Sugar Town

by Robert Nicholls

  His wheelchair squeaked away and I put my elbows on my knees, my head in my hands and stared down at my feet. Or were they the Reverend’s feet, like everyone said – long and boat-like? They certainly weren’t Rita’s feet, picked down to the bones. For a minute, I thought I was going to vomit on them, the world spun so dizzyingly. If I’d stayed at home that morning – or gone home instead of lingering at Amalthea’s – maybe none of this would have happened in the first place! Maybe I’d have talked Bridie out of going to see Bessie. Or at least I’d have gone with her. Then we’d have read the letter together and we’d have shared our shock and cried and hugged and made a plan to protect Asael. As a sister, I was absolutely the most useless piece of crap!

  I thought of old Isak, with his own new but hazy crop of memories. Things happen to you: good things and bad things, and you don’t deserve either one of them. That’s what he’d said. So maybe it was just meaningless Fate that made things happen the way they did: unavoidable, written in our hands. Nothing matters; everything counts. I dug around in my pocket for the ring that Gramma G had had engraved for Isak. He’d said I looked like her. Except, I supposed, for my feet! I wondered if, in a way, by giving the ring to me he felt he was giving it back to her.

  I thought of Amalthea, going without question into the darkness of the cane, just to see what was there. And Garlic, who’d gone into the darkness of death and come back but couldn’t tell us what was there. I thought of the boys and their eagerness to burn things, of Mayor Hoggitt, quivering with rage in the street and Alf, so calm, resonating with the slow pace of Sugar Town. Johnathon Cranna, Doctor Dabney, Sergeant Morrow, Bessie Crampton and Mister Bandini: all of us and more, locked into a dance. And at the centre, comatose, in a bed just beyond the door, lay my sister, Bridie.

  I forced myself to my feet and went back in, dragging a second chair to sit by Asael’s side. A short time later, full of forced chirpiness, Dana Goodrich appeared.

  “Hey, you two! She’s not going to wake up for quite awhile, you know? Not ‘til the doc’ wants her to. It could be tomorrow. Maybe even the next day.”

  She bustled about, tidying and smoothing. She uncovered Bridie’s feet and felt their temperature before pausing to look down at Bridie’s pale, serene face. She pushed hair off Bridie’s forehead and touched a cheek with the backs of her fingers.

  “She’s very beautiful, your . . . !” What was she going to say? Your sister? Your mum? She straggled off on a different tangent.

  “And a real sweetie. A little nuts-oid sometimes, eh? But then, who isn’t?” She fell quiet and a tissue came out of her pocket, to wipe at a sniffle. If I didn’t know better, I thought to myself, I’d say Dana was crying. And suddenly I realised she really was.

  “Ruthie,” she sniffed, “Asa’, I hope you know that all the hard times I give you . . . they’re only because I like you, eh? And Bridie. I like Bridie too. A lot! In fact, between you an’ me an’ the bedpost, I think Bridie’s . . . the world’s most beautiful . . . perfect thing!” She smiled ruefully and wiped at her eyes. “Between you an’ me, mind! Don’t you tell her I said that! You won’t tell her, will you, As’?”

  He shook his head earnestly and she tried a laugh.

  “That’s good. ‘Cause if you did, next time you came complaining about your aches ‘n’ pains . . . I’d have to amputate your weenie. And then where would you be, eh? Nothing left to play with!”

  I knew what she was doing: trying to gee us up, to lighten the situation. I appreciated it. She sniffled, blew her nose, shook a wrinkle out of the curtain and finally came back to us.

  “Sorry,” she said. “That was inappropriate. Folks tell me I need to get control of my mouth. But I’m so truly sorry things came to this! It’s something amongst the oldies, you know! But I can promise you!” Her face twisted and a whole new set of tears came bowling out. “If I had any idea who did her over, back then . . . there really would be amputations happening – without any hesitation at all. They deserve nothing less!”

  So the story was already out – from Kev’ to the doc’ and thereby to the nursing staff. I could have extended it by telling her about Les Crampton, who’d had the entire rest of his life amputated for what he’d done to Bridie and to Gramma G. But that would have meant trusting someone with the news that we’d spoken to Isak and that Isak believed there were others yet to be punished. Others yet to be punished? Both the shivers and the urge to vomit left me for good at that point.

  I watched as Dana stroked Bridie’s arm lightly and I heard her saying, “Look, she’ll be out of it at least until tomorrow. You could go home if you wanted. I’d call if you were needed. No? Well, if there’s anything I can do in the meantime . . . or even after this is over. . . anything at all . . . to help the three of you, you only have to ask. Okay?”

  I stood up, took her hand and drew her into the corridor.

 

  Chapter 15 - Home

  I heard Amalthea and Rosemary come up the stairs. I’d been sitting in the living room, trying to remember the sounds of habitation, the hubbub of my family moving about the rooms. Scuffling amongst the common, daily details of life and squirreling away our secret, private, unsharable little gum nuts of self. Now, without Bridie and Asael, without Rita and the Reverend, the rooms echoed and the closets and cupboards seemed ominously resentful. Amalthea stamped her feet and called out, “Anyone home?”

  It was only an hour since I’d left the hospital. Dana’d been right; there was nothing I could do there. But Asael wouldn’t easily have been moved from Bridie’s bedside, even if I’d tried which, considering what I had in mind, suited me fine. Dana and the other nurses were only too happy to keep him company, feed him, divert him and generally watch over him. So I’d called Amalthea and asked her to meet me at home.

  Why Amalthea? I’d thought of Kevin first, of course. After all, I loved him and knew that he loved me and Bridie and Asael. And therein lay the problem. Because love, like truth, is a tricky bastard. Being blind and all! I needed someone with eyes; the sort of person who would go into the darkness, just to see what was there; the sort who would not bow their head and turn away because what was seen or heard or found was other than what was expected.

  The door was open. I let the two of them walk in and listened to the click of Rosemary’s hooves moving through the house until they found me.

  We went to the kitchen: instant noodles for us and some aging broccoli for Rosemary. That was tea. While we ate, I caught her up on Bridie’s condition and on Asael’s hands-in-pockets stoicism and she told me about Isak falling asleep at her kitchen table. She’d woken him and insisted that he move to her bedroom, out of sight of unexpected visitors. He’d gone, but only after moving Queenie into the room with him. Garlic had joined them and both man and goat had been asleep when she left.

  “I gather you decided against turning him in?” she asked.

  I pulled the ring from my pocket and put it on the table between us. “This is all that stands between him and the loony bin. This and the fact that we might need him yet. To shoot somebody.”

  A smile crept across her face. “So, we’re here to look? For clues?”

  I fetched the letter that Bessie had returned to Bridie – the one that had set off this particular part of my family’s crisis – and let her read it through.

  She scanned it then went back to the beginning and read it again, this time reading parts of it aloud – partly, it seemed, for Rosemary’s benefit but also, I suspect, because it was a way of liberating the words from the prison of the page. I knew then that I’d asked the right person for help.

  By the time she reached the end . . . ‘Keep asking! Keep demanding! Write it all down! Love for now,’ . . . Rosemary had dropped onto her stomach, folded her dainty legs beneath her and seemed to be trembling with misgiving.

  “What a terrible way to learn!” Amalthea said. “If she truly hadn’t realised or remembered that she’d been attacked, what an awful way t
o learn!”

  “Yeah!” I tapped the letter urgently. “But look! ‘Write it all down!’ That’s what Rita asked the Reverend to do. Everything about the investigation; every suspicion, every clue! There’s more stuff that’s missing, Amalthea! Look!”

  I grabbed her hand and pulled her into Bridie’s room to show her the memory box.

  “These memories start . . . at the end! When things started to go wrong! I mean, things were wrong when Bridie was attacked, but the family survived that! It’s all later stuff – when Les killed Gramma G and Rita died and the Reverend went off to New Guinea – these memories are about those things! They’re Bridie’s memories and Bessie’s memories – not the Reverend’s. And even then, there’s not enough of them! If Isak’s right and names were suppressed . . . where better to look for them than right here?”

  So, as ridiculous as it now seems, we began to search my house. We started with Bridie’s room, easily the tidiest and emptiest of all the rooms. There were no jewellery boxes, perfumes, letter cases, ornaments, diaries or novels. The bedside table held a lamp, a Bible, an empty glass and the medicine bottle. Even the bed, untouched since Bridie was lifted from it, was only slightly rumpled, as though she’d folded herself into a tiny square, intent on leaving the smallest possible imprint. But there were drawers in the bureau and shelves in the closet.

  “Ironic,” said Amalthea at one point, “that Bridie, with all her health and her independence and her beauty, should make so small a mark on her space! My sister, Philippa . . . ,” (I blanched at the memory of snooping – the little girl with the ruined, wizened body and utter reliance on others to carry her from place to place) “. . . Philippa would have trashed this room. She’d have had everything she owned or ever desired to own represented somehow, out in the open, where she could see it and savour it and remember it.”

  She sighed. “Goes to show you, doesn’t it?”

  I didn’t know what it went to show but I agreed anyhow. I might have pressed her then for more about Philippa and maybe even about the photos of Kevin, but I didn’t get a chance.

  “Where’s Rosemary?” Amalthea suddenly asked. She’d crept out, it seemed, while we were intent on our task.

  “Rosemary?” She leaned into the hall. “Where are you? What are you up to?”

  The responding bleat was short and gargled.

  “Rosemary!” Thea raced down the hall and into the Reverend’s study. “Stop that! Spit it out! Right now!”

  Judging by the scrunched appearance of what was hanging from her mouth,

  Rosemary had been browsing in the waste bin. Half of it was already paste, but Amalthea waved the remnant in Rosemary’s face.

  “What’s come over you? You know better than this!” She dropped the salvaged bit back in the bin and tucked the bin under her arm for safekeeping.

  “These are people’s private papers, Rosemary! For goodness sake! You can’t just . . .!”

  I never liked that room – that study that had once belonged to the Reverend. It wasn’t just that it was a man’s room – dark and, even after all those years, faintly tobacco-ish, with a massive old desk, large, sagging armchairs and shelves of sombre looking books. The thing was that, though it was a complete contrast to her bedroom, this was also Bridie’s room. She used it only occasionally but when she did, it was purposeful and solitary. Asael and I were . . . not forbidden, but definitely not welcomed when we went there. I’d become so conditioned to avoiding it that being in it made me feel almost as guilty as snooping through Amalthea’s things. That room was why I needed her.

  “What’s all this?” she asked. One whole wall was lined with shelves which were chockers with reference books – mostly theological works. And there were albums! Stacks of personal albums! Twelve, fourteen . . . fifteen of them!

  “Sermons, I think.”

  “Sermons?”

  “This was the Reverend’s study.”

  “Ahh! Where the ills of the world were stripped for public flogging!”

  I looked at her quizzically and she said, “I’ve heard stories. A holy terror, they reckon.”

  She went to the bookshelf and selected an album from the end of the row. It was fat with dated pages, each hand-written in a script that was bold and confident, spattered with flourishes and slashing strokes, highlighted for emphasis. It was his handwriting.

  “Have you read them?” she asked.

  “No. Bridie probably has. But I’ve never been interested.”

  “No? Well! I am! Do you mind if I have a browse?”

  “Fill your boots!” I said. “Be handy if he’s named some names in there! Though I doubt he’d’ve gotten away with that! I reckon anyone who blabbed about the town’s business – even the Rev’ – would’ve been run out of town on a rail!”

  “Mmm! Are you sure he wasn’t?”

  “What? Run out of town on a rail?”

  Strangely, though I’d imagined Isak and Les Crampton and even Bessie being pressured in that way, the idea of the Reverend being rejected by the town banged me on the top of the head like an entirely new kind of egg falling out of the sky! My mouth sagged open with the jolt of it! Amalthea laughed lightly.

  “A foolish thought, I know! A much respected man, from all anyone says! Anyhow, at the very least, these sermons’d give you some insights into your father wouldn’t they? And it behoves us to know our fathers, Ruth. Even if they don’t want to know us!”

  With the bin under one arm and the album under the other, she went to the desk.

  “Rosemary? You find yourself a cool corner, why don’t you. Somewhere where you can’t get into mischief! And if I find anything fascinating, I’ll let you know. Okay?”

  She sat, squared the album away in front of her, tucked a rope of hair behind her ear and wiped perspiration from her palms onto her jeans. The house was so quiet. Why, I wondered. Why would it behove us to know our fathers? Especially if they didn’t want to know us! She opened the book and began to read lessons from a man she never met, delivered long ago to a people she hardly knew.

  I slipped out, back to Bridie’s room where I lay on her bed, in the space she’d occupied and attempted to die in. I tried to imagine what kind of pressure could be put on a man like the Reverend. If he’d made enemies from his pulpit and those enemies wanted him gone, what would they do? How would they bend him? The house snored gently in the afternoon air, a sound punctuated occasionally by Amalthea, speaking to Rosemary.

  “Why are there so many ‘whys’, Rose? Did you ever wonder that?”

  It seemed she was working through thoughts, just as the Reverend must have done in that very room.

  “Well why would he get upset about that? I mean, we’re only human, for God’s sake!”

  I imagined Rosemary nodding a sad condolence. Outside, the sky was the colour of chalk.

  * * *

  A slow flip of the pages reveals that the dates in the album are all from l984. Each date is followed by a brief introductory description of the sermon’s purpose. Some were for funerals, some for weddings, some for christenings. Some were comments on what was happening in Sugar Town or elsewhere in the far-flung world. It takes Thea short minutes to realise that, in those private notes – notes that only he would have read – names are indeed mentioned! She’s entranced. In her hands, it would seem, is a conscientiously constructed record – one man’s view – of the blessings and iniquities that were visited on the people of Sugar Town in the year of l984.

  “Nineteen eighty-four!” she whistles. “Twenty-four years ago! That’s the same age as our trail, isn’t it, Rosemary?” Rosemary flaps an ear lazily and Thea smiles.

  Thea is not daunted by the age or the faintness of trails. She has, after all, found and followed the thinnest of trails; one that’s led her far up the coast of Australia, to a tiny, improbable town called Sugar Town and a baker named Kevin Truck, with no other intention than to make the casual acquaintance of a man who might be her father. Because i
t’s important to know the father – to know him for who he is – even if he never chose to know the daughter.

  Deeds done, visions seen, vengeances sought. The pale, freckled little arse of the world! She doesn’t fear any of it.

  * * *

  1984, by all accounts, was a fine and fruitful year in the Reverend’s eyes. The sermons are those of an enthusiastic young preacher in love with his congregation and his learning and his new wife. ‘Love is the fulfilling of the law’, Amalthea sees highlighted on one page and, on another, ‘A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved to me.’ ‘Let us solace ourselves with loves.’

  In May of the year, he records the birth of ‘a precious daughter’ – Bridie – celebrating it with a lesson on the responsibilities of parenthood, and the duties of children: ‘Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that begat us.’ (‘No mention of mothers?’ Thea thinks.) She thinks of her own mother, stoically alone in childbirth while the father that begat the child was somewhere else, at an entirely unrelated labour of his own choosing.

  She puts 1984 back on the shelf and moves thirteen books to the right. 1997. 1997 was the infamous year; the year when the fabric of Sugar Town began to unravel.

  The first thing she notices is that the handwriting is different. The bold, flowery script has been exchanged for one that’s small, meticulous and exact, done with the lightest of touches. The ‘I’s’ are capped with precise little circles and the capital letters are printed. It’s the writing of a child.

  Amalthea fetches the goat-nibbled sheet from the waste bin. It’s one of half a dozen relatively freshly crumpled papers, on all of which the handwriting is recognizably the same as that in the book. Bridie’s writing. So she was helping her father! Working as his scribe at the ripe old age of . . . what? Twelve? Thirteen?

  Thea smoothes the paper absently as she tries to picture the process – the tall man stalking about the room, pausing to read over the child’s shoulder. Or did he merely make rough notes that she later, alone in her quiet time, transcribed for him? An act of devotion, perhaps.