his hands on a paper towel, said, ‘Who knows? A few years ago the rumour was gold.’
Escorting me back to my house, Lincoln asked if I wanted him to sleep the night on my verandah in case the Tanari returned. Reassured by Dr Swinton’s lack of concern, I declined the offer, saying, ‘It’ll be fine, really.’ As I mounted the steps leading to the veranda, Lincoln put his arm out to stop me. His voice was both begging and demanding.
‘Pray with me, Gracie. I think we should pray.’
Bowing my head, I listened to him clear his throat and pray. ‘Almighty God, my people, the Dwanigi, we have sinned. Forgive us, Lord. Make us brave, strike fear from our hearts and protect us, like the Israelites from the Egyptians, from our enemies. Let us be warriors in your name. Amen.’
I bit my lip to stop myself from giggling — Lincoln has always been rather too fond of the Old Testament.
‘See you tomorrow,’ I said.
‘You sure you don’t want …’
‘Nnnoooo!’ I said, widening my eyes, then smiling, letting the giggle out.
This morning, though, going out to see if my chooks had layed me an egg for breakfast, I found Lincoln curled up, sleeping under my front steps. Beside him, its head partly buried in the dirt, lay his axe.
He never complained, but I could tell Dad hated his job. He’d been blessed with a gift for fixing things (cars, furniture, TVs, toasters — anything electrical), and while he enjoyed helping people with their practical problems, he always wished he was repairing their souls. I remember him telling me once that TVs and record players were distractions, conjuring tricks designed to distract us from the majesty of life. Why, then, had God made him so good at fixing them? It reminded me of the Christmas he and Mum gave me a train set, when what I’d dreamt of getting was a model boat. I knew the train was a wonderful gift; it just wasn’t the one I’d hoped for.
Visiting Dad at work on a Saturday morning, I could see him trying to be grateful, working fast but carefully, making the most of his talents. Mum dropped me off on her way to the supermarket. The sign read, ‘Radio Redeemers: We Sell & Repair Radios, TVs & HiFis.’
The shop no longer frightened me the way it had when I was young. Now I could walk past the rows of televisions looming from the wall without fearing their blank, glassy stare; could stroll under the rolls of electrical cord dangling from the ceiling without imagining them as tentacles reaching down to entangle me. Still, I wished the shop was brighter, that the owner, Mr Sturgiss, wasn’t so stingy and would let Dad turn on all the fluorescents.
Ross, the assistant, was dealing with a customer when I arrived. Greeting him, I continued on out past the partition separating the shop from the workshop. Broken TVs were stacked one on top of the other; Pyes, Ranks, AWAs. In one corner was a heap of salvaged speakers and lining the walls were metal shelves with trays of nuts and bolts, electrical bits and pieces. Dad was