That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott Page B

equal number of prisoners. Three of the soldiers had their wives with them, and there were a handful of children.
    Wunyeran often slept in Dr Cross’s hut. They ate together, walked together, but even so their communication was rudimentary, and so not until after he had met Menak for a second time did Cross realise Wunyeran had been preparing him for the meeting for several days; was perhaps performing some piece of diplomacy.
    They were walking together when Wunyeran put a hand on Cross’s arm and pulled him up. Menak stood perhaps twenty paces away in a small clearing.
    A physically impressive specimen, thought Cross. Middle-aged, perhaps much the same age as himself. His hair was gathered in a knob at the back of his head, and a tightly wound band circling his skull held a bunch of white feathers. Bands around both upper arms held similar crests and raised scarring patterned his chest.
    Dr Cross hardly realised he was being manoeuvred toward Menak until they were very close to one another. Wunyeran playfully pushed and pulled Cross with an infectious good humour, while Menak was a picture of indifference, looking away as the two of them approached.
    Then Menak turned from his view of the huts and tents scattered at the edge of the wide harbour to face Cross. The heavy scars on his chest seemed to reach out, his crown of feathers to shade them both as he held a hand across the shrinking space between them. Cross grasped it and Menak immediately pulled him into an embrace. He then lifted him from the ground and with his arms around Cross’s waist turned a full circle. Eyeball to eyeball: one man in a cloak of animal skin, a hair belt, and with mud and grease smeared over his skin; the other with only the flesh of his face and hands exposed.
    Menak released him and stepped back. A beaming Wunyeran gestured for Cross to remove his jacket, then he unclasped Menak’s cloak and slid it from his shoulders. He handed each man the other’s attire.
    Cross settled the kangaroo skin over his shoulders while Wunyeran and Menak struggled with the problem of sleeves. The difficulty was the tuft of feathers inserted in Menak’s armband. They unwound the band, and Wunyeran wrapped it around Cross’s shirt-sleeved arm, hastily adding the feathers. Perhaps Menak had lost some of his dignity by putting on the old coat. But then, what of Cross?
    The surprisingly soft and pliable kangaroo skin hung easily from Cross’s shoulders, enclosing him in the smell of another man, a very different man, of course, but a man for all of that. Noongar , he remembered. The scent was not so much that of a body but of sap and earth, the oils and ochres and who knew what else of this land.
    They walked together, a strange sight: black man in a military coat, white man in a cloak of kangaroo skin with feathers on his arm.
    The man—Skelly—who Menak had speared all those weeks ago turned away from the sight, and again leaned into the upturned boat he was working on.

Convict William Skelly
    William Skelly was trying to spread red gum along the whaleboat’s keel. He normally used pitch, but there wasn’t any. Gum wasn’t as good; the first batch he tried had turned brittle and not lasted long at all. It had been Dr Cross’s idea to use it.
    The Indians use it, he said.
    As if everyone didn’t know that already, seeing as how they’d all traded food for native hatchets, and knew how the stone was joined to the wooden handle. Same with their knives. Some reckoned their spear throwers had a tooth held in place with red tree gum. A human tooth, Skelly had heard; others reckoned it was from a kangaroo.
    Skelly hadn’t ever seen a spear-thrower up close, but knew their spears better than he liked.
    Pausing in his work, he fingered the scar on his thigh. Had that spear been launched by a human tooth? It still made him wild that he—a man innocent of any crime against the blacks—had been the one speared, and that his own country’s fighting men had