Sugar Town

by Robert Nicholls

  Isak Jonas Nucifora! Surely there could only be one old man in the area with that name! But what coincidences! Not just that his name should come up again the day after we found him in the cane, but also that he’d had a period of being ‘missing’, in the same month that Gramma G was murdered! And when we were loading him into the wheelbarrow, he’d said her name! ‘Who else, Gracie?’ And something more! Something about being ‘too late’!

  And then there was this other name – Leslie Barry Crampton! I remembered Les Crampton – or at least his name! Bessie’s husband! Gone walkabout at the same time as Isak? So what had happened to him? Had he ever come back? Bessie was with us until I was seven, which made it 2002, and there was definitely no picture in my mind of her having a partner during those years! Maybe he’d become one of the travelling Showies, like her! Maybe he was Mister Zodiac! Or the fire-eater! Maybe, those years ago, she left us at his insistence! Or she went to try to find him! Maybe he was the ‘nasty, mean-assed piece of work’ that Kevin mentioned!

  “Is this who I think it is?” I demanded of Bridie, holding the article up and pointing out the name. She looked, squinted, leaned close and read again.

  “Bessie’s husband? That’s right, she had a husband once! I remember! He left her, I think.”

  He left her! Went walkabout! Which would explain Bessie’s availability to move in with us! To share mutual despairs! But then to take something that didn’t belong to her! Why do that? Unless it was something valuable! In which case, why bring it back? Surely consciences don’t sting for that long?

  I cleared the bed, stuffing everything, including the letters and clippings, back in my backpack, leaving only her banner behind.

  “You need to go see Bessie!” I said, pointing what I hoped would be a commanding finger at Bridie. “Madame Zodiac! Find out which of our memories she’s got! And get ‘em back!”

  I shuffled off the bed and left.

  Chapter 7 – Waking Isak

  Johnathon Cranna doesn’t move, doesn’t open his eyes, despite the fact that a clearing has appeared in the creamy, drug-induced mist that fills his mind. A close watcher might notice the change in his breathing but nothing else reveals the approach of consciousness. He studies the clearing and the stark, appalling vision that occupies it. The vision is directly related to the sharp-edged voice that’s shouting somewhere nearby. The voice’s owner is one Isak Nucifora and the vision is of that same old man, crouching in a patch of destroyed sugar cane, aiming his rifle into the sky. At the Moth!

  * * *

  “I want me clothes, girlie!” Isak was demanding. “I don’t care what the doc’ says or what you say or what anyone else says! I don’ know why I’m here an’ I don’ know how I got here, but I damn sure ain’ stayin’ here! Get me? I’m off! I got stuff to be doin’ and it don’ include lyin’ here like a dummy for yer proddin’ an’ pokin’ pleasure!”

  * * *

  That was the speech I heard being bellowed as I crept down the hospital’s hallway, toward Johnathon Cranna’s door. Bridie’d gone to the Showground to fulfil duties as the newly elected Queen, making me promise to give Asael a quiet morning. As soon as she’d left, though, he’d started at me. Not about going back to Sideshow Alley but about going to Amalthea’s house. He wanted to see the goats again – both the living and the dead. And to talk to Amalthea, who believed in his vision and in the occasional need of the dead to ring doorbells in the minds of the living. And most of all, he wanted to go back to The Thing.

  I’d given in, but with conditions. I was absolutely set on finding out more about that Terrible Deed and that meant following up my only remaining lead – Johnathon Cranna. Depending on the outcome there and on what came of Bridie’s visit to Bessie (if she followed through on it, as she’d promised) I could decide whether to back off or keep delving.

  So my condition was that Asael had to wait for me in reception. If he did this and if he promised not tell Bridie where we’d been, I’d take him to Amalthea’s.

  * * *

  The roaring voice had warned me to caution. I peeped around the corner of the door, snapped a mental picture of what was happening, and dodged straight back out of sight. The second bed in the room, though empty, had clearly been recently occupied and its missing occupant had, equally clearly, shoved aside some ferociously powerful looking medical apparatus.

  “Please, Mr Nucifora,” a nurse was saying. “Get back in bed! You’ve had a stroke! You’re a very sick man!”

  “Bullshit! You took my clothes off me. You been lookin’ at my pecker while I was sleepin’! An’ you callin’ me sick? Get outta my way! I’ll find them clothes meself!”

  Johnathon was still there, with his plastered leg elevated, but he looked, incredibly, to be asleep. I knew that I should leave. But I wasn’t sure how many chances I’d have to get back before he was released. And I absolutely knew I’d never have the nerve to approach him at the hotel! If I wanted to speak with him, my back was to the wall – in more ways than one.

  I realised that, if I stood at the right angle, I could see a fairly clear image of the room reflected in the glass of the door. I glanced about. A nurse crossed at the end of the corridor and disappeared. No one else was in sight. It’s just to save embarrassment, I told myself; don’t want to catch anyone half undressed!

  “Bastard!” It was Johnathon’s voice, fitting a word in through the nurse’s objections. So he was awake after all!

  “And,” Isak’s reflection roared, pointing a big-knuckled finger at Johnathon, “he’s not sick neither! Get him a crutch while ye’re gettin’ me me clothes. Hear me? An’ don’ be messin’ with me stuff, neither! I know what’s exackly in every pocket, see?”

  An I-dare-you look came over Isak’s face. “Well? Go on! What’re ye waitin’ for? Bloody Santa Claus? If I hafta go outta here wearin’ one o’ yer bed sheets, girlie, then by Christ you better not be surprised. Get me?”

  He raised his hand as though to push her but she fled, out of the room. I spun and pretended to be walking.

  “No visitors for them!” she mumbled angrily as she raced by, and I made a

  show of following. I intended to follow. But I was pulled up by the clunk of a water glass, followed by a clearer, stronger version of Johnathon’s voice.

  “I saw you!”

  “Saw me?” Isak answered. “Course ye saw me, ye bloody communist! I’m right here in the bloody room wi’ ye!”

  I slowed, let the nurse disappear, and crept back to my possie. Johnathon’s reflection was shaking its head, erasing Isak’s words with a waving hand. “In the paddock!” he stammered. “I saw you in the paddock! You shot me! You shot the Moth!”

  I glanced around quickly. There was no sign of the nurse returning, so I moved as close as I dared. This would be a story I wouldn’t want to miss!

  Isak was flicking his hands, dismissing every accusation.

  “Don’t be such a whiner, Cranna! Listen!” He jogged across the room, the thin, bowed sticks of his legs flashing beneath the hem of the gown. He thrust his face next to Cranna’s and, following many an exaggerated glance about the room, managed to hiss, “Did you see anything else out there, mate? You know! Anything. . . with me? ‘Cause there was sump’m’! Sump’m . . . big . . .important! Did you see it?”

  For a moment, it seemed the old man intended to climb onto the bed with him and I could see Johnathon pulling back, struggling to blow away the clouds in his head.

  “I don’t care if the Titanic’s out there! What’s important is, I’m in here! Half bloody killed! And the Moth is wrecked! ‘Cause YOU shot at me! You SHOT at me, you bloody lunatic bloody . . . crazy old . . . ! I’m gonna have you locked up!” He gulped water from the bedside table.

  “Fer Chris’ sake, Cranna! It’s all about you, innit! Ask yerself this: Am I shot? Eh? Answer? No ye ain’t! Ye ain’t, are ye? No! So ye got a little hole in ‘at raggedy bit o’ paper an’ string you call a airplane. So what? Buy yerself a patch! Buy
yerself another airplane! Buy yerself a jet liner, for Chris’ sake! All yer money, it don’ even matter! This is important, what I’m talkin’ about!”

  “What, an’ the Moth isn’t important? Is that what you’re saying? And shooting me outta the sky? That’s not important?”

  Isak wasn’t listening. He jumped on the spot, waved his hands and thumped Johnathon a number of peppery little taps on the shoulder.

  “It’s a Space Thing!” he cackled.

  I heard a sudden intake of breath at my back which nearly made me whiz in my pants! Fortunately, it was only Asael. His mouth was agape, his eyes were wide and he was pointing an ‘I-told-you-so’ at the door, as though Isak’s words were painted on the air. I put one finger on my lips, another on his and gave him the I’ll-toast-you-like-a-stale-muffin look which, happily, he responded to as trained.

  “A space thing,” Johnathon was saying flatly, as though identifying a splinter in his finger – a wood thing.

  I manoeuvred Asael so he too could see the reflection in the glass. I didn’t really want him to hear or see but, once he was there, it was either both of us or neither of us. And I wasn’t ready to leave.

  Isak was nodding gleefully. “A genuine, crashed-down, feel-good, metal kinda sausage space thing, Cranna! That’s what I’m tryin’ to tell ye! Ask me what happened to me while I was sleepin’ las’ night!”

  By this time he actually had crawled halfway onto Jonathon’s bed.

  “Get off me, you coot! Go lie on your own bed! This one’s got a shot man in it!”

  Isak hopped off and, as though demonstrating his eagerness to please, jigged away to park himself against the second bed. He folded his hands in his lap, cranked his eyebrows half way up his forehead and, like a comedian’s audience, gazed expectantly at Johnathon. I could hardly believe this was the same man we’d found, practically comatose in the cane, not twelve hours ago.

  “What?” a mystified Johnathon was finally driven to demand.

  “Ask me! Ask me what happened while I was sleepin’ las, night.”

  “Jesus Murphy! Will you never give a man peace? What? What happened while you were sleeping? A feel-good space sausage came down, I got that bit! An’ then what? It bought you a drink? Knit you a pair of socks?”

  “Nuh!” Isak shook his head happily. “I dreamed!”

  “You what?”

  “Dreamed! A whole friggin’ technicolour story ‘bout what-all kinda stuff! Unbe-fuckin-lievable!”

  “A dream? You’re telling me this big news . . . that you dreamed? Is that it? No space sausage, now? Just a dream?”

  Isak wagged his finger admonishingly. “Don’ be like ‘at, now, Cranna. ‘At sausage is real! Real as you are! I know you seen it, ye lying little rooster! But ‘at dream . . .! Well, she was like . . . almost real. Realer ‘n’ I could ever remember ‘er. No matter how hard I tried! An’ I tried plenty over the years, I can tell you!” He sighed, sniffled and knuckled at an eye. “Man!” he continued softly. “She was so fine!”

  “What the bloody hell are you on about? An’ what’s more, unless this space sausage dream was telling you you’re a dickhead for shooting at my airplane . . . what do I care? Eh? Is that what it told you? That you’re a dickhead?”

  “Course not! Don’ be such a bloody nong! An’ anyways, what I’m tellin’ ye is, that space thing weren’t part o’ the dream! ‘At was real, Cranna! Real as this bloody room! Real as you! It’s out there right now, in Alf’s cane paddock! An’ you know it, doncha?”

  Asael turned to look at me with wide-eyed expectancy and I turned his face away, back to the glass.

  “So you never had a dream before?” Johnathon was asking.

  “Are you bloody deaf? Course I had dreams! Jus’ . . . fuckin’ years ago! What I’m tellin’ ye, ye ignorant paddock-pisser, is . . . that thing wun’t part o’ no dream! The dream come after! An’ the feel-good come . . .! Well it come first when I got up close to the space gadget, see? Not straight away, like. First there wun’t anythin’ at all! Jus’ me bein’ curious, like . . . ‘bout the sound comin’ out of it an’ all. But then, when I akshally come across it, I kinda sensed ‘at thing uz jus’ scared! More scared ‘n’ anything I ever met. Scared shitless! You know? I mean, I met a lotta scared things in my time. Half-dead things. Half-alive things. But this thing . . .! You know, ‘f you could imagine your airplane comin’ alive while you was flyin’ along somewhere, so it up an’ spoke to ye . . . an’ maybe it says to ye, ‘I’ve blown a piston, Cranna! An’ I’m caught in a down draft an’ one o’ me wheels is fallen off an’ I’m entirely rooted. An’ unless you can think o’ sump’m’ to do, mate . . . I’m goin’ down!’ An’ imagine it’s like that airplane stops bein’ a thing yer in an’, instead, becomes a thing that’s inside o’ you! An’ you gotta do somethin’ . . . anythin’ . . . to stop that hurtin’!

  “So I starts to feel like . . . I dunno . . . like the Queen o’ Sheba’s come knockin’ on me door, in terror of her life! T’ask me for me help, ye know? An’ I says – I ‘member I spoke to it, right out loud – I says, ‘What’s yer problem, Queenie?’ An’ there it was! The feel-good! It was like . . . I dunno . . . like a dog, lickin’ the inside o’ me brain, ye know? Like they do when they find a sore spot. Just warm, like. An’ gentle. An’ kinda like . . . I dunno . . . like sayin’ nothin’ I ever done . . . no matter how bad . . . really mattered no more! An’ then . . . then . . . it started to come back to me! ”

  “What? What started to come back to you? The fact that you should be under lock and key?”

  Isak tapped his forehead, as though checking for woodrot. “I . . . I can’t seem to put a finger on it now. But . . . it was sump’m. Sump’m to do wi’ Gracie!”

  “Gracie? Gracie Albion, who’s been dead for half a dozen years or more?”

  “Eleven years, Cranna. ‘S been eleven years.”

  Asael reached back to touch me and I found myself wrapping my arms about him, patting his chest. I fancied I could feel his heart beating.

  “An’ suddenly, there you were, in that bloody noise machine o’ yours! What’s bloody wrong wi’ you, Cranna? You get some kinda kick outta fright’nin’ the bejesus out o’ people?”

  “Me? What’s wrong with me? Listen, I was out there, doing my civic duty – like I do every Harvest Festival! I’m not the one out in the middle of the cane dreaming about a . . . a brain-licking ‘Queen of Sheba-sausage-feel-good-thing’! And shooting at airplanes!” He gulped more water and poked a finger Isak-wards.

  “Let me tell you what’s really happened! There’s a little thing called delirium tremens that happens to liquored-up, sodden ol’ maniacs like you who’ve pickled their brains with over-proof rum for more years ‘n’ a centipede’s got legs! And in that world, there are pink aliens and space elephants! See? But not in the real world!” He gestured at the equipment standing derelict beside Isak’s bed. “Oh yeah! An’ apparently you’ve had a stroke as well! Which altogether adds up to fire crackers going off between your ears! Understand? Your thinking apparatus is ratshat! Got it? Not that your head probably ever worked any better than it does right now!”

  Isak hopped to his feet and jigged a high-stepping pirouette, favouring us all with a flashing view of his buttocks. “Well, slap me back o’ the head! Do I look like someone’s had a stroke, you donkey?”

  It was at that point that I realised Asael and I weren’t alone. I whirled about, and standing directly behind us was the hospital doctor and manager, Roger Dabney. Doctor Dabney was our family doctor so we knew him well enough, as did everyone else in Sugar Town. He was Sugar Town born and bred and had been in charge of the hospital at least for all the years of my life. He gave us a powerfully disapproving look and gestured down the corridor with his thumb.

  “Sorry!” I muttered. “Just leaving.” I switched my grip to Asael’s hand and began to tow him away. “Better not be calling me a donkey, in here!” I heard him say as he entered the room. “That’s th
e last thing you want to be doing while you’re resident in my hospital, Isak.”

  As soon as we were alone in the corridor, Asael stopped and pointed back over his shoulder.

  “He’s the key!” he said, as though he’d just remembered where his bum was. “That’s what mum said last night! He’s the key, don’t let them forget!”

  I’d been having the same thought; not that I was ever going to verify his delusions! Nevertheless, I swung us into the next room, which was unoccupied. My heart was racing like a train. I pinned him against the wall and wagged a finger in his face.

  “It was a hallucination!” I insisted.

  But it was more an effort to convince myself than him and he knew it. He didn’t bother to answer. I did a rapid circuit of the room, shaking my fists, wondering what to do. Isak had known Gramma G! He’d called me by her name when we were loading him into the wheelbarrow. He’d gone missing the very same week she was murdered! A crime that was never solved! And now here he was talking about her! So hallucination or not, it seemed he was, if not THE key, at least A key. And I wanted to know more. I peeped into the corridor. Empty. We doubled back in time to pick up on Doctor Dabney’s rebuke of Isak.

  “If I’d said you’d had a stroke – which I didn’t, but if I had – then, donkey or no donkey, a stroke is what you’d’ve had! Which wouldn’t be surprising, considering the lifestyle you lead!”

  “Ahhh! Ahhh!” Isak wailed, clutching at his chest in mock horror. “Lookit me now! Me motor’s conkin’ an’ I’m on me deathbed! Know how I can tell? ‘Cause they sent the slaughterman to finish the job!”

  “Your metaphors are as mixed up as you are, Isak.” Doctor Dabney patted the pocket of his smock. “I got a shot here’ll fix that for you.”

  “Whoa!” croaked Isak. He gripped Johnathon’s arm and pointed accusingly at Dabney. “Lookee here, Donkey! We got a horse’s arse come to fix us! You take my advice, mate! Don’ let ‘im touch ye! Fuckin’ quacks! Get paid by the disease, ye know! The sicker they decide ye are, the more money they get. An’ if they manage to kill ye, why then, the gov’ment gives ‘em a big bonus! Keeps the population down. Gits rid o’ the trouble makers! Did ye know that? That’s the God’s own truth! Am I right, Rog’!”