Bridge of Triangles

by John Muk Muk Burke

  Shirl looked at the floorboards.

  “You look after them kids.” The Old Granny spat the words at her daughter. “Paula and me goin’ to Pine Hill. Reckon you and that Jack go to showgrounds.”

  “Wherever he is. Not at the tent.” Sissy was smiling and her words were slurred.

  “Sis and me just went there,” said Mick and he drank the last from a sherry bottle’ he’d taken from his pocket.

  “We was just going back,” said Shirl quietly. “The Old Granny says the floods won’t come yet.”

  “I can see that, I can see that.” Sissy’s mood was swinging as the grog did its tricks. “Hey—what ’bout a drink for ya little sister?”

  “Sorry Sis, all gone.” And Mick threw the bottle into the oleander bushes at the end of the veranda.

  “You old meanie. Anyway there’s gonna be a flood you know. I gotta get these kids back to their father and pack up the tent. There’s gonna be a flood.”

  “Well git goin’ then,” said the Old Granny.

  In time Sissy and Mick and the kids with Shirl made their bedraggled way back to the camp. It seemed the wind separated each one of them from the other. As the group came up to the tent they could see Jack doing something.

  “What ya doin’ my old Man? Tightenin’ the ropes? Well ya can just bloody untighten them ’cos we’re not staying here to get drowned.”

  Chris felt frightened and eyed his father.

  Sissy continued beligerent as the grog wore off. “There’s gonna be a flood and I for one am pissin’ off. And the kids are too.”

  Jack continued with his task of securing the tent pegs. He did not speak.

  Sissy continued to build up like the storm all about, waving her arms wildly.

  “What about you Shirl—you not staying here are ya?”

  Shirt’s eyes were downcast. The ribbing on her thin red cardigan ran between her flat breasts and the wind flattened her hair. She was silent. It was Mick who spoke.

  “What ya reckon Jack? Reckon that river’ll come up over the bank tonight?”

  Jack spoke for the first time. “There’s not gonna be a bloody flood—a bit of a downpour and everyone’s runnin’ round like a chook with its head cut off.”

  Mick had a bit of time for his brother-in-law but he said, “Gee mate—I don’t know.”

  “Please yourself,” and Jack started to hammer the pegs in again.

  The grass cut the wind and the tight ropes shuddered in the air.

  Chris felt fearful. Every hit his father gave to the pegs increased the tension in the air. His father was a solid wall of defiance.

  “I reckon we’ll pack up the wagon Jack,” said Mick all of a sudden.

  Jack kept securing the tent against the universe.

  “Well piss off then!” Sissy threw the words at her brother like a stone. “Leave us here to drown—go to buggery.”

  “You could come too...” Mick looked sideways at his brother-in-law.

  “We’ll be right, we’ll be right.”

  So Mick and Shirl began piling stuff into the wagon. It did not take long. Mick harnessed up the horse and it looked impatient to be gone with the wind tearing at its mane and rattling the harness. Their two boys were lifted up inside the wagon. Mick and Shirl climbed up. They sat there foolishly hunched as the wind cut across them, Shirt’s red cardigan was cold and thin.

  Sissy would not look at them. Instead she walked off and sat on a flour drum with her back to the others.

  Mick clicked his tongue a couple of times and the wagon jerked and then rolled away over the wet grass. The Leetons were alone with the river and the wind.

  The night closed in and the river continued to swirl by, dark and dangerous. It became a beast that waited in the shadows, growling and threatening.

  The man slapped some devon on four metal plates and cut some thick bread. After the kids had eaten he said. “Get into bed.” They crawled under the blankets in their clothes and shut their eyes in a pretence of sleep. The rain beat solidly on the canvas. Sissy came into the tent then. The man lit the kerosene lantern. and the tent shadow moved as the boy’s parents sat there under that great wet sky, rolling cigarettes in their own private agonies.

  In his half sleep Chris heard vague shufflings and mumblings as the man cursed and fumbled. He was pumping kerosene into the lantern. Jack adjusted the wick and the tent danced in a dull yellow light. The boy fell alseep.

  When he awoke the world was chaotic. Gone was the soft light of the lantern. Now a great white light moved not within the tent but outside in the black and it picked up flying leaves and driving rain. Mixed with everything was the thudding of an engine.

  “Hold me neck, that’s it.” His mum’s voice.

  “Here, give me that one.” A strange voice—a man.

  “How many are there?” Another man’s voice—lower.

  “Pass her up.”

  “Up you go.”

  “Here’s another one.”

  Light in the boy’s eyes. Cold cold rain on his face. Knees scraping on cold hard metal. Laughter.

  “Here you go mate, get this round you.”

  Rough blanket down to bare feet which touched slatted boards.

  Sissy’s voice. “Yous sure ya got four up there? Don’t youse move this bloody thing till I’ve counted them.”

  “We’re not leaving anyone.” Serious voice—like telling off.

  “All here, righto, best take her over towards the bridge.” Strange voice of authority. Beating cold rain. Swirling world in black moving night.

  “Youse kids alright?” Sissy’s voice—softer now—less edgy.

  The floating vibrating machine with its strong white light pushed its way through the flood. There seemed to be a great many people. They sat on the slatted seats of the machine, all safe. The machine floated towards the approaches to the bridge. Its wheels fluttered as they found the solid wooden planks. It rumbled across and Chris saw the great white triangles slowly moving overhead. Above the whining engine and the driving rain a soldier shouted,

  “Jesus, its a floating farm out there—chooks and every-thing.”

  It was the smell more than anything that seemed to wrap around the boy and claim him and yet exclude him by its strangeness. It was a smell of damp and cloying heat, of cabbage and wet concrete. The echoing tin hall was filled with people. Practically the whole of the northern side of the town’s population had arrived at the showground. But the Old Granny, the great Paula, Billy and Prince and all the other people were nowhere to be seen. The rest had been rescued by the Army—as the Leetons had. They’d arrrived by tractors, horse drawn carts, on foot, car and even bicycles. They clustered in groups under the thundering corrugated iron roof of the pavilion. In other summers the same people had wandered through this hall, commenting on the vegetables and animals and flowers which they raised in the surrounding countryside and which gave meaning to their existence within the landscape.

  All the people were together under the glaring bare bulbs which hung from the cobwebbed angle-iron high above. Some sat on forms waiting to be ordered around. Children slept on the bare concrete covered with coats or whatever was at hand. At the end of the pavilion stood a long trestle table with tall piles of thick white china plates and cups.

  The flood had tumbled down the river in the night and no one had had time to sandbag their houses or lift side-boards onto drums. Many of the people muttered about the Godforsaken land and how they were going to pack up and go. How they didn’t belong. How they were losing their fight with the land. Of course afterwards they would go and push out the mud and scrub down their walls and grow old and bitter in the memory of their losses.

  No one understood the floods except the other people of the river. They lived not by a river but in the whole world. The landscape was not separated into hills, valleys, rivers, flats. The river was the sky. It lived for a time in the sky. But there was no time. It hid and played under the dry flats and flowed across the face of the burnin
g sun. It filled the space between the stars and as the whole great play of light and dark, of shifting water and wind-swept earth rolled around with its birds and lizards, kangaroos and snakes, everyone moved effortlessly like shadows in the bush, just as the sun moved away for the wind. Floods do not arrive either catastrophically or quietly—they are always here. The river is a tide.

  Sissy looked at the wet miserable huddle of people: Jack was standing over with his sister. She looked at her kids. She felt lost.

  Sissy was a small girl. The river was in flood. The sky was black as she walked up the hill with Paula. She held Paula’s sweaty hand. She was wrapped around with love.

  Pine Hill: the Old Granny and Paula were there now. Not here with strangers in a raining night all wrapped up in Army blankets. So she cursed the man. She knew she was alone.

  But she remembered, half remembered when everything just was.

  She walked up the hill to Aunty’s. The floods swirled in the droughts and the earth was parched in flood. The sun shone at night and the moon whitened the world by day. There was no yesterday or tomorrow. Now was when Paula let the chooks out. Now was when they sat up at Pine Hill eating damper with the big quiet faces all around.

  She hated these people because she did not belong. Did she belong with the big quiet faces?

  She wanted to run. She wanted to smash the tall towers of white plates and run away into where the shattered fragments of white crockery fell quietly, and as they fell they changed into a broad hot white plain where two still kangaroos with little burnt front paws stared across the distance—across all time—and stared at her in the eternal silence. And all was alright again.

  Sissy knew then that she would leave Jack. She could see him now talking with his tight haired sister who nervously clutched a large green handbag. Sissy knew that Jack and his sister were silently cursing the river. But Sissy did not curse the river. She cursed the man. Sissy was not one with the river, but she understood her mother, and as Sissy would have said, her mother understood the river. Unlike the man, Sissy had an instinct for survival. But her bitterness grew when she finally realised she could never go back to when she hadn’t seen the difference between her mother and herself.

  “Only the whites drown—unless they take us too,” her thoughts were abjectly bitter.

  And her bitterness and hatred and self-doubt all came together in a sickening surge of half-knowledge that made it impossible for her to hold on to any concept of “us”.

  Earlier that day, when Sissy had told Jack that the river would flood, her words had been utterly unable to cross that vast gulf between her world and her husband’s.

  The waters receded. The people went back to their private battles. The Leeton family was dropped off at Waterbag Road by Mr Dawson. (It was Mr Dawson who had employed Jack at the garage.) The dwelling was one main room with a corrugated iron lean-to attached. At one end of the lean-to was a flimsy tin cooking area. The main room, where cows had been milked, still had a few stray bolts sticking up from the concrete floor where a separator once stood. There was one window overlooking a red dirt lane running by a wheat field. Outside was a furphy which Dawson would tow away every now and then to refill at the cattle trough.

  The family settled in and the sun shone. The wheat across in the paddock turned from electric green to rusty gold. The lane glowed rose pink as the surface dried out and broke up.

  The hot Christmas arrived and settled with its magic and flies over the landscape. The small gums scattered down the lane stood milky green. Sissy took the kids and they broke off a branch. Back in the shed they decorated it with coloured paper. Sissy cut “Merry Christmas” from pretty paper and strung it across the top of the window.

  The wind moved over the ripening wheat and lifted the light paper message.

  The kids had fizzy drinks and Sissy and Jack floated bottles of beer in the cool water of the furphy. Later in the afternoon there was a summer storm and heavy rain drops punched into the red earth and washed the gum leaves. The family moved inside and the smell of dust and rain came through the window and all the wheat across the lane moved as the storm rolled in from the west.

  It was the last Christmas before Sydney. Chris asked why his name sounded like Christmas. Sissy and Jack laughed because they didn’t know.

  PART II

  The voices faded in the fog like a short-wave radio. Chris could not see any name for the town but he could make out dark lettering on a suspended sign where an amputated hand pointed to REFRESHMENTS. The window panes were black. The boy stirred irritably as the inconsiderate business of stopping the train proceeded. A short hiss was followed by a final jolt of the couplings. The dead stillness and a different light suddenly moved outside his head and Chris became aware of the figures on the platform. Grey shapes breathing smoke and moving silently past the window. Families arriving—leaving. And yes, there was a father. Did all the groups have a father? Big coat collars turned up to nearly touching low slung hats, and tops of heads just above the window. Families—families—leaving and arriving. Coming and going. Going—leaving. What strange words. Words that should have been exciting but were in the reality of this moment sickening and lonely. Yet Brian had left England. Perhaps that was why Brian had been his friend. Could Brian tell something about his future—that he was a traveller too? No, that seemed like nonsense. And Brian had spoken of his trip across the great ocean in the ship which had a swimming pool; laughed of it in his funny accent and shared sweets as he told of the biggest adventure of a life. Perhaps big ships were different? That had taken six weeks—six weeks! And this leaving, on a train, was taking forever too. Would he see Brian again?

  The train sighed as if all its systems had been turned off and it would rest here forever. Chris could still taste the meat pie his mother had bought eight hours before on another station—another refreshment room—another world. There the wintery sunshine had seemed full of promise and he hadn’t really thought of the others back at school. But the excitement was now replaced by a movement in his stomach which he fought to control. He saw Brian’s face smiling a crooked confused little smile as Mr Webster, hand on Chris’s shoulder and looking worried, had led him out of the classroom.

  His mother, in her best dress but looking terrible, and, strangest of all his older brother who should have been in high school, stood with Mary and Keith in a broken little family group. They stood there waiting and Chris felt something move in his total being. This shouldn’t be like this: something feels wrong: his mother never came into the school. Rarely she would meet the kids after school but then she would wait, across the ditch and under the dark monkey-nut trees that lined the metal road in front of the school. But here, right outside his classroom, inside the school—no. Chris sensed an impending horror. Was his father dead? Were they all going to jail or something equally impossible but somehow happening?

  The wall behind them was covered with carefully mounted paintings. He could see his own painting swirling around and fading in and out of focus and Mr Webster’s hands, hands so white, on his sleeve, pushing him gently towards his mother and the rest of his life.

  In this moment there came across the world a dreaming quality—a deep feeling that somehow no one, not anyone, ever again could ever be trusted. “Are we going home?”

  Sissy would not look at him. “No, just don’t ask questions.”

  Chris appealed with his eyes to Joe—that skinny dark boy with the shadowed black eyes and softly waving hair. But Joe looked only at the wide unpolished boards that Brian’s mother mopped every afternoon after school. Joe knew something but merely shuffled his feet. Mary, in her raggedy print dress and cardigan with the elbows worn out stood gently swinging a shoddy leather school bag in little sweeps by her turned down socks. She would not look at him. Keith seemed unaffected and kept straining away from Sissy’s hand and grinning at those bigger kids left sitting in the tall ceilinged classroom.

  The carriage gave a sudden jerk and Chris heard the
whistle, floating flat and dull through fog. His body touched against Keith’s sleeping shoulder. Tears stung his eyes as he realised that the sickening movement was about to start all over again. As the carriage gathered speed the passing lights flickered on the row of photographs where six trains were trapped forever in scenic parts of the state. The carafe of water, which the children had wanted to drink as soon as they saw it, rattled in its chrome cradle. They had drunk some too and it tasted of soot and leather but it was on a train—a train going to Sydney, so it was made to taste wonderful.

  The lights now stopped and Chris could see the dark shapes of railway tents. He thought of Errol who would be asleep now with his family, who laughed all the sunny day. And he felt a great distance from him and all the others who would be sliding in the muddy playground in the morning, as though the fury of their play would delay the bell. He felt an emptiness he remembered from somewhere else and wished he might hear the bell too.

  The smoke streamed past the window—its magic now merely a damp presence which tasted of meat pie. The beat of the train became a sudden roar as a tall bridge carried men and women and children across a deep valley. Somewhere far below in creekweeds and muddy spreads of reeds the frogs stopped their own noises as the bolted girders carried through their cold strength that relentless beat. Fireflies twinkled in the shaking air.

  He saw his father’s back with the thick leather belt holding up his trousers and this threatened to push the other pictures out of the frame of his mind. What was it he felt? Pity? Guilt? Whatever it was floated around like an irritating wisp of smoke which would not form into anything definite. Somewhere in this smoky vision he saw the man sleeping or perhaps huddled and confused at the makeshift stove in the shack at Waterbag Road with its cold empty beds.

  Keith’s knee was a rock in his side and he remembered the warmth of his back when they’d fallen alseep together. Was it only last night? The boys had slept together since ever he could remember. How they had warmed each other and breathed warm rings on each other’s backs on cold nights when the wind drove the rain against the tin walls of Waterbag Road. And how then he had lain awake and heard Keith’s breathing—like now, except that now he could only hear the crying of the train. This train which rushed and pulled them behind its great searching light that sought out sudden trees and glimpses of roads and left behind the occasional slow car with little yellow lights. This train that surged through the night and lit up its own path which you could see when it was coming to another turn in the track. This train predestined to travel a track laid down by men now forgotten.