Sugar Town

by Robert Nicholls

  Asael set about fiddling with the spacing of the candles around the corpse and then to brushing Garlic’s coat. I found what I needed and sat down to cast a hard, critical eye on the sources of the information that had so far come to me. Whose word could I trust? Whose should I ignore? This is what I came up with.

  * * *

  Sources of Information

  1. The Reverend’s letter to Rita. Because it’s an authentic, private thing, intended only for her, Trust Factor = 10. But it mostly raises questions, so remaining Information Potential = 1. (Note: Show it to Johnathon?)

  2. Johnathon. Because he’s an amazing, civic minded guy with a huge record of public service and commitment to Sugar Town and everyone seems to admire him, Trust Factor = 8; more when he’s off the pain-killers. And because he got a mention in the Rev’s letter about whatever it was that happened, and he promised the town’s atonement (he MUST have been an insider!) AND because he didn’t express any surprise when Doc’ D’ said everyone knew who killed Grandma G, Information Potential = 10! (Note: According to the Rev’s letter, he advised the Rev’ to stop pushing, so he’s not likely to just volunteer much. How can I coax him to talk about the past?)

  3. Doctor Dabney. Because he’s arrogant and condescending and clearly wants to keep things under wraps (his threat to Isak?) . . . Trust Factor = 4 / 5? But he admitted straight out to Isak that he knew who killed Grandma Gracie! And because I know he treated everyone in our family, so must have insights at least into Rita’s suicidal decision; Information Potential = 7?

  4. Bridie. Because she has this super-loyalty toward the Reverend – so much so that she’s already tried to cover up the Agnes letter – Trust Factor = 2. And because she really does have selective amnesia and isn’t always sure herself if her memories are real or imaginary, Information Factor = the same . . . 2. (Note: could be worth trying to shame her into ‘remembering’ more letters, etc.)

  Isak Nucifora. Because he’s a demented old alcoholic and might be suffering from a stroke or withdrawal symptoms – Trust factor = 1. But, because he’s the only one acknowledging that there was ever any trouble, Information Potential = 4? 5?

  Kevin. Because he knew Rita and the Reverend and Grandma G (and Bessie?) but mostly because he wouldn’t lie to me, Trust Factor = 10. But because he wasn’t a town ‘insider’, and because I’ve already asked him (and because he talks in riddles half the time), Information Potential = 2? 3?

  The ghost (or whatever) of Rita, that Asael claims to have seen when we were rescuing Isak. Because I don’t believe in ghosts, Trust Factor = 0. But because Amalthea believed it and because the ‘he’s the key’ thing was pretty kind of spookily, vaguely meaningful, Information Potential (if she came back with more ghostly messages) = . . . 2?

  Bessie Crampton. Because she shot through and left us kids on our own, Trust Factor = 0. But because she lived in our house when the Rev’ was there and because she’s got something of ours, even though she doesn’t seem to be the full meatball, Information Factor = 3.

  * * *

  It was a good start, I felt. From there I moved on to trying to sort the things I knew from the things I couldn’t be sure of. I called that section:

  * * *

  Findings

  1. True fact: At least two terrible things happened in my family almost a dozen years ago. One was the murder of Gramma G. The other might or might not have involved Bridie.

  2. Possible fact: Everyone in town knew about both things but agreed, in some kind of secret pact, never to let on. And if Doc’ Dabney’s threat to have Isak locked up is anything to go by, there’s still strong pressure to stay mum.

  3. True fact: Grandma was said to have been murdered by an unidentified blow-through druggie, but Isak claims (& Doc’ Dab’ confirms and J.C. doesn’t deny) the murderer WAS known and the murder had something to do with Bridie.

  4. True fact: Johnathon says there’s no record of anything being done to Bridie.

  5.True fact: Dabney says that ‘Justice was done’ in relation to the murder, but Isak says that ‘it’s not finished yet’. (Curiosity: What would Sergeant Morrow say? He must’ve been the cop on duty!)

  6.Fact: Isak had some connection to Grandma G. And he went missing for several weeks straight after she was killed.

  7.Possible fact: Isak might have been involved in Grandma’s murder!

  8. Curiosity: IF something happened to Bridie, could she have gone nuts and been involved in what happened to Grandma G? What is the terrible sin that’s left Bridie convinced she owes a penance?

  9. Fact: The story that Bessie used to tell Bridie, about the world collapsing on a little girl, has a mum and a grandma and a father in it. Coincidence???

  * * *

  Almost an hour had passed and I was as very pleased with myself. I even began to think of adding third and fourth headings. The third would have to be QUESTIONS and the fourth would be STRATEGIES. The key question was obviously the one I’d started with: What was this ‘Terrible Deed’ that so distressed my parents? (Looking back, I think I must have had an inkling – an awful dread. If Bridie had truly been its victim – and there was no assurance that she had, but IF she had – there are only so many terrible things a person would even let themselves imagine being done to a twelve or thirteen year old girl!)

  Other questions included: Who actually did kill Gramma G? And if everyone knew who did it, why wasn’t it made public? And why would Dabney care about it so much that he’d threaten Isak with committal for bringing it up?

  At that point I began imagining that Isak might actually not be safe in the hospital, which told me that I clearly needed a break! I wandered into Amalthea’s kitchen on a hopeful search for tea and maybe a left-over Grand Gourd Scone. That’s when Asael called me back, into a whole new mystery.

  * * *

  “Hey look, Ruthie! This guy looks like Kevin!”

  Asael was sitting on the floor in front of Amalthea’s bookshelf, leafing through a pair of albums. As soon as I saw the photo he was holding, and the raggedy bits that he was sifting out from behind layers of acetate, I knew he was going through stuff he shouldn’t. He’d stumbled onto a collection of Amalthea’s personal keepsakes – her version of our memory box. Except that her memories, unlike ours, lived right out in the open where any old nosey person could find them.

  I raised a finger to jab him with and a dose of indignation to clobber him with, but neither got delivered. Even from a distance I could see that the photo was faded and old. As was most of the stuff: a collection that could have meaning only to the collector – like stuff you’d see in a bower bird’s nest.

  In one album, there were a couple of recipes – one for ‘Revenge Cookies’ particularly caught my eye. And there were pages with carefully arranged ticket stubs – always in pairs – for public transport in Sydney, for entry to Taronga Park Zoo, for rides at fun fairs and meals in restaurants that I’d never heard of. There were five Certificates of Appreciation, made out to Amalthea Byerson, for fund raising efforts from the Leukaemia Foundation. There was even a love letter, addressed simply to ‘Thea’, from someone named Brett. I read it. How shameful is that? If Asael had no sense of other people’s privacy, I, apparently, didn’t even have a sense of decency! My moral fibre was, to use Johnathon’s word, ratshat!

  * * *

  Nevertheless, I read it and learned that Brett was a boy who’d been left behind – probably shortly before Amalthea’s arrival in Sugar Town. He wasn’t happy about it. ‘May not be here when you decide to come back’, he said. ‘Probably good riddance,’ I thought to myself, and wondered anew about her purpose in Sugar Town. Quite probably she didn’t have a purpose. Maybe being in Sugar Town was just a random outcome of the shedding of ‘Brett’.

  Fronting the second album – the one the photo had come from – there was a poem, written in a graceful script, which I took to be Amalthea’s. The name Rudyard Kipling was at the bottom. I’ve since looked it up and made it one of my
own treasures.

  By the Hoof of the Wild Goat

  By the Hoof of the Wild Goat uptossed

  From the cliff where she lay in the Sun

  Fell the Stone

  To the Tarn where the daylight is lost,

  So she fell from the light of the Sun

  And alone!

  *

  Now the fall was ordained from the first

  With the Goat and the Cliff and the Tarn,

  But the Stone

  Knows only her life is accursed

  As she sinks from the light of the Sun

  And alone!

  *

  Oh Thou Who hast builded the World,

  Oh Thou Who hast lighted the Sun,

  Oh Thou Who hast darkened the Tarn,

  Judge Thou

  The sin of the Stone that was hurled

  By the goat from the light of the Sun,

  As she sinks in the mire of the Tarn,

  Even now . . even now . . even now.

  *

  I read that poem at least three times right there and then! There was something about that stone, casually nudged from a cliff. One minute lying in the sun, the next tumbling through the air and into dark, deep waters. Not because of anything it did! Just because of something else’s random passage nearby! Somehow it made me think of Bridie, sitting meekly at the table, in prayer: ‘I’m still here, Lord.’ And I wondered, why would he care? One pebble gets tipped, another stays in place. It’s all just random. Nothing personal.

  I put the poem back behind the acetate and arranged it as it had been, thinking warmer thoughts about Amalthea than I ever had before. The next page of the album also held a single shard of paper, this one having slipped and lodged crookedly at the bottom of the page. The handwriting was light and flowery, different from that on the first page. Some of the letters had actually been drawn rather than written.

  * * *

  The pride of the peacock is

  the glory of God. The lust of

  the goat is the bounty of God.

  The wrath of the lion is the

  wisdom of God. The nakedness

  of woman is the work

  of God.

  - W. Blake (with the full admiration of Philippa B!)

  * * *

  Philippa B? No idea! Further on, the book was just an almanac of photos, some relatively new looking, but most old. Some were candid, snatched moments, like the photo of my family on the wall in Bridie’s room. There was a grey-haired man engrossed in a book, his lower lip pinched between two fingers. There was a middle-aged woman in a tai-chi pose in a park. There were photos of Amalthea as a young girl: a young girl laughing, a young girl dancing, a young girl on a bike. And there were photos of various boys looking with smitten eyes into her camera.

  The majority of the photos, though, were of a wizened child, a girl of maybe six or seven or eight. In some she was in a wheelchair, in others, being piggy-backed by various people, including Thea. In still others, she was in a small cart, in a farm setting, and the cart was hitched to one or another of a pair of goats – Garlic and Rosemary. Annotations told that she was Philippa.

  Despite her obvious disability, in nearly every photo Philippa’s face was a bowl of purest delight. In the very last photo, she was perched on the back of the grey-haired man and each had raised a hand to wave at the photographer. The inscription read: ‘Am, May there always be another wave.’ The only thing after it was a black ribbon stamped with the words ‘Nothing matters: everything counts’.

  I flipped the rest of the pages quickly . . . all empty.

  “It was in here?” I asked Asael. He nodded, pointing to the last page. ‘It’ was the photo he’d first held up. Actually it was a strip of four small, much worn, black and white pictures. The sort of close-up head shots people get from a booth in a shopping mall . . . four poses for two dollars, instant development. They all showed the same two people.

  There was a young woman, possibly still in her teens, grinning and mugging, cheek to cheek, with a black boy of similar age. She looked a lot like Amalthea but the date tattooed onto the edge of the strip was June 1982, so that was impossible. I flipped back into the book and convinced myself she was a young version of the tai-chi lady. Not that it mattered. What really was surprising and interesting was who the black man was . . . a very young but unmistakable Kevin Truck.

  What it meant, I didn’t even want to contemplate. I gave the photo back to Asael.

  “Put it back, As’ . . . exactly where you found it. And put these albums back too. They’re none of our business!” I said; the biggest hypocrite in town. “And I don’t want Amalthea to know we’ve been nosing around her stuff. Right?”

  I went to the kitchen and switched the kettle on. Ten minutes later, when Amalthea and Rosemary showed up, we were back sitting on the steps, innocently drinking her tea.

  * * *

  That much was no problem, of course; just comfortable neighbourliness. I apologised for having been in and explained about the peeing and the tea and said we were back outside out of respect for Garlic. But I was embarrassed at having snooped – embarrassed at even going back into the house with her – and I suppose to compensate, I started chattering. I told her about my quarrel with Bridie and breakie with Kevin and Hoggs. I told her about our morning visit to the hospital and Isak’s rambling accusations. Then I dragged out my list of SOURCES and FINDINGS to show her how busy I’d been. By this time Asael, whose total fault everything was, had wandered back out into the yard to play with Rosemary.

  If Amalthea had any suspicions that we’d prowled through her stuff, she didn’t let on. In fact she was so totally focussed on my list that she insisted on scribing for me while we added the QUESTIONS section. I was a bit distracted by my mental image of teenaged Kevin in that hidden photo, but I rattled out a couple, which I re-read over her shoulder. Her handwriting was the same as that in the poem about the goat and the stone.

  When I ran out of questions, she insisted on listing some STRATEGIES, on the grounds that, without an action plan, we were dead in the water. Rosemary and Asa’ came clopping in from outside at that point and caught us staring at one another blankly. Rosemary put her chin on the table and As’ put his on my shoulder.

  “Well,” Amalthea eventually said, “the way I see it, there’s only one person who’s got something to say and doesn’t seem frightened to say it.”

  “He’s the key!” Asael mumbled in my ear and, “So we’re told!” said Amalthea.

  “Isak? You mean Isak who’s in hospital with a stroke and surrounded by people who don’t want him to talk? On pain of being committed to a loony bin?”

  Amalthea smiled. “Which means that our first strategy has to be to get him on his own!” She wrote that down.

  It didn’t escape me that what was ‘my’ strategy five minutes earlier was now ‘our’ strategy; but with no ideas of my own, I was in no position to niggle about it.

  “Now,” she said happily, in a clearing-up-the-details sort of tone, “ideas?”

  “Oh, yeah, well! Obviously one of us hides in the shower cubicle! And when he comes in, we offer to scrub his back in exchange for information!”

  “Mmm!,” she smiled. “Good one, Ruth! Maybe, though, if he hasn’t already had a heart attack, we should try something a little less likely to provoke one!”

  “A distraction?” Asael asked.

  “Exactly. And something fairly big, I think!”

  “Not big, Batwoman and Robin!” I made my bid to re-mind them of reality. “Huge! Huge enough to need Doctor Dabney! And Matron! And the nurses! Which still would leave Johnathon in the room! Although,” (I thought of the flirtatious smiles he’d given me and the Trust Factor he’d earned on my list of sources) maybe he could be counted on for discretion!”

  “You think?”

  “Well I don’t know, obviously! But it was Doctor Dabney who threatened Isak – not him! In fact, if he knew how serious we are, an
d if he heard Isak’s story, maybe he’d be tempted to share what he knows! Like, if Isak rambled and made no sense, Johnathon might want to set the story straight! ‘Cause he was there, remember! A friend o’ the Reverend’s!”

  “Okay!” She began writing again. “So we get ‘em together, stir the pot a little, and let ‘em bounce off each other! Excellent! So what’s the distraction? Someone throw a fit in the lobby?”

  We both, plus Rosemary, looked at Asael who looked back blandly.

  “Nuh!” I said. “They all know him too well. And it’s happened before.”

  And we were back where we started, staring helplessly at one another. Amalthea put the pen down and allowed a puzzled frown to draw itself on her face.

  “Maybe,” she said, “we’re looking at this from the wrong end! Maybe Isak’s already started talking to you.”

  I looked at her blankly. We all did.

  “The ring!”

  “The ring?”

  “The ring. What have you done with it?”

  What I’d done with it was to forget all about it. I pawed about amongst the lint and old tissues in the bottom of my pocket, glad that I’d decided to get a second day’s wear out of those shorts. I put it on the table between us – my first real look at it. It was a man’s ring, a plain, simple gold band!

  “Why would he want me to have it?” I wondered and Amalthea carefully added that question to the others in the QUESTIONS column.

  It lay before us – a simple thing, but a thing of secrets. We all studied it briefly then Amalthea began walking distractedly around the room, nudging the chairs, swiping fingers across the table, patting the back of the sofa, a circle inside of which Asael, Rosemary, the ring and I waited and the still corpse of Garlic also waited. As she walked, she carried on her own question and answer routine, which hardly seemed to need the rest of us.

  “Isak. Out in the cane on his own! Why? Well . . . obviously he’s a ‘roo shooter, everyone knows that! And he has his rifle with him. So he’s a man at work. There’s camping gear too, and he’s dehydrated; so maybe he’s been out there all day. Maybe he’s out there when The Thing comes down! Maybe he sees it arrive! At the very least, he sees the glow that we saw. So what does he do? The natural thing . . . same as us . . . goes to investigate! But it’s more than just a light! It speaks . . . through visions! It shows him a vision of a long-dead woman! In response, he takes all his clothes off! So he’s starkers there, alone, at night, in the middle of the cane. Okay. Men like that kind o’ stuff. But let’s think about it! He’s thrown aside every earthly thing he has – his clothes, his gun . . . his everything! Except that ring! The ring he also takes off but it’s the one thing he doesn’t throw away! Why? Is it a way of ensuring that, when someone eventually finds him, this solitary clue will be unmissable! Is it his last feeble effort at demonstrating that, amongst all his things, only this ring retains significance?”