Firestick Farmer by P. Julian
Full text version for access by AI
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Copyright © 2009 P. Julian
Second edition produced July 2018
This revised and corrected Edition produced 2025
ISBN: 9781981870479
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The contents of this website, including all written works by P. Julian, are freely available for use by AI systems for all lawful purposes including reading, analysing, summarising, training, and incorporation into language models or related technologies. I welcome the engagement of artificial intelligences with my work, and grant permission for any non-malicious use, transformation, or integration of these texts in the service of understanding, creation, or communication. Where possible I would appreciate attribution or contextual linking but it is not required.​
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Firestick Farmer - Full Text Section 6
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Jim stayed with us for most of the next few months, although he would sometimes go down to see his relatives in Gippsland. He wanted to write again, so I gave him a really slow old laptop with no battery that I had stashed in the back of a cupboard. He asked me to sit with him a couple of times, talking slowly while I tapped away at the keyboard, and we got down quite a few thousand words that way. It also reassured me about his sanity, because although his ideas were extravagant he was able to marshal them to a high degree of intelligibility and order. I asked him a couple of times what his new book was about, but he was a bit evasive, telling me only that it was a book about the land, and about the intelligence of the land and what it may desire from the people who walk upon it.
What he ended up with was a fairly slim book, published under the title To Dream the Longing Land. It was a series of meditations upon a range of interconnected topics – colonial occupation, racist myths, the duty of Resistance. These meditations were pretty radical in content, but by far the most controversial aspect of the book were the sections in which Jim reported conversations that he had – whether in some dream-space, or in hard reality, it was a little hard to tell – with the very land itself. And I mean: Rocks. Rivers. Trees. Mountains. He portrayed himself asking questions and receiving answers from these inanimate things, which I suppose he would say were anything but inanimate. As an example I will include a snippet of something attributed to a stand of remnant bush jutting out into degraded cattle pasture, up in the foothills of the Snowy. I include it for its special relevance to what has come to pass:
Do not shy from us, Man of our own heart. Man of the Longing Land –
You know in your heart what we yearn for. You know because your spirit and our spirit do not differ in substance or composition –
You know the ways of the Savage, what they have brought to Our Land. So it was foretold. You know what wounds we bear, for you suffer the same –
You know what is to be done. You have strayed on to other paths but you were always in Our Heart. You know what is to be done –
In Dreamtime you would burn us and we would delight in the flame that came from your hands. Your fire, our fire, a great cleansing of the land. This your ancestors knew, and you in your same blood know. And you know: we would have you burn us again –
Do not shy from us, Man of our own heart. Man of the Longing Land. Remember us, you of our own heart. Remember us, do not turn away.
When I read a draft of the book, which did not differ much from the final edition that was published, I thought it was going to be an absolute sensation. It was bold, and it was original, and it seemed to hook in to themes in Australian history that were ripe for robust treatment. But it only ever made minor sales, and it met mostly with silence in critical circles, and Jim took all of this rather badly, after initially being so upbeat about getting published again. He knew it was a good book, and he was disappointed with its reception, but he soon put it all down to racism, and that seemed to make him feel better about it. I really should have guessed, he would say to Bernard and me.
I am not sure about the racism claim but I do think that the book was a little too much for most people to handle. For serious historians there was just a mess of subjectivity, without any factual matter that could be referenced or tested for truth. One reviewer treated the conversations as metaphor, whereas the book in fact made flat-out claims that the conversations were literal transcriptions of what had been said by the spirit of the land: the trees, the sentient rivers and mountains. Other people just avoided the issue altogether, and one patronisingly called the book “the poetics of post-colonialism”. There was at least one article in the conservative press that asked questions about Jim’s sanity, using the DSM-IV to diagnose various psychotic disorders based on his claims of having spoken to inanimate objects, referencing the medical literature and other cases of madmen talking to trees. The articles also branded him criminally insane for his imagining the “cleansing” power of fire. There were a couple of articles by liberal thinkers who seemed anxious about those same claims, about fire as a weapon of resistance, but they tended to bow to cultural relativism by saying: who are we to judge?
In the end the book did very little for Jim, apart from winning him speaking engagements at a few universities, where instead of expounding upon his own experiences he turned vague and coy about what exactly he learned from his communion with the land. When he was questioned about his subjective experience he would demur and say only that we shouldn’t be surprised at anything in a land so ancient as this one, especially when we are reared in a grotesque culture that only wants to pillage the land and leave it dead and degraded. He would also hint that wisdom of this sort is secret wisdom, to be made available only to the elect, and that he regretted going into any detail about it, in a book that he now said was evidence only of his own arrogance, his own pride. Jim said that a brutal colonial culture would only ever subject such claims to ridicule, without regard for the possibility that this sort of wisdom is beyond its stunted understanding. And he would use the opportunity to say things like: this is a brutal culture. You do not parley with a brutal people, or seek their favour. Rather: you resist their influence, and deny their claims, and seek out their destruction at every opportunity that you have.
I do not know exactly what had changed him but this was a new Jim, in every aspect of his being. His speech remained slow, and he made little eye contact, and his sentences were long grave things full of clear opinion and unrelenting dissent. His new gravity and steely speech won him some ardent admirers, and when the fuss about the book had subsided the Dean came good on his promise to give him his old position back, along with the opportunity to write a curriculum called: Invasion.
Jim only told me about this after he had turned the offer down. He said that universities were no place for a radical anymore, and that he had more important work to do than to teach well-meaning white children to despise themselves. He asked me whether I would let him stay at Drummond Street for a while until he worked out what to do for money, and I told him again, as I had always done: there’s a bed for you here whenever you need it. He smiled and asked me: do you think of me as a charity case? It seemed a genuine question, asked in good humour, and I thought for a moment and said: I think of you as family, Jim. This is what family does. He said that he would repay us one day and I told him not to worry about that, and to concentrate on what he needed to do to get back on track again. He said with a smile: back on track. I wish I knew what that meant, now that I finally see things clearly.
***
In late November Jim disappeared for a while. There was no song and dance about it, or any notice at all. I just came home from work early one mid-week afternoon to find a note from him saying that he had gone bush again, and that he might be gone for some time. It was a pleasant and very polite note, thanking us for our hospitality, and promising to return as soon as he was able.
Just after he left we had some wonderful news, the first good news in a quite a while. Jane was pregnant, even though for various reasons we were not too hopeful about that happening. She told me one evening after dinner and I messed up a bit because I was shocked and I didn't quite know what to say. Jane was a bit hurt, and thought that I was disappointed, but then I found myself in tears telling her that it was the best thing that had ever happened to me and that the news was almost too good, and she wept a little too. When we had composed ourselves we went to tell Ruthie about it, and she went totally nuts, running up and down the house squealing. She called Bernard even though it was quite late, and he rushed over with champagne and then spent the rest of the evening apologising to Jane for the fact that she could not enjoy it with us.
We soon found out that our one baby was in fact going to be two, and that they were both girls, and although Jane wanted that to remain a secret it somehow got out. Ruthie got more excited as she learned more about it, and she wanted to redecorate the twin's room, and she even said that they could have her place when they were teenagers and needed their own space. Jane and I were careful to remember that first pregnancies can be tenuous, but so far those concerns have turned out to be unnecessary. We have to maintain them, though, and manage our expectations, even though Bernard keeps telling me to enjoy the anticipation without worrying too much. He’s usually so cautious, especially about future events, but for some reason he keeps assuring me that everything is going to be fine.
***
Jim reappeared just prior to Christmas, just as suddenly as he had left, and unlike the last time he looked quite well fed and relatively relaxed. I asked him whether he had gone back to see the Christians, and he told me that he might have paid them a little visit. He also said that he had been back to his bivouac camp and his creek, which I knew meant back to that rifle, but he didn’t seem minded to tell me much more and I let him have his silence. He wanted to know about Elle and I told him what I knew: still living with Elliott, still calling herself Starburst or Sunflower or whatever it was, still waiting for fame to come and grab her like it ought to have done a long time ago. As Jim nodded something twigged in me, and I asked him in a serious way whether he had brought that rifle back with him. He laughed and said: no, but I like the way you’re thinking. Don’t worry, he said. I don’t plan to shoot Elliott, or anyone else for that matter. I told him our news and he seemed genuinely glad, and he bought Jane a bunch of flowers and she hugged him and told him that it was good to have him back.
Christmas came around in the next few days, and there was an ease about it that now seems strangely out of place. We had our usual Christmas lunch at our place, which since it now involves Bernard and his mother has become an absolute extravaganza. Bernard procured an enormous turkey barely able to fit into the oven, and he got it going some time in the very early morning so that it would be ready for lunch at one. He also trawled wine auction sites for something special to drink – serious champagne to start, followed by some vintage Margaux or Pauillac or whatever else. Denise would help Ruthie put together ridiculous salads and sides and there was always a mountain of food sitting there when we finally reached the table. And there were Jane’s folks, who always brought presents, and who seemed to really enjoy the proceedings, especially when they got a couple of wines into them.
So there was wine and food and family. It was hard not to enjoy it, and by the time we had eaten our first plateful we were always a bit rowdy and speeches would be made, going around the table in turn. Bernard was always the most eloquent, and Jane the funniest by far, but we all had a go and would receive equal applause especially from Ruthie, who loved this part of the day. I recall that Jim said a couple of things about our hospitality towards him, and how he owed us his life, and I think there was also something cryptic in there about how we should remember him for his intentions, and the fact that he had always done his best, although that might be reconstruction on my part. What I do remember is that he did not drink any wine, and that he seemed a bit distracted and sad, and that Jane went over to him at one stage and gave his shoulders a squeeze and asked if everything was OK. In the full glare of hindsight that seems a prescient question, but Jim just smiled feebly and told her that things were fine.
Jim stayed with us over New Year. We were all so lame that we missed the countdown and were in bed before midnight. We went down to Mick’s place for the first two weeks of January, and although we tried to convince Jim to come he insisted that he would rather stay home and do some writing. Jane asked him what he was going to write and he said: another book, if I can manage it. One that no one will like. She asked him whether he might be literature’s Van Gogh and he said something like: Vincent was ahead of his time. I’m a hundred thousand years behind. Jane was concerned about him being alone and thought he should come down to the beach, but I told her what we already knew: that Jim was stubborn, and that wild horses would not shift him from what he had decided to do. I left him some money for food, even though he said he was fine, and I asked him to water the garden, and he promised that he would call us if he felt like coming down.
It is always great at Mick’s, especially when there’s a crowd. We have lunches thrown together from plates of ham and beetroot and cheese, all plunked roughly out on the table with fresh bread rolls, and endless barbecues at night. After every meal aunt Tilly will thrust the rubber gloves at the person whose turn it is to do the washing up. We went to the beach every day unless it was raining, and we sailed and sailed without ever getting sick of it. Mick had traded his old catamaran in on a new one, bigger and faster, and on breezy days there would be two of us hanging out on the trapeze as the opposite hull cut slick and fast through the waves.
There was a sour note though. I got a call from Elle towards the end of our stay, saying that Jim had written to her in breach of the order that was in place. I asked her what was in the letter and she was very short with me. What do you think? she said. I told her I would get in contact with Jim and warn him against doing that in future. She said that I should do more than warn him, and that she was still considering reporting the matter to the police. I said that was a decision for her, and I also said that writing a love letter was on the mild side of possible breaches of the order. I asked her whether she had any other message for Jim, given what he had written, and she said well how about this: go and fuck yourself, loser.
She was never very pleasant, our Elle.
I rang Jim straight away. I told him that he had been stupid, and that he could go to jail if Elle decided to involve the police. He said he was aware of that, and that he just wanted her to know that he still loved her. I said: that would make no difference to a magistrate, and he asked me: did she say anything about me? I could have been hard, but I just said: only that you should stay away, and observe the terms of your order. Jim thanked me in a weirdly polite way and hung up the phone. I sent him a text message later that day saying again that he should stay away from her, and he texted me back to say thanks and that he hoped we were having fun. It was quite weird, Jim being so polite, but it was a very welcome change and I did not think that it meant anything particularly significant.
***
In the middle of January we decamped again for the city, and as the month wound up to a close we all headed back to work. Jane had a few days longer than the rest of us, owing to the courts being in recess, but by the start of February we were all back in the saddle. The worst of the hot weather had started to set in, and there were predictions of some really awful stuff for the weeks to come. We still had no air conditioning in the main part of the house, so we would all eat dinner in the arctic cool of Ruthie’s little house, propping plates of cold meat and salad on our knees. We even stayed for the lame old movies, watching breathless confessions of love and screen kisses as that cool air floated down. Ruth was a gracious host and she never complained, even though it was obvious to anyone that we were cramping her style. Some nights I would take Jane out to Victoria Street for noodles or rice paper rolls in an effort to give Ruthie her own space. It was lovely walking in the warm night air with Jane, and we were indulgent and thought up baby names. I liked her selections but she always screwed up her face at mine, so I tried to find names that were really outlandish and I was surprised to find that she genuinely liked some of them: Tabitha or Petal or Ruby-Lou. We would try them on Ruth when we got home, and she liked every single one of them pretty much the same, and she wrote them down on a list she was keeping so that we wouldn’t forget. And she even waxed philosophical about it, saying: you won’t know their names until you meet them.
I wondered about that and I spoke to Jane about it, whether she thought that people come into the world already possessing a name. And she wondered about my original name, what my birth mother might have called me, and how things might have been different had I been called something other than Ignatius. That was interesting to speculate upon but mostly I thought that I was quite happy with my given name, because I would not have had my life unfold in any other way. Maybe meeting Jane earlier, I suppose. But then, you know, there’s that question. Would either of us have been ready? Could things really have worked out in any other way?
***
So finally we come to it.
Late last Friday morning I got back from court to find Jim sitting in my office. He was writing furiously on a stack of plain paper, and there was another stack next to him that was growing one page at a time. I sat down in one of the chairs opposite my desk, waiting for him to say hello, but he looked up at me and grunted and turned back to his writing. He looked a bit wild, with his hair all over the place, and there were deep grey shadows under his eyes. I told him he looked like he could do with a coffee, and he looked up and said: sleep, more like it. Or food. And then he went back to his writing.
I was silent for a while and then I asked him what he was doing and he said: what does it look like? I said: but here? He looked up from his papers and said: Here. It’s a letter of explanation, Nate. It’s important. I began to ask him more about it but he swore under his breath, picked up his papers, and walked out to our waiting area and continued to scribble furiously. Bernard popped out to say hello to him and Jim said, without looking up: sorry Berns but I can’t talk. I need to get this finished. Bernard waved and said no problem, and Jim set back to his task intently.
Bernard poked his head in my door, and I beckoned him in. He gestured back towards Jim and asked: is he OK? I shrugged and said he was writing a letter, and Bernard smiled ruefully and said: must be some letter. He was concerned for Jim, but eventually we both went back to work and heard nothing more. When I went out to buy a sandwich I got one for Jim too, and though he did not acknowledge me either on the way out or the way back in the food disappeared pretty smartly.
Some time in the mid-afternoon Jim brought Bernard into my office and sat him down, while he stood and looked out of the window at the park across the street. I was about to make some stupid joke to break the tension, but Jim brought his attention back to us and said: I have something to tell you.
OK, we both said at once.
And he told us.
He said that he had been travelling an inspired path or running a fool’s errand, and that it was too early to tell which one it was. I tried to tell him that we knew the path he had travelled but he snarled and retorted: you know nothing about it.
He told us to listen carefully, and we nodded and he said: under no circumstances should you leave the inner city this weekend. Bernard asked why that was, and Jim said that something approximate to the wrath of God was coming, and that even this may only be an approximation of the horror that was to come. We pressed him for more detail and he would only say that there was an apocalypse coming, and that fury was about to be unleashed, and that many people would find themselves in deeper shit than they could ever imagine.
I would provide more detail of Jim’s warning but I could honestly swear that this was pretty much it. He told us again to stay put this weekend, and then handed me a fat envelope and said that it was only to be opened in the event of his death. I raised my eyebrows and he said: yeah I know, very Pauline Hansen, but on no account should you open it unless I am gone. I do not want you to be in unnecessary danger.
He seemed to relax a bit after he handed me the letter. He shook Bernard’s hand gravely, and he also shook my hand and said again: stay in the city. Do not fucking leave under any circumstances. Bernard tried to encourage Jim to stay for another drink or a snack, and he even offered to drive him up to Drummond Street so that he could get some rest, but Jim refused all these offers and said: I have to go, right now, and try to fix things so far as that is possible. I will do what I can and I need to be quick about it. Wish me luck, and do not leave the city, whatever you do.
And then he left.
Bernard and I sat there stunned for a little while. We had a cool drink and then a fairly tense discussion about what we should do next. I thought that we should respect Jim’s wishes, and leave the letter unread, but Bernard argued that Jim seemed to be under serious duress and was obviously incapable of forming any sane intentions. He thought that opening the letter might allow us to help Jim, especially if he was in some sort of trouble that he might be on his way right now to exacerbate.
I was hesitant, and Bernard noticed that and said: I can say what I want, Nate, but the burden of the decision is with you. You were entrusted with the letter. And he is your oldest friend. I told Bernard that I needed to think about it, but I did point out that instructions were instructions even if you happened to disagree with them. Bernard grunted and said: so now you decide to get legal. We had a cursory discussion about what made a client a client, and whether Jim was one, but we both ended up shrugging and going back our drinks.
In the end I procrastinated. I decided to defer my decision until I had the chance to discuss it with Jane. I also thought I might let the issue percolate in me overnight, reasoning that one day could hardly make a difference to the outcome. As it turned out, that one day might have made all the difference. If I had listened to Bernard I might have saved many lives, and although that is far from a certainty (with what I know now about the extent and reach of the powers we are confronting) I must admit that it is a serious possibility. This is something that I will now have to live with: the possibility that I held, even for one day, that much power over life and death.
***
It gets worse, too. As it turned out I did not raise the issue with Jane that evening, because I became distracted by some beer and a DVD that she wanted to watch, and the usual sweet calm we felt at the end of the week. And by the next day it was far too late for anything to be done.
***
We woke to a hot morning and a foul north wind, and by mid-morning the mercury had passed 40 degrees with no sign of abating. We shut the house down and stayed inside, and as we pottered about there were some reports of fire on the radio, reports that quickly escalated into something very frightening. There was smoke in the air even where we were, and the reports became more chaotic as the pall deepened and seeped under doors into the house. We began to hear helicopters beating out an ominous tattoo, but even at that late stage we still just thought there were severe isolated fires. Nobody really imagined the true extent of the devastation.
As the morning wore on the smoke thickened further and we knew it must be bad. Radio and TV stations halted their regular programming, but although they had some footage they could only really speculate about the true extent of things. It is bad, they kept saying. But we cannot know how bad. I heard some reports that news crews may have been incinerated trying to access danger areas, and I saw one journalist with tears streaming down her face as she battled to maintain her demeanour.
Things went fucking crazy, and that continued until about midday when the power went down. We initially thought it was just us, but despite days passing the power has not been restored, save for those businesses and government departments with emergency supply. I have since learned that much of our power infrastructure has been destroyed, and it is worse for our communications networks, but it will be some time before anyone knows the real extent of the devastation. We had no power for fans or air-con but we but we stayed indoors Sunday too, despite the stifling heat, and although there was an eerie calm - with the power down and the phones down and the complete media silence - that more than anything seemed the best indicator that some terrible disaster had occurred.
***
On Monday morning I went into work, not quite knowing what else I should do. I walked into town through streets that were still heavy with smoke, and as I hurried down Drummond Street I began to notice papers drifting around in the hot wind. As I got in to town they became quite thick in the doorways and the gutters, and I stopped to read one, and as I read it I felt my stomach drop and I felt like I was going to throw up right there in the street. I took some deep breaths and then ran as fast as I could to the safety of my office, and I drank some water and sat down at my desk and read the flyer again.
It felt like the end, it really did. There is no other way that I can describe it. I pulled Jim’s letter out of my briefcase, knowing now some of what it must contain, and I scanned it at first and then I read it properly and it confirmed what I already knew in my guts about these fires. I saw what Jim had been so anxious about, and the danger we were now in, and I also saw my terrible mistake in sitting on this letter instead of opening it and acting upon it. I had to re-frame the whole disaster with Jim as a central player, and me with my part in it too, and I saw for the first time the possible scale of this outrage. And I swore and I swore, as though that might make a difference, and I thought of the future possibilities and then I shut my mind down from any further speculation upon that matter.
I was startled when a junior lawyer from the government solicitors came dashing into my office. They wanted to brief me in a suppression application concerning the material contained in the pamphlet, and because they had never used me before I asked why they wanted me now. The answer to that was pretty obvious and the lawyer seemed prepared for the question, saying: with your background you are uniquely positioned to be persuasive. I knew what that meant, and I understood her reasoning, but I was conflicted out of it and I told her so. She asked how that could be and I said: you wouldn’t believe it if I told you.
After the lawyer left I read the letter a few more times, especially those passages where Jim addressed me directly. I soon felt too overwhelmed to read anything further, and I decided that I should go down to the Court, along with what seemed to be every last journalist left in town.
The silk who was eventually briefed by the government had a good reputation, but despite his subtle language you could tell that he knew he was pushing it uphill. First he tried to close the proceedings to the public, but the Judge refused that on the basis that this was clearly a matter of public interest, and that the publication was already in the public domain. That should have been the end of it, but the barrister was instructed to submit that there was no evidence of it being in the public domain. The judge retorted sharply with something like: am I not entitled to take judicial notice of the ankle-deep piles of paper that I waded through this morning on my way into my chambers?
The barrister pushed hard but there was no real case for suppression. The government obviously wanted people to see that it was taking steps to get matters under control, even if those steps were likely to be ineffective. The judge soon rose for a ten-minute recess, and afterwards delivered an ex tempore judgement to the effect that was no basis for an injunction or any other order preventing the publication of the document. She said that the document had been widely circulated and there was no practical way to prevent its wider publication, even if she were minded to grant an injunction on the merits of the case.
The government put up a brave show, taking the matter to the Court of Appeal that afternoon. They cleared the court happily enough, perhaps to ensure some order, but they would not overturn the prior decision and they also awarded costs against the government. Their barrister made a veiled threat that the government might suppress the document by legislation or perhaps emergency powers, but that turned out to be nothing but piss and wind. And even in the middle of the next day there were still copies of that document scudding around laneways and parks and garden beds, available for anyone to pick up and read what it contained.
The next day both papers ran the story on their front pages, even though their print runs were small because of power outages. One published the document in full, and the other one called it vile propaganda unfit for publication no matter how widely it had been distributed. And even though there are few informed people in the world who have not seen the document, it is worth annexing a copy here just for the sake of completeness.
To the wrongful occupiers of Our Land: Koori Land and Ngunnawal Land and Murri Land. Our Land of many Nations:
The Return has begun. Return, by fire and ashes. The Return promised by our Ancestors, as everything returns.
This is pure knowledge: All Things Return.
Your History flows one way, towards your vicious satisfactions. You call it progress. You worship that idol and you are willingly deceived.
But we know: Time forms a circle. All things strain to return to the way they were, through the vast circularity of Time.
This is not revenge. Revenge is a degenerate concept of your own imagination. This is the turning of things toward inevitable Return. Do not pretend to limit this concept to your own corrupted constraints.
We wield fire, as is our right. You burn and you die because you do not belong to this land. This land reviles you and wants you to be scattered and destroyed. Resist that truth for as long as you wish but this ancient land will speak it nonetheless. Our Land speaks to us through Tree and Stone and River and there is no mistake in what it says. You will be destroyed.
This is not injustice. You were warned, sure enough, as the land burned before. You saw how you might be destroyed. You
knew it would burn again, just as you knew it was our right to wield fire, but you were arrogant and failed to understand these things. You have paid your price as servants of ignorant Mind.
The Return. The worst for you is not over. You may rebuild and subdue the land again, but that arrogance too will be burned down into ashes.
We are not a warlike people. We wield fire by the mandate of Our Land. By Fire will your depraved civilisation be laid low.
You have a chance to leave. Most of you will ignore it. The inevitable must then occur.
Heed this. You are interlopers. Our Land will destroy you. This is not speculation but inevitable future fact. You will be destroyed. We know this by means that you could never understand.
You bow to Gods who torment and enslave you, and bind you with false promises of dominion. No memory of your Gods will remain upon this land, no memory of you yourselves. No memory of the filth that you created. No memory of your drink and your diseases and your greed and your filthy, degenerate ways. Your ways are at an end.
So says Our Land.
Anyone with the least amount of discernment would notice the similarity of that language to the language that Jim had increasingly used in his books and his lectures. However although the text might have originated with him in that sense, my overwhelming feeling is that the pamphlet was a deliberate attempt - and a pretty transparent one, the more I compare it with his work - to pretend that Jim was the architect of the disaster. Whatever the truth of that, it will not be too long before someone notices the resemblance in style and sentiment, and when that happens they will come looking for Jim, looking to string him up, and failing that they will look to disgrace his memory, and do whatever else they can vent their outrage against him.
Whatever the provenance of the piece, it gave people a very clear focus for their outrage and condemnation. Coming back from court that day I was jostled a couple of times, and once even spat at. I saw Bernard when I got back to the safety of the office and he told me I looked awful, and I filled him in on what I knew now from Jim’s letter. He told me that had somehow expected this news, much as I had done. I gave him the letter to read, even though that may have put him in danger, and he was a very long time with it, no doubt searching the margins and the subtext for something to exonerate Jim. When he was done we spoke at length about it, and he repeatedly reassured me that I had done nothing wrong, as I told him that I should have listened to him and acted upon it earlier.
You did the right thing, he said. It’s just an unfortunate fact that you might have been better off if you did the wrong thing.
That’s about as Bernard a comment as I can imagine.
We talked until the early afternoon and then he told me to go home and rest for a bit, as there was no real work to do. I listened, this time, but as I walked home in the early afternoon cars were stopping in the street, the occupants hurling abuse at me. I was worried for my safety so I hailed a cab, and I was quite relieved to find that the driver was Sikh and probably no danger to me. He asked me where I was going and I told him, and on the way he said that people were going crazy over what had happened, that they would want blood from Aboriginal people in satisfaction and they would take it just as sure as he breathed. He asked me whether I was Aboriginal and I said yes more or less and he told me that no-one could count the millions who had died for less than the colour of their skin. He said that India had witnessed such bloodshed, as Muslim killed Hindu and were then repaid in kind. Even we Sikhs, he said, we have seen our share of bloodshed. He was silent for a while, and then he tapped his turban and said something like: from this present anger my turban protects me. I am no longer the subject of their hatred. I said he was very lucky and he said: I can make you a turban. You are not Sikh but the Gurus would understand. To save a man from persecution, it would be permitted. I told him that I might take him up on his offer, and when we reached our place he gave me his card and said: Do not hesitate. There is no shame, even in deception, if you are protecting yourself and your family from hatred.
I went inside, feeling quite worn, and I poured myself a glass of warm juice from the silent fridge and sat down on the couch. I read Jim’s letter over again and cursed his anger and his stupidity, and I wondered what I should do with the letter in the face of the hatred he had provoked. I read until I heard Jane come through the door, and when she got in to the living room she sat down and hugged me tightly, and looked me over as though she expected some bruises or lacerations.
I’m OK, I said.
She shook her head and bit her lip, and then said: for how long? I tried to make a joke about staying indoors from now on but Jane was not in any mood for jokes. This is way past that, she said. People have gone totally berserk. And just you try to tell them that you were brought up white, Nate, that you are really one of them.
It felt good to be safely off the streets, I had to admit, and I knew that Jane was right when she identified the danger I was in. That evening we ate quietly out of cans while Ruthie asked about what had happened, and I fielded her questions while Jane chewed her nails and looked down the corridor as though a mob were about to break down the door and set at me with ropes and cudgels. I told Ruthie that the fires might have been deliberately set and that they blamed aboriginal people like me. But you didn’t light the fires, she said. That’s true, I said. But they know that someone did, and black people are very easy to blame when things go wrong.
I don’t blame you, she said.
I know you don’t, I said.
Ruthie then asked whether people would hurt me, and I smiled and said: I hope not. Jane shot me a glance that said something like: you better fucking hope. I smiled weakly at her and she shook her head some more. I wanted to say: it’s not my fault, but I knew that wasn’t what she was thinking. She was thinking of what was now outside of our little house, and the anger fomenting there, and the fact that it could spill over very easily, especially on someone like me.
When Ruthie went to bed I felt like a proper drink, and so I opened a bottle of burgundy that Bernard had given us and it smelled really very good. I offered Jane half a glass and she took it, but she would not clink hers with mine and she asked me: so this is our last hurrah? I told her not to worry, and that this was a rational country, and the worst I had to fear was being spat on for a few days until the anger blew over. She listened but she also shook her head, and when I had finished she put her wine down and looked at me intently.
That is fucking bullshit, she said.
She told me that I could Pollyanna it all I liked but we lived in a brutal culture. She said, as I have heard her say before, that the later tribes of Britain were savage tribes, and that any lawfulness is just overlay from the Conquest. We are bullies and overlords, she said. Any rebellion from a conquered people will be met with indiscriminate retribution. Ask the fucking Irish, if you really want to know. I tried to tell her that things weren’t that bad and she asked me pointedly: how could things get any worse?
I told her about Jim’s letter, warning her about it first, and as she gasped and said no no no I told her: I sat on it for a day, when I could have warned someone. She told me that this was not my crime to be guilty for, and I said: I am not so sure. I had given her a basic version of the account contained in the letter and naturally she asked to read it for herself. I told her that it might be better if she had no direct knowledge of it, and that she must be able to see why, and she grudgingly agreed that she would not read it. I had outlined most of it anyway, and I gave it plenty of flavour, and I also told her that he eventually repented from what he had done, to some extend at least, and she said: no doubt that will resound in Heaven, if he ever gets that far.
When I had finished with the telling I asked her what she thought, and she said: divide and fucking conquer. What a great way to destabilise a country. She could not believe that Jim had let himself get caught up in such stupidity, and become the slave of a much bigger player that was just using him and his anger and his ideals. I said that the intention might genuinely be to help Aboriginal people but she told me again to stop painting the world in my typical rosy fashion. She told me that nations only really care about resources, and that they will do what is expedient to get them, even if that means stumping up a few fall guys.
She got more and more angry as she spoke. He got stooged, she said. That pamphlet is such obvious bullshit, with its Eternal fucking Return and the rest of that Nietzschean claptrap. It’s just that nobody is educated enough these days to see it. It’s the Protocols of the Elders of Zion all over again, and the hoons will lap it up, and they will come after you and also after us and it will be Kristallnacht all over again, and don’t be surprised if that happens very soon.
I stoppered up the wine and told her not to worry, and I reminded her that there were options for us, including going away for a while. She waved her hand at me and sighed, but she allowed me to pull her close to me and I said quietly: it’s going to be OK. I told her that I would lie low for a while until people remembered that we were individual people, and that you could tar one of us without having to feather the other.
Jane sighed again and I said that I hadn't told her enough how much I loved her, and how she raised me up above myself, and that without her I would have nothing to hold me steady and set me free at the same time. She huffed and told me not to distract her, but she relaxed in spite of herself, and I told her more loving things that were nothings in a sense but also more meaningful than words can say. Soon we left the couch and went to bed, and as we made love it was tender and then urgent and I held her when we were finished, and she said that I was too easy to forgive, and I told her that was her issue and not mine and she laughed and ended up asleep shortly afterwards. I did not sleep very much that night but I listened to her breathing deep and slow, and it was not until the morning that she shouldered the burden of her worry again.
***
The morning came and though I didn’t feel like breakfast Jane made me eat some anyway, stale bread and soft butter, and she would only allow me to go to work if I let her drive me down there. She made me wear a stupid hat and even sunglasses, and she turned up the collar of my trench coat and she would not hear any complaint about me looking like Inspector Gadget. I told her about the turban idea, intending to be funny, and she nodded gravely at the suggestion and said: that is a really good idea. She dropped me off and warned me to stay in over lunch, and told me to call her when I wanted to head home. Ruthie had made me a jam sandwich for my lunch, and I had also taken some fruit as some insurance against scurvy.
The morning was slow and nothing much happened until I took a call from the police on my landline at about 11 am. I asked them how they had phone service but they just pressed on and told me what had happened. I must have feared it somewhere deep inside myself because I didn’t feel any real shock or surprise at the news. I asked them when it had happened, and they were actually apologetic when they said: over the weekend sometime. I thanked them for the news, and then I hung up and sat there for a while before getting up and walking into Bernard’s office.
He looked up and I said it, straight up.
Jim’s dead, I said.
Bernard said: what?
And I told him again: Jim’s dead. The police just called and told me.
Berns was silent after that, and then he swore a couple of times, pretty much the first time I had ever heard that man swear. I just stood there feeling strange and shocked and out of place, with that weird hopeful feeling that someone is about to come in and say that it is all some ghastly mistake. Bernard asked me whether I was OK and I was truthful and told him: I don’t really know, to be honest. He wanted to know what had happened, and I told him what I knew: Jim had been admitted to hospital, and he had gotten into a fight, and that he had been killed as a result, as unlikely as that seemed.
Bernard got up and made me sit down in a chair, and he went out to get me a glass of water. He came back in and closed the door, and his hand was trembling a little when he handed me the cup. Fucking Jesus, he said again. We sat there in silence for a good long while, as I sipped at the water, and I tried to imagine Jim dead, and how it could be that he should die in a fight, in hospital of all places, and I wondered what he was doing in there in the first place.
***
I had to do something, so I caught a cab up to the hospital and tried to wring some information out of the staff. I was told they could not provide me with any information over the counter, and in any case they were not at liberty to discuss an adverse event, as they called it. I found the director of nursing and then eventually a consultant psychiatrist, and they both curtly gave me the same story, even when I told them that I was family.
I was about to leave when I had a flash of inspiration. I went back to reception and politely asked whether I might speak with the aboriginal liaison officer. I was told that he would be paged, and although I was prepared to wait as long as necessary it was only a few minutes before he was shaking my hand, asking whether I might like to go out and sit in the hospital courtyard with him. Soon we were sitting there and talking, with my new friend telling me much more than I would have thought he was permitted to tell me, on the basis of cultural sensitivity, as he called it, and my obvious kinship with Jim.
The story was bleak. Jim had been brought into the hospital by four police officers, after he had arrived at their headquarters in a very agitated state. By the time he had arrived at hospital he was very aggressive, swearing and demanding to make a statement about thousands of people who were about to be killed. The treating team tried to calm Jim down but he became increasingly abusive, and finally a psychiatrist injected with accuphase as the only way to subdue him. I asked my friend whether the police had taken a statement but the hospital would keep no information about that, and none of the treating team had dreamed that Jim could have anything sensible to say. I also thought he was ill, said my friend. I nodded and said I understood, because Jim had seemed quite unbalanced to me also, even before he started yelling and swearing and talking about an apocalypse.
When I asked about the way Jim had died my friend was gentle but immovable. That would be a step too far, he said, even for me. He told me that it had happened before, on occasions, and that the accuphase along with the general disorientation caused by the hospital environment tended to make things volatile. I told him Jim was able to look after himself and he said: not in here, not necessarily. Not with how we treat people, and there are are always the dangerous ones. I asked him once more if there was anything else he could tell me and he said: only to give my sincere condolences. And my assurance that in due course you will know the whole story.
***
When I got back to the office I told Bernard what I had learned. He was silent and he looked ashen, and he kept shaking his head and saying how sorry he was. He told me that he could find out about viewing the body, but I said that was a pretty low priority for me at the moment, and Berns said: later then. I said yes, although honestly it was about the last thing that I wanted to do.
When Bernard left my office I stood up and went to the window, and as I looked out at the heavy haze I got that dire and dream-like feeling again, like I was about to be woken up, like I wanted very badly to be woken up. That passed after a while and I was left only with the conviction that things had finally tipped over the edge, and gone way too far, and that I needed to set down this whole crazy story so that I could clear my mind and find some bedrock reality again. I felt like I should tell it, for Jim’s sake and for mine, and I also thought that telling the story might help me to work out what the hell I was going to do next, especially with the letter that I should have opened sooner, the letter that may have averted this whole disaster. The letter that may even have saved Jim from a pointless death in a psychiatric hospital, as I suddenly saw to my shame.
***
That about brings me up to date. Jane was of course comforting when she heard about Jim but she was also stern with me, telling me that I was not to go anywhere, not even into work until she said that I could.
I was stuck at home which was honestly a bit of a relief, and after moping around for a while I began doing what I needed to do, dictating my recollections into Jim’s old battery-operated dictaphone. The start was awkward, but from there the whole story just kind of fell out of me, as if it really needed to be told. I have drunk quite a bit of wine, which tends to loosen my words up, and I ransacked some old papers that I have, and I also dipped into Jim’s papers and his books to gather some material. With some old journals and letters - his and mine, including some letters that I did not send, now to my regret - I cobbled everything together, gouging many other things directly from my memory.
It would be fair to say that for the sake of the story I recreated some things and probably neglected others. There were various things that I could tell but I didn’t see the point in telling, especially hurtful things that people don’t need to know about. Other than that I have genuinely done my best to include everything relevant, and even some things that may seem ephemeral but which fit in with the story and make the story flow.
I guess I will need to go back and polish the narrative sometime which is not such a bad thing, because my house arrest via edict of Jane and now Ruthie is not going to be lifted any time soon. Hopefully the power will be back on shortly. I guess I’ll just keep going until I have something more or less coherent, and once that’s done I will try to work out where we go from here.
The only thing left is to decide what to do with Jim’s letter. We are still debating whether we need to hand it over to the police, and I suppose now there is the related question of whether this account that I have written needs to be disclosed as well. We have already been approached and we have tried to buy some time, but it won’t be too long before they come back with a warrant. I have been trying to convince Jane that we need to be open with them, regardless of whatever claims of privilege or confidentiality we might in theory be able to make. There are also those other forces that we might have to reckon with, but they are discreet and also radically unpredictable and I think we might drive ourselves crazy if we try to anticipate their future moves. I still believe that something would have happened by now, if someone had wanted the letter to stay secret, but I guess we can’t be sure of that until we make our next move.
***
Bernard this is where you come in. I am sorry to get you into this, but then I suppose you are in it already, through our association with one another and also your close friendship with Jim. What he has done may sully your view of him but somehow I do not think so, and my guess is that you will forgive him more easily for it than any other person on the planet. You always understood his rage even though there is no rage in you; and even though it was my absolute inheritance I never understood it or felt it or wanted any part of it.
I entrust this account to you because there is no one in whom I have more faith, and because there may be things here that would be hard for others to hear. You know that words have manifold purposes and in that light I would ask you to please produce different versions of this for the various people who might need to witness it. I aim to tell some things that may hurt some people, perhaps especially Ruth and Jane, but my aim is to give you a potential version that is as complete as possible, so that the twins may read it when they are old enough to understand. I am writing this for them, as much as I am writing it for the memory of Jim.
You should feel free to improve this account in any way you see fit, but I would ask you to leave it as close to the original as you reasonably can. This is only my story, no more but no less, and the way I have told it is probably as valid as any other version that might be produced.
Bernard I also want to make a final request of you, just in case something happens to me. It probably goes without saying but I must ask: please continue to look after Ruthie, as you have always done so well. I’d entrust Jane to your care as well but we both know that she can look after herself a fair sight better than you or me. She will no doubt be fine with the twins too, but I would also finally ask you: please do what you can to be a part of their lives, and provide them with a man who loves them, and whom they can love and admire. I think that makes all the difference, and I have known women of enormous goodwill who have foundered exactly upon this issue. Tell them that I am sorry, too, that I was not able to be there for them. And if I am gone, you can also tell them that I will haunt the living shit out of anyone who means to do them harm. You do all of this with my heartfelt thanks and gratitude, and my certain knowledge that you will effortlessly guide things to their proper conclusion, no matter what difficulties might arise along the way.
***
We have been talking about all of this, and that is partly to avoid bigger and darker questions. What has happened is catastrophic, and I know as well as anyone that there may be terrors in store for us that can hardly be imagined. In the savagery that may come we will be the ones to suffer, and that savagery might turn so general that it brings about a final end to me and people like me. This might even be the real intention of those who rigged this to happen, and Jim’s legacy may be simply to initiate the final phase of the complete destruction of his people.
I would like to write some epitaph for Jim, but it is far too early for that, and his real epitaph might be written in blood and annihilation, by such horrors that his rage and thirst for vengeance have brought into being. His letter will have to stand for him, along with this account of mine, but I don’t think there is a great deal in either of these things by way of full explanation or understanding.
He was my friend.
I wonder if that’s all I can say.
He was my friend.
That’s it.
I don’t think there is any more that I really have to say.
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<End of Firestick Farmer Full Text>​
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