Sugar Town

by Robert Nicholls

  She was amazing, circling us like a hypnotist, building an illusion. An illusion which, as the best of them should, made its own kind of sense.

  “It’s Queenie!” Asael breathed softly. At which point, for me at least, the illusion popped like a dropped egg. But it didn’t for Amalthea.

  “Yes, Asa’!” She was passing behind him and she stopped, leaned elbows on the back of his chair and spoke softly, her cheek almost brushing his. “It’s Queenie! Queenie holds him! Queenie needs him to be there – needs to be there with him, holding his focus – until someone shows up. Until we show up! No one else showed up, did they? Only us! Like we were meant to!”

  “Like Santa on Christmas?”

  “Like butter on popcorn!”

  She wrapped an arm around him, her hand coming to rest on his breast, which she jiggled for emphasis.

  “Ask yourselves this: was everyone else so busy with the Harvest Festival that they missed seeing that light? That beacon? Answer: Of course they were! We’d have missed it too . . . if we hadn’t been here . . . looking after Garlic.”

  We all looked at Garlic, laid out and surrounded by the remnants of stolen flowers. Rosemary bleated sadly.

  “Maybe that’s why Garlic had to go!” she whispered. “A sacrifice, to get us out from under the Festival lights and back here! Or a messenger! To make contact on the other side! To let them know someone would be listening! At last!”

  And her trolley had run so far off the tracks at that point that her ability to keep going was actually beginning to spook me.

  “Okay!” I insisted. “I just wondered why he gave me the ring! Turning it into some kind of cosmic hookery-crookery stuff – like everything’s being coordinated by a lost bit o’ space junk – that’s just weird! And scary!”

  “Yeah?” Amalthea patted Asael’s chest. Their faces, side by side, seemed full of pity as they looked at me. “Well,” she said. “Something that would be even scarier, I think, would be . . . if they didn’t connect! And it really was all just random and meaningless! I’d be pissed, Ruthie, I really would!” Then she moved off again on her relentless circuit of reason.

  “Anyhow, this we know! We show up! Isak spots you and up comes his arm with the ring. He’s not keeping it or offering it to me or to As’! You’re the one who has to have it. Why?”

  I stared at Garlic, waiting for an answer. None came. Except for a small constellation of dust motes that seemed to swirl away from his nostrils, as though in the grip of a tiny breeze. I looked up. Amalthea, Asael and Rosemary were all looking at me.

  “Huh?”

  “Why, Ruthie?” Asael whispered in awed tones.

  I had no idea. I shook my head. I waved my hands. I opened my mouth to show there was no answer lurking there. I snatched up the ring and held it out in pinched fingers, offering it to anyone who wanted it. To do with as they pleased! That’s when the light caught the inscription. I blinked, pulled it close to my eyes then bolted for the window and the light. How could I have been so stupid as to not look for an inscription? The others gathered around me and we twisted and turned the ring, passing it from hand to hand, until what was left of the faint message had been viewed from every angle.

  As far as we could make out, it said, ‘I loveliest man G’! Three words and a letter. No sense. We looked at each other. We looked at the ring. We passed it amongst us again. Amalthea plopped onto the sofa, at last immobilised by the weight of thought.

  “ ‘I loveliest man G?’” she repeated. ‘I’ for Isak? ‘G’ for Grace? Isak comma loveliest man comma Grace? What do you think; was there a relationship?”

  “No-o-o,” I said. The Gramma G I knew from the photo on Bridie’s wall might have known Isak, but she definitely did not get around giving gold rings with pet inscriptions to old rubby-dubs like him! “No no no! Grandpa died years ago, but she stayed on her own ‘til the end!”

  “You sure? I mean, think about it, Ruthie! There’s a code of silence surrounding what happened to her! Only someone deeply, deeply affected by her loss would dare to break that code. What if that person is Isak? And he’s waited all these years for someone like you – someone who cares enough to want to listen! What if The Thing . . . Queenie . . . pulled Isak and you together? And then it served as a door – a portal – for spirits to cross; to spotlight the wrong! The ring could be a token – a solid token of the truth of the connection between Isak and your grandmother! And you!”

  I held my head in my hands. “No no no!” I cried. “How did Gramma Grace even get into this picture? The deed . . . the Terrible Deed in the Reverend’s letter . . . wasn’t about her! Even Isak said . . .” (I hesitated to dwell on it in Asael’s hearing) “. . . it was about someone else!”

  “Exactly!” Amalthea crowed. “ISAK said! Isak is the key!” She held up the ring. “Start with this! And it’ll lead you . . .,” she waved my list of questions, “. . . to this! Wrongs have been done, Ruthie! And whether you believe it or not, things are connected! All things!”

  And that was all I could tolerate of that. Waving my arms in denial, I stomped out, across the veranda and down onto the grass. In the distance, smoke churned from the mill’s stacks and the sounds of celebration arced across from the showground. I paced up and down on the road, picking up rocks and hurling them into the cane. I didn’t want connections. I didn’t want complications. I just wanted someone – any one of the apparently many who knew – to straight up tell me what Sugar Town had allowed to happen to my family! Why should that be so hard? Why did there have to be ghosts in the machinery? Eventually Asael came out to me.

  “Thea’s making sandwiches for lunch. I told her vegemite an’ cheese for you. ‘S that okay, Ruthie?”

  “Fine. Whatever. And don’t call me Ruthie.”

  “Okay.” He waited.

  “So? What was the last thing I told you to call me?”

  “Perplexia.”

  “Right! We’ll stick with that then.” And I pushed him ahead of me, like a shield, back into the house.

  Lunch was quiet, I suppose out of respect for my temper. And I did manage to calm down enough to at least consider an Isak – Gramma Grace connection.

  “Okay!” I finally grumped. “Just for argument’s sake, let’s say Isak has a story to tell and some unholy power has chosen me to be the hearer. Why didn’t I see or hear any visions, then? And why, if a spirit was needed to spotlight the wrong – why bring two? I mean Isak saw Gramma G but Asael saw Rita! Why the overkill? Eh? How does it work, Amalthea?”

  She tore a chunk from her lettuce sandwich and offered it to Rosemary. “It’s a mystery,” she smiled. “All we can do is follow and see where it leads.”

  “Follow and see where it leads. Great! But your thinking is that we’ll follow the ring to Isak, he’ll lead us to whoever killed Gramma G and that, somehow, will lead us to the Terrible Deed, right? That’s where we’ll finish?”

  Rosemary, chewing her sandwich, gazed at me blankly, as though wondering how people got to be so stupid. Amalthea shrugged.

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  She raised a hand, asking for patience. “Look! Based on what you heard at the hospital, you’d have to think that Isak . . . needs to talk to someone about what happened to your grandmother! Just go with it, Ruth! Let the Forces lead! Only they know your destination!”

  “The Forces?” I sneered.

  “Queenie,” said Asael.

  I was so filled with disgust for the pair of them, I was fairly popping with sarcasm.

  “So, like, when it says on Garlic’s banner, ‘The Force is Gathering’, we’re talking space junk, are we? That’s ‘the Force’? Or could we be talking a freakish great lolly-bomb, coming to brain somebody?” I held up my own hand this time, stopping any reply. “In either case, the question we’re stuck on is . . . . !”

  I didn’t know. I couldn’t figure it out! Too many ‘mysteries’ and ‘Forces’ and too much giving in, only to follow blindl
y.

  Amalthea smiled. “The question we’re stuck on is, ‘What’s our strategy going to be, Ruthie?’ Bearing in mind that the final choice is yours.”

  I was angry still, and recognising that anger is a force all on its own, I said, “Obviously, I’m going to talk to Isak! One way or another!”

  She nodded approvingly and reached for my list of strategies.

  “Good! That’s number one then. Method yet to be established. And what about a number two, if Isak doesn’t pan out? What then?”

  “Check on Queenie!” blurted Asael. Rosemary huffed through her nose and I, in full agreement, followed suit. Asa’ became immediately defensive.

  “You heard what Isak said! She’s frightened! And besides, the army might blow her up!”

  I wanted to take hold of him and shake him and shout in his face: ‘She’s not people, Asael! She’s space junk!’ But I didn’t. I took a purposeful bite of my sandwich, just so my mouth would be occupied with something less hurtful. As I chewed, I watched Rosemary pick an everlasting daisy from the few flowers remaining around Garlic. She stood then, with the stalk hanging from her mouth, watching me watch her. Slowly, deliciously, her lips pulled it in past the ruminative grind of her teeth. What I like about goats, Amalthea had said the night before, is how they meet life on its own terms. She swallowed the last of her flower as I swallowed the last of my sandwich.

  “Okay!” I said. “Let’s make that first then! Let’s go see Queenie!”

  * * *

  It couldn’t be just that easy of course. Even as we prepared to go, Amalthea reminded herself aloud that she had arrangements to plan for Garlic who had now lain dead in her living room for almost twenty-four hours. Her preference, she said, was for fire and the stack of termite-ridden timber under the Poinciana would be perfect for that – with Alf Caletti’s permission, of course.

  Asael missed the first part of that conversation, but he came into the room in time to hear her say, “I know Kevin’ll want to help with the send-off. They got on well together, he and Garlic.”

  “Send-off?” he asked.

  “Mmm!” she said. “A lovely column of smoke, connecting the earth to the sky. Garlic’s very own axis mundi! He’d like that.”

  “Smoke?”

  “Yah!” She was slightly rapturous with the concept. “You know, there’s a place in India where they just leave bodies out for the scavenger birds to feed on! Giving back to nature all that’s been on loan! The Towers of Silence, they call it. There aren’t enough scavenger birds here, though. Besides which . . . ,” she rolled her eyes in disbelief, “there’re civic by-laws. And we don’t want to get on Sergeant Morrow’s bad side, do we? But surely no one’d object to a lovely little funeral pyre!”

  “But . . . he’s still in there!”

  “Well, in one sense of course, yes. But that’s what I’m saying. That’s what’s not right. The sooner the flesh is gone, the sooner he’s free to go.”

  Asael virtually staggered from the room and I resolved, on the spot, to have him and me somewhere far away when Garlic was burned.

  * * *

  Amalthea’s mention of Sergeant Morrow, however, reminded me that I was expected at the police station some time in the next few hours, to give my eye-witness account of Johnathon’s crash. It was important, I knew. But squeezed in beside that were my equally pressing needs to figure a way to talk to Isak, alone if possible, to make peace with Bridie and to get this ‘Queenie’ distraction out of the way.

  My plan for Isak was non-existent

  My plan with Bridie was to be super-sensitive and caring about her vulnerabilities but an absolute hound about our pact to be truthful with one another. If, for example, she got herself together enough to find Bessie Crampton, I fully expected to be told everything.

  As for Queenie, she being only half a kilometer away in the cane and only a broken piece of machinery anyhow, dealing with her should’ve been easy. Even that, though, was destined to be put off. As I gathered my things and checked my phone, I found a text from Kevin.

  “Ring me.”

  * * *

  Bridie is half-way through the door before the voices register. Kevin, of course, is there behind the counter, his smile wide but his eyes weary. Franz Hoggitt is also there, elbows planted on the counter, his chin in the wishbone of his hands. And in front of the counter, her arm deep in her purse, is Frieda Hoggitt.

  “Please,” Kevin is saying, “don’t spoil it for me, Frieda! It’s my one small gift of the year to the town. I could no more take money for Grand Gourd scones than . . .” as Bridie steps through the doorway, “. . . than Bridie McFarlane could take money for saying a prayer!”

  Bridie finds herself suddenly pinned by three sets of eyes.

  “Darling girl!” Frieda crowds toward her and the large purse slides, mouth agape, to the crook of her arm. Before Bridie can react, she is smothered in a bosomy hug, all but lifted from the floor.

  “The town is agog with you, Bridie McFarlane! And very cranky, as well! Lyle positively wore himself hoarse calling your name over the microphone yesterday! Positively hoarse! Bridie McFarlane! Miss Harvest Festival Queen of 2008! But were you there to accept the crown? No you weren’t! That snooty young slut of a Renee Hamble – Miss Tupperman’s Hardware – got to stand in for you. My God but that girl would flash her tits at a parking meter if she thought it’d give her an extra minute in the limelight!”

  Through this speech she alternates between hugging Bridie, holding her away at arm’s length, patting her back, rubbing her briskly about the shoulders and wagging a finger in her face. “I nearly came to your house! Truly, I did! To drag you back – kicking and screaming, if necessary! But then Lyle got on the sauce, as he always does, and I had to manoeuvre the drunken sot home! Tell me you‘re alright, Sweets!”

  “I’m fine, Frieda. Really! Thank you so much for worrying.” She takes the opportunity to grasp and still Frieda’s hands. “I went to the hospital to see that Mr Cranna was alright and I had to wait and by the time I got to speak with him it was late and . . . I was just exhausted. And there was Ruthie and Asael and . . . you know how things get away on a person.”

  “Of course I know, darling!” Frieda returns to delving in her purse, scratching out a space for Kevin’s Grand Gourd scones. “No one knows that better than I!”

  “Frieda, I’m so sorry for Ruth’s outburst at the showground yesterday. Questioning the mayor like that! It’s not like her usually you know, but . . . well we came across some old, half-forgotten letters yesterday. Letters our father wrote years ago. And they mentioned things I couldn’t explain to her. Among my many blank spots, it seems! And Ruthie’s such a terrier about family things these days! She got very agitated and we quarrelled and . . . I’m afraid she took it out on the mayor. Please pass on my apologies to him!”

  “Oh tosh, girl! It was nothing! Nothing at all! I don’t know why you’re bothering to mention it. You tell that little minx of a sister of yours . . . blank spot – shmank spot! All that matters is that you’re well and safe! And . . .” she finishes busily, “that’s always been the deal.”

  Her head comes up slowly, her eyes suddenly wary. Kevin cocks his head to one side and Franz looses a finger to scratch his nose.

  “Deal?” says Bridie.

  “Deal? Did I say ‘deal’? No, no, no! That’s not what I meant! It’s what’s ‘right’, that’s what I meant! You know! It’s just . . . you deserve all the support . . . all the town can give, that’s all. What with . . . all you’ve been through.”

  “Oh Frieda! I’m sure we’ve not been through anything more than most people! We all have our difficult times, after all! Gracious, I’d feel terrible if I thought people were mollycoddling us for ours! In any event, our father always said that character is a crop best grown in lean soil.”

  “Yes,” says Frieda with an unexpected hint of bitterness. “Well . . . we’ve had our share of ‘lean soil’ in Sugar Town over the years, with
out a doubt. Don’t know how much character it produced! Certainly a healthy crop of thistles! Not that the Reverend’s here to know!”

  Bridie is shocked by the disdain in Frieda’s voice. She’s worked hard to uphold her father’s image in the town. “I . . . I’m sure he would be here if he could, Frieda! Father’s given up so much that he valued, you know – his parish, his friends, his family!”

  “Yes, yes, of course! Obviously! Well!” Frieda clears her throat loudly and waves a hand in the air. “Look, pay me no mind, sweetheart. I’m a silly old woman! Ignore me! Ignore me! Everything goes away if you ignore me.” Her air of jollity is like a precariously balanced leaf in a rising wind. “In any event, the Reverend must be terribly proud of you! Grateful for all your good work . . . fund-raising and all! While he’s off tilling someone else’s ‘lean soil’, eh? So to speak? So exciting for all of us when a letter comes. Not quite the same as having him here, of course! But there you go! That’s men for you, isn’t it! Always running! Toward, away from! Always running.”

  By the end of the speech the leaf has fallen and all hints of pleasantry have been slammed flat under a tone of wrathful indignation. She plops her massive purse onto Kevin’s counter where, with unwarranted vigour, she bats its contents into a new configuration and, as though completely out of patience with baked goods, jams in the scones. She deals them a few punches of their own and, before they can recover, bangs shut the mouth of the purse. She breathes deeply a time or two, staring at her big hands, which remain clenched on the purse’s metal lips, as though a crocodile might escape if she let go. Her sudden intensity has filled the small shop with nervous anticipation. When she lifts her eyes to Bridie, however, a mask of regret has slid, unbidden, over the anger.