Sugar Town

by Robert Nicholls

  Dealing with damaged people was daily fare at my house and, the more I heard and saw, the stronger my suspicion became that she’d become, or maybe had always been, one of them. Like half her thoughts were hiding behind the mulberry bush. It made me gloat just a little bit, a cruelty which she must have seen in my eyes because she let her gaze fall to the ground.

  “It’s Bridie,” she sniffed. “Bridie I should be seein’, not Ruthie! She was too little. She won’t remember Rita. It’s Bridie needs to know, not her!”

  * * *

  Something about Rita? Something about my family? My dead mother? And I, according to our one-time carer, didn’t need to know?

  “Right!” I sizzled. “Of course! A pleasure to see you again too, Mrs Crampton! And, yeah, you should tell whatever it is to Bridie! ‘Cause we’re all agreed around here that my family is none of my business! Everybody else’s business, obviously, but not Ruthie’s! ‘Cause we all know she’s way too freakin’ stupid to understand anything!” The last word was shouted.

  I was so angry, I wanted to scream and pull hair! True enough, I didn’t remember a lot about Rita. But I remembered plenty more than Asael did! Asael who’d never known her at all! She of the skeleton feet. And I wanted to remember her plenty more than Bridie ever seemed to want! I was, in fact, the one most deserving of knowing! And I was there, ready to listen! But I wasn’t the one that was wanted!

  I wished I hadn’t left my backpack at Amalthea’s. If I’d had it, I would have pulled out the clippings I’d taken from the memory box and waved them in Bessie’s face. See? You have actual memories! This is what I have!

  * * *

  ‘TOWN’S FAREWELL’

  ‘The body of local identity, Mrs Rita MacFarlane . . . laid to rest . . . Several hundred mourners . . . Follows closely on the death of her mother. . . service conducted by her husband, well known local identity, Rev’ Jacob . . . leaves behind two daughters, aged 15 years and four years. Especially tragic . . . an infant son, aged 10 months . . . sadly missed . . .’

  * * *

  ‘Daughter . . . four years’. Those three words were practically the sum total of my connection to my mother! And yet, according to Bessie Crampton, there was stuff I didn’t ‘need to know’! All I did know was that she’d gone out one drizzly day and been found the next, hanging from a limb in the mangroves! And of course I had the added benefit of Asa’s morbid imagination; the tides having come and gone twice, he calculated. Hence his dream image of her skeleton feet – picked clean by fish and crabs. As for why she did it, what had been going through her mind, what she’d said or done in her last hours at home, whether she’d hugged any of us before she left . . . I hadn’t a clue. Bessie, it seemed, had a clue. But it was none of my business!

  “So there’s no point in hanging about then, is there?” I said, loudly and stupidly. “Which is great because I’ve got some stuff to steal and people waiting for me! Wish I could say it’s been a pleasure, Mrs Crampton! But it hasn’t!”

  I spun on my heel and started to walk away. It was clear that Bessie couldn’t see much use in me and I was fully contemptuous of her. Let Kevin deal with her ancient looniness.

  “Ru’, Ru’, wait!”

  The back of an angry person was one of Kevin’s least favourite sights.

  “Don’t go! What are you talking about, stealing stuff? Listen! Wait! Bessie, look! It’s Ruthie! All grown and beautiful! You can talk to her! Believe me, Bess! You can talk to her! Just try, okay? For me?”

  It was a nice little speech. I especially liked the ‘all grown and beautiful’ bit – even though I knew it wasn’t true, on either count. Whatever! It seemed to reach something in Bessie because, suddenly, she beckoned me back impatiently and snatched again at my hands. This time, she took both, flipping them palm up, like a pair of exotic seashells. I let her look. Two minutes, I thought. Look fast because in two minutes, these hands are going to be off snatching flowers. And yours are going to be as empty as your soggy old heart!

  “Hmmph! Rita’s hands, all right!” she declared reluctantly, as though maybe she’d mistaken them for Edward’s scissor-hands the first time around. “Stubborn. Temperamental. Short on good sense.” She looked up at me, her eyes glistening. “Not that there’s any point in warning you! I warned Rita, ye know! Trouble in those hands, I said! Didn’t help at all! Best you can do is brace yourself. So listen . . . Ru’. Ruth. Ruthie.”

  It was an effort for her to get her tongue around the name. Which was okay; I wasn’t that fussed on it myself. Detestia, I felt like saying: call me Detestia. But I didn’t and, hesitantly, at least part of the story she’d brought for Bridie, she began to tell me.

  “Fact is . . . I took something! Years ago. Told myself back then it was for the best. Protect people . . . people who’d been good to me. For longer than maybe I deserved.” She kept her head down, talking more to my hands than to me.

  “I’ve come this way on the Show tour every year since I left! Sometimes stop, sometimes not. Sugar Town’s not been a good town for me. Lotsa good folks in it, mind. Fine folks. Well-meaning folks. But ‘well-meaning’ don’ always wind the clock, does it? Guess I’m your prime example o’ that! Anyways, I always thought . . . I dunno . . . maybe Jacob would’ve come back for yez – taken yez away. Couldn’ believe when I heard her name over the loudspeaker! Bridie McFarlane! My God, I says to myself! She’s still here! Has to be her! An’ then I says to myself, ‘That’s a sign, Bess! Time to step up and do your bit. Time to set things right’.”

  She turned a dark look on Kevin.

  “Men are such bastards! Always leave it up to women to put things right!”

  He smiled gently. “Because you’re so good at it, Bess! Go on, tell Ru’ the rest, now.”

  “Yeah, well! Thing is, what I took, I need to give back. That’s all. You tell Bridie, if she wants it, to come find me, okay? I got a caravan, back amongst the Showies – back o’ the showgrounds. Madam Zodiac. You remember that, Ruth?”

  I pulled my hands firmly away from her and pocketed them. I thought to tell her that, for all Bridie’d care, she could barbecue her ‘something’ with the sausages. Nothing from those times meant anything to Bridie anymore. It was all darkness, and that was how she liked it. But I just nodded dumbly

  “She can ask anyone along Sideshow Alley. They’ll send her right. Okay? You sure you got it?”

  “Treating people like they’re stupid,” I said through narrowed lips, “doesn’t actually make them stupid, Mrs Crampton. I’ve got it.”

  She took a last look at me, up and down, as though her eyes were whisking away dust. And then she changed the subject abruptly.

  “Asael,” she murmured. “Poor little mite! Of all the names we looked at, she picked that one!”

  And then she was done with me altogether. She turned to Kevin, put her arms around him and buried her face against his shoulder, as though holding onto him was all that kept her from spinning away into space. She wasn’t a small woman but she folded herself into his arms like a child of ten and, for the second time that day, I thought, again with a hint of resentment, how entirely at home women were allowed to make themselves in Kevin’s arms.

  “I just couldn’t watch him,” she sniffled into his shirt. “Couldn’t do it. I tried. I couldn’t.”

  “Bessie,” he said soothingly, “whatever happened back then. . . happened without your consent. It doesn’t belong on your conscience.”

  She choked out a laugh and pushed herself free of his grasp. “What would you know about consciences, Mister?”

  Kev’ smiled lopsidedly and shrugged at me. “See that? The world’s an open book to Madame Zodiac – and still it weighs on her! Simple folk like us, Ru’ . . . we haven’t got a chance!”

  He wagged his head, always happy with the impenetrability of the world, and guided Bessie toward the Ute. I waited, my trouble-marked palms clutched in my armpits and Kev’, once he’d secured her, came back to me and took my face
in his hands. Over the years, he and I had held hands, bumped shoulders, danced, slapped each other on the back, arm-wrestled, tried to push each other down and helped pick each other up. But he’d never before held my face between his hands. I was thirteen but felt at that moment like I was five.

  “Time heals old pains,” he said, “even while creating new ones. Some pains just take more time than others.” Then he kissed me on the forehead and I didn’t respond. Arms crossed, hands tucked away, eyes on the ground. “She’s more than she seems, Ru’. As are you. If you’re still intent on your quest, you could do worse than giving some trust back to her.”

  I nodded, knowing he’d soon be gone, already missing him. He climbed into the old van and chugged away, leaving a confusing mix of odours on the air – diesel and the too sweet smell of vegetable.

  I looked around and realised that the last shirt-tails of daylight had been tucked out of sight. And everything, from the sounds of the festival to the arguments in my head, seemed magnified by the dim and lonely light that arced and flickered overhead. Just like Kevin, to leave a person with a big ‘If’. ‘If you’re still intent on your quest. . . !’ His way of saying, ‘You don’t have to tell Bridie about Bessie: but if you don’t, you’ll have to accept that it’s over.’

  It may seem a given, that I would tell her, but it wasn’t. With all Bridie’s insecurities, who could guess how she’d be affected by the fossilised memories ‘Madame Zodiac’ had hidden in her witch’s trunk? Time creates new pains. What if Time used crazy old ladies to do its dirty work! What if it used her to open the door to more trouble – maybe the trouble that apparently lay dormant in my palm! Then again, if it was in my palm, maybe Bessie didn’t matter! Maybe the door was already open!

  I forced myself to start walking, back toward the shadowed floats. Maybe, if I focussed on my flower-stealing mission, an answer would creep up on me. Even so, I turned in slow circles as I walked, intent on ensuring that there’d be no creeping without my having at least a moment’s warning.

  * * *

  The trouble with trouble, of course, and me, is that we seem to have an affinity for one another. How else to explain the predicament I was already in, in that crammed parking area, with the nearby festival roar surging around me? How else to explain being drawn to a small but persistent knot of sound on the sugar mill side of the lot? A distant uproar of cheers, jeers and mocking laughter that I should have known to avoid but decided to investigate instead. In the interests of self-preservation, I told myself.

  I crept as close as I dared and climbed on a car’s bumper for a peep into the weak unhealthy-looking light, dull and orange as a pawpaw, that shone on the wreckages of the Moth and the smashed sugar hopper. Half a dozen boys were making eerie shadows, prancing, pummelling one another, crushing beer cans and roaring out challenges to the night. A testosterone binge, if ever I saw one! I was ready to scamper the moment I saw them. And I would have if it hadn’t been for the unmistakable silhouette of Dale Sutton, climbing over the Moth’s wing and, with all kinds of bravado, lowering himself into Johnathon’s seat.

  I nearly laughed out loud at how pathetic it was! As if he had the least hope of filling Johnathon’s place! ‘Chalk and cheese, you big bozo!’ I sneered at him under my breath. And knowing I should leave, I stayed, to watch a second figure climb onto the wreckage.

  It began to gyrate above Dale and the ones on the ground clapped and shouted drunkenly.

  “Look out, mate! Here comes Ruthie to yank you outta there!” They all choked with laughter and I felt myself flush with shame and embarrassment.

  “Whatsa matter, Suts? Too scrappy for ya?”

  “Yeah, scrawny little scrapper fights back, don’t she! Throw ‘er back, Suts! We want Bridie!”

  “No, no! The goat lady! She’s good for it, eh!”

  “No no! The goats! What about one o’ them goats for Sutto, eh? Give ‘im the billy!”

  My insides collapsed like cheap paper in a spit ball maker’s mouth.

  I knew all of them, at least a little bit – not my friends, but definitely my neighbours – and I’d never seen any of them quite like that before. I wondered what they’d do if I appeared amongst them and ripped into them. Would they cringe with embarrassment? Or would they step up to a whole new level of horrible?

  I considered it! I truly did! Until the ones left on the ground suddenly lunged, as unified as a school of sharks, and howling with exertion, began to push the Moth along the railway track. Somewhere under its belly, metal screamed against metal.

  I remember once asking Kevin about the effort he put into charming people at the bakery.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I pointed out. “It’s the only bakery in town! They’re always going to come back!” And he’d answered, “It keeps the weevils at bay, Ru’!”

  Something in the unity of purpose of those boys, and in the fantasies that bound them together, seemed powerfully weevil-ish to me that night. It was enough to send me creeping back, tail between my legs, to Amalthea’s barrow which squeaked, low and fretful, as I wheeled it amongst the floats.

  * * *

  I spent over half an hour, in the end, climbing over the abandoned vehicles like a crab over coral, sniffing, selecting and stripping away their blooms. If nothing else, seeing those boys and hearing their jibes had numbed my conscience, and it was numbed even further when the loudspeaker crackled into life with the voice of Mayor Hoggitt.

  “Well,” he roared through the microphone’s peeps and whistles: “you know the story by now, folks! We got a Queen we can’t find! I had my spies out lookin’ for her all afternoon, but . . . maybe she’s like them comic book heroes – needs impending doom before she’ll reveal herself. Ha ha ha! Last chance for today, Bridie! You out there in the crowd? No? Well . . . I’m gonna go ahead an’ guess maybe the day’s excitement’s got the best of her, folks. Either that or she’s out in the parkin’ lot with some lucky young stiff. Ha ha ha! Get it? Stiff? Whaddya reckon? Fat chance or no chance? Ha ha ha! No matter! Mayor Hoggitt’s spies’ll catch up with you Bridie! Sooner or later! Always do!”

  A series of grunts and bumps followed, underlain by the muffled voice of Frieda as she wrestled the mike away from him.

  “Listen to what you’re saying, you old fool!”

  And his slurred reply: “Don’ upset yourself now, love! All friends on a day like this!”

  So Bridie really was Harvest Festival Queen! After all those years, the judges (Frieda Hoggitt) had decided to reward her perseverance! I wondered how she’d feel about that and hoped, somehow, that she’d understand the compliment.

  Minutes later the fireworks began and, a little bit in honour of Bridie who would never allow herself such heights, I climbed onto the tallest carnation throne, three metres above the bitumen, to watch. It was somewhere between starbursts that the Tiger Moth burst into flames and the wild boys began to bay at the darkness.

  * * *

  In Amalthea’s living room, the air quickly became soupy with the aroma of pilfered flowers. She’d made spaghetti for Asael and me and, while we ate, she moved about, fine-tuning her arrangements. Rosemary, in her wake, dined slyly on marigolds, delphiniums and everlasting daisies.

  My plan was still for As’ and I to go. We’d been more than neighbourly and I didn’t want Asael to be part of whatever funereal weirdnesses Amalthea had yet to enact. Also, wherever Bridie was, she’d certainly be fretting about where we were. I figured she’d be at home – that she and Kevin and Crazy Lady Bessie must have crossed paths. I tried to ring but the battery on my phone was dead and Amalthea, inexplicably, didn’t own one. The silver linings that I glommed onto were that spending a little time looking for our sister would help distract Asael from the whole farewelling-the-dead thing; and that the day’s events might have created an afterglow of co-opertive good will in Bridie.

  She’d be hurt, of course. By my stealing the Agnes letters (plus the clippings, etcetera, still in my
backpack); by my sticking private family business up in public on The Grand Gourd (and its subsequent disappearance) and by my challenging the mayor! On the other hand, she’d come unscathed through a near-death experience and Asa’ and I had shown some redeeming community spirit by helping Amalthea. And I had news to tempt her with . . . Bessie Crampton’s reappearance!

  By the time we’d cleaned up our dishes, Amalthea had lit the candles around Garlic’s corpse, turned out the lights and seated herself, like a candle-genie in the midst of the flames. She invited us to join her and before I’d blurted out, “No, we have to . . . !” Asa was on the floor beside her. I started to remind him of his promise but then (me and trouble again!) decided maybe he (and definitely me) could risk a glimpse of what was to come. In the interests of experience!

  “Good,” Amalthea said, flicking the pages of a book. “Words are nicest when they’re shared, I always say. I’ve picked a poem here that Garlic always loved, didn’t he Rosemary. The farm descriptions, I think. Mornings and roosters. Reminded him of when he could see, I suppose. And of when our purposes were . . . simpler.” She and Rosemary both sighed and several candles waggled their flames. “Anyhow . . . that won’t make you too uncomfortable will it?”

  Listening, as it happens, has always been one of Asael’s more muscular skills. You could read a recipe to him and he’d listen like it was the story of the next Mars landing. He sat forward, watching Amalthea, and I leaned back on my hands, watching him watch her. As soon as she began, he closed his eyes and began to rock.

  It’s not so much the words, I think, as the voices that move him around like a big marionette. Amalthea’s voice, for instance – the husky musicality of her em’s, the rumble of her ar’s – sent visible little shivers running through his arms. When her tongue flicked away a line of el’s, he smiled a little Buddha smile and when she got amongst the o’s and the oo’s, he puckered his lips, as though she’d asked for a kiss. Asa’ could drown in voices. It makes him very vulnerable, I think, and it’s one of the reasons he takes medication. Also one of the reasons why I watch him so closely.