up by shooting a cop, and now I’ve got all those nasty feelings in my guts again as I stand in that high dock staring over the courtroom. Why, I’m almost on the level of the judge. He glances at me with eyes that don’t see me. I'm nothing to him, man, just some dirt to be swept away. Well, I don’t wear a silly red gown and a stupid grey wig. Who does he think he is—the fairy godfather? He glances my way again and I can’t help smirking at him. And he gets a mean look in his eye; but now I know that I’m something to him, just as Jacko Turk became something to that old digger, Clarrie, who’s just got six months. Lucky old fart!
I look down into the body of the court where funny wigs are bent over papers, and really, man, I don’t wanta be at this fancy-dress party. I want out! But I won’t get out. Their words flow over me; the judge stares at me as if I’m an enemy of the state, and declares that I’m a menace to society and that society must be protected from the likes of me. He goes on and on. I think back to the battle of Pinjarra and wonder if any judge said anything about that day when they murdered our men, women and kids in cold blood and my great-grandfather just a kid of nine, the same age as I am when I’m taken from my mum, sees his mum die. Guess we were all enemies of the state then too and have to be taken care of for the good of their society.
Well, I don’t wanta be here and I wish he’ll get the whole thing over. At last he stops with the patter and gives me a long, long look. I know he’s going to get even for that smirk. I listen as he sentences me to ten years at the Governor’s Pleasure, and it’s then that the scream begins again in my mind. If I was holding that rifle now. If I am holding it now, maybe I’ll turn it on myself, cut off that scream for ever. That’s how I’m feeling, you dig?
The cop guides my body back down into the cell. The black van waits to take me and the muttering old digger, Clarrie, to Freeo. I don’t know how to react. There’s this screaming going on and on in my head, going on and on in my head blotching out all thought. I don’t know what to do, man, don’t know what to do, would you?
Wildcat’s eyes sparkle as he listens to Crow. Crow opens his beak and gives gleeful squawks which bode no good for the wild cat. He brings out his claws and lifts a pa w. ‘Now you don’t take on so,’ Crow caws, giving a little jump backwards. ‘No worries, you want to fly? Well, I’m telling you, giving you the proper info. Now, listen here. Dead secret this. Tonight the moon’ll be full. Well, you put your eyes on that moon. Fasten them there and keep on looking and looking. Maybe, better that you climb a high tree. Less distractions up there, and closer to the moon too. Just look at him, keep on looking and you’ll lift off, fly higher and higher towards that old moon.’
Wildcat nods trying to be wily. Crow gives that squawk again. He hops around the wild cat, seeming awful gleeful. ‘And what you want in return?’ Wildcat asks. ‘You know, scratch my back and I scratch yours’—and he extends his claws and Crow’s glee leaves him. He gets into a kind of panic, and his wings open and he flutters out of reach just above Wildcat on a low branch. Wildcat bears his fangs. Opens his mouth in a great big yawn, giving Crow a glimpse of his rippers and tearers. ‘You’re a tricky one,’ he says. ‘So just look at what you’re up against.’ So Wildcat snarls; but all the time in his mind is the image of Crow just lifting off the ground as if the sky belongs to him. He wants to do that, wants to fly far and free.
‘Man, would I jive you?’ Crow says in his hipster talk. ‘Man, you would,’ Wildcat says, very much the bodgie, very much the cool cat in his dark threads.
‘Not this time,’ Crow answers him, slow and easy to put him off the track. ‘You eat and leave me a feed, that’s all I ask. We work together after this. You flying will be able to catch anything on legs or wings. Just give me my share, that’s all I ask.’
And Wildcat relaxes and begins to believe Crow. It won’t hurt to try, and if Crow is lying, well, there won’t be a crow to crow around much longer.
That night, the moon leaps up into the sky. Wildcat wary at first gazes at it from the ground. It begins to call him, singing a sweet sky song to him.
Arrh arrh, munya mayeamah yah-arah,
Fly up and touch my skin.
And Wildcat begins climbing this big old gum tree. His claws grip and he pushes himself up higher and higher, right to the very top, where he clings with his back paws and feels himself swaying, swaying, swaying and the moon calling, calling, calling to him. He leaps off and up, one foot, two foot, and begins falling, falling, falling, screaming, screaming, screaming ...
‘And we come to this cliff, cobber, about as high as a prison wall. There’s a kind of a path up it and up we go with blokes dropping all around. All mates, not bloody pack rats, and we come out onto a flat bit of dirt, Pluggie’s Plateau as big as an exercise yard, but it’s as if the guards are lined up shooting down at you. A cobber, Tom, he gets two bullets in the left leg, another through his hat, another one through his sleeve and a last one that hits his ammunition pouch. I’m lucky, a bullet glances off his entrenching tool and gets me in the arm. There’s the scar, mate, see it. Bloody shambles it was, bloody shambles, just like going through the gates of hell, cobber. Just like that. Blokes falling down everywhere, wounded screaming everywhere: the gates of hell.’
And I come outa my funk, come outa that screaming dive into the sound of that old digger’s voice and through the barred windows of that van, I catch a glimpse of the outside walls of the prison. The van halts. I should’ve been looking out and storing up the memories of streets and cars. Instead I was inside myself and that scream. I’ve missed everything that should’ve mattered to me, and now the van has stopped outside the gates. They swing open and we enter through into my home for umpteen years ...
Well, what else was I expecting. A holiday on Rottnest? Though that isn’t a good place for Nyoongahs. One big prison. Devil’s Island. Creepy place. The spirits of the oldies are roaming around there still trying to escape. Well, it’s what I’ve heard. Don’t make up things like that, or even believe them for that matter. Still, I ain’t been to Rottnest. Been to Freeo though. In there now, and perhaps worse things have happened here. Freeo, that’s a pun. I read all these books and that encyclopedia and like to air my knowledge. Ain’t got anything else to do with it, have I, you dig?
Well, back to the van, and the gates open and the engine starts and we lurch forwards to where they ain’t going to welcome me with open arms. A week or so out and back for longer than I can bleeding imagine. I don’t know, I don’t know. I can’t do it on my head. I’ll flip out if I think about it.
They open the back door of the van and the old digger Clarrie is the first one out. His old serge major is waiting for him, and he, that’s Clarrie, comes to attention and gives him a big salute. ‘Come off it, you silly old sod,’ the screw shouts. ‘Your brains scrambled, or something. This ain’t no bloody army camp. It’s worse than that.’
All the same, the screw has put a grin on his big red mug; but he scowls when I get out. ‘Well, well, who do we have here,’ he shouts; but I notice he keeps his distance. It’s then I start to realise that perhaps going after a copper means something here. It means you could go after one of them too, and something else. Coppers and screws hate each other. That means I won’t be getting bashed up for doing one of them.
I line up with Clarrie and we are marched into reception. Well, I’m used to it. Ain’t nothing new to this wild cat. It’s the same old eye-fucking thing with the stripping off of everything that makes us what we are. Poor old Clarrie, the flasher is able to flash all he wants to. Feel a bit sorry for him. No one here wants to look at his old limp prick. All the same, I sneer, ‘Flash it Clarrie!’ Then ease off as he looks at me as if all his humanity has been lost. Well, what was his flashing but a sign of his humanity. He lost something at Gallipoli, and so became a rummy and flashed what he thought was his manhood
