Sugar Town

by Robert Nicholls

  It was Asael’s sudden straightening up and taking an interest that made me look beyond, to the parking lot. Amalthea Byerson! Amalthea the ‘outsider’! Outsiders never become ‘insiders’ in Sugar Town, but usually a few months of residency at least teaches us how to ‘read’ them. Not so with Amalthea! She was about the same age as Bridie but everything else about her was well off the local scale of familiarity. Her long, chemical-carrot coloured hair; her funky Saint Vinnie’s dress sense; her blatantly sexy, round richness; and most challenging of all, her casual way of spouting peculiar opinions that made people suspect she might be taking the piss.

  Add to all that, her lack of history. Where had she come from? Why was she here? What was with her living out on the fringes, in that run-down rental of Alf Caletti’s? And the goats! (One of which, Garlic, was blind and therefore, according to common wisdom, completely useless!) What was with them?

  In short, she fitted in the way you might expect a phoenix to fit into a pigeon coop; which is to say that she was allowed to be there amongst us, but the pigeons were eternally wary of, and completely mystified by her.

  Despite all that, though, in my book Amalthea had two indisputable things going for her. One was her refusal to make concessions . . . to anyone. She just was! Like it or lump it. And the other was that Kevin Truck had hired her to work behind the counter of The Harmony Bakery. I reckoned that, if she was good enough for Kevin, she was good enough for me! I could make a cheap comment here about the two things Asa’ liked best about Amalthea, but I know that wouldn’t be fair to either of them. Suffice to say that, as happened to many of Sugar Town’s males, coming within shouting distance of Amalthea caused Asa’s hormonal sluice gates to open wide and his power of speech to desert him.

  * * *

  From our hiding place, he and I watched her emerge from between the parked vehicles, flanked as always by Garlic and Rosemary. All three of them were wearing sunglasses. (Though why Garlic needed them, I don’t know. Maybe he was incognito!) And the goats, as always, were wearing banners draped over their backs. The words on one said: THE FORCE IS GATHERING. The words on the other said: LET IT GATHER IN YOU. What ‘the force’ might be or why anyone would want it gathering in them or how you could stop it from gathering, were more Amalthea-type mysteries that no one had yet managed to solve.

  It’s stupid, I know, but my take on it was that the whole ‘force’ thing might have had more to do with the goats’ outlook than with Amalthea’s. They had that sort of spooky independence about them! The first time I met her I asked if they made good pets. Straight away Garlic, the blind one – the ‘The Force is Gathering’ one – nudged Amalthea’s hand, waggled its ears and bleated unhappily. And Amalthea began to scold it.

  “You,” she said to it, “are very rude, Garlic! How can you be like that when Ruth has tried so hard to be pleasant and inquiring?” And to me she said, “You’ll have to ignore him, Ruth. Garlic doesn’t believe he’s a pet. In fact Garlic doesn’t believe in much of anything – or at least in anything lasting.” (Which of course straight away gave me a bit of fellow-feeling for that goat!) “He’s right, of course, in some ways. But that’s no excuse for bad manners, is it!” This last, she’d spoken slowly and from two inches in front of its nose, as though forcing the message through its nasal passages.

  Rosemary, for the little time I knew her, was very different from Garlic – though maybe dying that first time altered his personality. When I knew them, though, Rosemary was a socialite and Garlic was a curmudgeon. Rosemary was (fatefully, in the end) trusting and Garlic was everlastingly cynical. It even showed in their signs. Garlic’s THE FORCE IS GATHERING always seemed ominous to me – a warning. While Rosemary’s LET IT GATHER IN YOU was like an offering – an invitation. Up to that Harvest Festival weekend, I’d never seen either without their signs but, after the first time he died, Garlic rejected his; I suppose maybe he’d met ‘the Force’ and been unimpressed. And Rosemary’s sign, of course, simply made no sense without Garlic’s!

  * * *

  Speaking of ‘forces’ though, watching Amalthea enter a conversation with Bridie, as she did at the gate, was like watching a wild brumby approach a horse that was born broken; one loose and animated, the other stiff and reserved. Amalthea virtually danced into the conversation while Bridie locked herself in place, her arms folded across her chest. Bridie focused solely on Amalthea throughout but Amalthea was like a force of nature, sucking in an entire surrounding – the money table, the Grand Gourd, the music from Sideshow Alley . . . everything.

  I fancied that I could follow Bridie’s and Amalthea’s conversation even without being close enough to hear it. First, Amalthea would compliment Bridie on her role in the parade.

  “You were lovely in the parade! You and Asael! The motorbike was perfect! And wasn’t it all so fast? We’ve never been to a parade quite as thrilling and . . . fast as that, have we kids!” I saw her toss the question to Rosemary and Garlic, though neither goat responded, they being busy exchanging muzzle messages. A moment later, Bridie unfolded her arms and looked down, brushing at her dress self-consciously, which meant Amalthea had just offered one of those womanly ‘love-your-dress’ compliments and Bridie’d gotten embarrassed.

  Then Amalthea waved a hand in the direction of The Gourd, maybe commenting on its size or on the number of notes stuck to it, and Bridie became dismissive. She shook her head, frowned, muttered and waved the comment away.

  That was as far as the predictable bit went because then Amalthea did something totally unexpected. She crossed to The Gourd, hoisted her skirt above her knees, her knees above the edge of the plinth . . . and climbed up!

  I was so gob-smacked that I stepped out into the open, just to be sure I was seeing right! And Bridie, forced to witness it up close, raised her hands to cover her mouth, her eyes wide with shock.

  Behind me, Asael whispered, “Holy Cow!”

  If Amalthea’d shinnied up a flag pole and waved her knickers from the top, she couldn’t have startled us more! Nobody was allowed to climb on that plinth! Especially after people had started placing their notes! But there she was, right up there, bracing herself against our Gourd!

  I jumped back out of sight but had to peek again straight away. She’d begun studying it, for all the world as though she was thinking of having a copy made! She pressed her weight against the handle-sized stem at the top! She knock-knocked on the shell and put her ear against it, as though the thousands of seeds inside might whisper her a ‘Who’s there?’ She draped herself across the breadth of it, spreading her arms wide, pressing her cheek and breasts against it in a gargantuan hug!

  I had to draw back to catch my breath – to look around and see if anyone else was watching! For all I knew, there might be a stampede of outraged citizens! She might be tarred and feathered and dumped on the outskirts of town! Thankfully, though, Sideshow Alley appeared to have temporarily swallowed the entire town. I peeped again and she was still sprawled over it, her hands now tracing slow, lazy, feather-light paths over its hilly, mounded parts and down into its deep valleys. Even from a distance, her hands were princess-pale against the pumpkin’s green skin.

  “Holy Cow!” Asael repeated and I folded my hands, pleading silently for her to stop before anyone else saw her. Much as I admired her courage, it was horrible to watch – like watching someone slowly lift a drink to their lips and they don’t know but you do know and can’t tell them that it’s poison! But horrible as that was, it became even more horrible when I realised that she had, as I’d wished, stopped stroking. And instead, started to read! Casually, carelessly, one by one, she was flicking the notes up, scanning them and letting them fall back! Until, inevitably, she came to the Agnes letter.

  Now, I want to be clear about this; Bridie knew that was our letter. It was big, it was obvious and I’d made absolutely certain she saw me put it there. She had to know that it was there for her. But she said nothing to Amalthea! Instead, she looked away, down a
t her hands, watching them fumble hopelessly with one another!

  I mean, I suppose it wasn’t like it mattered hugely if Amalthea Byerson read the Agnes letter. It wasn’t like she really knew anything about us! But how hard would it have been for Bridie to simply take it back? To say, ‘They’re all private, actually! Especially this one!’? For reasons that confused even me, I was almost as embarrassed by her as I was by Amalthea.

  * * *

  Amalthea read the full letter – both pages. She parked herself on her bum on The Gourd, trawled through it line by line and, when she finished, she simply leaned over and slapped it back into its place. Several quiet moments followed, long enough to make me wonder if the Reverend’s blatant hypocrisy had somehow paralyzed her. But then she shook herself, made a couple of expansive, see-how-deeply-I’m-breathing gestures and, with all the carelessness in the world, retrieved a folded paper from between her breasts and bubble-gummed it into a cleft next to my letter. Side by side with it, like an answer! And she jumped down; apparently having achieved all she could on that particular pumpkineering expedition.

  Both goats stepped toward her – hoping for news of the world, maybe. But she flitted past them, suddenly keen again to talk to Bridie, gesturing down Sideshow Alley. Just casual courtesies, I hoped, knowing Bridie would die on the spot if she had to acknowledge that letter. But in the two or three minutes of those courtesies – while Amalthea’s attention was diverted – Garlic reared up in strangely man-like fashion, placed his front hooves on the Gourd’s plinth where she’d just been and, though blind, began moving his nose from note to note.

  “Is it smelling them?” Asael hissed at me and, “How would I know what it’s doing?” I hissed back.

  But when Garlic dropped back onto all fours a minute later, I knew exactly what he’d been doing. The Agnes letter was gone. I could hardly believe my eyes! I was half inclined to run out and grab the thing by the throat! To see if I couldn’t squeeze the paper back out of it! But I couldn’t, of course! I’d put it out there and it had met its fate! Amalthea, still unaware, laughed a good-bye to Bridie and turned away, down the sawdust path toward Sideshow Alley. Rosemary nudged the thoughtfully chewing Garlic into motion and my letter began turning into a motion of a different sort.

  I was fairly stuttering with outrage. My impulse was to march back to the table and have a piece of Bridie! Why hadn’t she taken the letter from Amalthea and hung onto it? But if I did that, I’d be letting on that I’d been hiding and watching – that I’d set a trap for her! That I was a sneak and a plotter! So what was I to do? And even worse, without the actual words to wave under her nose, how would I force her to talk to me about whatever woes the Reverend had inflicted on Rita?

  Amalthea, Rosemary and Garlic ambled away but both Bridie and I were frozen to our spots; to our moments. I watched her and she stood like a statue, watching her feet – considering her options, I supposed. And then, to my great relief, she strode across to The Grand Gourd and touched the spot where the letter had been. She looked up and down the path, under and all around the plinth. Had it blown off! Of course not; there was no wind! And I could tell that at least she knew! Something important had gotten away on her . . . again!

  I’d almost decided to move away myself before recognising the indecision that had come over her. She was folding and unfolding her arms, looking to the sky and shuffling her feet. Until – and I can only imagine the level of guilt she had to overcome – she plucked Amalthea’s note off the Gourd! She slipped it inside her dress, under a bra strap, and scuttled back to her table where she began packing up her donations. Feigning an innocence she hadn’t felt in all the years I’d known her.

  “Well well well!” I muttered in admiration. “It’s a new day for sure, Asa’! I bet you never thought you’d see anything like that, eh?”

  I said the words to him but he didn’t hear them. He’d vanished.

  * * *

  “Try yer luck, ladies an’ gents! Everyone’s a winner, no one’s a loser!”

  “Fifty bucks fer a two dollar investment, folks! If yer banker was yer brother, he still wouldn’ give ye odds like these!”

  “Bust a balloon . . . throw . . . shoot . . . see . . . reach . . . try, try, try!”

  Asael had gone wandering, alone, amongst the crowds at Harvest Festival! If anything could conceivably have been less likely than Bridie stealing a note off The Grand Gourd, it was Asael going off on his own into Sideshow Alley! What, I wondered, had come over him?

  Not that he was in any danger. It was just Sugar Town, after all, and no one was ever going to bother him! On the other hand, the crowds were loud and intense and they could be a little crazy around the beer tents and the peep shows. And if he’d already had a seizure that day . . . did that make him more susceptible? Or less?

  I knew that, as a responsible sister, I should start tracking him down straight away. But, shamefully, I didn’t. What I did was, I took it as an opportunity to go back to Bridie. She’d opened Amalthea’s note by then and spread it on the table in front of her. So deep in thought was she, that I was right behind her, looking over her shoulder, before she realised I was there.

  “Ruthie! My God, you startled me! What’s wrong? Where’s Asael?” The note disappeared under the table.

  “He’s okay. I just wondered if I left my wallet!” I slipped off my backpack and made a quick show of rummaging. “Oh no! Silly me! Here it is! Okay! See you later.”

  Secrets would be a lot more fun if you could count on them to make sense. All Amalthea’s note said was: ‘We follow. Now we follow.’ That’s what I’d been doing all day! Following clues, following impulses, following the parade and now, following Asael – hoping that at least one thing in my day would turn out to be uncomplicated.

  * * *

  When I finally did track him down, he was in the most unlikely of places, run aground in the midst of a flowing crowd, in front of the open mouthed plastic clown heads; the ones that all turn in unison, left, right, left, and you pop ping-pong balls into their mouths. Once, when he was younger, their stunned watchfulness had prompted him ask Bridie what they were looking for. She’d told him they were watching out for the King of Glory. As though He might momentarily appear from either direction, carrying a ball of cotton candy and a lightning bolt! No wonder the kid was bent!

  The clowns, not surprisingly, were still looking. But Asa’, when I first spied him, had his eyes closed, and something about his lonely isolation in that river of people nudged my curiosity enough to push me off the path into a canvas alcove. He had his hands stuck deep in his pockets which, knowing his hypochondria, made me guess he’d drifted into some kind of self-inspection; maybe checking to see if the motorbike experience had infringed on his testicular well being! A few little pushes, this way and that. In his mind, he’d be seeing diagrams of strings and connectors; stuff from his books.

  That was my first thought. My second was that maybe he was playing a game with me – waiting for me to find him; because suddenly his eyes popped open and he began searching the faces that surged around him; head swivelling like those of the plastic clowns. But I wasn’t there, of course, and he soon dropped his eyes. Frieda Hoggitt’s ten dollar note came out of his pocket and drew an approving nod from him, but almost immediately it disappeared and he fell still again. Crap, I thought! He was like a little defective computer that kept freezing and I was, like, the nominated re-booter. I had to rescue him. Again.

  I sized up the rolling wave of people, spying out a way through and when the opening came – I didn’t take it. I didn’t take it because, in my last glance, I saw that a sly, silly grin had plastered itself across his face. I looked where he was looking and there, surfing happily along in the crowd, were Amalthea, Rosemary and Garlic.

  I couldn’t believe it! Had he seriously risked his sanity and my anger just to ‘accidentally’ bump into Amalthea Byerson on Sideshow Alley? With his pathetic little ten dollar note? But then, watching her come alon
g; she was like a mermaid embedded in a school of mackeral. That electric buzz of red hair, the black eyes, the olive skin, the skipping rhythm, the funky clothes; boobs like a pair of happy teddy bears on a trampoline. And woven through the surrounding riot of noise, the throatiness of her laughter!

  And I could see! She was totally mesmerising . . . even to me! Boys like Asael – boys of any age, for that matter – would be like butter on hot corn when she was around! At least half the males in town, I suspected, would have played the goat for a chance to join Rosemary and Garlic at Amalthea’s side.

  Interestingly, though, there was another contingent in our conservative little town that saw her in a totally different light. Too much, they said. Too sexy for her own good! Too outspoken! Too outrageous! Too much of an outsider! Too single. I’d seen older women in particular tapping their noses when she walked by. I’d heard their whispers. Men stopped at Amalthea Byerson’s house, they said!

  Why would they do that?

  Don’t be naive! What for, if not for . . . ?

  Do you know anyone who’s been there?

  Well, no one personally, dear, but I did hear . . . !

  But the thing was that Amalthea floated above all that! Before meeting her, I’d actually begun to believe there must be a submissive gene that automatically kicked in at some early point in a girl’s life. Virtually every female I knew had it to some degree. Bridie had it in spades! I’d been dreading it – dreading what my gender would make me become. But even my distant view of Amalthea’s three defiant months in town had pushed my horizons well out into forbidden territory.

  One of the lesser of the recent arguments I’d had with Bridie had developed from a question I asked about Amalthea’s reputation. I’d raised it as a matter of genuine curiosity, hoping for the benefit of Bridie’s ‘grown–up’ wisdom. Unaware at the time that, not only was Bridie not really a grown up; as far as normal people went, she didn’t have much wisdom!