Sugar Town

by Robert Nicholls

  Probably, once the engine died, even Johnathon could have heard, over the race of wind, Lyle Hoggitt’s frantic efforts to summon them.

  “This is IT!” Lyle was wailing. “Get onto the paddock, folks! ‘Cause Cranna’s lolly express is comin’ out o’ the south, RIGHT NOW! Don’t be slow! Go! Go! Go! Eyes open an’ heads up, EVERYONE! It’s LOLLY DROP time! And who knows what could come fallin’ out o’ the sky for YOU!”

  It was an un-missable tradition, the lolly drop! People would run from all corners of the grounds to gather in the footy field next to the rail lines. In the aftermath, we counted our success in lollies, but secretly everyone understood that it was about much, much more than that. It was about release and abandonment. When that plane cruised over and its hatch opened, it didn’t release only sweets onto the Harvest Festival air. It also released permission for the townspeople to shuck off their inhibitions, their timidity and their shyness. For a time, people could dance and caper and hoot, as carefree as nudists beneath a sweet, tail-spinning rain. At Harvest Festival, the wilder, the sillier, the more childlike, the better. No one would ever dare to criticise.

  On that day, for the first time, I was outside of it, standing to one side with Kevin, still mulling over my options with regard to this ‘terrible deed’. Maybe, as Kev’ seemed to suggest, I should just give up on it; pass over it. Let it lie. Obviously Bridie, if she ever knew it, had managed to forget it. And the Reverend too, I supposed, with Rita gone and his New Guinea ‘Agnes’ to console him, had probably put it behind him.

  And yet, if whatever it was was so insignificant, why didn’t somebody just tell me? Just shine a little light on it for me, so I could forget it too! That was all I was asking! Trouble was, Kevin had been my only hope. Without him, I had no clue how to proceed!

  So we were at the edge of the paddock, Kevin and I, and I was just beginning to wonder what he was thinking about, when the Moth began its run. Out on the paddock I could see teenagers, kids I knew, jostling aside pre-schoolers and adults ploughing into the teenagers and granddads swinging their walking sticks to make room about them. The lolly drop had always had a Roller Derby element about it but I’d never seen it quite that fierce before. Sort of desperate. As though something precious and old was being allowed to unravel in people and no one knew quite how to stop it.

  * * *

  In the moments between the mayor’s amplified rants, there would have been silence in the cockpit of the Moth. Except for the rush of wind, maybe. Hush! Husssshhhh! It was a light, manoeuvrable plane that still offered options to Johnathon. But none of them were good. If he swung to the west, he’d come down amongst the Showies’ tents and caravans with their minefield of gas bottles, welding kits and amped-up transformers. If he swung to the east, the water tower would catch him. If he tried to bring it straight to ground, before the paddock, he’d be in the rail yard, amongst the stacks of concrete sleepers. And that left the Showground paddock which, while probably offering the least harm to him personally, was packed with his friends and neighbours! Not much joy and not much time to mull it over!

  In the end, he made just that one minor adjustment. Everyone on the ground agreed. The wings tipped just a little.

 

  Speed and altitude are declining rapidly. The Moth is doomed, without doubt. Johnathon, however, may yet survive. As should most of the Sugar Tonians gathered in the paddock, once they’ve sensed the inevitable fall. He takes his hands from the controls, re-checks his harness and firms his back against the seat.

  What an irony! A small forest of welcoming arms is there, beckoning him closer, expecting lollies to come down, like rain. And instead, the Moth itself is going to come down. Like an axe!

  “Well there you go,” he murmurs grimly to them. “We don’t always get what we came for!”

  At forty metres above the ground and two hundred metres from the edge of the paddock, he can see faces. Time has slowed so much that every brief observation seems like an entire page of thought. There’s the bank manager. There’s Frieda Hoggitt. Every fleeting impression excites a wealth of memories and impulses.

  There’re the Legg Brothers, who are booked to entertain at the pub next week.

  Off to the left, like a flag, is Amalthea Byerson’s flaming hair! And there are her goats draped with their sandwich board signs! ‘The Force is Gathering’! And trailing along behind Amalthea is Asael McFarlane, fresh from his perch on The Grand Gourd! ‘Let it Gather in You’!

  “Hurry up, now! Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Lyle’s voice throbs again into life. “Come one, come all! Get on that paddock! Grab a possie! ‘Cause you gotta know, somewhere in his bag of tricks, Cranna’s got big surprises in store!”

  “Amen to all that!” Cranna mutters.

  And further out, he sees . . . Cranna does a double take! At the northern end of the paddock a skerrick of ground is opening up as the townspeople surge toward him. Impossible that the glide would carry him that far! And never enough room to stop! Maybe enough to get the wheels on the ground, though! If only some miracle . . .!

  A lone figure stands there! Who? Bridie McFarlane? Now there’s a memory! One dark, drunken night! Long slim legs! Fast as a whippet! How she stopped, unexpectedly. How she turned. How she then forgot. And how this morning, first time in ages he’d been close to her, she looked at him as though something was there. Untidy details from a careless, disorderly piece of the past.

  Thirty metres up and passing over the first of the people! There’s a snowball’s chance that the Moth could make that northern end! Would mean risking the densely packed middle of the crowd! So many people! But Bridie! Bridie and the past, the two birds; me and the Moth, the stone. What the hell! It’s all whimsy, folks! Always was! Nothing personal! We’ll just try this one last little adjustment.

  He twitches the aileron and the patch of Amalthea’s chemically reddened hair moves to the bottom centre of his windscreen. The lone, serene figure of Bridie moves to top centre.

  * * *

  Why Bridie had stayed so long at her table near the gate was anybody’s guess! Counting the donations? Wondering about the lost letter? Pondering Amalthea’s note to The Gourd: ‘We follow. Now we follow’? Who could say? Maybe it was just quiet time to think about the problems I presented, having reached the embarrassing stage of publicly standing up the mayor.

  If she could only find just the right Biblical proverb to sum things up! That one about the wind blowing where it pleases would have been good. And you hear it, but you don’t know where it came from or where it’s going. Or in our case, what it means!

  Anyhow, when she’d finally turned her attention back to the present and wandered to the edge of the paddock, she was truly on her own. Ahead of her, she’d have seen only backs – hundreds of the backs of the Reverend’s one-time parishioners. Herself the last and the least of them. If she was meant to get anything, it would come to her wherever she waited. That was how she thought.

  * * *

  Neither Kevin nor I noticed her at first. Our attention was all on the Moth and its upcoming rain of lollies. We’d spotted it when it was still a kilometre out to the south, making its final turn, and we’d watched it settle into its line. We even heard the slap of silence when its engine died. We waited, listening for a restart, commenting that the line was wrong and he was going to miss the centre of the crowd. Then, at the last minute, the Moth dipped its wing and altered its course. Which I took to mean that Johnathon knew what he was doing.

  Kevin read those signs differently though. The silence, the failing altitude and speed. When the Moth turned into its the new path, directly over the greatest mass of people, including Asael and Amalthea, his hackles went up. It was him who spied Bridie over our shoulders, in the last place that the plane, if it failed to restart, had a chance of landing. He gripped my arm and pointed but I didn’t understand. Not him, not her. As I looked, she raised her arms above her head, as though offering herself. Here I am! Pass your judgement. She was a
s placid as a ghost.

  * * *

  In the cockpit of the failing Tiger Moth, Johnathon Cranna can only wait out the year that passes in the falling seconds. Though an unbeliever, he squeezes out a cynical prayer. ‘Please let me make it! Only a little further now. If you’re out there . . . prove it to me now!’

  * * *

  I think it’s fair to say that Garlic’s sign proved prophetic that day. The Force (whatever it is or was) really did gather! Possibly in the Moth, possibly in Johnathon Cranna! Possibly in Sugar Town as a whole! There was no crash of thunder, no bolt of lightning, no burning bush, no one walking on water; not your conventional sort of miracle at all! What happened was, the Moth went into a state of stasis! Which is to say that it simply stopped falling! And its forward momentum, while declining in speed, continued impossibly on and on! And, as an added touch, the hatch opened, freeing thousands of assorted lollies to tumble earthward.

  The townsfolk on the paddock, when they saw the lollies, roared their approval, even though the effect was unexpectedly devastating. The plane was still doing at least thirty or forty k’s per hour and that was the speed at which the lollies socked and snapped into the upturned faces. People of all sizes were bowled off their feet. One little bundle, nearly a kilo of deadweight lollies, failed to separate and, in a clump the size of a small bucket, brained poor Garlic – he of the blind eyes and the ‘Force is Gathering’ injunction. It felled him like a slaughterman’s hammer, even as the Moth glided on, as silent and uncaring as the shadow it chased across the field.

  By the time it passed in front of Kevin and me, it had left behind the crowd and the spot where, in anyone’s wildest estimation, it should have crashed. I could see Johnathon as clearly as if he was standing across a room from me. Our eyes met and my hand came up impulsively to wave, as it had when he’d buzzed me in the street. He opened his mouth as though to speak to me. And then he was past. His speed was down to what seemed little more than a walking pace but, somehow, he glided on, as though caught on an invisible rail.

  And in that very instant, I knew! I knew that he was the one! The one I needed to speak to! It was him, in the Reverend’s letter to Rita; him who spoke of the town’s efforts at ‘atonement’! Him who knew about the terrible deed!

  Kevin cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted: “Bridieeee!”

  I turned to look and it was only then that I understood how it had to end. The Moth, if it had no power to fall, certainly had none to make itself rise, either. And the knoll at the north end of the paddock, where Bridie stood so determinedly in its path, was metres higher than our spot. It occurred horribly to me that hers would be the last face Johnathon would see before crashing. And his would be the last she would ever see! Hers remained propped between her upraised arms, bathed in an expression of serene acceptance. His, I had already seen, wore an expression of grim determination.

  The whole flight would be eulogised as a miracle, of course. Though a miracle unseen and un-understood by almost all the people of Sugar Town who, in their efforts to protect themselves from the hail of sweets, had turned their faces to the ground. But I saw it. And Kevin saw it. And Bridie saw it. And Johnathon Cranna rode in the midst of it. And it persisted just long enough for the plane to pass safely over Bridie.

  I saw the wind of it lift her hair, tear at her banner and mould her dress to her body. It was so low that, if she’d made a tiny hop, she could have touched the Moth’s wheel as it passed over. She never so much as flinched. Tall, upright, arms raised, legs apart – she was a monument of faith.

  And then the miracle was finished. The plane put a wheel down on top of Snowy Sutton’s flash new Ford utility, the only vehicle in that end of the Showground, and bounced, peeling away both the Ute’s roof and its own landing gear. It hopped to the entry gate, slashing away Bridie’s umbrella and table before slicing through the pavilion of The Grand Gourd. The umbrella reappeared as cloth confetti and the Gourd as a pale, juicy corona of green and gold. And finally, shattered, torn and stained with pumpkin, its momentum all but gone, the Moth crossed the corner of the parking lot and belly-flopped onto the railway tracks. It slid and twisted and half tumbled, screeching with protest, until crunching at last to a halt against a hopper car full of rough brown sugar.

  “Oi vay!” Kevin exclaimed and, for two more beats of a heart, he and I stood still, in amazement

  Then we began to run.

  Bridie, of course, had to be in shock. That’s what happens to survivors – to people who witness mayhem but don’t fall victim to it. Kevin and I swarmed over her, demanding speech, touching her in fear and gratitude, but she remained silent, rooted to the spot, her hands still braced aloft. I looked up, reached up, to help her bring them down and – I swear this is true – I saw a flutter of movement in the air, disappearing into one of those hands. She brought her hands down then, and showed us. A single Allen’s Mintie. Somehow, released from the turbulent air around the plane, it had hovered, fluttering like a bird, swirling on the currents, staying aloft until well after the Moth was finished – until it was able to plant itself in her palm, as gently as a kiss.

  We all gazed at it in wonder and, “What does the Lord require of thee,” she whispered, “but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God? Micah, six eight.”

  She clasped the Mintie to her ‘Miss Freedom House Ministries’ banner and turned to cast her gratitude after the plane which she only then realised was no longer in the sky.

  * * *

  The wreckage was wedged up against the sugar hopper, its nose high, as though taking a last lingering look into its lost element. The air, even as far away as we were, reeked of engine oil, hot metal, pumpkin and sugar. Nothing moved. But the crippled engine, much too late, had begun to click and stutter.

  I remember Kevin saying breathlessly, “He’ll be a bloody burnt pumpkin scone if she goes up!”

  And next thing I knew, I was kneeling on the wreck. I remember fumbling with the harness that held Johnathon in place, freeing his arms and yelling at him to open his eyes, to get himself out. Blood was eking from a gash over his ear and his eyes were rolling, vacant.

  I remember bunching up the front of his jacket and trying to lift him, but he was limp, unable to help. That’s when I hiked my shorts up as far as they could go and lowered myself into the cockpit. There was just room for me to straddle his legs, bracing my knees against the seat. His eyes opened then and a hand began to bump against me.

  “The Reverend’s daughter,” he mumbled vaguely. And he followed it with some nonsense like, “Stopped running! We never expected that!”

  “Yes!” I stammered at him. “It stopped running! You’ve crashed! But you missed the crowd! And you missed Bridie! Everyone’s okay!”

  I pushed my arms under his and pulled him tightly against me. His face was only an inch from mine and his eyes were anything but focussed. But his arms came up in a feeble kind of embrace, his hands sliding on my back. Trying to help. I don’t know why, but I kissed him. Just ever so lightly and quickly. On the lips. Kiss of life, I thought to myself. Smiling just a little.

  “You’ll be all right!” I whispered. “I’ve got you!”

  And with all my strength, I jerked him skywards. He gasped with pain, even as he slid away, back into unconsciousness. So, at that moment, he and Isak Nucifora were both buried in deep and blessed darkness. One not so far away, in the cane, the other in the long spidery arms of a thirteen year old girl.

  Chapter 4 – Life in Death

  The ambulance is never far away during Harvest Festival and ours was quickly on hand to carry Johnathon to hospital. Dorrie Gunster, chief driver and medico, had him bandaged and immobilised within minutes before launching into her own version of correctional therapy.

  “No thanks to good sense,” she roared at him, “you’ll probably live!”

  Unlike the Moth which, clearly, had rolled its last barrel and looped its last

  loop. I edge
d to the back of the crowd where I found Kevin, also in the process of unloosing his temper. And, though I’d never seen him let go before – certainly not at Bridie – I entirely understood where he was coming from.

  “Are you completely bonkers?” he was demanding. “Couldn’t you see that plane was coming down? Why didn’t you run? What the Sam Hill were you thinking?”

  He pushed a hand across the thin stubble of his hair, as if to say, you were this close! And then he actually did say it. “You were this close, Bridie! I don’t know how that plane stayed up but . . ,” gesturing at the ambulance, “there, but for the Grace of God, girl! Without a doubt!”

  Bridie just nodded dazedly at him and said, “Oh yes! The Grace of God! Without a doubt!”

  I knew, and I’m sure Kevin did too, that blind luck was a concept outside of her reckoning. In her mind, if you lay down on the tracks and God didn’t want you to die, he’d stop the trains. That sense of submission – the conviction that God’s will ought to take precedence over your own – was something she and I had argued about endlessly. My conviction was that, someday, her convictions would be the death of her.

  “You do know what just nearly just happened, Bridie?” I goaded, figuring two voices might carry more wake-up-to-yourself strength than one. “That plane – there was only one place for it to land, you know! And you were standing in it! I mean, there’s no way on God’s earth it should have missed you!”

  She turned her calm, serious eyes on me, as though I’d spoken to her in the language of flowers. “No, it couldn’t miss me,” she said serenely – an answer to all our past arguments. “And yet it did!”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” Kevin cried. “We see that! But the point is, it shouldn’t have, Bridie! By all rights, it should have . . . ! Nobody could have known that it would . . . how it would . . . ! God Almighty the Second, Bridie! Do you really think you’re that impervious to the world?”

  “No, no,” she admitted. “Of course not! Not impervious.”