by Joy Dettman
He stayed away for four years, living the life of a gypsy – a good life, until he met Ellie, married her, and took her and their first little bastard back to meet the family. John Lawrence. He’d named him for the old man, thought it might buy him back into the family. Big chance, but Saint Sam was impressed. He married young May Hargraves that same year, but they’d produced no heir, so Jack kept breeding, just to nark them.
He’d named Liza for his mother. Eliza Jane.
‘Shit on the world,’ he said, tossing his last five to the beer slops.
The bar was full. His glass remained empty – as his packet of cigarettes was empty. ‘Give me a pack of Marlboro.’
‘Coming up, Jack,’ Mick called.
The door swung wide and old Rella Eva entered. Jack smiled. Her face always made him smile. It was a travesty of furrows she’d attempted to fill with a spatular dipped in paint. Her hair dyed a dull red, was worn long. Eyebrows plucked to extinction had been replaced by two fine black-pencilled lines. As she walked to the bar, Mick shook his head. ‘Public bar’s no place for a lady, Rell. I’ll serve you in the lounge.’
‘Watch out who you go calling a lady, Mick. Give me a beer and shut your cake hole,’ she replied, then she turned to Jack. ‘You look like you lost a tenner and found sixpence, Jack.’
‘What’s brought you to town, Rell?’
‘Dave’s in hospital. I’m on my way up to Warran. You’ve been dodging me lately, lover.’
‘I’ve been home ... Narrawee.’ Narrawee would always be home. ‘Have you got a fag on you, Rell?’
She handed him a near full packet, watched him remove one, light up, inhale. ‘I’ve missed you, lover,’ she said, reclaiming her cigarettes with one hand while the other grabbed at the bulge in his groin.
‘Get your hand off me, you stupid bitch,’ he hissed, but his old comrade in arms was rising to the occasion. Her hands could turn him into a pleading boy. Ugly old slut. Only her eyes mirrored the girl she might have been thirty years ago. They were a fox’s eyes, bright, hot with want.
Ellie never wanted him. Never had. Sex was a sin, unless it was making babies. Cold, brood-mare bitch, Jack thought as his eyes moved over old Rell. He drank his beer in one long swallow, pocketed his packet of Marlboro, then walked to the door, looked out. ‘If you’re heading up to see Dave, can you drop me off at the bridge, Rell? My car’s buggered,’ he said. ‘When you’re ready.’
She was ready. Ready for anything.
All tracks led to the river. There was nowhere else for them to go in Mallawindy. Each summer new paths were forged through the dust, some to remain, given names, others to fade away beneath the winter grasses. There was Milly’s Track, west of town, and Wally’s Bend Road to the north, but the track they took led east. It was well used. Dead Man’s Lane, they called it. It led out to the sandhills, and to an Aboriginal burial ground five kilometres from town. Until Malcolm Fletcher’s son had died after finding some bones there, it had been a popular hang-out for teenagers. Now the whites left the place alone. The local blacks had always claimed it was a taboo place – but it was private.
Rella tucked her car into a bay it knew well. She spread her well-travelled blanket on the ground, and sat on it. Jack wandered, kicking sand, sifting sand between his fingers. He found a bottle top, and he smiled. It was probably one of his. He liked this place, he often came here alone to drink, and think. Miles of sand, where little grew, except rabbits and crows. On the next dune, three of the raucous black bastards were attacking a poor bugger blinded by myxo.
He watched it run in circles, trying to evade the unseen foe, then he walked to it, wrung its neck and tossed it to the birds. ‘It was a woman who developed myxomatosis,’ he said, wandering back to the blanket. ‘Trust a bloody woman.’
Rella had the morals of a rabbit, but little interest in their diseases. She was on him. Time was awasting.
school
February 1970
Dogs always knew the coolest places to sit. Mickey used to be Johnny’s dog; he was Ann’s dog now. He licked her face, trying to kiss her better, because he knew she was frightened. Dogs knew about all the bad things, but they could only lick and watch you with their worried eyes. They couldn’t take the bad away. She patted his heavy coat, brushing the dust from it. Fine red dust. She liked dust and the hard earth. Nothing ever stained it. Not like the wood floor or the carpet got stained. Chicken blood, and rabbits’ blood, and people’s blood, just soaked into the earth or was swept away with the wind.
The fat man was making her go to school today. She didn’t want to go. He came last night in his car and said he’d be back in the morning to drive her to school. She was frightened of him, and his car. Didn’t like school, or cars. Didn’t like ... anything.
This morning she’d tried to pull the dark over her mind, but it was only lace curtain dark, not strong enough to hold back the memories fighting to get through. They stung her head like the wasps, stabbing their stingers through and making pin-point holes for the memory to get out. Everything was going bad, and she couldn’t stop it.
Her father walked by her to the kitchen. There was a letter in there that Benjie had brought home from the post office yesterday. It stunk of Narrawee, of roses and cedar wood and beeswax polish and it had money in it. There was always money when those envelopes came. Cheque money from Narrawee, the money tree.
Her father made Ann touch the letter, read it. Made her sign the words. She didn’t want to, like she didn’t want to look at photographs.
The letters always started with ‘Dear Jack and Ellie, I hope this letter finds you and your family as it leaves me.’ Then it talked about Sam. Ann hated Sam as much as she hated Narrawee.
Narrawee had demons. Ugly things, they came out of the ground and they stank of old earth and apples, and they laughed at her, tried to make her watch them. Light. Dark. Light. Dark. Like ... like lightning in a storm. Like something else, but she couldn’t think what the something else was.
She wouldn’t go to bed after her father made her touch the letter, because if she went to bed she might go to sleep, and if she did then the demons would get her, and if they got her they’d take her back there, and she’d know everything, and it was too bad to know.
Benjie worried about her when she was crazy. Last night, when everyone had gone to bed, he came from his room to sit with her and Mickey in the moonlight. He talked about school. Safe with him in the clean moonlight, she had made many words with her hands.
‘Big frightened. Inside head like ... like storm. Like fast little lightning ... never make same thing two time. Never stop long time. Like that thing ... round. Pretty glass, make pattern. Twist around all time for change pattern.’
‘Kaleidoscope.’ He spelt the word on his fingers.
‘Yes. That thing. Bad kaleidoscope. Not pretty. Make bad picture. Get bad, then more bad, then more bad. Push, push inside head. On off, on off. Make heart say thump thump, thump. Make me big fright.’
‘Do you remember the kaleidoscope we used to have, Annie? You used to look in it for hours,’ he had said.
‘No.’
‘You must. If you remember what it looked like, you must remember it.’
‘Not remember nothing.’
‘What about the doll you won in the raffle that time? Remember the raffle? Number 48.’
‘No. No talk in before time.’
‘You have to try to remember what happened, then we might find Liza, and all of the bad stuff will go away.’
‘No remember nothing. No more think, Benjie. Big hurt in think. Just think now time. Think big moon. Think cloud. We run across big cloud. Run fast over sky. Chase moon over there ... over sunset to where Johnny live and no more demon live there.’
‘I’m never going to run away, Annie. I’m going to stay here and make Mum’s farm as good as Aunty Bessy’s, and build my new footbridge.’
‘Build bridge, then run. Find Johnny. No want fat man school. No want Narrawee. Just wan
t here. Just want nothing.’
‘Everyone’s got to go to school. If you don’t go to Mr Fletcher’s school, then Father Fogarty will get the city people to take you away again, and you don’t want that to happen, do you? I have to go to school till I’m fifteen. I don’t like it either. I don’t like wasting time sitting on the bus. It’s not going to be like the last time, Annie. You’ll go in the morning and come home at night, sleep in your own bed.’
‘Big frightened. No like fat man. No like car. No like nothing.’
Today her hair was plaited, tied up with new ribbons. She had a new dress too, but her eyes were fighting to close. She looked at her new dress, and knew she shouldn’t be sitting in the dirt with the dog. She stood, walked to the verandah where she could watch the yard for the fat man’s car to come for her.
‘I hate. I hate. I hate,’ her hands signed the two words while she thumped her head against the wall, making the outside pain come so it might kill the words going around and around in her mind. She felt like Mickey trying to bite fleas on his tail.
She had a dress that was flowers. Her purse was fat and fawn
Full with paper money, like a lettuce picked at dawn.
Under the leaf there is new leaf, all so crisp and new.
That could buy anything in the whole world. Anything for you.
Narrawee. White house. Green lawns.
‘No. No think. I hate. I hate. I hate.’
The baby clinging to her nipple, Ellie stood, watching Annie. She couldn’t understand the hand signs, had never learned more than a couple. If the truth were told, she was afraid of her own child, afraid of her moods, afraid of her wild animal scream. ‘I’m sure I don’t know how that old drunk is going to do her any good, Jack,’ she said. ‘I don’t trust him.’
‘He can’t do her any more bloody harm, can he?’
One handed, Ellie served Jack’s scrambled eggs and sausages, she passed him two pieces of toast, then stood back. ‘She was such an independent little thing, Jack. How did it happen?’
‘You’re the one who keeps wanting to educate her. So you’re getting what you want, and you’re still moaning. Pass the salt and stop your sniffling,’ he said.
Ellie jumped to obey. She watched his plate clear, then as she poured his tea, the baby lost its grip and began to wail. The nipple squirted its offering into the open mouth. The baby choked, swallowed, then bellowed anew. ‘Father Fogarty doesn’t think it’s a good idea. He said we should think about that other school. They know how to handle them. I don’t know how to handle her. She’s growing wild.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with the shamming little bitch – and shut that baby up, or put it to bed. I’ve got a headache.’
Ellie changed the baby over to her other arm, offering the preferred breast. ‘She feels a bit feverish. Do you think she’s going to be sickly like Benjie?’
‘You inept wet-nurse slut. How do I know? Take her to the doctor.’
‘Could you drive me to Daree, love?’
‘Get your interfering bloody sister to take you.’
Ellie relied too much on Bessy and Bill to drive her around. It wouldn’t hurt Jack to take the day off. Wouldn’t hurt him to drive Annie to school either, as Bessy said last week when Annie refused to go to school. Ellie chewed on her lip, fighting against speaking Bessy’s thoughts out loud. The sound of a car saved her. ‘Here he is, Jack. You’ll have to take her out. I can’t get her to do anything.’
Ann was at the kitchen door, her hands signing to her father. ‘No want go fat man car. No want school.’
‘You’ll go where I tell you to go and like it. Now, get your lunch box and get out of my sight,’ he said, his hands moving to his belt buckle.
She stepped closer. ‘Please, I go nowhere. I stay house. No like fat man. No like fat man school.’ She wasn’t afraid of his belt. She walked towards it, signing, and he understood every word.
‘Talk to me and I won’t make you go. Say it. Say I don’t want to go. Say it.’
‘For the love of God, she can’t say it, Jack.’
‘She can bloody well say it if she wants to,’ he roared. ‘Get out of my sight. Get to buggery, you crazy little bitch.’
Each morning for a week, Malcolm drove down to the Burton property and drove away with Ann in the back seat. On the first day, she sat in a corner of his classroom and went to sleep. Malcolm left her until lunchtime, then setting two sixth graders to guard her, he walked across the playing field to refill his Thermos. She was missing when he returned, and one of the guard girls had teeth marks on her arm.
At a quarter to nine the next morning he drove again to the fowl yard. Ann escaped the classroom at ten, via the open door. His back turned, he’d been writing on the blackboard.
On the third morning, she sat in her corner, and her scream continued for most of the morning. Determined to imprison her in his room, he had locked the door. Mrs Macy, the elderly mistress who taught the juniors, let her out, and thirty-five children watched with relief as Ann ran for home.
Nothing wrong with her co-ordination, or her sense of direction, Malcolm thought. He was back in the fowl yard on Thursday, as stubborn as the black-eyed child. They started the day with the blinds drawn, his old projector whirring. Ann remained in her seat, transfixed by the screen until the nature film ended.
‘Stay,’ Malcolm signed. ‘More.’ He wound the reel back and showed it again, then again.
‘More,’ Ann signed, when he began packing the reel into its can.
‘Lunch,’ he said. She picked up her bag and ran home to eat her lunch.
On Friday he gave her a seat adjacent to the open door, only fencing her in with books. Picture books, an atlas, animal books, fairytales, and anything else he could drag from the small school library. Ann sat all morning, leafing through the books. At lunchtime she took the meat from her sandwich and ate her bread and tomato sauce at the desk, and when she smudged a picture of a dog, she winced.
He wiped it away. ‘All gone,’ he signed.
He missed lunch that day. Missed filling his Thermos. Mid afternoon, Ann walked alone to the toilets, and Malcolm made a relieved trip himself. When he returned, she was back with her books. At three-thirty, he had to pack them away to get her out of the room.
‘Holiday. Two day. I will come for you Monday, Burton,’ he spoke slowly, his hands making slow signs.
‘Book,’ she signed, hands together, palms open.
‘On Monday. Two day home, then more book.’ He made the careful sign for book.
‘No car,’ she signed, miming the steering wheel. ‘I walk. No like car.’
‘Good.’ Thumb up. ‘Good. You walk. Walk to school on Monday,’ he said.
‘I walk, same like Benjie walk. I get more book.’
Ann walked to school through the heat and red dust of February and March, through gentle April, and cooler May. She walked through the clogging red mud of June, her feet shod in lace-up school shoes that she polished at night while Ellie polished Jack’s.
She walked through the winds of August, and summer came again. On the day of the school break-up, she learned there was a prize for those who hadn’t missed a day at school. She wanted a prize too. Mr Fletcher told her she couldn’t have one, because she missed many days in the first weeks.
‘No miss one day other year,’ she signed.
Then Christmas came with its holidays, and New Year came, and there was no school. She went anyway. Malcolm often found her wandering there, or waiting on the verandah.
‘Holiday,’ he said. ‘We have a long holiday.’
‘No like holiday.’
He bought her a book, and told her it was her prize. She looked at the fly leaf. No words were written there. She handed it back.
‘For you. You go home. Read the book. Have a holiday.’
‘You keep for prize, next year. You put Ann Elizabeth name in book,’ she signed.
He opened the schoolroom door, and he gave her four library boo
ks. ‘You bring them back when the holiday is finished.’
She grew tall and determined the year she was ten. In August 1971, tonsillitis and Ellie tried to steal her chance for a prize, but she wouldn’t stay home. Her father gave her two of his Aspros and she walked off in the wind. That year her name was called at the Christmas party. Mrs Macy handed her the prize, her name written there in dark black ink. Awarded to Ann Elizabeth Burton for perfect attendance. 1971.
It was a beautiful book. It was Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. She read every word, then turned back to the first page and read it again.
Measles killed her perfect record in November of 1972. She wasn’t allowed to go to school. Measles was contagious.
Half the school was down with the disease, and it was a bad dose. One of the West girls ended up in hospital, and returned home partially blind. Benjie caught it and took it badly. He gave it to Bronwyn, who gave it to Annie, who gave it to Linda.
Each day, Ellie Burton grew more afraid of the measles. Bronwyn was a sturdy six-year-old. She took the spots in her stride, but Linda Alice, not yet three, had never been strong. For two nights Ellie was up with her.
The closest doctor was in Daree. She thought to ask Bessy if she could drive Linda down, but she hated troubling her sister. It was probably unnecessary. Children had to get the measles sooner or later. Everyone said it was better for them to get it while they were young.
You could have counted Annie’s spots on one hand. A strange girl, she refused to give in to illness, and this morning she was champing at the bit to return to school, to the man she now called the keeper of answers. Ellie didn’t like the fat old drunk, didn’t trust him, but she had to admit he’d been good with Annie. Up with the roosters this morning, Annie was trying to hurry the hours along. She helped bring the cows down to the shed, helped with the milking. Since Ben had been sick, Annie had actually been a big help around the place, but both she and Bronwyn were going back to school today.
