THE PASSING OF JONES
by Bungarra

Jones was a friend of mine!!  In all fairness, I must state, however, that the connection was not of my own seeking. Like poverty, subpoenas, and subscription lists, it was thrust upon me. The first time I met Jones was on the Bungarra track at the tail end of a wagon loaded with tucker and swags. There were twenty men, Swampers, chasing that vehicle, one behind the other in Indian file, strung out along the beaten strip between the sandy wheel ruts where the horses walk. Jones was the last joint but one in that tail; I myself was the last joint.  The men in front had all been there before. It was no hardship for them to trudge their twenty miles in the hot sun. While every hidden stump along the road was marked by a volley of ‘Australian adjectives’ of full flavour and good body, Jones stubbed his tired toe and said merely

‘Oh dear!’ or perhaps if it was the toe with the water blister on it, ‘Goodness me!’

With the others, when their brows were wet with honest sweat and the quarts and long in sleevers of shy poo, shandygaff, snake juice, and the liquid abominations of long weeks spent in public bars, oozed through every pore, Jones’s shed tea and lemonade only. He called it ‘perspiration’, the word ‘sweat’ being distinctly ‘vulgar’ except when applied biblically, which didn’t count.

At night, when tea was over and the empty tins slung to one side. The teamster had finished currying his horses and had joined the circle round the campfire, swapping lies about impossible nuggets, and conjuring up memories of old mates mutually known to one another. Jones would crawl away quietly by himself, and drawing out a pocket book, would open and read by the flickering light the cherished letters and the good advice a young man always gets when

he starts down the thorny path of life for himself — and never follows.

Then he said his prayers and turned in with a sigh, while the other fellows sought in their swags for the flask concealed to taper off on, and furtively took a good pull at it before cursing the blamed pebbles and sticks under the blankets they slept on.

Three days had passed, and we had not spoken. Jones had eyed me often and wished we had had an introduction before starting, but on the fourth morning out he came over to me while the billies were boiling for breakfast and said with some show of hesitation, ‘Er—excuse me—er—have you got any pomatum (perfumed unguent for the hair or scalp), you could lend me ?’ ‘No’ I replied, thinking he wanted to lubricate his blistered feet, the teamster has some axle grease he might lend you.’ ‘ Thank you,’ Jones remarked sadly, it would hardly do. You see, it is Sunday morning, and I always do my hair on Sunday.’ Then he added, ‘I see the teamster fetching his horses,

‘surely they don’t travel on Sunday. I thought we would camp and hold a service.’

Now there was in the crowd a parchment-faced, beetle-browed fossicker, known colloquially as ‘Paddy the Preacher,’ from the fact that in one of the intervals that ensued after he had got out of jail and before he had got in again, he had joined ‘The Salvation Army’ and thumped a drum, the extent of his musical capacity, for a week or two till the fumes of his last debauch had evaporated and his intelligence had supervened enough to tell him there was ‘nothing in it.’ So he left the Army and cast about him for another occupation. He decided to try the Civil Service and get into the post office. But they caught him — he was ‘getting into’ that Department through the window — and he was convicted. Paddy had seen better days; he had once essayed to start in business for himself, and he had opened a store with a crowbar and a jimmy—but the public had not responded, while the police had. Now he was about to try his luck at the new diggings.

‘Honesty is the best policy he would often say, adding sagely, ‘I know, because I’ve tried both.’

Just at this moment, Paddy was wrapping his long linen Prince Alberts around what he called ‘his hoofs,’ and I referred Jones to him as an authority on religious subjects. When I looked up again from rolling up my swag, I perceived quite a little crowd around the pair of them. Paddy was explaining, ‘Blamed if he ain’t right, boys. Let’s camp for a day and ave a blanky service. Come on, Pete, you’re ‘orses want a spell, turn ’em out again.’

Pete was willing, and so were the boys generally, so we sat on our swags and had a friendly chat over details. Ideas on the conduct of Sunday services seemed vague and somewhat involved. Suggestions came in thick and fast, notwithstanding, from the conclave of swags. “I vote that Jim Maloney and Long Mick be umpires and Mr Jones acts as referee,” suggested Flash Joe, a third-rate Sydney pugilist of shady antecedents. ‘This ain’t no sparring match”, corrected the man on the striped bluey, this is a gate money affair, we’ve got to appoint a treasurer.’

A pained expression crept over Jones’s face, and he stood up and said, ‘Gentlemen, I don’t quite catch the drift of your remarks. I think you must belong to a different denomination from me. Perhaps Mr.—er—Mr.—er—Paddy the Preacher would explain how we can conduct the—er—service.’ Paddy jumped up off his swag and marched into the middle of the ring. The old Army instinct was upon him. He threw his cap down on the ground, spat on his hands, loosened the red kerchief off his throat, and waved it aloft. Then he began:—

Never mind denominations, as he calls it, boys. ‘I ain’t got any denomination myself. My father was an Episco-blanky-palian, and my mother was a Presb-blanky-terian, and I was brought up by the ‘air of my ed as a Cala-blanky-thumpian myself, but I wouldn’t ‘ave none of ’em, not I. I was a lost sheep, a regular goat, and slid along the pathway of sin like a long sleever of shypoo down a thirsty maw’s throat on a hot day. Yes, my friends, I’ve had sin for breakfast, sin for dinner and more sin for tea, till I was chock-a-block up to the neck with sin and couldn’t hold no more. My back teeth were under, and the sin was running out o’ my ears. Like a drowning man, I sniffed the battle from afar and plunged into the ocean of wickedness, but it’s a long worm that has no turn-‘