That Deadman Dance by Scott Kim

Author:Scott, Kim
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2012-03-07T05:00:00+00:00

Trees bent over them, bowed each side of the sandy pathway Bobby led them along, then straightened again and rose higher as the humans passed. At another bend in the river there was a tiny tributary and Bobby, crouching, plunged an arm below the surface and came up with a handful of red clay. A few steps away he did it again, but this time it was white clay in his hand.

Christopher was tiring, was too mature for ochre dabbed onto his skin. The bubbling spring held him, how it fell from granite onto sword and sedge, along a cleft running down to the pool. His father, he knew, thought to fatten sheep and cattle beside it.

They made letters of ochre, three-dimensional at first, then smeared large on bark and rock. Finally, they used their fingers to make letters in the sand. Bobby showed them footprints; did they know the animals that made each mark?

Alitja, look, he said, showing them some scratches not far above the base of a tree. Possum writing, laughed Bobby. He’s not here no more, he gone along the ground to ’nother tree. Too far for him jumping. See here? he said. Gone up again. There were marks in the trunk, too, rough axe cuts and—Bobby showed them how—you put your toes there. He ran up the trunk, toes finding the steps a stone axe had made.

Christopher shook his head, looked into the water for mullet.

Bobby and Christine kept on. Possum home, Christopher heard Bobby say, but he not coming out today. He saw the long white curve of Christine’s leg, that she’d tucked her skirt into her pantaloon and that she and Bobby were in a high fork of the tree, limbs and leaves like a safety net below them.

Christine thought Bobby was funny.

Wabalanginy, he said, the name bubbling on his lips. Bobby. He balanced a honky-nut on his head, and she laughed with him all the more.

She said he should have a real policeman’s hat. Like Daddy said Peel’s men wore on the sleety cobbles of a London she couldn’t remember. She skinned her knee, and when Bobby bent to the wound felt a thrill she’d never known.

Very close to the possum, but held high in strong limbs and dappled leaf light they heard whispering all around them.

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