Ghost River

by Tony Birch

  Ren and Sonny got each side of Tallboy, stood him up and guided him to the wheelhouse door.

  ‘You coming in?’ he asked, as if he was inviting the boys into his home. He pushed the door open, releasing a smell of stagnant water, stale air, and what Ren was convinced could only be the stench of rotting bodies.

  ‘We’ll wait here for you,’ he said.

  Minutes later the others surfaced, hugging putrid blankets to their stooped shoulders. They sang a graveyard cough, opening their lungs to the fresh air. Each of them had turned a death grey colour. Tex and Cold Can had also thinned to the bone, and Big Tiny, still on the heavy side, had even stripped a few pounds. Tex stared blankly at the boys as if he had no idea who they were and shuffled along the track. The others fell in behind like the walking dead. They tried climbing the track up to the mill but couldn’t manage it. They were forced to walk as far as the iron bridge to climb a set of stone stairs to the road above.

  The cold days continued, but with an end to the rain the ground dried out and Tex decided it was time to move back under the bridge and rebuild the humpy. He asked the boys to help out with materials. They stole a tarp and two lengths of strong rope from a wagon in the railyards, and on the way to the river scavenged lengths of roofing iron and a bundle of wire. Big Tiny and Cold Can were fit enough to gather scraps of wood along the river, and Tallboy set about rebuilding the 44 barrel stove. By the time the new humpy was finished, it was twice the size of the original and looked as if it would hold together well enough to fight most storms. Ren could see some life coming back to the river men. Their colour returned a little, and Tex, even though he’d become crippled that winter, had a bit of step in him.

  It was almost dark on the afternoon the boys walked home after finishing the new humpy, tired and wearing blistered hands embedded with splinters.

  ‘I need to tell you something about my old man,’ Sonny said, out of the blue.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I come home from the paper shop three nights back and he was breaking up the kitchen chairs. He put the wood on the fire in the lounge. When he’d finished with the chairs he tore a door off one of the kitchen cupboards and smashed it up too. And there’s no food in the house. Nothing.’

  ‘What have you been eating?’

  ‘Till this morning, dry biscuits and plum jam. I scraped the last of the tin at breakfast. I got up for the paper round yesterday and he was gone from the house. I haven’t seen him since. I went looking for him in the pubs. Nobody’s seen him. It don’t make any sense. It’s like he’s vanished.’

  Sonny stood on a sheet of scrap iron. The sound cracked the air. Both boys jumped with fright as a big cat shot out from behind a roll of old carpet and ran between Sonny’s legs. He picked up a rock and was about to throw it but the cat was too fast and disappeared into the bushes before he could take aim. He wrapped his hand around the rock, made a fist and examined it.

  ‘What are you gonna do?’ Ren asked. ‘Go to the police?’

  ‘I’m not that stupid. If they know I’m on my own they’ll take me in and I’ll end up a ward with some do-gooder. Or worse. A kid fucker.’

  They walked the length of the mill wall and saw Archie getting out of his truck on the other side of the street. He slung a work bag over his shoulder, locked the truck door and walked along the lane to the back gate.

  ‘Shit,’ Ren said. ‘I don’t like getting home after Archie.’

  ‘Tell him you been with me, helping me out searching for my old man.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  They crossed the street and ducked into the lane. Sonny opened his gate and looked up to the dull yellow light coming from the upstairs bedroom of the Reverend’s house. He noticed a shadow moving behind the curtain.

  ‘Hey, Ren, you see that window. That’s the girl’s room. She might be getting undressed.’

  Sonny went into the yard, propped the rubbish bin against the side fence and stood on it. He watched as the shadow turned to the side and pressed against the curtain.

  ‘It’s her for sure,’ he whispered. ‘And I reckon she’s got no clothes on.’

  ‘You don’t know that, Sonny.’ Whether Della was undressed or not Ren didn’t want Sonny imagining that she was.

  A second shadow appeared at the window, towering over the girl. An arm reached forward, grabbed hold of Della and pulled her away from the window. The light went out.

  ‘You see that?’ Sonny whispered, getting down from the bin.

  ‘Had to be her father,’ Ren said.

  ‘Yep. I bet he’s doing her.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘Not for certain. But I’d still bet he is.’

  ‘If he is we should tell somebody.’

  ‘Like who? The coppers? They’d kick us in the arse and tell us to fuck off and mind our own business.’

  ‘He shouldn’t be able to get away with it. She’s just a girl. And his own kid.’

  Sonny looked through the back window into his empty kitchen. ‘My mum went to the police one time, over my old man. He was knocking her around more than ever. And other stuff. She waited until he went to work one morning and give me a bath and put me in some clean clothes. We walked all the way to the police station in the cold. She had two black eyes and I was wearing the only jumper she owned, to keep me warm. Come down to my knees. She had this thin dress on, like it was made of paper. It was a long walk to the police station and I was only small. I remember her kissing my cheek when we got there, and saying, You walked two miles you brave boy, two miles. She was sat down and had to tell one of the coppers what my dad had been doing to her. She didn’t want to talk about it in front of me, but there was no one to look after me and I had to listen to it all. Some stuff I couldn’t understand, but knew was terrible. She was crying and all. You wanna know what the copper said to her when she was finished?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go home, love, he said. He’ll be sober in the morning. I never have forgot that.’

  Ren couldn’t think of a single word to say in response. He looked down at the ground and could hear both his own and Sonny’s breathing, together in the air.

  ‘They wouldn’t even give us a ride home. We walked all the way. When she put me to bed she kissed me here.’ Sonny touched his forehead. ‘And told me she was sorry. I remember that too.’

  ‘You must miss her a lot?’

  Sonny again looked up at Della’s darkened window.

  ‘Not as much as I try to forget her.’

  CHAPTER 8

  Ren woke to a foreign sound the next morning. He put his dressing gown on, went downstairs and opened the front door. The street was full of cars and a crowd was pouring into the Reverend’s house, men in suits and women in long skirts with handkerchief scarves on their heads. He went back inside, made himself a cup of tea, went up to his room and heard the piano start up in the stable, followed by the sounds of hymns and prayers. He pulled the curtain away from the window. Sonny’s face was pressed against the glass.

  ‘Fuck!’ Ren screamed, opening the window. ‘You give me a heart attack, Sonny.’

  ‘Let me in. It’s cold out here.’

  Sonny’s hair was standing on end, he had sleep in both eyes, and he was wearing the same clothes he had on when Ren left him the night before.

  ‘You look like a wild kid out of the bush. Tex is in better nick than you.’

  ‘Get stuffed. You’re no day at the beach.’

  Sonny jumped through the window, grabbed the mug of tea out of Ren’s hand and took a long sip. ‘You hear what’s going on next door to my place?’

  ‘Yeah. It woke me up.’

  ‘Woke the whole street. I reckon we should go take a look.’

  ‘You can go on your own.’

  ‘Come on, put some clothes on and come check it out.’ Sonny took
another long drink of tea and stared into the bottom of the empty mug. ‘You coming or not?’

  ‘Nah. I’m going back to bed. Like you said, its cold out.’

  ‘Your girlfriend, Della, I bet she’ll be there.’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend. I’ve hardly spoken to her.’

  ‘You spoke to her? You never told me that. When?’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘Forget nothing. When’d you speak to her?’

  ‘Not telling you.’ Ren hopped back into bed and pulled the blanket around his chin.

  ‘Last chance,’ Sonny offered. ‘You coming or not?’

  ‘Already told you. Not.’

  ‘Please yourself.’

  Sonny wasn’t halfway out the window before Ren changed his mind. He pulled a pair of jeans and a jumper over his pyjamas and followed Sonny out the window, onto the roof and down the drainpipe into Sonny’s yard. The thundering piano lifted the stable roof. Sonny unlatched the back gate and they crept along the lane to the rear of the stable, where Sonny bent down and put his good eye to a crack in a splintered weatherboard. Ren kneeled beside him and tried pushing Sonny out of the way so he could take a look at what was going on. Sonny wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Move,’ Ren said. ‘I wanna take a look.’

  Sonny pointed to a knothole in the wood directly below where he was kneeling. Ren lay in the dirt and put an eye to the hole. The ground beneath was muddy. It quickly oozed through his woollen jumper and soaked into his pyjama top. He could see the Reverend pacing the room. The men sat in front of him on one side of the aisle, the women on the other. Ren could see Della sitting between her mother and another girl, who looked a little older. She had red hair poking out of her scarf and looked up adoringly to the Reverend. The music ended abruptly and the hand-clapping and singing stopped. It was perfectly quiet except for Ren’s heartbeat and Sonny’s wheezy breath. When the Reverend’s voice boomed across the room and shook the weatherboards, Sonny jumped with fright and stood on Ren’s hand. Ren had to bite into a lump of dirt to stop himself from crying out in pain.

  The Reverend’s fearsome preaching made no sense to the boys. ‘We were brought here, brothers and sisters, to create a place of worship, by the words of the Messenger. God Himself, Our Father Jealous Divine, ordered us to this place from across the ocean where he resides … and the Good Mother Divine, in her chaste beauty and purity, had also asked that we be in this place, our House of Worship …’

  ‘You hearing this, Sonny?’ Ren whispered.

  He nodded his head and stuck his ear to the crack in the wood.

  ‘… and is it not also known,’ the Reverend continued, ‘that in the days immediate to the Great Earthquake of 1906 the Messenger attended the city of San Francisco, at that very time a site of pestilence and evil? At the behest of the Holy Spirit, he visited wrath upon the sinful by fracturing the Earth and sanctioned Lucifer to ignite the flames of Hell.’

  The words ‘Amen, Amen’ were chanted across the room.

  ‘And is it not also known that when the Messenger was imprisoned for His holy works the gaolers in attendance to pacify and shackle Him were struck dead by lightning and He was able to free Himself and walk among us again?’

  ‘Amen!’

  The longer the sermon went, the louder the Reverend’s voice rang out across the stable. Ren could feel his words beating against the wall. Women in the audience began to wail and the men called out in agreement with Reverend Beck, ‘We are with you …’

  The red-headed girl seated next to Della wiped tears from her eyes, opened her arms and held her hands out. The Reverend stepped forward and took her hands in his. Della couldn’t take her eyes off the girl.

  ‘As each of you are with the Messenger Jealous Divine Himself,’ he said, smiling down at the girl.

  The sermon ended and people in the room stood up and clapped and cried out, ‘Be Praised! Be Praised!’ The piano struck up again and the gathering sang a final hymn. Sonny tapped Ren on the shoulder and snuck back along the lane. Ren tried to stand up, fell back and slid on his arse. ‘Fuck!’

  Sonny smothered his laugh with a hand and opened the gate into his yard. Ren followed, one careful step at a time. Sonny bolted the gate behind them.

  ‘Look at you. You been rolling in shit.’

  The front of Ren’s jumper and the knees of his jeans were covered in a mix of mud and dog shit. When he tried wiping it off, all he managed to do was move it around like a finger painting. ‘My mum is gonna kill me for this.’

  Sonny couldn’t stop himself from laughing. ‘And after that she’ll kill you again.’

  Ren scraped a handful of the muck from his jumper and flung it at Sonny, missing his target. ‘Don’t go thinking this is funny. She’ll flog me.’

  ‘You sling any more of that shit at me and I’ll flog you myself. Come in the kitchen and I’ll throw your clothes in the twin-tub and wash them for you.’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  The house was a mess. Broken pieces of furniture lay in the lounge, empty beer bottles were stacked in one corner of the kitchen and Ren’s shoes stuck to the sticky lino floor as he walked across it.

  ‘I still haven’t seen him,’ Sonny said, without Ren having to ask.

  Ren sat on the only kitchen chair left in the room, and waited while Sonny found an old football jumper and a pair of Mr Brewer’s work pants for him to put on.

  ‘Sonny, you ever hear stuff like that, what we heard in the stable?’ Ren asked.

  ‘Yeah. Some of what comes out of Tex’s mouth.’

  ‘It weren’t nothing like his talk. Them prayers gave me the creeps. And the women crying and babbling. Sounded like another language.’ He looked around the kitchen. ‘You got any bread for toast?’

  ‘There’s nothing to eat. I’ll have to use my saved money if I want food.’

  ‘How much you got?’

  ‘Nearly a hundred dollars.’

  ‘A hundred. You could buy any food you want with that. Where you keeping it?’

  ‘I’ve hid it away from the house so he can’t get his hands on it. Shouldn’t have worried. He’s gone and left me with this mess.’

  ‘Still got no idea where he’s got to? What are you going to do?’

  ‘Enough of the questions, Ren. You want to play policeman, get a fucken badge.’

  ‘I was just asking …’

  ‘Well, don’t ask. Or you can give the pants and jumper back and piss off home in the nude.’

  Sonny lit a fire and strung Ren’s wet clothes across the fireplace on a line of string. While they waited for them to dry, Ren tried talking him into coming back to his place for something to eat, but Sonny wouldn’t hear of it.

  That night, Archie asked Ren if he knew anything about the racket that had gone on in the street that morning.

  ‘You said you were over at your mate’s place. You hear anything?’

  ‘Only some music and singing,’ Ren replied.

  ‘Couldn’t call it singing. Sounded more like the shit I had to put up with when I was a kid in Sunday school. Shouldn’t be allowed on our street, where families live. Take their religion some other place.’

  ‘Maybe you could ring the Council?’ Loretta offered. ‘They’d send the by-laws officer, he’d help himself to the collection plate, and they’d go on with the praying like nothing had happened. Nothing gets stopped around here unless money changes hands. You know that.’

  Ren looked down at his half-eaten roast lamb and thought about Sonny sitting next door on his own with no food in the cupboard. He couldn’t eat another mouthful.

  ‘Mum, Sonny’s dad’s gone off some place.’

  ‘What do you mean, gone off?’

  ‘He’s left Sonny on his own.’

  ‘The boy’s better off without him,’ Archie said. ‘A nutcase right next door to
us. Then again, the kid probably drove him out.’

  Loretta glared at Archie. ‘Be quiet, Arch. Charlie’s trying to tell us something. What’s happened in there?’

  ‘His father went crazy on him and shot through. He’s got no food and the house is a wreck.’

  ‘And it’s none of our business,’ Archie added.

  Loretta slammed her hand on the table, lifting the dishes in the air, shocking both Archie and Ren. ‘Shut up, Arch! Please, shut up! Finish your dinner, get upstairs and try sleeping off your misery.’

  Archie went to speak but Loretta raised a hand. ‘I said, shut it.’

  Archie did shut up, by shoving a whole baked potato in his mouth.

  Loretta got up from the table, stood behind Ren and put her hands on his shoulders. ‘Now, tell me what you mean, that there’s no food in the house.’

  ‘His father’s disappeared and there’s nothing left to eat. And the place is filthy dirty. Mum, we have to do something to help him.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Archie muttered. ‘This stuff is for the Welfare Department. It’s not our business.’

  Loretta flattened her palms on the table and looked across at him. ‘Would you mind telling me which one of us is going to ring the Welfare and get the boy taken away? I think you should do it, Arch.’ She grabbed her purse from the kitchen bench, opened it and tipped it upside down. Coins poured onto the table. She tapped the tabletop with her knuckles. ‘Go on, get yourself down to the phone box outside the milk bar and give them a ring yourself. Tell them it’s an emergency. Could have him locked up before you’re in bed. Give you a good night’s sleep, Arch. Wouldn’t that be good? You won’t have to sit here and complain about him anymore. Better than that, you won’t have to look at the boy again. Just yourself, in the mirror, Arch.’

  She picked up some coins from the table and jiggled them in her hand. ‘Go on. Ring them.’

  Archie stood up and pushed his chair into the table, knocking over a jug of milk. ‘Fuck! I didn’t say anything about getting him locked up.’ He stomped out of the kitchen and up the stairs.