Sugar Town

by Robert Nicholls

  It was a pointless argument.

  “Kevin,” I said, catching one of his shaking hands. It was rigid and damp with unaccustomed sweat. “She won’t get it! She’s a brick wall!”

  His eyes were locked on hers and he was actually trembling!

  “You’re as stubborn as your mother!” he cried. “And look where it got her!”

  People had been milling all around us, some chatting excitedly about the crash, others listening to our little face-off. But the movement stopped suddenly when Kevin said that, and a little wave of silence rippled over us. It only lasted a heartbeat or two, but it punched a big ragged hole in the day.

  “Aah!” he said softly, and even he sat back in surprise. Then he tried a smile, which bared his teeth but left his eyes wide with apology. “See how shaken I am? I’m not as young as I was, you know!” He patted his cheeks, dark fingers on chocolate skin. “I must be pale as a ghost, am I?”

  “Like a sheet,” I agreed, wanting only to get us past the moment. “Like a polar bear in a snow storm! Maybe you should sit down, whaddya think?” And he did, right there on the ground!

  Whether it was the reference to Rita or that mock collapse or something she saw in the Mintie, I don’t know, but Bridie did finally concede a hint of understanding.

  “Sorry,” she said, even though it was obvious that she wasn’t. What she was, was distracted – much the way Asael got when he had one of his seizures! “Sorry,” she said again, sounding fully as contrite as a kid who’s just flipped a two-headed coin and won your bicycle. “Sorry you were worried. I just . . . saw something different, I guess!”

  A small, three-cornered tear had appeared in her dress near the sleeve, at the curve of her breast. She lifted the flap, patted it into place, then let it fall. She looked at me and reached to touch my cheek, as though to pat it back into some imagined rightness, as well.

  “Ruthie! Where’s Asael?”

  I pointed into the showgrounds, down the paddock. Even from where we were, we could see him, standing beside Amalthea and Rosemary, next to the motionless lump that was Garlic.

  I’m not sure if she actually looked. The thing that had really held her attention through all this chaos was the captured Mintie. All the while we were speaking, she kept turning it over and over and cupping it like a talisman between her hands.

  “Good!” she said absently. “Good! You’re a good sister, Ruthie!”

  * * *

  I could tell that something fairly major had happened inside Bridie’s head. It wasn’t an entirely new thing for her to become all beatific and contemplative and sacrificial virgin-ish. But I’d never seen her be quite so convincing before! And what she next threw at Kevin shook me even further.

  First, she bent to touch his cheek, her skin as white as paint next to the black of his. “There haven’t been many people in our lives,” she said, “who’ve been as constant as you, Kevin.” His forehead crinkled deeply and he looked up at her; her face, her eyes, her mouth – her air of unruffled tranquillity. He knew as well as me that her head, like Asael’s, was a favourite hang-out for various troops of fairies.

  Then – and this was the kicker – she put a hand on the grey buzz of his hair and, as though speaking a blessing she said, “Our mother . . . I think, if she hadn’t loved our father, she would have loved you!”

  My mouth dropped half way to my knees and Kevin jumped like a stomped-on cat, clambering to his feet. “Bridie!” he gasped. “What on earth has gotten into you? Have you been drinking? Has she been drinking?”

  I couldn’t answer him. I was fully speechless! Already that day, I’d seen her steal something and I’d seen her refuse to remove herself from harm’s way. Now she was talking about Rita as though she once had been a real and sensual woman – not just the Reverend’s wife! I don’t know if I was more shaken by the daring of this last image or by the depth of Kevin’s embarrassment!

  She, however, was completely oblivious to both our reactions. “Would you,” she smiled at him, “watch over these two for a bit?” (Meaning Asa’ and me.) “I think I’ll go with the ambulance.”

  And without waiting for a reply, she slid through the small crowd and climbed into the compartment. A moment later Dorrie, having lectured Johnathon back into unconsciousnesss, thumped the doors closed and, with a get-out-of-the-way burp from her siren, edged the vehicle away.

  I had the briefest impulse to run after them and ask if there was room for me. Mostly wanting to see that Bridie was okay, of course, but also wanting to see if Johnathon was okay. Secretly, I was quite thrilled at how things had worked out. Aside from three very important realisations (one, that we’d all escaped harm; two, that I had a new lead in my quest to learn about the Terrible Deed; and three, that I had a newfound and entirely fascinating image of Rita) . . . I had a very sweet little tickle in my throat. It came from the image of my scrawny, gangly, barely teen-aged self straddling the legs of the great Johnathon Cranna, holding him helpless in my arms, being held in his, and kissing his lips. I could still taste the faintest hint of sugar-coated pumpkin.

  * * *

  I turned to Kevin and had to suppress a laugh. “You and Rita, Kev’! You and Rita!”

  The tone I was aiming for was ‘light-hearted and teasing’ – an extension of where we’d been. But it didn’t come off at all well. Firstly because, even as I was speaking, I realised that the image of Kevin and Rita together was at least as comfortable to me as the image of her and the Reverend. Maybe more so! And secondly because, when I looked at him, the furrows on his forehead seemed, if anything, to get even deeper. He raised a warning finger and looked away.

  “If you’re ready to believe, you’re easy to deceive,” he said, which, like so many other things in my life, made hardly any sense to me at all.

  * * *

  Fortunately for both of us, we had the lolly-drop victims to distract us. There were damaged townsfolk everywhere, some limping about and some back to scouring the grass for the last of the lollies. But the majority remained on the ground, investigating their wounds and shaking their heads in dazed confusion.

  Amalthea was one of those on her knees and Asael was one of the ones standing. She had a healthy trickle of blood on her forehead and half a dozen coin sized welts freckling her arms but he, crazily enough, had come through unscathed. Knowing his instinct for survival, my guess was that he’d hidden in the lee of her when the pummelling began.

  The focus of both their attentions was Garlic, sprawled and limp on the grass beside the lolly-bomb that had felled him. With one hand braced against the stillness of his shoulder, Amalthea was struggling to free his banner which had bunched under him when he fell. Only the words ‘The Force . . .’ remained visible. There were no tears, or sobs, but her face was a mask of disconsolate hurt. Kevin went straight to her and crouched, adding his hand to the one she rested on Garlic. That’s when I knew for sure that Garlic was dead.

  I guess that, during good times, we should all devote a little thought to what we might say or do when things turn rotten. I don’t know why – maybe because there’d already been so much loss in our family – but my first instinct was to get Asael away; to keep him from realising how close to him Death, his dreaded nemesis, had come.

  I pinched up a bit of his shirt to move him but, before I could, Rosemary stepped between us, catching his eyes and holding them for a long, strange boy-goat moment, at the end of which she sniffed sadly and he sniffled back at her. And then, with what even I viewed as a beautifully philosophical eloquence, she bent and plucked a lolly from the murderous bunch that had killed Garlic. Her lips drew it behind her teeth and she turned her head away to chew. I thought of Bridie, with her Mintie floating down, finding its way into her hand, and how different that was from Rosemary, bending to choose her own – making her own will known. I gained a lot of respect for Rosemary that day.

  I gained some for Asael as well. Although his lips had begun moving and I could make out mutterings
about brainstems and cerebellums, he didn’t, as I’d feared he might, go to pieces. Instead, he shrugged off my hold, got down on his knees across from Amalthea and put a finger out to touch Garlic’s ear. Getting a scientific sense of the dead, I imagined; though Amalthea clearly saw something more empathetic in it.

  “Aahh Asael,” she said softly. “Here’s a thing!” And she reached across the corpse, taking his hand and folding it in both of hers.

  It was such a tender instinct for inclusion that it shocked me. I stepped back and left them there, turning my attention to the others on the paddock.

  Looking back, it still amazes me! There were so many wounded and yet, there was none of the anger or self-pity or outrage I’d’ve expected! In fact, despite the general impression of devastation, there were smiles twitching at the corners of mouths and even unmistakable hints of laughter! I looked with astonishment at Kevin who shrugged eloquently.

  “A legend is born!” he chuckled. “Remember the year Johnathon Cranna half-slaughtered us with lollies and demolished The Grand Gourd? My God, what a great festival that was!”

  And he was right, of course. It wouldn’t matter that no one but Kevin and I had actually seen the Gourd get splattered because, before long, heaps would firmly believe they had seen it. Some would even say Johnathon had given them a private nod and wink beforehand. In short order the Chamber of Commerce would create a Harvest Festival sub-committee to map out plans for a repeat performance the following year. They would (and in fact did) go so far as to find and help finance a replacement for the Moth! (Though, as you’ll hear, that turned out to be a disaster of a whole different order.)

  The reason being, as Kevin was inclined to say, the heart cries out for wonder.

  “And given a little, even if it hurts, we cry out for more! Not a good world for one-trick ponies!”

  I didn’t fully see the implications back then, but I did know that, along with the birth of a legend, something in us – in me, in Asael and maybe in Bridie too – had changed. I knew that sometime in the near future, I’d be paying my own visit to Johnathon Cranna, looking for his help to put the dead and the missing in my family firmly behind me. And I knew that Asael, even as Amalthea gave him back his hand, had already begun feeling about for the courage to leave his fearful boyhood behind. And I was not surprised in the least when Rosemary plucked a second lolly from the clump that had killed Garlic.

  * * *

  Bridie waits patiently, scanning magazines in the nurses’ lunchroom where they’ve seated her to await the results of Johnathon Cranna’s scans. In ones and twos, they come through to hear the story of the crash and to curse their luck at having been rostered to work. Soon they’re bringing stories to her, of people who’ve come in to have wounds checked – cuts, bruises and contusions from falling lollies. At last, she’s permitted to see the downed pilot himself.

  He’s propped on the bed, his head wrapped in a bandage, his lower leg encased in a cast, like a white log. His eyes are glazed, his expression one of faint confusion. The second bed in the room is empty.

  She bends over him. “Mr Cranna! How do you feel?”

  He blinks up at her, like a drunk trying to place a one-time acquaintance.

  “Well,” she carries on, too joyful to be contained, “you shouldn’t be feeling too well, I don’t suspect! You’ve had a crack on the head! And your poor leg! And the painkillers will be making you quite fuzzy I’m sure, but my goodness! That’s a small price to pay, isn’t it? I feel quite dizzy myself, and I was only on the edges of it! Sugar Town’s own little miracle!”

  He sinks further into the pillows, groaning in helpless self-pity, his eyes closing once again. Bridie waits for comments, but none come. Instead, his breathing slows until she’s prompted to reach a finger and touch the furrow between his brows. His eyes re-open.

  “You can’t go to sleep,” she tells him. “The nurses only let me in with the promise that I’d keep you awake. So, awake you have to be! Talk to me. The alternative is you’ll have to listen me. And that could be worse for you!”

  He shakes his head, winces and closes his eyes again, so she moves to sit on the bedside. The movement pulls lines into his forehead.

  “Mr Cranna?” she demands, ramping up her insistence. “Don’t go to sleep! I’m serious. You have to stay awake! If you think your troubles are over, you should know that . . . they aren’t! They aren’t over! Amalthea Byerson’s going to be looking for a piece of your skin, for one thing! Did you know you killed one of her pets? Mr Cranna? Johnathon? One of the goats? People in the lobby are talking about it even now!” She jiggles the bed, intent on keeping him focussed, even if it’s from mere annoyance.

  “It was struck it with a huge clump of lollies! I can’t imagine what you were thinking!” She finds herself dancing her fingertips on his shoulder. “Dropping those lollies at that low altitude, Mr Cranna! For goodness sake! You should see all the cuts and bruises and black eyes! It’s like you beat up half the town!”

  His eyes judder open. “Lollies?” he murmurs in wonder. “I didn’t drop ‘em! Nowhere near the handle! I remember!”

  “You didn’t? Well! There you are then!” she says in a matter of fact voice. “Another part of the miracle!”

  His eyes swivel in her direction. Did he or didn’t he drop them! He doesn’t think so, but can’t be sure. Nonetheless, apparently they were dropped! Maybe that lightening of the load was what saved him?

  “Someone was with you,” she assures him; “watching over you! A guardian angel! Watching over all of us! You must have felt it?”

  He thinks to himself, “No angels. Jus’ me ‘n’ the Moth. All alone.” He must have said it aloud, because she answers him.

  “Johnathon! I can promise you, you were not alone! No matter how ‘in control’ we think we are, we’re never alone! There’s always a greater pilot guiding our ship.”

  He’s too confused, too drifting in the mind, too stupefied by what’s happened to follow where she wants to lead. Why is she here? What does she want from him? After all these years . . . it’s dangerous. Dangerous to be near her!

  Bridie’s last resort for keeping him awake is to relate the evidence of the miracle she’s witnessed: the death of the Tiger Moth’s engine, the long impossible glide, ending in the destruction of that offensively exalted Grand Gourd! The impossibly realised feat of avoiding harm to the people of Sugar Town! And now, add the inexplicable dropping of the lollies! Through the narration, she frequently touches his arm, prods him with questions and jiggles the bed in an increasingly fruitless effort to keep him awake.

  “You should’ve run,” he murmurs at one point.

  Bridie’s smile is slight and reflective. “You know, I almost did run at one point! But then I . . . it was like I heard my father’s voice! ‘Be strong and of good courage’, Bridie. That’s what he used to say to me. ‘Because come what may, God will have His way with you’.” She turns her steady dark eyes back on him. “So I waited to see . . . what his way might be!”

  “And . . .?”

  “And . . .” she holds her arms out, presenting the evidence of herself, “here I am. Here we both are, alive and well! So his pleasure is for us both to go on . . . in the renewed knowledge that we are His.”

  He groans his refusal of being anyone’s and Bridie sits back. She thinks of how, in the manner of small towns, she’s known Johnathon, but hardly ever actually spoken to him. She’s seen him cross the street sometimes, as though to avoid her, though that must certainly have been in her imagination. But today, she thinks, God has pointed them out to one another! His name has come up in the Reverend’s eleven-year-old letter to Rita! And he was there to save Ruthie from injury at the marshalling yard. And now they’ve been linked by the miracle of their survival – two who most certainly should have been killed! It seems clear to her that, for some reason, Johnathon Cranna has been put squarely in the path of her life.

  “My father thought well of you,” she
says.

  The information takes a moment to sink in but, when it does, it whips him back

  into full consciousness. “Eh? What did you say?”

  “I found an old letter this morning. One that he wrote to my mother when she was away having Asael. He mentioned you in it.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes. He said that you were helpful. Sceptical, but helpful. Apparently there was some unpleasantness going on in the town and . . . you spoke to him about it? AND you got a new cross for the church!”

  “He said that?”

  “Yes. He seemed to like you.”

  “The . . . unpleasantness . . . he didn’t . . . ?”

  “He didn’t say what it was, no. And I’m afraid I have a hole in my head from around that time. I expect you’d remember it though?”

  He shakes his head slowly but his eyes remain fixed on her face. Has the time finally come, he wonders? Has he let things go too long?

  She laughs lightly. “Of course I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t remember! It’s ancient history now, isn’t it? All so long ago! Mind you, Ruthie’s convinced there’s a story to be learned. She even confronted the mayor and Freida about it this morning.”

  “She asked Lyle?”

  “Yes! I was so embarrassed! He thought it was most likely something to do with the murder! You know, Gramma Gracie? But it wasn’t! As Ruthie pointed out, Gramma Grace was mentioned in the letter. So whatever it was that happened, it was BEFORE gran’s death!”

  “Before?”

  “Yes. It makes you think, doesn’t it? Something that seemed so important to my parents back then, and now no one remembers it at all! It’s completely odd, isn’t it?”

  All he’s heard is ‘No one remembers it at all’. He smiles faintly, remembering it himself.

  “Anyhow!” she chirps happily. “We’ve more important things to think about, haven’t we? Look, I have something for you!”

  She holds out the Mintie, warmed and softened by hours in the heat of her hand.

  He peers through narrowed eyes. “What’s this?”

  “Take it as a sign,” she says, her eyes smiling.

  “Sign o’ what?”

  “A sign,” she answers, pressing it into his hand, “that if you try to be a good person in your heart, and you believe in God’s mercy and you stand your ground, good things . . . right things . . . will find their way to you. Eventually.”