Gavin Corbett: This Is the Way

I think of him standing in a field. He is stripped to the waist and the last of the challengers is lying pounded in the dirt. I see him walking away and the crowd cheering him hitting him on the back, the crowd passing money under his head and the crowd dying away around him and him walking on and looking at his thumb, his left thumb, and seeing it bitten and bleeding and dirt in the wound and him spitting it clean and licking it clean and his tongue shaking and his hand shaking and him hearing a voice, a calling, saying this is not for your people this is for me and taking off his belt and hitting a stone and hitting a stone and walking and hitting a stone and hearing no more of the fighting or the old ways I have a special path for you.

I think of the men that came to the Cliffs to take Teresa back. I see them pulling her, peeling her away from that unnatural mark. They are haring off through ploughed black muck and hanging drizzle, they are going over tar past yellow teeth and yellow lights to the mountains.

I think of Aaron the southpaw. I think of that weapon he had. Coiled to spring it was said.

I hear the words of the Gillaroo spiking the Sonaghan saying they are a people always pointed the wrong way.

And I think of Arthur and I think of his hand and I think of his scars, and I think of the time I first heard this story of our people, sitting in Judith’s garden, and all a sudden I knew it all I thought, why this terrible wound was done to him, why he had this terrible fucking monkey hand, it was clear as if it was sitting in front of me.

It was a time it was quiet, there was no talking loud. There were none of the others, there was just Judith myself and Arthur. We were seated on wood chairs at a wood table under a heater. We had not taken heavy drink. It was a beautiful clear evening and the ducks were disappearing from the country over our head.

Stories of the Sonaghans came out our people’s mouth and were said to Judith’s father. They been through many mouths and the last mouth was Judith. We learnt Judith had a mouth on her indeed. She had caused a lot of harm to her father in his life time but she was making up for it after he was gone. She been a bad daughter she said, she would have thrown herself through glass she would have taken a sharp bit of glass she said.

Will you go on out of that talk says Arthur.

She had her troubles like the rest of us, but the trouble she was when she was a young one and she was wild was serving her to the good now she said, although it was a pity her present troubles were out of her hands to mend because she loved a married man and he would not leave his wife but that was a different story she said.

Let me get this straight she says you two are uncle and nephew through via because of whom.

But anyways she was the way she was back then she said.

She says I caused my daddy such grief when I was young but he was a fine man. I’ve come to realise that I am my father’s daughter, we are the same person. He was pushing the boundaries and I could not appreciate it at the time. In fact he was so much more daring than me, he was a pioneer and a radical. You would have liked him fellas. He touched everyone he met, he was a great listener, he knew where the soul and salvation of this country was, that was his greatness.

He had worked like Judith in a university and many years ago he went out in the field and he spoke to the native people of this country. He set out to write down every part of our culture, he filled note books with wisdom and story and song. He thought it was important in a time when no one else did. Judith was working through the note books, copying the stories, bringing them into the store of knowledge. There were such riches it was the most enjoyable work she ever done she said.

She had the note books out from a box on the table. They were in the damp in her attic too long and they had mushrooms on them once but it was not the note books themself was important it was what was in them was important.

Where were you from originally she says.

We came out of Melvin I says.

Melvin the same as the Gillaroos Arthur says.

That’s right says Judith, she says Melvin.

She been on the look out for stories about the Sonaghans and she found our name all through the note books, but we are one of the biggest names through the country and through England.

She read words in the note books, she said about wagons and tents and the Blessed Mother tinware panboxes churching and ringworm and seeing pooka in farm yards.

Do you know about these things she says.

I heard of some of them says Arthur.

She put the note books to one side and she stirred up out her seat and twisted the handle on the heater, made the flame glow bright and blue. Now she says.

Arthur says can you lower that flame.

I’ve only just turned it up she says.

No can you bring the pole down to a lower height so’s the flame is close to us he says.

No I can’t says Judith, it’s at a fixed height.

No bother, no bother says Arthur.

I think of our stories now I think of an old man saying them because they are stories older than Judith and older than them books. They are stories could have been said by the man said to Judith’s father the stories but they are stories could have been said by a man going back further than that. They are stories for wild bright sparking fires and dying clear low fires.

The Sonaghans were the fish were put in the lake in Melvin by God himself so it goes. He put them in one by one with his own hand. The left hand is the Devil’s hand and God would not use his left hand and he put the Sonaghan fish in the lake by holding the fish tight in his right hand. When he was holding the fish in his right hand his thumb pressed in their left side and when he let them go in the lake the mark of God’s thumb was burnt in the Sonaghan fish’s left side as the sign they were the fish were from God. When the Sonaghans grew to people the mark of God stayed with them on their own thumb. Because the mark of the thumb of God was on the left side of the fish, when they grew to people it was on their left thumb that the Sonaghans had the mark of God. Favoured was the word, chosen was the word.

They are words would be said by the old man jumping off his seat on the ground, he has only two teeth there is smoke and buckets near him. He spits on the ground he says and we are the ones is chosen by the Lord the others is dirt. He laughs loud showing the old holes in his teeth. He says you see it today and it’s the special sign of the Sonaghan so it is. Look at any of our left thumb. Take a look at me own look at it. See it now. The print on it is different to the print on all me other fingers and the other thumb see it. See it he says.

In her garden under the heater in the dark Judith says come now and look at this. She opened one of the books on the table on one of the pages. I seen the two thumb marks of a man must have been made using burnt wood. One was written left underneath it the other was written right.

See how the lines in one print are so different to the lines in the other says Judith.

The right one was loops getting smaller and smaller one inside the other, the left was different it was true.

It’s an S shape do you see says Judith.

I could see it clear now it was pointed to me yes it was an S shape. I looked at my own thumbs I seen the exact same, something I never seen before. My right thumb was loops, even my fingers was loops, but my left thumb was an S. The lines of it gathered at the top and moved together in a swerve and back and back out again. I was standing under this gas heater and lamp looking at it, Sonaghan or sinner I did not know.

Judith says well Arthur let’s see yours.

Arthur says I don’t have it.