Thea Astley's The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow
The blue fire, he said. This blue. Burn my heart it jump like fish jumpin straight down sky. Marl-gan! Sky-fire! Cum-oo, he said. Water. He yelled, Go-ah go-ah go-ah! Rain! Talking Gungganyji. Talking language. Talking migaloo, whiteman talk. Made talk migaloo after the big wind at the Heads. Shacks blew down. All shacks. In the morning after they creep out from behind the rocks where they shelter all night, their bodies. Mumma, he whimper, mumma, stickin his pink and brown paw into her. Uncles killed. Tribal cousins. Even the boss big house scatter along rain-soaked grass and the rain still comin and no one to tell them what to do.
Did they need anyone to tell?
Mumma, he ask in language, what we do?
Find your dada, Manny. That what we do.
And later that morning with the steam rising and already the stink starting, there had come his father down from the hills, trailed by Jericho and clutching Billy wrapped in a bit of old blanket and yowling fit to bust.
Boss dead. Wife too. Crushed under a ten be eight beam, huge beam hold up his house. Must’ve gone hide downstairs from the big wind, dada say, they all say, looking at the body of this once boss/ruler. Silly man, dada say.
They know better. You can’t hide from the wind. You close doors on the big wind it get angry, shake your bones, your house bones, body bones, little sticks it thick, it know little people sticks. Flesh fly away like grass in big wind….
