by Joy Dettman
His son. For six months, he’d had a future prime minister in that crib. Flo’s mother had taken that dream away, and the doctor she’d brought to the house.
‘Retard,’ they’d said. ‘Put him away.’
Flo hadn’t wanted to put Donny away, not then, not until later. She’d been big with the next one before she’d started on the idea. Nothing wrong with the second one. It had come out head first. Flo wouldn’t look after it. Her mother had come to help; two weeks she’d spent in the sleep-out; two weeks nagging him to put Donny away. Maybe he’d thrown her out. She’d told the cops he’d thrown her out. Maybe he had.
A roar of laughter rose in the bar and Ray turned to its source: the Macdonald twins, clad in their army uniforms. They’d been out of the army since they came home from Korea. Still playing dress-ups. He hated those bastards. He had gone there looking for work, looking for old George. One of the twins had been in the office.
‘N-n-not taking on men right n-now, Ray,’ the bastard had said.
They’d mocked his stutter in the classroom, and when he’d taken on one, he’d taken on two. He might have taken that one on, had Joss Palmer not reached out to shake his hand.
‘Try Davies, Ray,’ he’d said. ‘He’s looking for men.’
Joss Palmer, son of Tom: they both worked for Macdonald. Joss had wed one of the Macdonald girls. Weasel Lewis had got work with Macdonald. He’d wed Joss Palmer’s sister. Every bastard working at that mill was tied up somehow to Macdonald or Palmer. Between them, they had this town boxed up like one of those crossword puzzles young Georgie sat filling in, each word woven into another. The whole town was connected up, even Charlie White, the grocer. His daughter had wed Alfred Timms whose sister had wed a Thompson. Thompsons connected to Nelsons, Nelsons to Lewises, and back to Palmer/Macdonald.
Ray didn’t fit into the crossword. Born flawed, he was incapable of joining.
Harry Hall didn’t fit in either. A blow-in from Melbourne, Harry had wed scrawny little Elsie, a darkie connected to no one. Their kids might join them in one day; they were white enough. In this town though, they’d never be more than one of those grey squares, where a wrong word had been pencilled in and erased by a wet finger.
An elongated, rusty-headed fringe dweller, Harry Hall. Employed by George Macdonald for his driving skill back when few in Woody Creek could handle a loaded truck. He’d talk to anyone, migrant or mayor, talk politics or atom bombs, confident in the knowledge that he had the words waiting on his tongue. His suit trousers had seen more wear than his coat. He didn’t own a pair of shoes, but his working boots had been polished for Vern Hooper.
Ray’s shoes were new, his white shirt was brand new, his wedding suit had cost him three weeks’ pay back in ’46. It didn’t change who he was. He was less than Harry Hall; less than Shaky Lewis, who was putting away more than his fair share of free beer.
‘He got a good turnout, Ray,’ Harry said.
Ray nodded.
In his youth he’d sought friendship, had followed new friends like a hulking cur pup, its tail wagging, eager for a pat on the head. Too often he’d been kicked in the guts and run home yelping — only to be kicked in the bum by his nasty bitch of a mother. He’d learnt early to accept his position in the scheme of things.
His hand, seeking purpose, reached for his glass. Empty. Freddy’s wife had returned to the women; his son, attempting to help out, pulled beers that were half froth.
‘Freddy. There’s blokes choking of thirst down here, mate,’ Harry called. From his trouser pocket, he removed a tin of tobacco, the small packet of Tally-Ho papers half buried in the weed. Ray watched him pinch a few brown threads, watched deft fingers roll a slim smoke faster than most could get a ready-rolled out of a packet. Ray got one out, lit it.
‘That little moustachioed bugger,’ Harry said to Lenny.
‘Tony?’
Harry nodded. ‘He bailed me up as I was getting out of the truck. I think he was jabbering about marrying Joany.’
‘She told Mum a week ago he’d asked her to marry him.’
‘I don’t know how she understands a word he says.’
Woody Creek had taken in its share of those left homeless, landless, by the war. Pommy ex-servicemen had brought their wives and kids out on the first boats and not a soul had kicked up a fuss about them. Nor had they about the next lot: blue-eyed blonds, their countries of origin somewhere near the Baltic Sea. A few of them had brought women and kids. These last years, the Immigration Department, running short of blue-eyed blonds, had started shipping in dagoes, a younger bunch, and not a woman or a kid amongst them. A lot in town were kicking up a fuss about them. Some of those swarthy little buggers were darker-skinned than Harry’s darkest, and it was universally known in Woody Creek that they all carried knives and would slit your throat and rape your daughters as quick as look at you.
A pack of them worked for the Forestry Commission. Harry had two teenage daughters, Joany and Maudy. They’d brought a couple of those Italian boys home.
‘What did you tell him?’ Lenny asked.
‘To ask me again when he’d learnt the lingo.’
Weasel Lewis had a distinctive snigger. The Macdonald twins didn’t snigger; they howled like a pair of dingoes.
‘What’s the joke?’ Harry asked.
‘Your neighbour could give you a few tips — on the lingo, like,’ Weasel sniggered.
Harry wished he’d bitten his tongue.
It didn’t take much to start rumours in Woody Creek, not if your name was Jenny Morrison, not if you hadn’t been sighted in town for five years. Folk still drove down, or sent their kids down on bikes, to buy eggs, fresh vegetables in season. That old cane pram, pressed back into service as Raelene’s crib, had been sighted by a few. A few had asked Harry if Jenny’s latest was half dago.
He glanced at Ray, hoping he thought Weasel was referring to Gertrude, who got on well with a Latvian woman who’d also recently come to town. Ray was looking at the women in the dining area. Harry hoped he hadn’t heard.
No sign of the Hooper women or Jim. Harry had shaken Jim’s hand out at the cemetery. If he’d remembered him, he hadn’t made it obvious. Too many wanting to shake his hand and Jim looking as if he wanted to be anywhere else but there.
‘Five minutes, lads,’ Freddy said.
Lenny pushed his glass across the bar. Ray emptied his glass and turned to leave.
‘We ought to get going too,’ Harry said.
He was rolling a smoke for the road, his back to the Macdonald pack; didn’t see what happened or how. Heard the thump, felt the rain of beer, saw an empty glass crash to the bar, shatter.
No one saw it coming.
Like his glass, Weasel Lewis had taken wing. Landed on his bum between the funeral shoes, his landing separating the Macdonald twins.
Identical, Bernie and Macka Macdonald, no necks, broad in the shoulder, barrel-chested, as bald as their father with not a lot more height. They stood, arms swinging at their sides, Ray between them, flexing his fingers. When his fragile cords of self-control snapped, they snapped clean. Ice in his head; no thought there but to smash what was before him. Which one?
‘He’s half your bloody size, you st-stuttering bastard,’ a twin said.
Decision made. Ray nailed him with a sledgehammer left to the mouth. Turned to take care of the other one, but the second bald-headed bastard was back-pedalling.
Every eye in the bar fixed on Big Henry King’s son for an instant, seeing the man, the height of him, the breadth of his shoulders, his thick butter-yellow hair, his strong, straight teeth. He was no Rock Hudson, but Woody Creek wasn’t Hollywood.
Tom Palmer opened the door for him. Freddy Bowen watched one of the Macdonald twins spit two teeth to the bar-room floor. Three or four women peered over the bar to see what had gone on, Maisy amongst them.
‘I’ll be able to tell you apart,’ she said, as the twin who wasn’t bleeding kicked the door shut behind Ray King.
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nbsp; Old timber pub, standing on that corner too long, the glass in its termite-riddled window frames, mocking that overgrown stuttering kid who’d come to that pub two and three times a day for his father’s billy of free beer.
His bike mocked him before roaring into life. Old now, bruised, its paint peeling, it roared its rage through town.
He didn’t turn down the forest road. He lived on Gertrude’s land under sufferance, and no one knew it as well as he, so he rode on, over the bridge, and out towards Three Pines, pushing that bike faster than it wanted to go. Rode until the ice in his brain thawed, then he turned around and rode home to her.
She was sitting at the table, feeding mush into his boy who wasn’t a boy. She glanced up, saw him at the door. He stood watching his boy stare at the lamp. A flickering, dancing flame behind its glass chimney tonight, barely competing yet with the outside light.
An imp in the flame, Gertrude would say. She’d lift that chimney and use her scissors on the wick. She’d fix it. She wasn’t in her kitchen tonight, so it danced.
The two girls were setting the table, flitting around the light, one looking like a part of the flickering flame, her long red hair picking up the light, dancing like fire; the other, pale, pudgy, a thick-bodied white moth caught in that other one’s flame.
They’d both be burnt by this town.
Jenny scraped the last from the bowl and fed it into Donny, wiped his face, then carried him to his cot. Two hours ago Gertrude had gone to her room to take off her funeral outfit. Almost seven, and she was sound asleep, lying face down across her bed, still dressed for the funeral, her legs stocking-clad. Jenny hated Vern Hooper as she hated no other, but could understand Gertrude’s pain. Until these last years, he’d been at her side. She understood the escape of sleep; a soothing place to be when life doled out too much pain. She didn’t wake her.
Pots waiting on the hob could wait a little longer. The onion sauce had turned to glue. She added a dash of milk, gave it a stir and replaced the lid. A lump of corned beef was safer in the pot than out. She moved the pot well off the heat, then reached for a packet of cigarettes. Every day, Ray left a packet on the mantelpiece for her. She didn’t thank him for them, but she smoked them.
The girls had gone over to Elsie’s to listen to Dad and Dave, a radio show Gertrude considered a waste of battery power. She made the rules. The girls obeyed her rules.
No sign of Ray. He’d be sitting outside somewhere, chain-smoking. Not in the shed. If they were intent on burning money, they could burn it in the yard, Gertrude said. If he wanted to drink, he could do it somewhere other than on her land, she’d said. He’d been drinking at Vern’s wake. Jenny had smelt it when he’d come to the door. He hadn’t come inside.
She walked down the side of the house, keeping her eye out for him, cut through the vegetable garden, then down to the orchard — orchard by reputation: a bunch of old trees with one or two seedlings allowed to grow tall enough to prove their worth. Two young apple seedlings had been allowed their space but had not yet grown an apple. The old tree, already gnarled when Jenny was young, had split in the winds of last August. It hadn’t died. Its remaining branches were loaded; maybe its final attempt to seed the world with the sweetest apples ever grown. The sky darkening, the bravest stars were already peering down as she walked by the fig tree. So much foliage on it, its fruit was hidden — from her, if not from the birds. She lit a cigarette behind the fig tree and drew the smoke deep, hiding there thinking — always thinking.
She’d made a mess of her life, but she only had one, and this was the one she had. She had to sort it out. She’d never sleep with Ray again, but she was his wife. She could get out of that marriage, but it would cost money to get out, and what for?
She drew the last from the cigarette then tossed the butt, making her own shooting star. Followed its light — not as wise as the Three Wise Men. It led her to the lopsided apple tree, where she killed the ember, grinding it deep into the earth.
Loved starry nights. As a kid, she’d believed the stars fell to earth each morning when God folded away his sky blanket. She’d searched the dust for their twinkle. Thought she’d found one that day on the railway line — the day Vern and Jim had found her there. Had sighted a twinkle of blue and run to claim her fallen prize — just a piece of broken glass. That’s life. You think you’ll finally hold a star in your hand and you end up holding something capable of cutting.
All bled out now. And her stomach grumbling hungry. Plenty of apples — not that Granny’s apples should ever be eaten in the dark. They were full of grubs. Always had been.
Joey had introduced her to Granny’s apples; not withered like the apples Norman had bought from Mrs Crone. She could remember her first bite; still see Joey, perched up that tree, a cheeky brown-eyed elf amid green foliage, picking apples so Granny could make chutney. And hear him too.
‘What’s worse than finding a grub in your apple, Jenny?’
‘Not finding it,’ Jenny, the child, had replied smartly.
‘Finding half a grub, ’cause you chewed up the other half,’ Joey had giggled.
‘I swallowed it whole,’ she told the old apple tree, and lit another cigarette.
The girls must have woken Gertrude when they came in. The rattle of pots roused Jenny from the orchard.
‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’ Gertrude said.
‘Why did you go to sleep?’ Jenny countered.
No need to find an answer to either question. They knew the answers. Two of a kind, Jenny and Gertrude. No blood joining them; something much stronger than blood had welded those two.
‘Your onion sauce has gone gluey.’
‘A bit of milk will fix it.’
They worked together, keeping clear of the other’s elbows. A dangerous place a crowded kitchen when two women are tossing pots around. Gertrude lifted the lump of corned beef to a plate. The smell of meat drew Ray in from wherever he’d been.
‘B-big funeral,’ he said.
‘I haven’t seen one bigger since Moe Kelly,’ Gertrude said.
Ray walked down to the rear of the kitchen to stand beside the old green cot and watch Donny sleep. He looked perfect when he was sleeping.
Through the years, Gertrude had spoken a dozen times about building on a couple of rooms. If Ray and his babies were staying, something had to be done. That old cot took up too much space. Jenny wanted more rooms, and a bathroom. Ray had offered to pay for a couple of bedrooms.
Gertrude slicing beef, serving it to five plates.
‘Don’t give me any,’ Jenny said.
‘You’ll eat what you get and like it.’
‘I don’t like it.’
‘It’s good for the blood.’
She’d be eighty-three this year. She’d never divorced Archie Foote. He’d never divorced her. Maybe she’d been his shield against his many women — and Gertrude’s against Vern Hooper.
‘I was dreaming I was back in India,’ Gertrude said. ‘How does the human brain come up with the crazy dreams it dreams?’
‘What was it about, Granny?’ Georgie asked.
‘I was on a train with Archie, and I was hiding a baby in my sewing basket. I knew it was Vern, and I knew Archie wouldn’t let me keep him if he found out.’ She placed a dollop of mashed potato onto each plate, scraped the last scrape from the saucepan. ‘They’ve got this belief over there that when we die, we come back as a newborn. I told Vern once that he deserved to come back as a woman and I’d come back as the man.’
‘If they come back straightaway, he’ll be too old for you when you come back,’ Georgie said.
‘And he’ll look like Lorna,’ Jenny said.
Laughter as five plates were passed around the table, interchangeable plates, apart from Ray’s. He had two slices of meat. Gertrude made no allowances for fussy eaters — she’d served him silverbeet, carrot rings and not enough potatoes. In Armadale he would have scraped the carrots and greens from his plate. He ate what was served to hi
m in Gertrude’s kitchen. In Armadale he’d pitched his soiled clothes into a corner. He put them into the dirty clothes basket up here.
‘It’s a beautiful bit of meat,’ Gertrude said.
‘T-t-tender.’
They spoke. The girls spoke. Jenny’s mind travelled, travelled in circles as she watched him mix his silverbeet with the onion sauce. In Armadale, he would have been cutting more meat by now, spreading bread, making himself a sandwich with a slab of corned beef. It was on the dresser, covered by an upturned basin, still accessible.
Wondered if he’d brought his roadkill home to Florence May Dawson, if she’d sliced up his livers, fried them, boiled his tripe in milk and onions, cooked him mountains of potatoes. She’d been a nineteen-year-old girl when Raelene was born, eighteen when she’d had Donny, seventeen when he’d got her pregnant.
He’d told them no more than her name, that she’d gone home to her mother and left him with the kids. The wheat bag he’d brought with him that night had contained his clothing, the kids’ clothing, and two unopened envelopes. One had contained Raelene’s birth certificate. Raelene Florence, they’d named her, and what a god-awful name to saddle that pretty little mite with. She should have been . . . Lynette.
Babies grew on you. She wanted to raise Raelene. Wasn’t certain why, other than some convoluted idea that if she unravelled the tangled threads of that little girl’s life, she might untangle her own. Wasn’t sure why she’d allowed Ray to stay, other than if he went, Raelene would have to go.
And life was easier with him than without. Last week, he’d paid the water carrier to fill the rainwater tank and suggested they buy another one. She wanted another tank. He’d found a new vocation for Granny’s old tin trunk when they’d moved it out of the kitchen to make room for Donny’s cot. It lived outside the door now and was filled each morning with wood by Ray.
Maybe there has to come a time in every life when you stop wanting what you can’t have and you settle for a trunk full of wood, a tank full of water, a jar full of money, two more rooms — and a kerosene refrigerator. He’d ordered one from Fultons. It should arrive next week.
