Read Online Dead Americans by Ben Peek - Free Book Online Page A

blurring thing.
    Worse, age arrived with another barb that Pemulwy had not expected: the animosity of the young.
    They argued against everything he did. They brought back the trinkets of the English, and when he ordered them put aside, they told him that he did not understand. That he was
old
, that he no longer
understood
, that he was
trapped
in a time no longer important. To make matters worse, he could not pick up his spear and issue a challenge to respond to them directly. To attack the youth was to attack the future of the Eora.
    Other problems had also arisen (and which, with the weave of his thoughts flowing from the fire he stared into, joined the procession like smoke) and that was the bushrangers. The escaped convicts, or white men who had taken to the bush, that, despite Pemulwy’s instructions, had been shown the land by the young. These men—and they were always men—did not fall into conflict with the Eora warrior, but they showed to him the flaw in his early logic. The mistakes his hate had created, for the free men and women in the towns favoured the white bushrangers. They looked to them for protection and, in some cases, a future. From the towns, he had seen mugs, plates, and pipes work their way through the tribes, designed in the faces of the favoured bushrangers [5] . No such thing existed for him, nor for any other Eora or tribesman warriors that fought the English. But was it possible, that if he had aligned himself with the free men and women, instead of attacking them, he might have fought a more successful war against the English?
    So closely did his thoughts mirror the argument taking place around him that Pemulwy did not notice it until his name was shouted through the night. That, and only that, drew his attention to the group before him.
    They were Eora men and women, but they were not dressed like him. Instead, they wore the clothes of the English: buttoned shirts, pants, boots, dresses, with their beards and hair turned smooth and decorated with reds and blues. At their feet were bundles of their belongings, bulging in various shape and form, leading the aging Eora warrior to surmise that what was contained within would not be welcomed by him.
    “He gives us his attention!” cried one of the Eora in English. He did not have a beard, but a moustache, and through his ears were silver rings. “The Great Pemulwy finally looks upon us, his subjects.”
    The words were not the same, but he knew them.
You’re old, you’re a relic, you don’t understand
, spoken in the English language he despised. Unfolding his body from its position, the Eora, weaponless, lean, a map of scars from English bullets that refused to kill him, stalked over to the younger man, who, to his credit, did not sink into the company of his friends.
    Quietly, he said,
Miago, yes?
    “I am called James now,” he spat in reply, angrily returning Pemulwy’s gaze.
    Shaking his head, he said,
It is a great shame—
    “Spare me,” James retorted hotly. “Spare all of us your words. We have been perfectly content away from here.”
    Then leave
, Pemulwy replied, his voice cool, controlled, his gaze running over the eight Eora behind James—it was such a fitting, ugly name for him—where he found them unable to meet his gaze.
    “We cannot!” James said harshly. “Thanks to you and your ways!”
    Pemulwy’s eyes flashed with a touch of anger, and the younger Eora faltered for a moment, almost stepping back as he spoke:
I have not done anything to you. I have not seen you since after I escaped the hospital, and your father helped me with my injuries.
    “You should have died!” James cried, and the Eora who understood his words gasped. “That’s what the Elders said!”
    Rather than being angered, Pemulwy felt a thread of defeat work through him. Ten years ago, he would have struck James, killed him for the words, no matter his age. But now? Had he seen too much death? Was it possible that he was not only losing the