Danielle Writing Extract

Parole officer Perkins skidded to a halt. The only major road in the whole of the Central Australian desert and he’d nearly knocked someone down. Then he saw who that someone was and felt a surge of rage. He leaned heavily on the horn.

‘Jarrah, you flaming idiot, I could have killed you.’

The boy was standing in the middle of the highway, utterly transfixed by something in the sky.

Perkins counted three breaths, smoothed the front of his plaid shirt and emerged, shakily, from the car.

‘What is that?’ the boy asked without turning around.

Perkins was perplexed, he looked up at where Jarrah was pointing but could see nothing.

‘Will you get out of the road!’

He grabbed Jarrah by the sleeve of his T-shirt and dragged him to the roadside. He felt a presence behind him and turned to see a group of grandfathers standing, arms crossed, at the boundary of Red Creek Community. He was suddenly aware of what this looked like, another white officer of the law pushing around a vulnerable Aboriginal youth. But ethnic minority or not, the boy had had his last chance.

‘I’m here to take you into custody,’ Perkins said, with more emotion in his voice than he had expected to be there.

At last, Jarrah turned to him, his face registering confusion, then recognition and fear.

‘Wait, no, see I was coming … I was just on my way … I missed the bus and then…’ the sentence died in mid-air and Jarrah turned back.

Perkins followed his gaze but there was nothing but endless crayon-blue sky, not even a cloud, all the long way to the horizon.

‘Jarrah, now I want you to answer me truthfully: Are you on drugs?’

No reply.

‘Jarrah, I don’t think you realise the magnitude of the trouble you’re in.’

But the boy didn’t even turn around. Perkins was wasting his time, trying to be the good guy.

‘Come on, you’re under arrest. Come quietly and I won’t have to cuff you.’

Perkins thought about the coffee and pastry he’d buy himself when this unpleasantness and the attendant paperwork was over.

‘No, please!’ Jarrah waved his arms in the air, ‘I can’t go to prison.’

Perkins felt his stomach flip over. He’d thought this one would end differently.

‘Come on,’ he put his hand gently on the boy’s shoulder and guided him towards the car, aware of the growing audience behind him.

He was opening the passenger door when he heard someone shouldering their way through the crowd.

‘Hey,’ a familiar voice, ‘where you taking our boy?’

Perkins counted three breaths, like the anxiety management programme had taught him.

‘May,’ he mustered a smile. ‘Always a pleasure.’

‘What’s this boy done? Where’s your warrant?’

May, at 6 foot 4, towered over Perkins, and with the sun where it was, her shadow stretched across the car and over to the other side of the highway.

‘Don’t need a warrant for this one, May. Jarrah has broken the terms of his suspended sentence. He signed an agreement to attend parole and he has broken it. He’ll be transferred to the youth justice centre in Darwin when the bus comes in on Monday. In the meantime, we’ll hold him in town. You can apply to visit him there.’

May crossed her arms. She stood, breasts loose inside her sleeveless faded sundress, bare feet firmly planted on the ground.

‘Why not pick him up Monday?’

‘I’m here now.’ Perkins licked his lips. He could almost taste that almond croissant.

‘Where’ll you be keeping him 'til Monday.’

‘At the station.’

‘The police station in Alice?’

‘Hmm, that’s right.’ He knew she was stalling, Alice had the only police station in a hundred miles. He tried to meet her eyes, but the sun was in his eyes, and all he could make out was May’s wide nose, the deep charcoal tone of her skin, and the halo of wild, white hair that glowed like a second sun.

‘You want to keep him in a cell with the weekend drunks shouting all night and scaring him, a child, a young boy. You feel right about that? You be going home tonight feeling right after leaving this young boy at the mercy of … Jarrah, what are you looking at?’

‘Can’t you see it?’ Jarrah said.

‘He’s high,’ Perkins said. ‘What is it, Jarrah? Glue? Petrol? Are you stoned? Did Willie give you something?’

Perkins thought of his one and only visit to Jarrah’s home. The front door hanging off its hinges, the unmistakable smell of marijuana, though musky perfume had been sprayed to cover it. He remembered the way Willie, sometime boyfriend of Jarrah’s Aunt Clara, had openly glared at him, while Clara and Jarrah’s grandparents fluttered around, dressed in their Sunday best, offering him one cup of tea after another, and soft out-of-date biscuits. No, he did not feel good about this.

May pulled Jarrah towards her, tilted his chin upwards and studied his eyes.

‘He’s not high,’ she said, definitive.

‘Nevertheless…’

May silenced Perkins with a slicing motion of her arm.

‘What is it Jarrah?’

‘That black thing floating in the sky,’ Jarrah said.

May’s eyes widened. ‘Where?’

Jarrah turned and pointed to the endless blue sky across the other side of the highway. ‘That way, out towards Warri’s camp.’

‘This is all very interesting, but I’ve got a ton of paperwork, so if you wouldn’t mind.’

Perkins directed Jarrah to the back of the car and guided him in. There was a murmur of disapproval from the crowd behind them.

‘I’ll come too,’ May said.

‘That’s not the…’

‘Make room, Jarrah.’

‘Wait,’ Perkins held up his hands. ‘That’s not what’s going to happen here.’

‘I’ll come and speak with your boss and if they won’t speak with me, I’ll wait in your office and if that bothers you then you can go ahead and arrest me. That way you can arrest a young First Nations’ child and an eighty-three-year-old First Nations’ elder all on the same day. Come on, Jarrah, make room.’

‘You’re a teenager, Jarrah, a young man, not a child,’ Perkins said. ‘May won’t always be there to rescue you. You need to start taking responsibility. One day you’ll be standing at a crossroads all by yourself and you’ll have to decide, am I going to take the easy path or am I going to do what’s right? Now, the easy path, that can be…’

‘Or,’ May interrupted him. ‘You can forget about throwing this young boy into a stinking police cell all weekend, terrified and alone and let him have a last weekend at home with his family.’

She glared at Perkins, hands on hips. Not for the first time that week, he decided that he wasn’t cut out for this job. He was beaten, they all knew it, and now he had to find a dignified way to draw a line under the whole affair.

May gestured at Jarrah with her head, ‘Go wait in my store.’

‘You bring him to my office on Monday,’ Perkins barked. ‘Nine am sharp or I’ll be back here and I’ll …’ The sentence died mid-air. Just what would he do? Oh, he wasn’t cut out for this job.