Sugar Town

by Robert Nicholls

  Thea flicks on through the album, glancing at dates and titles and introductory notes. It slowly dawns on her that, in the years between 1984 and 1997, more than the handwriting has changed. The Reverend’s once companionable and celebratory tone is gone and his sermons now pulse with barely coherent rage. The notes to one, entitled ‘Insidious Destruction – What are Your Children Reading?’ condemns teachers at local schools for issuing novels that deal with witchcraft. Another (‘Pagan Ritual and Satanism – Have We Become Druids?’) vilifies the mayor and his council and the entire farming community for endorsing the Grand Gourd as chief icon of the Harvest Festival. In ‘Lust, Lechery and Fleshly Temptations’, a tirade is unleashed on marital partners who stray into other’s beds. That topic, ramblingly, is connected to the rumoured issuance by hospital staff of ‘morning after’ pills to careless fornicators. In yet another, (Discipline and Public Order – Who is in Control?) the police receive a drubbing for failing to curb drunkenness and casual domestic violence in the community.

  It’s the tone of a burnt out teacher struggling to correct a disaffected class. Sundays with the Reverend, Thea thinks, cannot have been easy! And yet, in these records, all that anger has been channelled through the hand of a child!

  * * *

  I was all but asleep when Amalthea wandered into the room, carrying one of the albums. Almost an hour had passed.

  “Listen to this, Ruth! “Husbands, love thy wives and be not bitter against them. Woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him.”

  I shook my head. “Yeah? What about it?”

  “It’s from a sermon on the virtues of loyalty, patience and forgiveness in family life. Guess whose name is mentioned in the preliminary notes. Les Crampton!”

  Again I shook my head, not understanding.

  “Heaps of these sermons are aimed at someone or something specific in the town! He’s written private notes on each of them! And people are named in the notes! This sermon barely stops short of publicly naming and shaming Les Crampton! And it comes within a whisker of inviting neighbours to intervene! And listen to this!” She flipped pages and found a highlighted section.

  “There’s a reference here to ‘men of deep learning but shallow spirit’. ‘Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him.’ Guess who! Roger Dabney! It’s a sermon about arrogance and abuse of power!”

  I swung my legs to the side and she sat beside me, opening the book between us.

  “It’s Bridie’s handwriting!” I said.

  “The sermons, yeah. 1997! She was his scribe. But these notes are in his hand! Look here! Johnathon Cranna got a mention!”

  She flicked a page and picked out highlighted bits. “ ‘We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.’ And again, ‘Let us not be weary in well-doing; for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.’ Can’t quite figure whether he’s flattering or knocking with that one!”

  Even Kevin Truck was there, mentioned in the notes of a sermon that rambled confusingly over topics such as trust, loyalty, opportunism, intimacy, confiding and disappointment.

  Amalthea read, “‘Let us take our fill of love until the morning, for the Goodman is not at home; he is gone a long journey.’ What about that? And this: ‘They were as fed horses in the morning; every one neighed after his neighbour’s wife!’”

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  She shook her head numbly, staring at the words. “Nothing very nice, I think.” Then she flipped the page abruptly and slammed the book closed.

  “Questions without answers!” she snapped. “Come on.”

  She headed back to the study and I straggled along behind.

  “This is 1997,” she was saying as I caught up. “There are three albums left. Supposedly they’ll be 98, 99 and two thousand.”

  I did the maths quickly. Gramma G was killed in June of 1998 and Asael was born the following month. Rita died early in ‘99. Bessie Crampton was with us from ‘99 to ‘02 but the Reverend left, and so the sermons ended, in two thousand. It occurred to me that, if there were revelations about his leaving, they might well be in that last album.

  It didn’t escape me that, while I was handling the books, Amalthea was quietly removing one of the sermons that we’d just looked at in 1993. I didn’t say anything. I knew it would be the one mentioning Kevin and I figured I owed her at least that – for having snooped in her memories, if nothing else! I picked 1998 off the shelf and she took both 1999 and 2000. She sat at the desk and I sat in the big armchair.

  Two things were immediately obvious to me. Firstly, the sermons were in the Reverend’s own handwriting all the way through to September. The months before must have been when Rita had us in Brisbane, waiting for Asael to be born. After September, Bridie was scribing for him again. And, secondly, true to what he’d told Rita in his letter, the Reverend’s anger never faltered. The congregation, tasked only with figuring out who he was cutting to pieces on a given Sunday, must have found the services appalling to sit through.

  The last sermons were more subdued. Resigned. Gramma Grace was dead and, somehow, so too was his fire.

  ‘So fight I; not as one that beateth the air . . . lest that by any means when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.’

  A castaway? Was he already planning his escape to New Guinea? Or was he just going crazy! Mad with grief or disappointment or too much thinking. Perhaps he’d used up all the targets in Sugar Town and had only himself left to focus his wrath on! Whatever the case, I realised that his accusations were far too all-encompassing to be useful to us. We needed information from a sniper – not from a shotgun enthusiast.

  * * *

  I was drifting through these thoughts, immersed in the big chair, when Rosemary suddenly catapulted to her feet, staring distractedly from side to side and flapping her ears.

  “That’s what you get,” Amalthea scolded softly, “from eating people’s private papers, Rosemary! Bad dreams! And serve you right!”

  Then a heavy step sounded on the outside stairs. Followed by another and another. Someone . . . someone much too slow and deliberate to be Asael . . . someone who Rosemary’s sixth sense was definitely not comfortable with . . . was about to knock on the door!

  Despite the fact that I was in my own house, I suddenly felt as guilty as a fox in a barnyard – or, in this case, the Reverend’s private space. The footsteps reached the landing and paused. I waited for the knock, but it didn’t come. Instead, there were faint clicks as the outer door opened and closed. Whoever it was, was standing in the kitchen! The thought crossed my mind that this would be what a real ‘blow-in’ off the highway would sound like; someone come to bludgeon two girls for no reason, as one had supposedly done to Gramma G. I had an impulse to hide! Amalthea, happily, had an altogether more useful impulse as, very stealthily, she tucked the 1999 book away in her shoulder bag, leaving 2000 open on the desk in front of her.

  There was the sound of shuffling footsteps and soon a shadow slithered along the floor into view; elongated head, shoulders, torso and legs making their slow, silent way past the study door. Then an actual foot and, finally, a dark, solid figure appeared. He side-spied Amalthea sitting at the desk, did a double take and limped to a halt. His eyes clicked from left to right, capturing Rosemary and me in a glance.

  It was Sergeant Morrow – nervous, suspicious and barely fit, it appeared, to be out and walking around. The hand he raised to his hat trembled visibly and the rest of his body seemed unsure of its ability to stay upright.

  “Sergeant!” said Amalthea brightly. “I surely did not expect to see you out on the beat this afternoon! That shock you got this morning looked like it might’ve killed an ordinary man! You all right, then?”

  He lifted his cap and his head shook ‘no’ even as his voice said, “Yair, good.”

  He gave me a disparaging look. “Thought you
’d be with yer sister.” I wagged my head and said nothing.

  “I come to . . .” He looked around, dazedly; just the way you’d expect a man to look only hours after his neurons had been zapped by an exotic chunk of space debris; and then seen a goat that he had just touched and recognised as being stone cold dead . . . open its eyes and wink at him.

  “I come to see about the pills. ‘Parently there were pills.”

  His voice carried barely an inflection and his hands twitched at his sides, like those of a washed-up gunslinger.

  “In the bedroom,” I said. “There’s a bottle. I’ll get it for you.”

  “Good,” he said, without much interest. And twitching a glance at Rosemary, he asked, “Which one’s this?”

  “This is Rosemary. Rosemary, say hello to . . . !”

  “Not the dead one?”

  “No, no, Garlic’s the dead one. And even he’s not the dead one anymore, it seems! Is he?”

  “Not wearin’ their signs.”

  “No, well! What with recent events, we’re thinking we might need some new signs!”

  She cast an enigmatic smile which made him lift his head and cock a suspicious eye. Just checking, I suspected, to see if she was taking the piss. Amongst the many things capable of provoking Sergeant Morrow’s wrath, taking the piss ranked very highly indeed.

  “You pair,” he said, flicking his eyes abut the room, “yer magnets for trouble, aren’t yez? The old man. That space junk. Brawlin’ wi’ them footy boys. Askin’ questions about things better left forgotten. Now we got a suicide attempt. What’s it gonna take, eh?” He hooked a thumb through his belt, next to his pistol, the better to steady the hand, and locking eyes with Rosemary, he demanded, "What you doin’ here?”

  By the end of that little speech, my back was well and truly up! This was my house and these were my friends! And in a free country, I could ask whatever questions I felt like asking! Not to mention the fact that the ‘attempted suicide’ was my sister! Anxiety, territorialism and frustration, combined with, I confess, my native bad temper, turned into a fist that had me by the scruff of the neck and half out of my chair before Amalthea stymied me. She did it by banging her palms on the desk and demanding, much too loudly, “Here? What’re we doing here?”

  It was like she’d been waiting all afternoon for a chance to explain.

  “We’re helping our friends, Sergeant! When Rosemary and I heard how serious a turn things had taken for Bridie . . . we just had to come see what we could do for Ruth . . . who you can see is absolutely distraught, poor thing!”

  Everyone looked at me and Amalthea waggled her eyebrows encouragingly. I wasn’t sure what she was up to but I turned the corners of my mouth down and sniffled obligingly.

  “You see? And Rosemary and I – and Garlic helped, of course, but mostly Rosemary and I – we had this brilliant idea! To contact their father!”

  “Their father! The Reverend?”

  “Exactly! I mean, a father would want to know, wouldn’t he? That his family was in such turmoil? And if he knew, surely he’d be back in Sugar Town in a jiffy! How good would that be?”

  “Back in Sugar Town?”

  “Exactly! The problem is, though, the only person who knows how to contact him is Bridie! But there has to be something written down, you’d think! A phone number, an e-mail address . . . something! So that’s why Rosemary and I are here with Ruth. Just kind of . . . ferreting through the stuff! Standing by the family! As friends do!”

  She emphatically patted the 2000 album still open on the desk in front of her, drawing his eyes to it. By the look on his face, you’d’ve thought she’d said she was there to eat frogs.

  “You find anything?”

  “Well there’s the serendipity, Sergeant! No contact details! Not yet, anyhow! But what we did find was these books of sermons!”

  She helpfully indicated the row of albums on the bookshelf and, from the shrewd look on her face, I began to understand what she was doing. Isak had declared that guilty men – rapists and murderers – still walked the streets of Sugar Town. And if that was so, someone was responsible for ‘closing the books’ on those people! Amalthea, it seemed, was about to give the Sergeant’s tree it’s second big shake of the day.

  “Did you know,” she went on, patting the open book, “that the Reverend wrote private notes on each of his sermons? A little week by week commentary on the good, the bad and the ugly in Sugar Town! And what’s really fascinating is . . . he’s put in names! Lots of townspeople’s names!”

  A small furrow formed on Sergeant Morrow’s forehead, rising from the bridge of his nose.

  “Hey!” she continued, as though it had just occurred to her. “You know what just occurred to me? Because they’re so detailed and . . . it looks like one album for every year he was here . . . they might be really great evidence! Like even stuff about the attacks on Bridie and on their grandmother! Wow, Sergeant! Imagine it! The answers could’ve been right here in this house, all this time!”

  The policeman stalked over to the desk and turned the album. The crease in his brow deepened as he flipped a couple of pages and grunted, a small surprised sound.

  “All dated?” he asked.

  “Seem to be, yep!”

  “With names?”

  “Yep!” She smiled and wagged her head flightily. “Not as good as police records of course but gee! I bet they’d be interesting reading for anyone who was . . . you know . . . just trying to get an idea of who did what to who! Don’t you think!”

  He went to the bookshelf and confirmed for himself the organisation, flicking open one after the other, checking dates. He came to the last one, 1997, and the empty space that followed. He looked to the book I had in my lap and the one open in front of Amalthea on the desk and his lips moved as he did the calculation in his head.

  “’98 an’ ’99,” he said, bobbing his head at our books. “Rev’ left in 2000, as I recall. So this’s all of ‘em?” His voice was thoughtful, empty of its usual brusqueness.

  “Well, that’s all that’s on the shelf, so I suppose . . .?”

  He looked at me for confirmation and I shrugged exaggeratedly, leaving him to reach his own conclusion.

  He closed 1997, sighed deeply, rubbed the bridge of his nose and put the album back in its place.

  “Finished the year after the . . . ! When . . . !”

  He stopped. The whole town would know by now, from what I’d said to Frieda in the main street and from Bridie’s overdose, that the stories of the rape and of Bridie’s and Asael’s unorthodox relationship, were no longer secrets. But Morrow, to his credit I suppose, was still intent on treating the topic with delicacy. I made my chin tremble and sniffled into my sleeve.

  “Revelations,” he said, twisting his mouth into what passed for a smile in his world. “The Reverend was always big on Revelations.”

  It was obvious that the collection was something new to him – something that was stretching his imagination. New things meant change, and change meant challenge and challenge always came back to being something for him to deal with. After a few moments of stillness, he took 2000 from in front of Amalthea and 1998 from me and put them back into the empty space on the shelf. He didn’t check their dates and, if the two books didn’t quite fill the space, he seemed not to notice. He drew a deep breath and began methodically to crack the knuckles of his hands, one after another. Then he turned his cold gaze back on Amalthea.

  “An’ you didn’ find that address?”

  “The address? No! We got so distracted with the sermons! Has to be here, though, doesn’t it? We’ll just keep looking, I guess!”

  He shook his head. And to me he said, “Sorry, kid. You ‘n’ your brother . . . gonna have to clear off for a day or two. Gi’me time to check through this lot. Investigate. Make a list. Get you to sign it. Should be your sister but you’ll have to do. Right?”

  I sniffled and whimpered a bit. There was no way Asael and I would have
spent the night there anyhow; especially having been offered beds in the hospital, near Bridie. Still, why make life easier for him?

  “Maybe your ‘friend’,” he said, flicking a glance at Amalthea, as though she wasn’t really a friend at all, “could put yez up. Or I could book yez a room at the G.C. On the gov’ment, o’course.”

  “S’okay,” I said. “We’ll work it out for ourselves, thanks.” I sniffled some more and gave him a calf-eyed look which never touched him..

  “Right, then. Settled. So I’ll ‘ave this pill bottle, eh. Then youse can get about your business. Somewhere else. Let me get into this lot.”

  We both rose and Rosemary danced a little jig, tapping her sharp little hooves, a movement that distracted Morrow just long enough for Amalthea to swing up her shoulder bag without revealing its weight. Before we reached the study door, however, he barked her name, bringing her to a guilty halt.

  “That piece o’ machinery.” We waited while he collected the rest of the thought. “I’ll be sending someone ‘round for that.”

  She nodded, put a dramatically supportive arm around me and, smiling sidelong, guided me out of the house. Rosemary raced ahead into the yard, licking up fallen frangipani blossoms and, as we left the stairs, Amalthea formed her lips into a “Shhhh!”. We walked off into the street, past the patrol car. The weight of 1999 was bumping between us and the weight of Sergeant Morrow’s gaze was heavy on our backs.

  * * *

  I wanted to stop in the park just a hundred metres up the road. We could sit on the kids’ swings, I thought, and begin reading through the papers she’d pilfered. But Amalthea said no.

  “If he realises we’ve short-changed him, he might come looking for us.”

  So where to go? Her place was too far, she said, and the hospital was too busy.

  “We should go to Kevin, at the bakery,” she suggested and I had a feeling it was the only option she’d consider. But I was good with that. All being well, Bessie, having planted her poisonous remembrance with Bridie would have cleared off, back to Mister Bandini – perhaps even have left town. And Kev’s brain would be available for picking. All in all, it seemed a good choice.

  Chapter 16 – Allies