The Blue and Gold Coat

By William E. Yabsley

Rabbits ought not to walk upright nor children carry guns; and parents should not abandon their children. But life is complex in the arid Australia Outback; and the imagination of a child unconscious -- drifting from reality to dreamtime as drought turns the landscape to torrents of muddy liquid gold – is no less bright than that of any child anywhere in the Universe. Destinies are forged in the panic and in the search for the lost child and the lost dreams of an imaginary; yet real child’s world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: May 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781796007367

William E. Yabsley

William E. Yabsley is a nobody, coming from a nothing background, with nothing particular to say – and yet it is that quality that makes his history so enthralling. As a teacher he was sacked repeatedly for protecting abused children against the ravages of his employers. As a thinker he created a new and powerful ‘code of ethics’ for the universe – but you haven’t heard of it because it is so controversial no one will print it. As a man he is a coward often in trouble, unmarried and childless; a Van Gogh character deep and misunderstood.

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THE BLUE AND

GOLD COAT

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William E. Yabsley

Dedicated to Gavin Brown

Blinded by my own Awesomeness.

Copyright © 2011 by William E. Yabsley. 500549-YABS

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.xlibris.com.au

ISBN:   Softcover       978-1-4568-5432-4

Hardcover   978-1-4568-5433-1

EBook            978-1-7960-0736-7

Library of Congress Control Number:   2011901761

Rev. date: 10/09/2019

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

The passing of summer had become a slow and painful process. It had given birth to an angry child of uncommon heat, which in its haste to prove itself, had wrinkled and aged the topsoil. It’s sister Wind drew up the parched earth and carried it far away, leaving hollows and creases in the Australian Outback. Dried up were billabongs with stranded yellowbelly and jewfish rotting in the stagnant mudholes.

As summer drifted into its dreamtime and the swelter subsided, cousin autumn cast a yellowish frown on the face of the leaves. Listlessness invaded all living things with only the promise of rain taunting on the horizon in frequent flashes of dry lightning.

The Yabsley family had moved to the outback just five years before the drought. William senior having given up teaching in Brisbane due to total hatred of his life, not the least of which included a burning desire to break with the traditions of his wife’s family. Mary belonged to the Rodgers dynasty of business tycoons with her father frowning on the marriage as it interrupted his plans for the education and promotion of his daughter’s ‘necessary’ interests. He had big plans for her and knew the marriage was never meant to last. He would see it didn’t.

William junior was born shortly after the marriage, very shortly after. He was spoilt, indulged and greatly loved by his father who planned the boy’s education from the start in defiance of interfering grandparents. Before he could even walk young Billy became the proud owner of a ‘Kingdom’. His crown of solid polished gold painted brass was lined at the base with soft well-tanned rabbit fur and impossibly heavy for the boy to wear. It just sat on the shelf as a mark of respect for his dreams and imaginary friends. At four years of age he received a magnificently carved wooden staff, the head end of which was topped with three gum-tree nuts. These possessions were sacred to Billy not because they were particularly grand, but because his father made them just for him, and not store bought.

The Kingdom consisted of an area about one acre in size and in a roughly shaped square through which a small stream normally flowed, except for drought times. Beyond the stream the boundary was made up of a sheer cliff of about five metres in height, which was very high in the eyes of a child. Much of the remaining area was dust and dead bushes except for a single clump of twisted trees called ‘The Palace.’

Every Christmas the Kingdom was added to in some small way so that by the age of five Billy owned a sizeable treehouse twelve feet above the ground inside the Palace and perched firmly in the strongest branches of a small grotesque and drought twisted fig-tree. Below it stood an old red telephone box complete with telephone connected to the house. The phone had been lowered so that Billy could reach it even if he had been lying on the ground. From there his mother could keep in contact by simply ringing from an old army field phone bought at some distant garage sale. Billy had strict instructions to answer the phone every time it called without exception, but then Billy had selective hearing and often failed to even hear it ringing, if it suited him.

By the age of six, Billy had been presented with a large set of toy soldiers and military vehicles and canon in a hand made box perfectly crafted by his father. These were to become a very large part of Billy’s childhood experiences as he spent almost every minute of every day playing with them in the sandpit beside the telephone box.

One day while engaged in a serious battle between good and evil, a strange sensation came over him as if someone had crept up behind him and passed their hand over his back without actually touching him. On looking about, he became aware of an audible clacking of sticks and a chanting that chilled him to the bone. Billy searched the Kingdom and beyond with his eyes. It was a rhythmical song uttering from a lone aboriginal man perched on top of the cliff and shrouded in wisps of smoke that furled about his body as if caressing his skin in some magical ceremony or attracted by some hidden force.

Fear of the unknown gripped the boy momentarily as his eyes were attracted like magnets to the very old man, but then the terror left him at the instant their eyes met and he was drawn to the fellow as water is drawn down a hill in unstoppable drifts of gravity. The boy realised without the need for words that there was no malice here, so shakily at first; he rose and moved toward the cliff.

The closer he came as he climbed the more gentle slope to the right, he saw the man was so old that his skin hung like sunburnt soil in folds of weathered dry drapes, his hair sun bleached white and thin.

By now Billy had climbed on top of the cliff and as he approached he felt the warmth of the fire and breathed the sweet perfume of its smoke. The old man sat cross-legged gazing into the fire, slowly, rhythmically the chanting continued with a gaze so intense it was doubtful the presence of the child was even noticed.

The old man’s skin glistened with beads of sweat hotly sought after by the midday sun and occasional demanding flies. Ochre painted scars on his forehead marched in straight lines telling of past battles, as did the many large dreadful injuries all over his body. His nails were brittle with age, the teeth strikingly ivory white and well polished, his eyes deeper than a star lit well, thoughtful in a passion of stature and dignity. Around his waist there was nothing. Nakedness meant little to Billy who hardly ever wore more than a loose pair of underpants in the shade of a baking sun. Without further thought he cast his eyes on the weapons laid gently over the crossed thighs, a spear, woomera, boomerang and bone knife.

As the boy watched, the old man took from a coil of rolled bark a number of witchitty grubs and placed them carefully on the fire. They wriggled painfully for a few moments, swelled and finally puffed out with their skin stretching to its limits. Still their eyes would not meet again and the chant continued.

Moments seemed like years as if two people passed the same spot but in different centuries. They shared the same ground without speaking and understood without explanation. The aroma of the freshly cooked grubs mixed with smoke bought a change to proceedings and at last the old man moved, taking up a grub and leaning over toward the boy he gestured for him to eat. Billy did so without taking his eyes off the stranger, for Billy was not one to shirk nature and he had eaten worse things just out of interest. Following the man’s lead, he put the grub into his mouth, bit off the head and spat it into the coals, then chewed up the body with great lust and delight, for it tasted very much like chicken.

A confidence seemed to grow between them with the barriers of race and age disintegrating in an old man’s smile. In all only three words were spoken, the first of which was ‘Waka-Waka’, which was attended by a gesture, the pointing of a spear toward all the far off horizons. The second was ‘Bunya’ and a drawing in the sand of a large mountain tree. Billy knew it to be large because the old man drew a very small stick man at its base.

With the third word there was a ceremony. It began as the old man collected his things; then, into the hot fire coals he thrust his knife. He gestured to the boy to put his shoulder forward and grasping it took up the knife and made three small incisions which he then rubbed charcoal ash into without any regard for the boy’s feelings, to mix with the blood and form a kind of healing poultice. They stood together, took each other’s hands and stared deep into one another’s eyes. Moments later Billy watched his new friend turn and head off into the west away from the dry river, and then the old man stopped, turned and called ‘Cubbaree’. ‘Cubbaree’ replied the boy instantly giving a wave of his hand.

There was a little pain overshadowed by a welling sense of pride and belonging. The boy understood the man had accepted him on behalf of his tribe, as part of something Billy did not yet understand, something worthwhile and rare to be treasured.

CHAPTER TWO

It was a bright summer’s morning and Ruscat began to get impatient.

His parents were seldom away from home for more than an hour or two and Ruscat was getting hungry. ‘Perhaps he should go out and look for them’ he thought. It was tempting for sure, but he had never been out of his underground home before and his parents would be very cross.

‘Why shouldn’t I go?’

The emptiness of his voice sounded fragile and frightened him even more.

His fur was well established now, his claws beginning to harden in readiness for a life of digging. His tail was as long as the rest of him put together and he was very proud of it. He licked his little whiskers with long strokes until the beams of light from the entrance glistened and twinkled along their length.

‘I’m proud to be a rat,’ he announced to the unseen world. ‘I’m proud to be a rat and one day I’ll be the best rat that ever lived.’ He couldn’t understand why his parents always giggled when he said that. Until now, Ruscat had been too young to train in the ways of the world, but today was his first real ‘coming out’, his first real lesson, a time of initiation into the dangers and beauty of a universe outside his underground home. There had been stories about the outside world; riveting stories set to chill the bones of any hardened traveller, and yet nothing more than idle conversation on how to survive with no real demonstration of the art.

The little fellow dreamed, dreamed of going into the land of sunshine, a land of plenty where he could choose for himself the fattest and juiciest berries and seeds. A land of animals both large and small competing for life.

The more he thought about it the more upset he grew. Minutes passed until his temper began to flair and hunger welled gripping his stomach in ever-increasing violence. His mood turned to youthful impatience from which rose the tide of mischievous adventure.

Ruscat crept up to the mouth of his cave, sniffed the warm fresh air, paused and pondered for a moment. It smelt and tasted magnificent with pure mountain crispness, even in the grip of drought. The sun hurled down its rays in torrents that blinded the little fellow. Hunger told him of the need to press on as he stepped wearily, sheepishly from his home and rubbed himself against the sunshine for the first time in his life. Before him were colours swept by wind that caressed the tuffs of grass a paws length away. Everything threw itself at his senses in a rage of blinding vision until his eyes adjusted to the bright light of day. Green and brown grasses tossed their heads high above and were in their turn dwarfed by larger shrubs and even greater trees in all directions. The sky hung pitted in white drabs of fairy floss cloud, light blue toward the horizon, sliding into the deepest and prettiest colours overhead. Flowers of red and gold grew large and flamboyant as far as the eye could see, the earth peeling from its depths the fragrance of sweet dry compost. Even in drought the rotting vegetation of the mountain floor was home sweet home to Ruscat.

The little fellow had no idea which way to go as he had never been out before and the simplest of little things captured his attention dragging him from his quest. Of the few things he did recall from stories by mother on cold winter’s nights around the fire, was that of a stream not far away in the gully. This particular watercourse bubbled up from deep underground and had never been known to stop flowing and, as it was the only thing Ruscat knew about for sure, it seemed a good place to start.

Before long he heard the gurgle of water and came upon the stream. Never had he seen such an expanse of fluid in one place. To the right the water tumbled down over the rocks until it passed the place where he stood and continued down the mountain to the left. ‘This is not the place,’ he muttered to himself. ‘I must find where it comes out of the ground, higher up the mountain.’

Just then, and without any warning, the ground seemed to rumble under his feet. It seemed to jump right up at him causing his face to give the most extraordinary look of fear and surprise. He leapt back unsteadily, lost his balance and tumbled head over heals down the steep slope toward the stream. Fighting to regain control over himself, he ploughed his way into a large copse of mushrooms disappearing with a large thud amid a maze of broken stems and crowns. There he lay for several seconds propped up against the trunk of one of the larger fungi, stunned by the fall and covered in rich golden powdery spores. A cloud of debris rose wistfully upwards to be caught in the light breeze gracefully winding its way past the tragedy.

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Beyond the riverbank somewhere high in the trees came a piercing