Sugar Town

by Robert Nicholls

  So it what followed, though it was an extension of Sutton boof-headedness, was partly my fault. I should have taken a breath. I should have focussed on avoiding the rot. Instead, I was focussed on the sudden isolation that I felt. You see? You can’t lose concentration. Especially when there are people around who haven’t had their turn at being a craphead. Snowy was finished; he’d taken to mumbling to people in the crowd. And Darryl was finished, reduced to licking his fat old wet lips in Bridie’s direction. They paid me no mind. But Dale, following some spark of unreason in his dark little recesses, as I edged past him, grabbed onto me like Squid-man and aimed a slathery old square-toothed kiss at my face!

  I think now, it was kind of kindly intended, if you know what I mean. But seriously! Do any real cranial procedures at all go on in a male’s head? Like anything short of an outright, public apology can make up for being a random loser who tosses around members of someone’s family? My mental reaction then was: You big repugnant dozer! On a warm Spring day with the air full of ice cream butterflies, I’d still have to be unconscious before someone like you could get away with touching me!

  My physical reaction was to pound my little fist square onto his big flat nose. It was a lucky punch, I admit; a sucker punch. And if it’d caught him anywhere else he’d’ve laughed it off, him being the size of a small elephant and all. But the connection was good and solid enough to bring tears to his eyes. Which, when I saw them, made me smirk right out loud, fair in his face. Which he responded to by slamming his palms into my shoulders, knocking me arse over teakettle off the tray of the Ute.

  Now, a person can be seriously damaged, toppling off the tray of a Ute! Break some bone that only Asa’ or Doc’ Dabney’d know the name of! Fortunately for me, though, in retrospect at least, I had the luxury of one particular pair of arms that reached out to catch me.

  Gratitude, though, I’m ashamed to say, didn’t immediately occur to me. Astonishment did! Followed instantly by madder-than-Hell! I don’t know who in my family the ‘berserker gene’ comes from – maybe Grandma Gracie – but I seem to have it in spades. I lashed out with everything I had – feet and arms flailing in every which direction. Just as Asa’s had done a few minutes earlier, only much more so. I’d like to say that every strike was aimed at big gorpy-face Dale Sutton, still up on the Ute, looking down on me. But I suspect he was just one in a whole row of mostly innocent people! My parents, my sister, my brother! Even the unknown person who was holding me! Even myself! Why not just break something and be done with it?

  But give them their due, those arms hung on for the half minute or so it took for the red to begin to clear from my head. Then I saw that Bridie was there, trying to catch my arms, and Asa’ was hopping from foot to foot on the tray of the Ute, beside Dale, who was looking shame-faced and teary, clutching his nose.

  So I took control. Willing myself to be calm. Willing myself to breathe. Inhale – exhale. Let it flow away. Background sounds started filtering through.

  The parade marshal signalling the need to get on: “Wrap it up, Snowy! Time to get that bloody pumpkin out in the street! C’mon everybody! Chop chop!”

  Snowy, ripping strips off Dale – not for knocking me for a loop, but for distracting attention from The Grand Gourd!

  Someone behind me, saying my name in my ear. I twisted to see – Johnathon Cranna!

  He put my feet carefully on the ground, as if I was a pistol with a hair-trigger, which I guess I was, and I stood there in front of him, shuddering with barely suppressed teenaged stupidity. On any other day, I’d surely have gone back for another shot at Dale on my own behalf. But Bridie and Asa’ were both clearly distraught! And Johnathon Cranna was there, saying nothing; nothing with his voice and something inscrutable with his gorgeous, knowing eyes.

  As I’ve said, Johnathon wasn’t someone I’d ever had a conversation with. But his reputation alone made him pretty imposing and helpless, stupid, childish anger was not what I wanted him to see in me. So I decided that, for the moment, Dale would have to keep! Time favours the patient.

  I pulled in that healing breath.

  “Thank you, Mister Cranna. Sorry if I hurt you.”

  He shook his head slightly and continued a long, thoughtful look at me – like he was searching for a familiar freckle. I wasn’t sure what effect he was hoping for, but if he was waiting for me to go all weepy or little-girlish, his luck was just as bad as everyone else’s. This was not the day and I was never that girl.

  Bridie, by this time, had switched her fussing to Asa’ who’d been reduced again to snivelling, so it was kind of a very private moment between Johnathon and me. Another deep breath. I ran the fingers of both hands through my hair, tossing it back off my face in my best ‘I’m not to be messed with’ sort of a gesture, which I only wish would come off as well in real life as it does in the movies. Then I forced myself to meet his eyes. Which, I was gratified to see, widened a little in surprise.

  “I’m all right,” I said, as flatly as I could, probably as much for my benefit as for his. “Really! I’m fine.”

  “Yes,” he said and, after a long pause added. “I can see that you are!”

  Not many words but they came with the start of a really beautiful smile. I glanced around. Dale Sutton was leaning against the Ute, sniffling through his damaged nose and staring grimly at us, like the big gormless idiot that he was. I flicked my hair and turned back to Johnathon, giving him what I thought was a look that Bridie might have used to slay men if she’d had any interest in them at all.

  “You can see that I’m what?”

  He put his hands in his pockets and leaned a fraction toward me.

  “That you’re a person to be reckoned with, Ruthie McFarlane! Obviously!”

  So! That was the whole of the first conversation I ever had with Johnathon Cranna. And I was someone to be reckoned with! Not the scrawny thirteen-year-old girl who lived in my mirror, but someone to be reckoned with! I would have liked to be conversationally reckoned with a bit more by him but the moment was stifled when Asael, who’d heard more than I realised, whined in his quiet little half defensive way, “Don’t call her Ruthie. Call her Genuflecta!”

  Then he ducked back behind Bridie’s skirts and, “I’m just saying!” he squeaked.

  And immediately following that, Snowy jumped down from the Ute and killed the moment dead.

  “So! Y’all right, girl?”

  He put his big paw under my chin to force my head up. If I’d been a dog, I expect he would have yanked my ears.

  “She’s fine,” Bridie said breathlessly. “Sorry Snowy! Sorry! I don’t know what got into her! How about Dale? Is he . . . ?”

  “Yeah, yeah! Bloody big boof-head! Got nothin’ but girls on his mind, that’s ‘is problem! Tol’ ‘im to leave the kids alone, eh! Pick someone his own age, know what I mean?” And he turned to bellow it again over his shoulder: “She’s a kid, ye bloody boof-head!”

  When I looked back to Johnathon, his eyes had skittered over and parked themselves on Bridie. The two of them nodded briefly at one another, like wary old acquaintances (though I doubted she’d ever said even as much to him as I had just said).

  Johnathon made the smallest mock bow. “The Reverend’s daughters!” he said. “Always a pleasure.” And he turned away, into the rapidly thinning crowd.

  I watched him go. We all watched him go. I fully expected him to glance back – at least at Bridie. Almost everyone has a second look at Bridie. But he didn’t. Not even when Snowy called out, “Hey Johnno! Good luck with the drop, mate! Watch out for them fallin’ comets!”

  Johnathon raised an open hand, even as he melted into the crowd which was, itself, melting into a couple of dozen small, busy groups. The irony of things: before noon, he’d be unconscious in my arms.

  For the moment, though, no sooner was he out of range than Snowy turned a snarling face on me.

  “And by the bye,” he growled. “Ye got off lightly this time, girl! Might
not be no Johnathon Cranna aroun’ t’save yer bacon next time ye decide to tease them boys, know what I mean?” He thrust his chin and a finger in my direction. “Don’ say you wasn’t warned!”

  And muttering swear words under his breath, he stomped away. At the front of the Ute, Dale and Darryl were shaking out a banner which said, “Grand Gourd 2008”. And in small print below, “God bless Sugar Town.” I swallowed hard and looked back to the spot Johnathon had filled. ‘The good, the bad and the ugly,’ I thought. What else is there?

  * * *

  I spent the next fifteen minutes sitting under a tree, totting up the various weirdnesses that a day can bring. Apparently on some days a space thing can fall out of the sky, a lost letter can be found, your brother can be terrorised, you can have your first kiss, (and it can be a slobbery public embarrassment!) and you can get in a hopeless fight that somehow turns out to be your fault! All before lunch! Oh, and you can be publically humiliated in front of the town’s first citizen! Surely there couldn’t be more?

  Ordinarily I might have tried to talk some of it through with Bridie, but she, of course, had her own stresses to deal with. Once she was certain As’ hadn’t been permanently scarred by the Gourd ordeal, she’d become completely engrossed in pacing up and down and straightening her dress at every second step. I even considered having a word with Asael, just to take my mind off things. I would have liked to know, for instance, what a hallucination felt like. But, aside from the fact that talking to him was an act of desperation in itself, he was as distracted as Bridie – snivelling on about the Suttons and the unfairness of how they’d treated him.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Ruthie! They made me go up there, didn’t they? They shouldn’t’ve, should they?”

  “No they shouldn’t, Asael! But they did! Now let’s just drop it, okay?”

  “Okay. But Ruthie?”

  “And don’t call me Ruthie. Call me . . . Perplexia.”

  “Okay.” He was quiet for a bit, then, “Perplexia?”

  “What?”

  “I tried not to be frightened. Like you said – like my name means. But I wasn’t as brave as you. I have to work on that, don’t I? And Perplexia?”

  “What?”

  “I’m okay for the motorcycle!”

  He was a sweet kid, in some ways. Probably I should have made more fuss about the seizure. But sweet or not, I didn’t want to have to take his place in the parade. And I didn’t want to miss out on my private time with Kevin either. Happily, I didn’t have to worry about it for long because, at that very moment, Kevin’s lightly decorated old rattler of a Triumph, sidecar attached, came choofing into the park.

  “Am I late?” he shouted as the engine spluttered into silence.

  And even as he spoke, the parade marshal began to bellow: “Five minutes, people! Let’s get them girls in place!”

  Chaos renewed itself instantly, sparking us all out of thought and into action.

  * * *

  The ‘girls’ were the Harvest Festival Queen entrants, all identifiable by the sponsors’ banners they wore across their chests – Miss Prince of Wales; Miss Combined Sugar Mills Association; Miss Tepperman’s Hardware Services; Miss Jeppeson’s Accountants (Honest to the Last Dollar). Bridie’s banner, which was as old as her parade dress, said ‘Miss Freedom House Ministries’ – the same as the sign Kevin had rigged up on the Triumph.

  No offence to Kevin but, as a float, the Triumph was never going to be a winner. While the other girls would be perched up high, on the bonnets of antique cars, on the backs of trucks, on hay bales, in crepe and balloon castles – elevated for maximum, eye-catching exposure – Bridie was going to be tucked down, almost out of sight, in a motorcycle’s sidecar. Why? Two reasons!

  One was that she didn’t really care to be seen as a serious contender for the title, the other girls all being sixteen and seventeen – perkiness personified – while she was an ancient twenty-four year old. But more importantly, for the first time, she’d been unable to gain support for a proper, independent float. Every year since he’d left, Bridie’d had a float to help raise money and awareness for the Rev’s New Guinea ministry. But that year, for the first time, nobody’d had any ‘appropriate’ vehicle to spare. Maybe quite genuinely, for all I knew! But Kev’s motorbike was her last option.

  * * *

  Watching her fold her long legs into that cramped little sidecar was painful. I had to look away. I couldn’t see why she didn’t just drive the bike herself; sit up tall and rev’ the bejabbers out of it all the way up Main Street! At least people who didn’t care about the ministry would be reminded again of what a humongously beautiful woman she was! Maybe they’d cough up some dollars on that account!

  I couldn’t comment though. She’d tried to draft me into doing the driving and I’d flat out refused. The bike had sorely tempted me but there was no thrill in the world, no cause in the world that could overcome my refusal to be put out there on display. Asa’d tried refusing too but, though he might know the proper names of all the bones, the concept of ‘backbone’ escaped him entirely. Especially when it came to standing up to Bridie. So he and Kevin had tootled up and down the driveway a hundred times and he had memorised what he needed to know: start, first gear and stop.

  The two of them were going through it one last time while she inched herself lower and lower into the sidecar and I looked away, thinking how sad and pathetic it was. The banner that Kevin had rigged up over Asael’s head read:

  FREEDOM HOUSE MINISTRIES’

  ‘Rev’ Jacob McFarlane, Working for Christ in PNG’.

  ‘Working for Christ.’ It was an old sign and I still blame it for my picture of Christ, in a hardhat and sweaty tee-shirt. The logo on the shirt says: ‘Bloody hell, McFarlane! How’re ya gonna get the job done if you’re off nancying about in the jungle?’ (The ‘job’ being looking out for us kids!)

  Hardly a flattering take on my father or on Christ but, as I’d said to Bridie, get one of them to come and set me right, why don’t you! We’d argued the whole ‘why isn’t he here?’ thing through so many times that it just didn’t matter any more.

  “He is what God’s made him,” she would say primly, “and does what God requires. Shall the clay say to him that fashions it, what makest thou? No, of course not!”

  She had stock answers like that for most things. Another one was that the Reverend would be with us if he was needed, but he wasn’t needed because she was plenty capable enough to care for the three of us. (Probably true at twenty-four, but she was sixteen when he left! Did she acknowledge that? Hardly! Or that she was only eighteen when Bessie left? Not likely! And that, from then on, she was officially, totally responsible for a family that wasn’t of her making? I don’t think so!)

  Another favourite fall-back was that, whatever the cost to her or to As’ and me, the cost to the Reverend must have been so much greater.

  “To lose part of his family to evil (Gramma Gracie’s murder and Rita’s suicide) and the rest (her, me and Asael) through the call of God! How could anyone presume to criticise?”

  See? I knew her answers as well as she did; so well I could, and often did, fight with her even when she wasn’t around! That’s because I’ve got a ferocious memory which various smart-arse people have told me fits my temperament exactly. For example, I can quote you this entire letter; partly, of course, because it lived on the fridge door for years, so it was in my face every time I reached for an apple. But more so because I, even if Bridie didn’t, recognised it as the sly one that set up his expectations for Bridie.

  My dearest Children,

  I begin this letter as a project of faith, knowing that it will, in time, reach you. But when or how, I cannot say. The reason is that I have, at long last, found the courage to leave the general mission at Daru and to direct myself into a more acute and personal ministry. I know you will be happy for me when I tell you that I am now resident amongst, and ministering to, a tribal people deep in the mount
ains of the Western Province. In the atlas, run your finger up the Fly River and beyond, into the fathomless reaches of the Victor Emanuel Range. There am I.

  The people in my valley – my people – the Gebusi, they are called – have only the barest interest in western civilisation. That is to say that white people do occasionally pass through – prospecting, surveying, seeking particular stands of timber – even just adventuring. And members of the tribe do, in turn, sometimes travel down the river to Kiunga, where the barge stops. But it can only be done by dugout canoe and on foot so is an arduous task. (As any path worth travelling is bound to be!) I can only promise you that, though the remoteness of these valleys is great, so too is the need of their inhabitants for salvation.

  I have arranged for your letters and care packages to be forwarded to Wasua and, from there, placed on one of the barges carrying goods to Kiunga. There they will be held until such time as either native or foreign travellers pass through in this direction. I am confident that nothing will linger there for overly long. For my own part, I intend to make my letters of a continuous nature – writing as and when I can until opportunities arise for me to put them into motion in your direction. I am determined to be as thorough and detailed as possible – especially as I know you put them to good use in your fund-raising efforts for the ministry.

  All rife with self-sacrifice and grand ambitions in Bridie’s eyes but, to me, there were two key phrases: ‘care packages’ and ‘fund-raising efforts’. About as subtle as a jab with a Gebusi arrow. But they worked on her. They were why she put herself on display in the parade every year – to prod Sugar Tonians into remembering him generously, as she insisted she did and as I utterly refused to do.

  * * *

  “Sure you’re all right, Ruthie?” Bridie asked me, as she settled into the sidecar. And to Kevin she added, “She got in a fight with Dale Sutton!”