Chapter 07

School

The first Tuesday in February is the first day of school so Mack and the Thomas kids walk over to the school. They were all at the school some time during the previous week to make sure the paperwork was all done and correct for them to start, as well as getting class timetables and the school issued textbooks. Mack is in Year Nine with his cousin James, Diane is in Year Ten, while Mary is in Year Eight. All of his cousins were born early in the year about a year apart while Mack was born late in the year. So James is starting Year Nine as a fifteen year old as are many others in that Year, which makes Mack one of the oldest in the Year Nine group. He’s also one of the shortest for his year group, so few realise he’s sixteen. Most of the kids of the tribal families in the Queanbeyan area are also at the high school and the rest are at the primary school next door to the high school.

When Mack nears the gate closest to their house he sees Dave Burns being confronted by five other students and Dave doesn’t look too happy about the situation. Mack walks up while asking, “What’s up, Dave?”

“Hi, Mack. This is Tim Hamilton. He’s upset about something.”

Tim snarls, “You put my uncle in to the cops!”

Mack asks, “He did? When? How? What could he know about your uncle and any criminal behaviour by him?” Tim turns to stare at Mack. “Some weeks back Dave was silly enough to do as you asked him to and he removed a valuable item of stock from the shelf at Target. In his nervous haste he didn’t realise you had him take it instead of doing it yourself because there’s a video camera at that counter and a live guard watches its monitor during the day. Dave put the item down in the store so he had nothing on him when the security grabbed him outside the store. But I’m sure you knew that and were probably stealing something else while they were distracted with Dave.” A lot of other kids gather round and are listening to this with great interest. It’s also obvious Tim doesn’t like having it made public. “I’ve an authority from Dave’s tribe to see to the welfare of the tribe and its members. So when the police couldn’t find his parents they asked me to act for his parents while they interviewed him. All he told them was about how he picked up the item and later put it down again inside the store. He didn’t even say where he put it down. After hearing this several times I convinced the police to let him go for lack of evidence. Which they did. How all this relates to your uncle is beyond me! Did you tell Dave anything about your uncle and how he steals things or has them stolen for him by you and those you dupe into doing it? I doubt it, but did you?”

Tim snarls, “I’m not stupid enough to tell him or anyone else how we work! What do you take me for?”

“I take you for what you are - a lying thief who works to have others blamed while you take the cash. You admit Dave knew nothing about your uncle. So how could he have told the police? They probably knew your uncle was a thief and watched him or were told by someone else or they may have watched you and were led to your uncle by you.” Tim snarls a curse and stomps away.

Dave gives Mack a weak grin, “That’s the first time I’ve seen him since that day. I gather, from what he said, the police have arrested his uncle for some reason. I’ve not seen any of his usual crowd since then, either. I’ve got a whole new group of friends now.” His smile widens a lot when Fiona and four of her friends move over to speak to them. They chat while they enter the school together. The crowd that had gathered during the talk with Tim breaks up while they enter the school as well.

The first day of school goes as such days do: in utter chaos with some periods of mere mayhem while everyone gets sorted out and settled in.

Secrets Revealed

Things go as well as can be expected over the next several days and Mack settles into the new school environment. It’s a lot more hustle and bustle than his last school as it has many times the students and staff. He makes friends with some classmates and he has a number of different students he sits with during lunch and the mid-morning break. Some of the teachers are surprised at his level of skills in their subjects.

One lunchtime he’s walking to a table with some friends when he passes a table where two of the girls from the tribe are sitting with some other students. One turns to the other and says, in the tribal tongue, “I wish I knew why the Council set Mack on us as a boss?”

He stops and says, “It’s rude to speak a language others don’t know while with them. They chose me as they know I won’t take shit from anyone; not you, not the teachers, not the police, not the government. Got it?” She looks scared while she nods yes because she’d no idea he knew the tribe’s language. He adds, in the tribal tongue, “You’ve no idea of what I know or why.” The members of the tribe who hear him are stunned as he’s got a better command of their language than most of them do.

The teacher on duty is his language teacher who’s teaching Japanese to him. He hadn’t studied it before so he has some out of class work to catch up to the rest of class, but he’s very fast in learning Japanese. Hearing him speak this other language helps her to know why he’s so good at learning Japanese. Being used to studying another language the previous experience makes adding new ones easier.

Mack reaches the table he’s heading for and he sits down with Dave, Fiona, her friends Marion and Belinda, and Marion’s older sister, Alice. They all greet him. Fiona says, “I didn’t know you spoke our tongue!”

“There’s a lot you don’t know. That reminds me.” He pulls out his phone, turns it on, and hits speed dial one. Students aren’t allowed to have phones on during class but they can turn them on during breaks.

The phone rings and is answered, he says, “Ma, please. It’s Mack.” They know he’s an orphan so they all wonder about who he’s calling ’Ma’ on the phone.

Jedda smiles as she replies, “I know the voice, Mack. Here she is.”

Ma Hanson takes over, “Hi, Mack, what’s up?”

“I bet you know about my last emails with Hammer!” This lets some of the others at the table know who he’s talking to, and they tell the rest.

“Yes, I am. I bet you want me to tell you how much he’s dug out.”

“As long as he does no digging with a shovel anywhere other than in the vegetable plot, until I tell him where to dig, I don’t mind. But I do want to know what he’s worked out for himself because it helps me to understand how close he is to other things.”

“Would those other things include how a certain Irishman would say his name’s Jim Kelly in a brogue that makes it sound like Jemkala?”

“Yes, amongst others. I’m sure you worked that one out.”

“After watching a program on family history and how names sound different with different accents I spoke with Paddy Murphy and found out the truth of that old legend. Anything else I should know about?”

“Well, since you know the truth about Jemkala and now know, for sure, it’s true and he existed you can read his journal and the others to put many ghosts to rest.” This gets the tribal members’ attention since he’s talking about an old tribal legend. How does he know it’s true?

“That’ll keep me busy for a while.” She smiles, then a thought hits her, hard. “Ghosts, you said ghosts. Do you mean the Gift Ghost, is that all in there too?” Jedda looks up at this since the Gift Ghost is what the tribal members started calling the events where gifts of food, medicines, and clothes started appearing on porches out of nowhere. They were said to be left by the Gift Ghost because no one saw anyone drop them off or in the area. Even bought items that couldn’t be traced in the shops.

“Yes. James kept the first journal and his son, Martin, started the next one but he handed it over to his wife, Mary, to keep. Since then the women of the farm have kept the journals. Everything that happens at the farm or happens to the family or the family does is in there.”

“Yeah, that fits in with what we’ve worked out. You’ve got my sons busy trying to work out what you and Jim did with millions of dollars of harvested exotic and native hardwood trees. It’s sending them mad.”

“I see they found Camp Cream. Mum wouldn’t let me harvest there after Dad died, so they need to clean it up a bit to get a lot out. We sold that to the sawmill in the city as we didn’t want Parks to know any of the good woods were still available in the area.” The other students at the table find this a hard conversation to follow but do find it interesting to hear. They’re busy trying to make sense of his side while they eat.

“Well, the Elders have started to think about businesses properly. So when Parks put the Ryan’s Ridge Sawmill up for sale they borrowed some more money and bought it. We’re taking it in there and selling the cut wood to city based buyers. So it’s generating a lot of good income for the tribe. That’s why the Elders want to put up more houses, that and the fools who are upping the rents in Wood Valley.”

“OK. Let me know if anyone here should move back due to the tribe needing their special skills. Please tell Jedda I now agree and she should lift the veil as she has knowledge you should now know.”

Ma looks at her daughter-in-law, “So Jedda should lift the veil and tell me something, should she? I’ll ask her!” Jedda smiles and nods yes as she’s happy she can finally let this secret out. “Mack, can you get back for a weekend soon? We’ve got a big problem with Jess and Ann as they’re in the middle of a big fight. They won’t tell us about what. However, we’ve heard your name mentioned a few times and you were always able to get those two to see reason. The way things are going one’s going to kill the other before too long.” Mack takes a moment to think on what could be causing this trouble. He soon comes up with one possible reason for this behaviour, and it makes him angry, very angry.

“Damn. Look, it’d take the full weekend to travel there and back. Ma, you need to get them aside with their mothers and yourself. Kick everyone else out of the house and sit them down in a formal council type way. Then tell them to remember, as I remember, one Saturday afternoon in the forest on the last one before the Christmas just before Dad died. I remember a small fire at Alpha Two. If that doesn’t get them thinking and crying call me straight away. Those two have forgotten some very important promises they made to me and each other.”

“Mack, I trust you with a lot of things, but you’re asking for a formal Women’s Meeting to resolve this. If I do this it must be resolved and I may have to punish one of my granddaughters. I’ve got to have a more concrete reason before I’ll go that far.” She glances at Jedda and sees she’s worried about what she can hear of this development.

“Hold on a moment.” Mack stands up while asking, “Dave, watch my lunch, please?” He walks to a corner of the lunch room where he won’t be overheard. “Ma, I was ten when they took me into the forest for a special meeting on the last Saturday before Christmas, just us three. They were perfect while they did the ceremony. They know I speak the tongue because they found out when they asked and I replied in it. They told me they had Chosen. I accepted them on the condition we wait until I was eighteen. They accepted and acknowledged the delay. It seems they’ve forgotten that. I want you to remind them of it and to tell them I’m not impressed with them forgetting that day and those promises.”

Ma’s face goes white, which worries Jedda. “Mack, I don’t think you could’ve told me anything to have shocked and surprised me as much as that does. How do you know the ceremony was correct?”

“I can move through that forest without being seen, when I want to. I once saw a lot of tribal women walking through the forest so I went to see what they were doing. I watched and listened while they taught the girls various things. That happened a number of times.”

“Damn, and we work so hard to see we aren’t followed when we do those teachings. You must be very good to have not been seen by us at all. OK, I think you may be right and they’ve forgotten. I’ll deal with it now that I know how to deal with it. I’ll see you at the break.”

Details

“Not so fast. You’ve not yet told me what Hammer knows.”

“Well, he found where you landscaped gullies to help with hunting rabbits and breeding them. He knows the pump and sewerage works are designed for a small to medium sized village. He’s had people in diving gear in the dam getting actual measurements to confirm it’s a lot bigger than you told us and a great deal bigger than it appears. He thinks he knows where the storage tank for the excess treated sewerage is until it’s used. He wants to know where you hid the cistern and how big it is. He’s remembered how your father was at school and he thinks your mother trained him, he also figures she trained you too. He also thinks the name Kelly is a good replacement for the word deception, as they’ve spent generations at being deceptive in how things are here at the farm. I think that’s as far as he got, at least as far as he’s prepared to say.”

Time’s passing and the real confidential stuff is done with so Mack goes back to the table and he has some lunch while Ma talks. Mack replies, “He’s right, there’s a lot more money in the farm than has previously been said. We buried it, literally. The five hundred thousand litre cistern was a problem to build. We wanted it in the dam wall, but to put it in would make the dam very weak until it was built. In the end we dug a trench across the dam behind the crest and drilled down into the bedrock. We put some one metre diameter reinforced concrete pillars down into the bedrock and then dug out space just in front of them to take interlocked reinforced concrete barricades half a metre thick. That strengthened the wall to the point we could dig out most of the area behind it to build the cistern with its base in the bedrock. Put the pipes in then cover it all up again. The road along the top of the dam sits on the pillars and barricade. All of the water pipes are high quality steel and they’re designed to last for centuries. All buried a metre or more down. The power and phone cables are done the same way. Dad talked the people putting in the fibre optic trunk cable between Wood Valley and Ryan’s Ridge to run it along our road so he could have them put in one of our own into each town. The farm is set out for a small village of over a hundred houses. All of the pipes and utilities are in place, so are the footings and foundations for some houses. You have to know where to do it, but when you scrape off about two hundred millimetres of dirt you’ve got the concrete floors to build on for many of the houses.”

Ma is stunned, “Mack, you and Jim must have been very busy to do all that by yourselves.”

“Oh, we had a bit of help, here and there, from a couple of people. There’s always been two of the Women’s Council and two Elders who knew the truth about the Jemkala and what we were up to, but they were sworn to secrecy until such time as we said for them to lift the veil to let the rest know. Ma, think about it! How would some of the locals and some of the authorities have reacted if they learned any member of the tribe had freehold title to such a prime piece of local real estate? Or if we told them what we were up to? We now own the land, our land, and by the laws the authorities respect. We’re reaching the fruition of plans made almost two hundred years ago. Please, don’t let them screw it up now!” Those at the table are now very interested.

“OK, Mack. I’ll put all of my support behind making them wait until you can front them on this. Even if it means we take days off work to come down there. They can either do that or wait for the holidays.”

“Thanks, Ma. I had hoped we had a few more years before we went public. Our original plans were for all this to happen after I turned eighteen. But other events have interfered.” They say their goodbyes.

Dave says, “Well, you can’t leave it at that, Mack!” Mack starts to eat his lunch again while he explains to them all that’s been revealed about the farm and the Jemkala. They’re very surprised to learn it. Dave and Fiona are surprised to learn Mack is a member of the tribe, twice, both through his ancestor and by his recent adoption.

Sandy Knoll Farm

After hanging up the phone Ma Hanson turns to Jedda and says, “I wish to see all. Lift the veil for me, daughter.” Jedda grins and starts to tell her the long tale she was told when she turned twenty-five, told to her by her grandmother, a senior member of the Women’s Council.

The story told of the truth of Jim Kelly, the Jemkala - The White Elder, and his joining forces with the tribe to preserve what they could of the tribe, the land, and the tribe’s culture. How Jim’s family have worked with selected tribal leaders for hundreds of years to fulfil those goals. As whites the Kelly family had access to things the government wouldn’t let the tribe or its members have access to, so they kept the links secret. The secrecy has often proven helpful because it made it impossible for some people taking deliberate actions against the tribe to know anyone was helping the tribe while allowing the Kelly family and the tribe to act against those people. Only two Elders and two of the Women’s Council were taken into this circle of secrets at any one time, each new one was selected with great care by those already in the secret circle. One of the tasks of those in the know is to pass on the tribe’s heritage and legends to the children of the Kelly family so they know of their dual heritage and to also be a secret repository of the tribe’s culture. The farm and its forest area has always been a safe refuge for the tribe’s members when danger threatened. The Kelly family would turn away anyone who’d threaten them, a thing the tribal members couldn’t do for almost two hundred years. The Kelly family often stood between the tribe and troublesome government bodies. When the Dean family moved into the area in the late 1800s they became good friends of the Kelly family and also became unknowing helpers in the tribe’s fight with the government agencies. This brought the families closer together until they became one with the marriage of Jim and Irene. Two long lines of stubborn Irish set on preserving the land they lived on for future generations.