The Promise

by Tony Birch

  ‘Is that all I need to do, honey?’

  ‘Is that all? How many times have you promised, Luke, and done nothing?’

  ‘This will be different, Carol. This house is like a morgue without you and the boys here. This is a real promise.’

  I could hear her mother’s whining voice coaching her in the background.

  ‘You sign up for a program before I come back. And I want to see proof. One of them authority notices the government’s put out. All right?’

  I had a chuckle after I put the phone down. Rory Collins, a mechanic at the garage on the main street, an amiable man I drank with from time to time, had a brother-in-law who’d worked as a drug-and-alcohol counsellor with the City before he’d fallen off the wagon himself. He’d gotten the sack from his job, having gone near blind on homemade firewater he’d cooked up in his backyard. On his way out of the counselling service he’d lifted a fat pad of pledge authorities and had been selling them for twenty bucks apiece ever since.

  The biggest business in town was grog. Always had been. Closely followed by the church, and after that, since the government crackdown, came drug-and-alcohol counselling. None of the charities in town would give a man as much as a cup of tea without a signed authority note. The dole office was likely to cut off your cheque if you were an identified pisshead and not in a program. The counsellors ran the show, so they benefited most from the graft – cash, grog or girls. Sometimes the unholy trinity, if they were particularly greedy.

  Three days after the phone call and Carol’s demand, I was ready to head over to the in-laws’ with a signed authority in my pocket. I’d forged the signature myself.

  I’d picked up a suit jacket at the Salvation Army, had a shave and spit-polished my only pair of leather shoes. I’d even thought about a haircut, but decided against it, calculating that the twelve dollars would be better spent on a six-pack of Rebel Yell. I settled for some ancient hair oil I found in the back of the medicine cupboard in the bathroom before heading off.

  The oil had belonged to my grandfather, Abraham, a mission black who’d found God as a young man and who’d known the Bible, Old Testament and New, word for word. He’d bought our two-room weatherboard, on a low rise in the middle of town, with the money he’d earned over twenty backbreaking years as a ditch worker for the Water Board. Abe had a plan to set up his own church in the back room of the house, but as he got older and hunched over, the idea slipped away from him. Even then he never stopped reading his Bible, and slept with it under his pillow.

  He had taken good care of me after my mother ran off with some whitefella. My father had been white, too, a cattle worker passing through town heading west for a run; he’d stayed long enough to woo my mother back to his hotel room one night and send her home pregnant. When her belly got too big to hide under a dress, Abraham prayed for her and explained that she could stay in the house as long as she promised to get down on her hands and knees every night and pray with him. Dulcie, my mother, didn’t have much choice. Back in those days, if a pregnant black girl didn’t have a safe roof over her head and someone decent to speak for her, she’d have the baby whipped from her breast soon after it was born. She knew that Abraham’s word was the Gospel itself, and kept her promise until I started crawling around on the floor and making demands of her that she wasn’t interested in meeting. She got the wanders and eventually travelled far enough from us that she didn’t bother finding her way home.

  For a while I reckoned my father must have been an albino, because I was the fairest-skinned blackfella in the history of the town and could have easily passed for white. Abraham showed no prejudice towards me and tried steering me on the right path, but as soon as I was old enough I drifted out to the lake, to the ruins of the Christian mission, and quickly learned to love the drink and the smell of a girl’s skin after it had been dipped in water and wine.

  Abraham left the house to me after his death. It wasn’t much of a prize, but it was enough to impress Carol, a farmer’s daughter who worked at the bank in town and knew all about the value of private property.

  ‘It’s a start,’ she said softly, when she first saw the place, as rundown as it was.

  I met her during one of my brief periods of sobriety, a time when I went around town in a clean white shirt and talked about reviving Abraham’s dream of a church of his own. I’d even dressed the story up for Carol, in an effort to get her into his old brass bed – I told her I’d sworn to him, on his deathbed, that I would build his church and fill it with believers.

  ‘And what did he say?’ she’d pleaded, tears in her eyes, as we sat in the only tearoom in town, drinking Earl Grey out of flowery cups.

  ‘Well,’ I said, as I took a long gulp of the tea and stalled for an answer, ‘he looked up at me with that wrinkled old face of his, and even though he was in a mess of pain he said to me, “I know you can do it, Luke. You’re a strong boy. The Lord will be pleased, and I’ll rest easy.” ’

  Carol leaned across the table and rested her head against my chest. I put my arms around her and pressed her body into mine. She smelled so clean and soapy and pure, I was sure we’d be happy together.

  The days of scandal, of a white girl marrying a half-caste, weren’t quite over. The town whispers followed us wherever we went. But when I met Carol’s parents in Abraham’s dusted-off black suit and told them of my plans for a church, they seemed satisfied.

  ‘Land,’ her mother gushed to her husband, almost in disbelief. ‘He has land.’ Meanwhile the old man looked over at Carol and thought, to my reckoning, that she was a bit of a wallflower and this might be his best chance of marrying her off. He took her by the hand and told her he was happy for us.

  They lived far enough out of town to have no direct experience of my reputation, and never made inquiries, which would have turned up trouble for me. To this day I think that maybe they didn’t want to know.

  I did love Carol, then and now. But not as much as I loved the grog and the good company of them old boys. I loved the stories they told about the old days, when there was just a handful of whitefellas on the horizon. I also loved the town girls who drifted out to the lake to lie by the water of a night and look up at the stars. After a time, of course, the boys died away, and the girls grew into women with a tribe of kids of their own and an old man for each of them. If one of them fellas caught his wife out at the lake he’d kick her arse all the way back to town and throttle any man caught jazzing with her.

  Before leaving the house for the farm I downed my first can of Rebel Yell at the kitchen sink and threw another couple onto the passenger seat of the old Datsun, then set out to lay my claim on Carol and the boys. Along the way I stopped at the cemetery out of town, sat on a gravestone, drank another can and plucked a bunch of flowers from the grave to present to Carol as a peace offering. I shook the dust off them and sat them on the seat with the last of the grog.

  A couple of minutes’ drive away from the turn-off into the farmhouse I pulled over to the side of the road, under an old peppercorn tree. I hopped out and took a piss and then sat under the tree and sipped at the third can of bourbon and cola while I enjoyed the peace and quiet of the afternoon. When I’d finished I shook the last dregs out of the can, crushed it in my hand and threw it way off into the bushes. I dug into my jacket pocket and pulled out the half pack of XXX mints I’d planted there earlier, and then went to the side-view mirror to look at my face. I checked my bloodshot eyes and sucked and crunched on those mints and then I spit in my hands and tucked my wild head of curls behind my ears. I winked at myself in the mirror, pleased that I’d scrubbed up okay, all things considered.

  My head didn’t feel too good. In the car I rested my chin on the steering wheel and focused as best I could to keep to my side of the road. I took the turn into the in-laws’ long driveway a little too fast and managed to clean up the mailbox, which shattered into kindling. I held my hand down on the c
ar horn so the boys would hear me and come running to see their dad. But they didn’t come running at all. I pulled up out front of the house, with its long wide verandah and boxes of pretty flowers. There was no sign at all of Carol or the boys. Just Ma and Pa, old Martha and Ted, waiting to greet me.

  I fell out of the car, landed on my hands and knees in the dust, and looked up at them.

  ‘Heya, Teddy,’ I said. ‘Can you tell Carol I’m here? To pick her up, and the boys. She got her things packed?’

  Ted was wearing his bib-and-brace farmer’s overalls and a straw farmer’s hat. He hadn’t done any fieldwork for as long as I could remember; he hired in blackfellas on the cheap to do the slog while he sat on the phone nattering to his big city stockbroker. Martha was wearing one of her pretty floral dresses and a ton of make-up. She never got out of bed of a morning without doing her face. Probably wouldn’t recognise her if I came across her sleepwalking. They were full of disgust, both of them.

  ‘She doesn’t want to see you,’ Martha said, laughing and crying hysterically all at the same time. ‘She’s had enough, Luke. Carol wants a divorce.’

  Ted shifted awkwardly on the balls of his feet, maybe thinking that Martha had played her trump card a little early. I dusted myself off and pulled the forged authority from my jacket pocket.

  ‘She won’t need any divorce,’ I said, waving the slip of paper in their faces. ‘I signed up for a program, just like she asked me to. I’m off the grog. And I’m staying off it.’ I tried handing Ted the slip of paper, but he wouldn’t take it. ‘You ask her to come out here and talk to me right now,’ I went on. ‘She’s my wife, they’re my children, and I’m taking them home.’

  Martha tut-tutted and shook her head, and silent Ted went red in the face with embarrassment. My story was so full of bullshit I think he felt sorry for me. I heard the screen door slam on the verandah.

  ‘You’ve got no right being here, Luke.’

  It was Carol. She marched past her parents and down off the porch so we were standing toe-to-toe.

  ‘I don’t want you upsetting the boys. Like Mum says, I’m not coming back. It’s over.’

  I pushed the authority slip into her face.

  ‘You told me, on the phone, if I went on a program you’d give me another chance. Well, I did. Read it, Carol. Read it. I am clean and working hard on this. I love you, Carol.’

  She snatched the piece of paper out of my hand, screwed it into a ball and threw it to the ground.

  ‘Clean! You’ve never been clean, Luke. You’re dirty, dirty, dirty! You and all your kind. Look at you. You’re drunk now! I can smell it all over you. I got a call from Jenny Oakes, from the bank – she told me you were in there yesterday morning cashing a cheque, and by noon, when she was out getting her lunch, you were sitting up in the front bar of The Royal, half drunk. You’re not in any program.’ She pointed along the drive. ‘Leave here now. You shouldn’t have driven out here as it was. That car’s got no registration and you’ve got no licence to drive it. I hope the police get hold of you and lock you up.’

  I took a step back. My legs started shaking. Ted walked over and put a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Please, Luke,’ he said. ‘We don’t want any trouble here. I’ll drive you back into town, if you like.’

  Martha rested her arms across her flat breasts and pulled a face. ‘Have you anything to say to my daughter, Luke? Maybe an apology?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got something to say, Martha. To Carol, and to all of you.’

  I did have plenty to say. I just couldn’t remember what it was right then. I shook my head, trying to loosen the thought, but it wouldn’t come. If I’d had a dollar for every time Carol had threatened to leave, I’d be the richest blackfella in the country – richer even than those boys working on the oilrigs off the coast up north. But this time I could feel the pain deep in my gut because I knew there’d be no getting her back.

  I got into the car, fumbled with the keys until I could find the ignition and drove off.

  At home I went through the medicine cupboard again and grabbed hold of all the pills I could find. Sleeping tablets, antidepressants, painkillers, a few vitamins and even some cough drops. I shoved them all in my gob, stuck my head under the tap and drank until I’d swallowed the lot. I was desperate for another drink, but couldn’t remember where I’d dropped the last cans of Rebel Yell. Rifling through the refrigerator I found a lonely can of beer at the bottom of the empty vegetable tray. I drank it, stuck my head in the pantry, came out with half a bottle of vanilla essence and downed that as well.

  Abraham had kept a shotgun all his life. He’d never fired it, as far as I knew, but he liked to keep hold of it, claiming that one day he might be called upon to ‘protect the righteous from the sinners, black, white and brindle’. The gun wasn’t hard to find; I crawled under his old double bed, the wedding bed, and searched around until I found the loose floorboard, then fished around some more until I felt the cold steel of the barrel. I knew the gun was loaded without having to cock it. ‘Have it on the ready,’ Abe had instructed me. The breech had held a .12-gauge birdshot cartridge for as long as I could remember.

  I was ready to shoot myself right there in the house, but thinking about the mess it would make, about Carol or somebody else finding me with half my head caked to the ceiling, I stood up and walked onto the front verandah. It had begun to rain. I looked out across the hills behind the town, at a stand of trees in the distance, and then back at the lonely house. I knew then that I would never be coming back and decided I couldn’t abandon it this way.

  I went around back to the shed and threw some tools, old tins and chaff bags around until I found the half can of petrol I kept for the mower. I walked slowly through the house, from room to room, dousing each of them. The petrol trailed me along the passageway, out onto the verandah to the front yard. I struck a match and the flame chased the petrol back into the house. The place was fully alight in less than a minute, the dry old boards cracking with pain and weeping off the last traces of paint Abraham had put to them years back. I could hear the windows exploding with rage as I turned away from the flames and started up the car.

  Driving out of town I held the gun between my knees with the barrel scratching at my throat. If it had gone off then and there I’d have died a reasonably happy man. Would’ve saved me from testing my courage. Between the pelting rain, a dirty windshield, fucked wiper blades, and the pills and grog, I was driving on the last prayer I had. The car wobbled and weaved across the highway, by some miracle dodging trucks and trees and some livestock. Cows, mostly. I don’t know if it was one of them I hit, or one of those ghost trees they talk about round here that appear out of nowhere, but the last thing I remember was head-butting the windshield.

  When I woke my mouth was full of dirt and blood. I lifted my head and tried opening my eyes; I could see out of one, but the other was clamped shut. I’d been thrown from the car and was lying in a muddy ditch, the Datsun to the side of me, its windshield caved in, the door slung open and steam pouring from the bonnet. Something warm and sticky oozed from the corner of my bad eye, down my cheek. I tried getting to my feet and fell down again, up to my arse in murky water.

  I swallowed a few breaths and crawled over to the shotgun lying in the mud a few feet from me. I used it to haul myself up and get out of the ditch, onto the side of the red-dirt road. The car was fucked and wouldn’t be going anywhere. All my life I’d been walking the roads skirting the town – I thought I knew all of them. I didn’t have a clue where I was. There was nobody around and no buildings to identify with, save a rundown hay shed.

  It had stopped raining, but a death-rattle wind cut through to my skin. I started to walk, which wasn’t easy, as I was missing a shoe and had done an injury to my right foot. I could still get it over and done with and shoot myself, of course, but suddenly it didn’t seem such a smart idea. This would be a lon
ely place to die. The car crash had shaken me up enough to make me know I was a coward.

  I dragged myself along the road and eventually rounded a bend and came to a crossroad. There were no signs to tell me which way was which. Heading straight on seemed as good a choice as any, so I walked on, hauling my bad foot with me.

  After a while I spotted a white wooden cross and the pitched roof of a church through some trees in the distance. I got closer and could see that it was a small wooden building, resting on a bank above a dry riverbed off the road. The arched front door was open. I made for it.

  The doorway was draped with a deep-red velvet curtain. I pulled it to one side and went in. The light was low and it was hard to see. There were people on either side of the room, some sitting behind fold-up tables with colourful card decks laid out, others, mostly old girls, sitting opposite empty chairs with heads bowed and eyes closed, in front of flickering candles, which gave the women a creepy look. A few looked up at me as I walked in, splattered in mud and blood and carrying the shotgun. None of them seemed disturbed by the intrusion. They went back to what they were doing, which was most likely some form of meditation.

  A woman at one of the tables wouldn’t take her eyes off me. She was older, but beautiful nonetheless, with thick dark curls and the fullest lips I’d ever seen. I wanted desperately to kiss her. She began laying out her cards. I was drawn across the room to her.

  ‘You’ve had a troubled day, son,’ she said, when I reached her. ‘Would you like to put that gun down and rest your leg on this stool here?’

  I propped my weight on the shotgun and looked around the room. ‘What’s this place?’ I asked.

  ‘We are the Church of Spiritual Healing,’ she said, and smiled; her voice was sweeter than I thought could have been possible. She was a songbird. ‘We are here to heal the wounded souls that roam.’

  ‘Really? How long you been round here? I know every inch of this country. It don’t look it, but the church must be new?’