by Tony Birch
Review of Australian Fiction
Volume Ten: Issue Four
Zutiste, Inc.
Review of Australian Fiction Copyright © 2014 by Authors.
Contents
Imprint
Spirit in the Night Tony Birch
Sweetest Thing Ellen van Neerven
Published by Review of Australian Fiction
“Spirit in the Night” Copyright © 2014 by Tony Birch
“Sweetest Thing” Copyright © 2014 by Ellen van Neerven
www.reviewofaustralianfiction.com
Spirit in the Night
Tony Birch
I fell in love with Heather Glass the first time I saw her, on the morning I fronted up to school in a pair of piss-stained shorts. I was eleven years old and no other kids would let me sit next to them on account of the burning scent of acid up the nose. Riding my boneshaker bike to school that morning, along a two-mile dirt road, I was so fearful of being late (which I was most mornings of the week, earning the strap for my trouble), I pissed my pants rather than jump off the bike and take a leak behind a tree.
The kids in class laughed and teased me and I hid down the back of the classroom, trying my best to wipe the tears from my dirty face with one hand and making a fist with the other. I wanted to slam that fist into someone’s face, and didn’t care whose it was, as long as I caused pain and drew blood.
Mr Wrench, our teacher, marched into the room, slammed his books on his desk, stared at me through his Coke bottle specs and poked a bony finger in the air.
‘Sexton, find yourself a seat. And not on your own. If you prefer solitary confinement I can call the constable and have you hauled off with your older brother.’
The class giggled like a mad choir. I searched the centre aisle for some place to sit. Any kid with a spare seat moved their arse to the middle of the bench, letting it be known there was no place for me.
Heather was a new girl that day. She stood up, walked to the back of the room, tugged at my T-shirt and pointed to her desk.
‘You can sit next to me, if you like,’ she whispered. ‘My name is Heather.’
The other girls in the class looked at her in disgust, like she’d asked me to put a hand in her pants for a play.
I shuffled along behind her, back to her desk, and sat down, as close as I could to the end of the bench without falling off. I didn’t want her passing out on account of the stink. I sniffed the air to get a whiff of myself, but all I could smell was something like Velvet soap coming from her golden plaited hair.
She sat back-straight, looking at the blackboard, paying attention to old Wrench. I took a good peep at her. She had to be the cleanest person I’d ever seen. Her dress had no stains or repairs and there were no marks on her fair-skinned arms except for some freckles. And no pox rashes, bites, or scars like I had.
Wrench’s stick of chalk scratched at the blackboard, the swinging heels of boots scraped against the floorboards and Heather breathed quietly in and out. I looked at the dirt under my fingernails and decided right there and then that I was in love with Heather. I’d never loved anyone before. Except for Angie. And she didn’t count, as she was a mongrel dog who’d come out of nowhere three years back and followed me home along the track.
At lunchtime that day I took up my usual spot, under the peppercorn in the far corner of the yard, trying hard not to think about food or the hunger pains in my gut. Heather stood in the middle of the schoolyard, the sun catching her hair. She smiled and walked toward me, holding a lunchbox under one arm. She stopped, opened the lid, took out a sandwich and held a half in each hand.
‘Would you like some? The sandwich is vegemite and cheese.’
I looked up at the thick slices of bread, knowing I could gulp the lot in one mouthful, even if the filling had been nothing more than dripping with pepper sprinkled on it for taste.
‘Nup. It’s not my food to have.’
She leaned forward and offered me the half sandwich anyway.
‘Please take it. There is more here that I can eat.’
I took the sandwich and dirtied the white bread with my grubby fingers. Heather took two shining apples from the lunchbox and offered one to me.
‘What is your name?’ she smiled. Her teeth were straight. And even whiter than her skin.
‘Noah.’
‘Noah who?’
‘You a copper or something, with all the questions?’
She took a bite from her sandwich.
‘I’m sorry. I won’t ask another one. Are you going to eat your sandwich?’
‘It’s Sexton. Noah Sexton. Didn’t you hear Wrench call out to me?’
‘Why do you sit here, all alone?’ she asked.
I held the sandwich in front of my face and stared at it. I wanted to get a good look at it before taking a bite.
‘You said there’d be no more questions. And you asked another two already.’
‘That’s the last one. I promise.’
She scratched the end of her nose.
‘I sit here because I’m a Sexton.’
My surname was explanation enough for anyone living in the town. Or miles around. Being a newcomer, she didn’t get it.
‘What about it? That’s just a name.’
‘Not our name. We’re cursed. Don’t you get too close to me. You can catch it, like a disease.’
‘Don’t be silly. I bet I can’t catch anything from you.’
To prove her point she sat next to me, close enough that I could smell the sweet soap of her again.
‘Can I ask you a question this time?’
She wiped crumbs from her dress.
‘Of course.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Under this tree,’ she laughed, but not like she was making fun of me.
‘Nup. At this school? In this town?’
‘My father is the new policeman. He’s going to be in charge of the station. And my mother does a lot of work with the church.’
So, she was a copper. Sort of.
Our mob was well known to the police, and I knew straightaway that as soon as her father got the story on the family name, she wouldn’t be sitting under any tree offering me a vegemite sandwich.
My old man had been in and out of prison more times than he’d had work. And most of my uncles, on both sides of the family, were no better. My older brother, Jeff, was two years into a manslaughter conviction, after slamming his car into a tree at high speed. He was blind drunk at the time and killed his best friend, Carlo Rainer, who’d been asleep in the back seat wearing no belt. The car split a mighty ghost gum in two, Jeff broke both legs and an arm, and Carlo finished up down the road, his head separated from his body by a fair distance.
Instead of wolfing the sandwich down, like I would have done if I’d been on my own, I pretended I had a few manners, and ate the sandwich one bite at a time. After the sandwich I took a chomp of the apple. It tasted good. Fresh and juicy.
The air was a little quiet. I guessed I needed to say something to show my gratitude.
‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’ I asked her.
‘No. There is just my mother and father. What about you?’
‘I have two older sisters, Dee and Jessie. They work in the butter factory, on the other side of town. And my brother, Jeff. He’s… he’s away.’
‘Away where?’
I took another bite from the apple and chewed on it a while.
‘Just away.’
‘Do you have any friends at school?’
‘Nup. No friends no place. We’re the only abo family left in town. No one deals with us, ’cept the town bo
ys that come sniffing around for Dee and Jess.’
She frowned at me.
‘Abo. That’s a dirty word. You should not say that. My father was posted at an outstation before we moved here. People like you, we call them half-castes. It’s more proper.’
‘Well, round here it’s not,’ I laughed. ‘An abo’s an abo, no matter how black or white he is, my dad told us. Far as the whitefella is interested, the shit smells just the same. My dad told us that, too.’
Heather wriggled round, less than comfortable over what I’d said. I didn’t care too much. As pretty as she was, I was beginning to think she was only another do-gooder. They come through town from time to time and then leave when the place proves too hard for them.
‘What about the other abo… aboriginal families?’ she asked. ‘Are there others?’
‘None. One time there was more of us here than whitefellas. They give the place up over the years, for jobs on the mines. Or moved back to country. The last of the rest took off more than two years back. They were Sextons too. But more related to the white side, the Sextons who own most of the dairy land round here. One of the boys, Stevie, was shot in the back when a farmer caught him breaking into his workshop one night, stealing tools. Stevie was only fourteen at the time and skinny as a rake. The family had no money and buried him in a suitcase. Didn’t matter how he’d been killed either. The law said the farmer was defending his family and his property. That was the end of it.’
‘That’s not fair.’
‘Fair don’t come into it. They’re on top. Us on the bottom.’
‘That won’t happen with my dad. He’s always fair, to both sides.’
I looked straight into Heather’s big brown eyes. She believed what she was saying. I felt like ripping her, but backed off. There was no point in bullying her over the law.
‘Where do you live, Noah?’
‘In an old farmhouse out of town. The owner give up on it last drought. My grandpa, Teddy, was a roustabout for him, years back. The farmer walked off and said Teddy could stay in the house for nothing as long as he kept the grass down and the troublemakers out. We been there since, the house falling down around us, waiting for the land to be sold off.’
‘It must be exciting, living on a farm. What animals do you have?’
‘The only animals we have is a milking cow that don’t milk, hens too lazy to lay and my old dog. And she don’t bark.’
‘You said it was a farm. All farms have working animals.’
‘Not this one. There’s some broken-down machines and car wrecks across the fields. Fences fallen down and the dams dried up. If you want working animals, we got plenty of rats. A nest of them under the back verandah. And crows waiting to swoop from the trees and poke an eye out if you stand still long enough.’
Wrench walked out of the schoolroom and across the yard. He grabbed hold of the end of the school bell rope and rang it. I stood up and dusted my pants off, for maybe the first time in my life.
‘We have to get back. He goes mental any time you’re late in.’
Heather sat with me most lunch times after that day with a lunchbox loaded with more sandwiches and some homemade cakes. She said once her mother had heard of me, and that I had no lunch of my own, she made a point of providing for two. The other kids in the class were looking at her like she was trash herself.
Wrench had called her aside after school one day and warned her off me.
‘What did you say to him?’
‘I told him that my mother was a Christian, I was a Christian, and that it was a sin to turn away from those in need.’
I didn’t feel good being spoken of like a charity case. But I guess I was. And I was so in love with her by then I’d have put up with anything to sit so close to her and share lunch.
I took to scrubbing myself of a night with a cleaning brush, hard enough for the sharp bristles to draw blood. I hung my clothes on a line on the verandah overnight, giving the air a chance to work through them. In the morning I stuck my head under the cold tap in the kitchen and combed it through with the hairbrush my mum had left behind before she shot through on us years back.
My pa, Teddy, who’d be sitting at the table, concentrating on the steam coming out of the spout of the teapot, had worked out I was up to something.
‘As far as I’ve heard you haven’t been given a job on the carnivals, boy. It has to be a girl?’
‘Shut up, will ya, Teddy. Keep your eyes on the tea or you’ll over-brew it and be pissed off for the rest of the day.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m watching it. You got yourself a girl at school, Noah?’
I said nothing but he picked up the flush in my cheeks.
‘They all white girls at that school. Don’t be getting cocky and above yourself. Unless you want your nuts taken for a fucken trophy. You stay away.’
I wasn’t going to stay away from Heather. She was kind to me and we weren’t doing anything wrong.
She stopped me at the school gate after school one day and said she wanted me to meet her mother.
‘You live behind the police station?’
‘Yes. In the cottage.’
‘Then it’s not a good idea that I come over there. Your old man, I tell you now, he wouldn’t be happy when he spots my head.’
‘You’ve never met him. How do you know that?’
‘Cause I do. He’s a copper and I’m abo. I never met a copper who didn’t want to get hold of a blackfella and skin him.’
‘Don’t you say that, Noah.’ She was angry. ‘He’s not like that.’
‘And your mother? Bet you never said I’m a blackfella. She’ll faint when she sees my dirty face.’
Heather smiled, but not like she’d done before. It was the same smile I got from other whitefellas. All superior.
‘We want to help you. My mother more than anybody. She has been called.’
We stopped at the picket fence leading to the cottage. The old police van was parked out front of the station. I prayed we wouldn’t run into her father. I followed her to the front door of the house but stopped when she opened it and walked inside. All of a sudden I knew it was a bad idea to come home with her. Sitting under the tree with her had been wrong. Now it was too late
Heather waved at me to follow her inside.
‘Come on, silly.’
I walked into the front room. It had carpet on the floor with flowers in the pattern, photographs and paintings on the wall and big couches and seats around the room. I could smell something cooking in the kitchen and was sure it was roast meat. Heather called out for her mother. I heard footsteps in the kitchen.
Heather’s mother came to the doorway. She had the same hair as her daughter and wore it like hers, in plaits, which made her look like a schoolgirl herself. She was pretty too, just like Heather.
‘Hello!’
She ran across the room, threw her arms around me and held me tight.
‘Noah, Noah. I have heard so much about you from my daughter.’
She finally give up hugging me and took hold of my hand.
‘Please sit down.’
She led me to the couch, squeezed my hand all the while.
‘It’s lovely to have you here.’
I’d never met anyone so happy to see me, including relations I hadn’t seen in years. Or my old man whenever he come home from gaol. Mrs Glass told me all about the work she’d done ‘with the tribal Aborigines’ and how, with her help, they’d become Christian.
‘When we arrived at the outstation all I could hear were cries of pain and hunger. By the time we left the night was full of the sounds of prayer. Are you a Christian, Noah? You do have such a rich Christian name.’
Half my family was the craziest Christians on Earth, speaking in tongues when the spirit took them and taking to the bible day and night. The other half was outlaws or drunks. That was the half I belonged to.
‘Are you?’ she asked again, her face turning dark.
‘Yep, I am,’
I lied. ‘My Pa reads me the bible. Sometimes.’
If Teddy had ever read the bible he never spoke of it to me. And the only time he mentioned religion was when he screamed Jesus fucken Christ, which was a lot of the time.
Mrs Glass insisted I eat dinner with the family. It weren’t a good idea. I didn’t want to sit across the table from a police Sargent.
‘That’s nice of you, but I gotta get home before dark.’
‘That’s fine,’ she insisted. ‘My husband has to be up at four in the morning. We eat early so that he can sleep and Heather and I have time to each other.’
Heather took hold of my arm.
‘Please stay, Noah.’
I was sure I could hear the meat sizzling in the oven. My tummy heard it too and rumbled.
‘Ta then.’
Mrs Glass looked me up and down inspecting me close like she’d finally worked out I was a blackfella. She tugged at the shirt hanging out of the back of my jeans.
‘Do you have hot water at your own home, Noah? And a bathtub?’
‘No. We got running water, but it’s cold. Teddy, he treats us on a Sunday night. Boils up the copper and we all get a share. My sisters and me wash our hair and all.’
‘Well, you must have a bath. There’s time before we eat. You can have a bath and I will find you some fresh clothes. We have a clean supply that my husband hands out to drifters.’
I didn’t want to be having a bath in a strange house. And a whitefella’s house made it worse.
‘Ta, but a feed is plenty enough.’
‘But I insist,’ she said. ‘My husband likes us to be presentable at the dinner table, including guests.’
She put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me toward her.
I looked at Heather to help me. She raised her eyebrows, like there was nothing she could do.
The water in the bath had some sort of perfume in it. I lay in the hot water looking up at the ceiling. Although I wasn’t a Christian at all, I thought maybe I was in heaven. My best friend was a white girl with teeth of pearl and her mother seemed to love me like blood. It was weird her making me take a bath. But now that I was enjoying it, I was happy. If something was going to go wrong—if Teddy were in the bath with me he’d look around the room and mutter too good to be fucken true—it could only be on account of Heather’s father, the cop.
