Read Online The Ballad of Desmond Kale by Roger McDonald - Free Book Online Page A

Kale sensed it, too, and stood leaning against a boulder, half turned away, half smiling. The more he asked of life, the more he thrived — though it never took away any suffering. This was incredible though.
    â€˜You could at least express some astonishment, Kale, at what I have done.’
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ said Kale. ‘Spoken with proper exasperation. My astonishment’s in the sheep you gave me —’
    â€˜Not gave — gave over —’
    â€˜We shall argue that expression when they build back up to a thousand, as I think we agreed. Wait on their wool, Rankine, the astonishment in their wool is all the answer, to your niggling ways. Send me a packhorse drover in a month’s time and I’ll send in some woolpacks of finest fleece. They can be sent to England, for an opinion on their grade. I believe they shall amaze the bowels of the woolstapler who grades them. As for a drover and carrier, there isa good trusted one, John J. Tharpe, originally from Cavan. He knows how to dodge and weave.’
    â€˜I note the instruction,’ said Rankine. ‘But “niggling”? — I don’t like that —’
    â€˜You’ll need Tharpe’s whole team. Don’t say Kale asked for them. But say the fellow with the salt has an answer.’
    â€˜Whatever that means.’
    â€˜Whatsoever indeed,’ said Kale. And then began singing half under his breath, as they walked back down to the valley floor.

TOM RANKINE KNEW ONLY ONE thing of Desmond Kale when they began in this: it was said by all that Kale was the inordinate man for a sheep, but was so tied down in chains, incorrigible with abuse, he was lost to men’s ordinary ways. Whenever he stirred himself he was laid up with a flogging. Oh, and had a daughter — that handsomest damned washerwoman in the governor’s laundry sheds. Yes, they had met. Yes, they had exchanged two words. And yes, just as soon as he found her, Rankine lost her in the very utterance of the two words spoken between them.
    When his duties took Rankine into the gaolyard at Parramatta, all such matters were enlarged by intensified wonder.
    Out of the prisoners crowded into the holding yard there was one who stood apart. A tense, measured manner attracted attention, in the man who hefted his chains, as if they were made of paper; and the slumbering, powerful gaze of a captive centurion was seen, as he turned his head and stared at Rankine.
    â€˜Who is that man over there?’ said Rankine, already guessing. He was told it was the Irishman — a singular sort of reply: becauseof all the numbers present, Irish were in the predominance. Thus did Rankine gain his first lesson in the admiration of Desmond Kale, even from those who hated him.
    There was no sunlight in the punishment cells. They were built half into the ground and smelled sourly of mould. Only in one room a narrow window admitted paltry light, and there Kale was returned after being counted.
    Rankine took sight of Kale sitting in a corner of that rock-hewn cell with his chewed grey hair and sad, courageous features, his large-knuckled hands hanging between his knees, his head thrown back and singing.
    â€˜It is something about the singing,’ he decided, ‘that brings the guards running.’
    â€˜He is not allowed it,’ said the superintendent.
    â€˜Let him go on with it.’
    â€˜He is testing you, captain,’ warned the superintendent.
    â€˜Allow him,’ said Rankine.
    Doubtless the fellow would wrench Kale from his cell and take him along by the heels, back into the yard and deal him a few keen blows, if an officer was not present.
    Light seemed to come on Kale as a marvellous privilege in the dank space.
    â€˜It is said that if the Irishman ever cries out on the punishment block, it shall be the end of them all.’
    â€˜That is interestingly thought,’ said Rankine.
    â€˜It is their kind of superstition, expressed