Red Dirt Talking by Jacqueline Wright

Author:Jacqueline Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction/General
ISBN: 9781921888915
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Published: 2009-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

16.

Annie’s life begins to fall into a satisfying pattern of work and bushtripping. She discovers a lot about Yindi and Breakaway and the people that live there as they bump down tracks and sit by cooking fires. Sometimes, they slip her a proper story, usually when she forgets to bring her recorder. The stories are not always traditional; they are accounts from last week, past years and childhood, and those passed onto them from their mothers, fathers and grandparents. Ruthie fills the gaps in the story, polishing them with soft asides whispered in her ear. The stories tie the tellers to one another and to place. Annie wonders if, one day, they will tell the story of the white woman who started the power station, and then blushes. She’s being bold to even think she’ll be remembered at all.

Mysterly also begins knitting herself into the bushtrips but only when they go fishing. Handlines cast, Annie and Mysterly swap backgrounds. Mysterly’s life is far more interesting than Annie’s. The only daughter of Lutheran missionary parents, Mysterly grew up in the New Guinea highland village of Bulo.

‘They were un-fucking-stoppable,’ she snorts, referring to her parents. ‘Full of the word of God and bursting to tell it to all who’d listen or not, more like.’

Annie looks at Mysterly, who is intent on picking out pebbles from the coarse river sand at her feet.

‘Dad used to call Mum his little woman, can you believe that? She was six foot one for Christ’s sake! And she did most of the work around the place while he preached and sniffed out heathen behaviour.’

‘They were diehard missionaries in those days,’ Annie observes.

‘Yeah, I reckon.’ She shakes the pebbles she has collected in her hand. ‘To be close to God was to live like a Christian. That meant dressing like ’em, eating like ’em, speaking like ’em, shitting like ’em.’

‘So no form of cultural expression was allowed?’

‘Painting your body, dancing and talking your own lingo were definitely out of the question,’ she says laughing, throwing the pebbles one by one into the pool.

They watch as the circles broaden and merge.

‘You know, Annie, it might have been all right if the missionaries had just stuck to their God business, but they couldn’t help ’emselves, had to go building roads between the missions to make it easy for their God-bothering mates to visit. The early missionaries called the roads symbols of the peace of the Gospel. Not for the villagers it wasn’t!’

‘Why not?’

‘Those roads made it easy for enemy tribes to visit from other villages so it was open slather between warring tribes. Fuckin’ imbeciles! Never twigged the roads had anything to do with it. Thought they’d got to Guinea in the nick of time to restore peace and harmony.’

Annie can’t stop herself from asking questions: What are your earliest memories? What was the village like? How did you live?

Mysterly’s descriptions are vivid, her hatred of her parents and their work insatiable, her insights into village life evocative.

Then Annie discovers Mysterly didn’t actually leave the village until she was sixteen.

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