Sugar Town

by Robert Nicholls

  A single soft voice finally ventured, “Jee-zuz!” and Snowy nodded, wiping away a tear. And that set off an avalanche of cheery noise.

  Christ, what a whopper!

  That’s a cracker, Snow!

  Shit a brick, mate! Whadja feed that bastard?

  Bloody fantastic!

  Miss Universe o’ pumpkins, Snow! Jennifer bloody Hawkins!

  Give us a touch of that mongrel! She can’t be real!

  * * *

  Touching The Grand Gourd is another big Sugar Tonian tradition – kind of a home-grown good-luck thing, like stroking a rabbit’s foot. People even put messages and questions on them when they’re on display at the Showground! Someplace in Tibet they write prayers on papers then float them away on burning kites; in Sugar Town, we stick ‘em on our Grand Gourd! Not that anyone expects a reply, of course. If you asked anyone what happens to those notes, they’d shrug you an answer: they dissolve in the rain, fade to nothing in the sun. Who knows? Who cares?

  I expect that’s actually what happens to most of them. But I also expect that some survive the long weekend and that those survivors are disposed of discretely by my very good friend, Kevin Truck who, when the Gourd returns to being just a pumpkin, hauls it away, to salvage what he wants for use in the Harmony Bell Bakery. Maybe he cooks them up in his scones, like fortunes in cookies! I’ve given him the nudge-wink and offered to help chop it up, just to get a squiz at what’s left. But he says, even if anything was still readable, he wouldn’t. He says the whole procedure is meant to move people’s issues from the inside to the outside – not to replant them in someone else’s imagination.

  I was disappointed about that, but not enough to stifle the pleasure of mocking.

  “Fancy being so frustrated, or guilt-ridden, you have to whisper your secrets to a pumpkin!”

  “It’s not a pumpkin, Ruthie! It’s a Grand Gourd! Everyone needs a Grand Gourd sometimes; just to keep their lives in perspective!”

  “Not me! My life’s in great perspective, thank you very much!”

  “If you think it is, it probably ain’t.”

  “Ho! You’re pulling my chain, Kev’! ‘Cause I reckon, next to me, you’re about the most together person I know! And if there’s two of us, logic dictates there must be others, don’t you think?”

  He waggled his eyebrows knowingly. “Be nice if you were right, Ru’! But if you are, I guarantee it’s going to be only folks who keep their noses out of other people’s business. Only way to avoid the rot! Which is why, as far as we two excellent people are concerned, all the Gourd notes blow away on the wind!”

  * * *

  Nobody knows how much of what Kev’ says even he takes seriously! But there was really no argument about the depth of the Grand Gourd’s importance to Sugar Town. Even before Snowy lifted that tarp, the crowd had been positively light-headed – like we were a band of allies approaching the end of a great quest. Bodies bumping and feet shuffling. Sifting the hundred or so of us, none of us strangers to one another, into a back-to-belly bond.

  And when the solid green and cream bulk of that Gourd emerged, well . . . a dozing bunyip wouldn’t have been much more fantastic! That’s how amazingly unconditionally ‘other’ that Gourd was! Like you could easily imagine a huge, slow, alien consciousness lurking inside it! Demanding stillness. Then praise. And finally prodding us into a sort of tidal, surging motion which, because we were locked so closely together, had us rocking in weird, unconscious unison, like a huge self-soothing monster. Despite my impulse to mock and Bridie’s to mis-trust, even we were in it and a little bit part of it, without ever giving our consent to it.

  * * *

  I almost said everyone was in it there but, of course, the one usual culprit, Asael, was not. As’ is a great participant from the other side of a keyhole, but he’s far too personally obsessed to yield to anything else – even on an unconscious level. Consequently, all that communal awe just meant loss of breathing space to him. In response to which, he began to shrink into a smaller and smaller ball, until he was finally nothing but a whimper, squeaking out from between Bridie and me.

  That was exactly the hint Bridie needed. She hooked his pathetic little arms around her from the rear and, pinching my shirt to make sure I was with them, she turned to face the crowd.

  Escape was never going to be easy, of course. Not in the long run; not in the short run. In the long run because their tightly-packed closeness meant dozens of people had to yield just a little bit more. In the short run because the first people we hit were Darryl and Dale Sutton, Snowy’s two big bull-necked, Grand Gourd discovering sons, who wouldn’t give space to a quadruple amputee, let alone to Bridie!

  Darryl, being the older brother and out of school, I knew then, only by the common consensus, which was that he was stupid as a stick. Dale, slightly the quieter of the two, was still at school, three years ahead of me, making him almost seventeen. Big muscle-head; swoon material for girls with super-simple tastes – much too self-important and ‘mature’ to move aside for my family! I heard Bridie’s murmured excuse-me’s and Darryl’s honking laughter and I knew we were in trouble. Still, following Kev’s very wise recommendation, I put my head down. With every intention of avoiding the rot.

  Bridie, of course, with Asael snuffling against her back, felt compelled to speak Darryl’s name, asking him personally, pointedly, to please let us by. He made a loud, ‘Go for it’ response and I peeped around her in time to see him puff himself up, making it necessary for her to scrape her gorgeous curves against him. I’d’ve put a finger in his face and a few choice opinions in his ear if it’d been me, but Bridie – avoiding the rot was second nature to her – with Asael’s volume rising behind her, twisted herself into the too-small corridor he offered.

  In the sudden space, I could clearly see the lust gleaming in Darryl’s eyes and the paw that he edged out, to wipe across her breast. And that was totally the end of my communal awe. I thought, ‘No frickin’ way, you dumbass!’ and I pressed Asael in the back, adding what little impetus I could to Bridie’s momentum. And in the resulting half-a-person’s width that opened up between him and me, I stopped. I stopped and waited for Darryl’s squinty little eyes to fall off her and turn to me. I was working on instinct, but I just knew I was going to catch his eyes with a winning smile and crush his dreams with a knee to the groin. He was big, but my legs were long, my knees were bony and I reckoned, if I took him unawares, I could drop him like a lead weight!

  Not the smartest plan, I suppose, but Sutton-stupidity still managed to save him. Because even as I saw him turning – even as I bared my teeth at him – smooth as juice, he spun his big arms out and snatched Asa’ into the air.

  “Come on, young McFarlane!” he roared, bouncing him like a stuffed toy. “Let’s see how ye measure up!”

  * * *

  Guys like Darryl always have so much to prove – big man, no fear, do-what-I-want! Yada yada. And guys like As’ seem always to pay the price! The price this time began with being tossed up onto the Ute, into the big hairy hands of Snowy Sutton to share an instant of silent, mutual confusion! Big old farmer – twice terrified kid! At the end of which, both Darryl and Dale dropped down beside them, having scuttled like a pair of apes up over the Ute’s cab. So no satisfying knee to the groin; only a glancing view of my puny little brother, imprisoned behind a meaty wall of Suttons.

  Anyone who’s encountered their own Darryls or Dales knows the sensible thing to do when they corner you. You play dead. Or play the clown! Play anything, so long as it isn’t their victim! But a roar of applause went up from that carnival-ready crowd and Asael, possibly thinking that the Armageddon he was always watching for had finally come, freaked! His whingey moan had been pinched off when Darryl snatched him, but now a real wail came out of him – ‘Bridie-e-e-e!’ His arms began to flap and his legs to churn. Through cracks in the Sutton wall, we could see him, doing his feeble best to batter his way out.

  Fear, of course
, when fools are at work, is like nuts to monkeys. One unthinkable thing leads to another and I watched helplessly as all three Suttons, probably for no better reason than to keep Asa’ from hurting himself, grabbed hold of him – arms, legs, the waist band of his shorts. Asael’s howl rose in volume, threading its way out over the crowd which, in turn, increased its own volume; one sound competing with the other! Even Bridie and I joined in, me shouting at Asa’ to be still – not to fight them – and Bridie shouting at the Suttons to let him go. Nothing could stop it, though. Even as we shouted, the scenario evolved, the Sutton grip turning into a lift, the lift into a swing and the swing into a plopping of Asa’ on his bum on top of The Grand Gourd!

  The Suttons, of course, if challenged, would’ve said, what’s your problem? Bit of a laugh, that’s all! Liven things up! And certainly the sight of Asael, perched like a horribly terrified, bespectacled little gnome-king on our own Grand Gourd, did that!

  Ha ha, what a lark!

  Looka bloody that!

  Ha ha! Take a bow, young Macca! Take a bow!

  With only the occasional: Ya scarin’ the poor little bugger, ya mugs!

  And the Suttons jiggled about crazily, like the over-sized knob-heads that they were. Darryl especially. His grey little eyes jabbing fiercely down at Bridie. Clearly wishing it was her he’d been able to man-handle across the Ute’s deck.

  I remember thinking, ‘Only an idiot would get within arm’s reach of you, you maniac!’ Only to look around and see Bridie, scrabbling for purchase on the Ute, her chin trembling, her long legs bared and her bum folded out toward the crowd!

  She looked like a referee who’s blown her whistle only to have the players offer to jam it down her neck! The look alone should have been enough to tell them they’d well and truly stepped over a line. But some people can’t imagine more not being better, and the ‘more’ that day was to lean their great, round, sunburned faces right in close to Asa’s, (which would’ve terrified the crap out of anybody, let alone an already verge-of-hysteria kid!) and to grunt the whole works – Gourd and boy together – up into the air.

  Now up to that point, I’d been mostly cringing with embarrassment for As’ and Bridie and, most of all, for me. But when three men – I don’t care how big they are – on the rocking, crowded tray of a Ute, decide to lift two hundred and sixty-two kilos of pumpkin, plus thirty-some kilos of hysterical boy, with nothing to hold onto but a slippery curve of polished skin and their steroidal stupidity, that’s a cringe of a different sort! Like what fool can’t see the catastrophe lurking there? So, while the rest of the crowd hooted with surprised amazement, my embarrassment flapjacked into pure mad. So much so that I yanked Bridie aside and went for those handholds myself!

  And that was the instant, between one step and the next – between looking down and stretching up – that something reached out of the air and snagged a hook into Asa’s fear.

  In a finger-snap, he stopped thrashing! His eyes relaxed and his grimace melted away. His hands drifted to rest in his lap and his lips settled into a firm, almost disdainful little line. He sat up. He looked around with this great, Is that all you’ve got? look on his face. It was an Asael that no one in the crowd had ever seen before and, a bit like the Gourd itself, he summoned a blanket of silence, casting it across the whole yard.

  It was entirely excellent, if I do say so! Even I stopped, half-way aboard. This was the Asael who, some in the town would soon believe, was capable of communing with the dead! But at the moment, for me, it was the Asael who’d reduced his tormenters to the status of left-over props; trembling under the massive weight of the Grand Gourd, their demented squirrel grins slipping away. And when he twisted to look calmly into each of their sweating faces – serious as a gun – their eyes took on that bewildered look that cattle get when they find themselves in the race that leads to the abattoir.

  A faint hiss escaped from him and his arm floated up over the crowd, with an accusing finger that roved amongst them, targeting individual faces; pausing, lingering, going back, moving on. It was weird enough that people began dropping their eyes and ducking their heads. A couple of throats cleared but between those sounds, the silence was so pure you could’ve heard a gnat’s scratch! And I found myself floating a little inside, wondering how the crazed little obsessive who hid from his dreams in my bed in the middle of so many nights could produce such a seriously spooky aura! Such totally ingenious thinking! That’s my bro’, I thought! For once, totally cool!

  And then I realised. He hadn’t produced it at all! The epilepsy had! The epilepsy thing was so new at that stage that, really, only Bridie and I and Doc’ Dabney knew about it. Even Asael hadn’t fully taken it in yet – couldn’t be sure – didn’t much care what was real and what was hallucination. And since Asael lying about taking his medication was one more possibility that Bridie seemed intent on being blind to, I was probably the only one in the crowd who guessed he was having a seizure.

  Strangely though, even with that – even knowing he was hallucinating – I couldn’t help stretching, like everyone else, to see what faces that accusative finger was picking out. From my perch, half-way onto the Ute, I could see what he was seeing. But I no sooner began to look than his pointer began to wander; away from faces, way out past the crowd, past the assembled vehicles and beyond the paperbarks at the park’s edge. The furthermost discernible line that you could see was the line where the green of a distant cane paddock feathered up against the hazy blue of surrounding hills. That’s where Asael’s finger finally stopped. Toward the mouth of the river. And there was nothing to see there. Not for the rest of us, at any rate!

  And then, almost the last thing – second last, really – his lips moved. And a faint little stream of words came out. And I swear there would have been people in the crowd – people he’d pointed at maybe – whose bladders also let a little out! The silence stretched like a balloon blown way, way, way beyond its capacity. And then a small voice in the crowd popped it.

  “What’d he say?” it whispered, a question everyone knew was directed at the Suttons, whose neck cords had begun to distend with the effort of holding a load they seemed unable to put down. Their usual vacant glances. Then Snowy grunted out, “Sump’m ‘bout ‘the place’! Sump’m about whose fault is it!”

  And for me, that was the context – the clincher. Everything became as clear as bells! As’ was pointing down the river toward the mangroves; ‘the place’ where Rita died! No one figured as highly in Asael’s delusions as Rita did. And the ‘fault’ thing was one of the conversations he most frequently had with her! (Which shows, I guess, how deeply he shared Bridie’s psychotic sense of guilt!)

  The question and answer cemented everything in place for me but it released the crowd, allowing a little sort of ‘Hooley-dooly!’ hum to rumble from throat to throat.

  “What’s he mean?” someone nearby demanded. “What place? What’s he talking about?”

  “You’re the one he pointed at, mate! You tell us!”

  “Me? He did not! ‘At was him behind me he was pointin’ at!”

  “Yeah, so you say! So what’s ‘at about someone’s fault, eh? What’s ‘at about?”

  “How should I know? Was it even us he was talkin’ to, d‘ye think?”

  “No one else here, is there? Lookit him! The kid’s makin’ the hairs on me neck stand up!”

  “Someone’s ‘fault’! Man! On’y thing I can think of is . . . !”

  “Don’t!”

  I’d looked around for the speakers and found them, just as the last one cast a warning glance in Bridie’s and my direction.

  When I looked back, the Suttons had finally managed to ground The Gourd and were skooching back from it as far as the Ute’s tray allowed. Snowy reached each of his sons a tap on the back of the dome and grizzled, ‘Now look what you’ve done, you pair o’ knot-heads!’

  I suppose there was a vague chance that I might have just said to everyone, ‘It’s okay; it’s a seizur
e’. But I didn’t care to, and I know now the re-awakening of the quarrel between Sugar Town and my family had begun somewhere in those last minutes, with the snatching of my brother and the suggestion of a reason for guilt in the crowd. It wasn’t and wouldn’t be enough to be part of them. Not until someone could explain to me that ancient quarrel and why all the adults in my family were dead or gone or mentally crippled. Until then I and Asael at least, because he was with me, would not be part of them again.

  While I was thinking this, a mumble of speculation was shooting through the crowd, all the way to the outer edge and back again, like a Mexican wave, and when I looked to see why, the last, odd and totally inexplicable happening had set itself in motion. A sprinkle of green was floating down in a narrow, luminous column, onto Asa’s shoulders. The Suttons looked up; I looked up; we all looked up. Above us, in the whole, still vastness of the Poinciana tree, a single little branch was trembling so hard that handfuls of its tiny leaves were losing their grip. Just as Asael had! Maybe just as all we McFarlanes had at one time or another.

  I looked back into the crowd and maybe it was my imagination, but spaces seemed suddenly to have opened up. That sense of their having been singled out for wonders, of being somehow especially deserving, was not there any more. In less than a week, in fact, Sugar Town would have its Night of Mayhem, a vigilante camp would be established in the Showground, Asael would no longer be my brother and Bridie’s memory would be healed in the most awful of ways. Also, for better or worse, the ghosts and shadows that clustered around me and my family would be gone.

  * * *

  In the meantime, however, things had to proceed by the thousand little steps that everything takes. First up, Asael still sat, gazing serenely into his hallucination. So far, we’d seen seizures lasting anywhere from five seconds to five minutes and this one was shaping up to be a long one. Someone had to fetch him. Bridie pushed at me gently and I went the rest of the way onto the Ute; more resentful than relieved; feeling conspicuous beyond belief; not sure how I was going to move him; wishing I could will us to ‘out there’, on the horizon where he was looking, instead of being the uncomfortable centre of attention in the marshalling yard.