a few giants left behind, trees so noble, Harry imagined, that no man could bring himself to cut them down, great gnarled old creatures which could harbour possums in their scarred wounds, white ants, insects, grubs and fungi, and still have the strength to draw water and nutrients into their tough old roots, suck them right up the enormous height of their sapwood, hold their leaves out to the sunshine and exchange gases with the world.
There was no wind. It was a perfect day for dropping trees, but he was not ready to start. There was something to do before the others arrived. Something to be done without rush. He leant his axe against the trunk of a young stringybark and went around gathering rocks which poked out here and there from the ground-cover of deep dead leaves. They were not the sort of rocks he would have preferred. He had imagined (that long time ago) something grey with a touch of some sparkling mineral (mica? anthracite?) which would later catch the sun. These rocks which littered the hillside were soft and red and looked like broken housebricks.
As he gathered the rocks the forest seemed to become very quiet. A solitary honey-eater set up a sharp chatter down in the gully below him as he carried the rocks to the first tree which would provide him with stumps for his hut. It was already scarred, a small mark made by his own axe. Its base was half hidden by a tangled pile of twigs and leaves. He began talking, but not before he had looked around.
'I'm sorry,' he said, 'we have to do this. I need a house to live in. That's why we put the mark on you yesterday.'
His voice sounded very thin and insignificant in the forest. He was not unaware of how he might look to people but was more aware of how he stood in comparison to an eighty-foot-high tree. If he was shy, it was not because of people. He was shy in the presence of the tree. He did not use the full words.
'I'm putting these stones here,' he said, 'as a promise. I will plant another tree here tonight, another tallow wood. I will dig a hole here beside you and plant it where these rocks are.'
Daze sat quietly on the edge of the circle made by the trees they planned to drop. He had come down to tell Harry that Clive would be late with the horse. He had heard Harry's voice come through the forest and he had stopped to listen. He was going to roll a joint, but he decided not to. As he listened to what Harry had to say he was very moved. This was no bullshit story. This was a man saying something that he felt. It was not the silky voice that Harry Joy had used in his city life, but something at once coarser and softer.
When Harry had done the first tree Daze gathered some rocks and came and stood behind him. He nodded his sharp, inquisitive face and offered Harry two rocks.
'Go on,' he said.
Harry began to shake his head, stepping backwards, colouring.
'Go on,' Daze said.
Harry nodded. This time he used the proper words, the formal words, as they are known. His face burned bright red, but his eyes were bright.
'You have grown large and powerful. I have to cut you. I know you have knowledge in you from what happens around you. I am sorry, but I need your strength and power. I will give you these stones, but I must cut you down. These stones and my thoughts will make sure another tree will take your place:
Thus, with their stones, they moved from tree to tree. A small wind came and stirred the upper branches. Clive arrived with the old Clydesdale. Paul Bees came rubbing sleep from his eyes and yawning. Margot arrived too, and then Honey Barbara who remained standing at a distance with her arms folded across her chest.
'Stand around the tree,' Daze suggested.
They joined hands around the tree and Daze said some of the words with Harry.
When it was time to chop the first tree they were all very quiet and it seemed to Harry that when he began to chop, the wood, famous for its hardness, was soft and yielding. Huge chips flew through the bush. (Later, when the logs had been snigged down to the site, Harry barked the logs and the flesh of the wood was yellow and slippery like a skinned animal.)
When the first tree fell, Daze walked back to where Honey Barbara was standing.
'Well... ' he said.
'Well what?' Honey Barbara said.
'That was really amazing.'
'I came to work,' Honey Barbara said, 'not to get involved in this Hippy mumbo-jumbo.'
And to show she meant business she took one end of the cross-cut saw that Margot had placed across the fallen tree. 'Come on, Margot,' she said, 'or did you only come for the mumbo-jumbo too.'
Honey Barbara worked hard all day. She did not talk to Harry once and every time he passed her, she looked the other way.
The man with the clenched whiskered face wore suit trousers and a suit jacket which could never, in even the most bizarre time, have been part of the same suit. Heavy work boots showed beneath the trousers and there was string where once there may have been proper black laces. Above the right-hand boot was a white sockless ankle that something, perhaps a bush rat, had gnawed at before passing on to something else. This man (Jerusalem John by name) was lying in the sunlight on Daze's open verandah. A cheap thriller was sticking out of his jacket pocket. A couple of flies laid their eggs on his gnawed ankle and he was, of course, perfectly dead.
It was still early enough in the day for one half of the valley to be in sunlight and the other in shadow, but up here on the ridge there was no shortage of sunshine. The trees, incorrectly known as wattles, glistened and two big king parrots swung around the branches of the one that grew over Daze's forever unfinished house, noisily eating the blossoms and dropping the hard wood casings on to the tin roof.
Honey Barbara, sitting with the others beside the rusting metal pipe which Daze had converted into a fireplace and boiler, did not need to be told what those small pinging noises on the roof were and, in her mind's eyes, she could see the red and green birds clearly against the bright blue sky. It had not been a good year for honey. Perhaps she might get a bit of a flow out of these wattles.
Daze was there, of course, fussing about washing cups. Paul Bees squatted on his big heels with his back to the fire and Crystal had moved a small three-legged child's stool to be close to him. She wore a long crushed-velvet dress on to which she had fastidiously stitched tiny shells. She wore wooden beads around her neck (the remnants of Paul's failed abacus) and the crystals from which she took her name were arranged, just two of them, in her jet- black hair.
Clive was there wearing, as usual, nothing but his boots. Richard was there, and Dani. Assorted children were sent outside occasionally where they could be seen squatting around the dead man. No meeting had been called. The gathering was prompted by the mysterious workings of the bush telegraph.
'What does he know about trees anyway?' Honey Barbara said to Daze. 'He doesn't know anything. You don't know him like I know him. He's only into saving his neck. He doesn't believe in anything.'
Daze didn't say anything, which irritated her even more.
'He knows good stories,' Paul Bees said, 'that's the point.'
'You call yourself an anarchist!' she said to her father. 'You people will follow anyone. You're all so bored that when someone new comes along you practically rape them. So the man's got nice stories. They're not his stories anyway. They're his father's. He even stole his
'I don't see that that matters,' Richard said.
'I think,' Dani said, 'that it's O.K., so long as he
Honey Barbara groaned quietly.
Clive was leaning against a bushpole with his arms folded above his furry bear's belly. 'I don't see why we don't do what we did for little Billy.'
'What was that?' Crystal asked.
'We dug a fucking big hole: Clive said, and it was difficult not to believe that he was relishing it. 'We dug a fucking big hole and we buried the bugger.'
'We dig a hole for a person the same way we dig a hole for a shit bucket,' Paul said.
'Well, that's right, isn't it?' Clive said. 'It's the same. All goes back into the soil. I don't want any of you lot doing OMs over me.'
'I think we should do something better for Jerusalem John than we'd do for a bucket of shit,' Paul insisted.
'He's dead, mate,' Clive said. 'It won't worry him one way or the other.'
Jerusalem John was not really their responsibility at all. He had made it his business in life to be no one's responsibility. He was an old hermit, a loner, who lived at the bottom of the gully that ran between Bog Onion and
