Owen Marshall Selected Stories

by Vincent O'Sullivan

  ‘I’m getting sick of Arty,’ said Creamy thoughtfully. ‘You know that. I’m finding Arty pretty much of a pill.’

  ‘So am I,’ I said. Creamy tossed his aluminium knucklebones up and down again in the palm of his hand. We were nearly at the street where Creamy turned off. ‘You didn’t mind Ken and Matthew being there?’ I asked him.

  Creamy didn’t give any glib answer. He walked on for a while.

  ‘I suppose it’s selfish to just have one or two friends,’ he said. ‘I suppose as you get older, you meet more and more people and make friends with them. Only I don’t seem to find as many as you. There’s an awful lot like Arty.’

  As Creamy went off home, I thought about that. For the first time I realised that, despite being good at everything, Creamy didn’t have that many friends. Being good at everything was in itself a disadvantage even. That’s what was the matter with Arty. He resented Creamy’s ability. Somewhere, sometime, he’d like to see Creamy take a fall.

  The next Saturday I went again. Ken couldn’t come, but Matthew and Arty did. I hadn’t seen Creamy, but I thought he’d be there. He had another Tech boy with him. None of us knew him. He had eyebrows that grew right across the top of his nose. I’d never seen anyone with one long eyebrow like that before. His name was Warwick Masters. When he thought something was funny, he let his head fall forward, bouncing on his chest, and gave a snuffling laugh on the indrawn breath.

  Creamy and I hadn’t had any snail hunts that summer. No decision was made not to, we just didn’t do it. As third formers we were growing out of snail hunts, and into more fitting things like knucklebones, and calling hubba hubba, ding ding, at Ken’s sister. Yet the way Warwick treated the snails made me so angry I could feel my throat becoming tight. ‘Christ Almighty,’ said Warwick, ‘look at these snails.’ He reached into the fennel walls of the hut, and plucked out the snails. ‘Just look at these snails, will you.’ He let his head bounce on his chest, and gave his idiotic, sucking laugh. He arranged a line of them by the wall, then smashed each one with his fist. The shells cracked like biscuits, and what was left of the snails seemed to swell up in visceral agony after Warwick’s fist was lifted. Creamy made no attempt to stop him. He hardly seemed to notice what he was doing.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ I said to Warwick.

  ‘Bloody snails.’

  ‘It only makes a mess in the hut.’

  ‘Stiff,’ said Warwick. ‘That’s really stiff.’

  ‘Just leave them alone.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’ The verbal sparring quickened into a semblance of humour, and Warwick bounced his head and laughed.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Arty, ‘I don’t think you Tech guys should come to the hut.’

  ‘It’s always been my hut too,’ said Creamy seriously. Three summers are an accepted eternity when one is young.

  ‘Its got to be either Tech or High ground,’ said Matthew. He liked things simple for his own peace of mind. ‘All the places got to be either Tech or High.’ Matthew’s simplicity had found the truth. All the places that mattered in our town were either High or Tech ground. The territories were marked, and only the adults in their naivety were unaware. My father never understood why I wouldn’t take the short cut through the timber yard on my way to school.

  ‘This side of the bridge is ours,’ said Arty.

  ‘But it’s closest to the Tech swimming hole.’

  ‘Stiff.’

  Warwick picked up some of the squashed snails and quickly wiped them down Arty’s face, then crashed away through the fennel a few paces, and stood bouncing his head and snorting. Creamy’s subtle and unique face creased with delight, but he made no movement. Arty flung the remaining mess of snails at him, and urged Matthew to grab him. ‘Grab him, Matthew, grab him.’ Creamy dodged Matthew’s first clumsy attempt. He seemed as if he were about to say something, but Arty got in first. ‘High on to Tech,’ he shouted.

  ‘Yeah,’ I heard myself say, but without reason. It seemed to come from a surface part of me, and not deeper where I thought things out. Creamy slipped from the hut, and stood with Warwick.

  ‘For today you mean,’ he said, smiling. Creamy loved a battle.

  ‘For always,’ said Arty. Arty was pleased that at last he had something over Creamy. Creamy was Tech, and the rest of us were High. Creamy was quicker, stronger, better at knucklebones and swinging under the bridge, a true friend, but he was Tech. Arty, like most weak people, enjoyed advantages he couldn’t himself create. ‘For always. No more Tech farts on the bank. Fight you for it.’

  It was three on to two, but that didn’t worry Creamy. He had a sense of occasion, though, did Creamy. If it had to be Tech against High after all, then it should be done on a fitting scale. ‘Th ursday night then,’ said Creamy. His full upper lip expanded as he thought about it, and his eyes took on the visionary look with which he regarded his schemes. A look that hinted at the appreciation of more colours than existed in the spectrums of the rest of us. ‘On Thursday after school we’ll have the full fight between Tech and High for the bank. You get all you can, and we’ll meet you. All out war.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Arty. ‘Maybe we should set rules and numbers.’ Arty’s brief moment of initiative was over; Creamy had, as always, taken control.

  ‘All out war,’ he repeated, and Warwick’s head bounced and his laugh sounded through the fennel.

  ‘Is it really all out war?’ I said. I could see Creamy’s face not many paces away, but he didn’t answer. ‘All out?’ I said. Creamy’s face was relaxed and droll, so difficult to read.

  ‘Full scale,’ cried Warwick. ‘Tech against High.’ And still Creamy didn’t answer.

  ‘We’ll win easily,’ said Matthew. ‘We can round up a dozen or more easily.’

  ‘Look out for Rainbow Johnston, that’s all,’ called Warwick. He went off, laughing, to follow Creamy, who had turned away and begun walking towards the fence below the bridge.

  I watched Creamy climb up to the road with Warwick, and I knew it had happened. I knew that him going to Tech and me going to High had ruined our friendship after all. I looked at Arty and Matthew standing by the hut, and I knew that neither of them was half the friend that Creamy had been. ‘Do you think they’ll really get Rainbow?’ said Arty hollowly.

  ‘I’ve heard things about Rainbow. I think we need plenty of guys.’ Matthew’s slow logic was depressing.

  ‘Can we get enough, though?’ said Arty.

  ‘Jesus, Arty,’ I said, ‘will you stop moaning.’

  That week at school we started getting as many allies as we could. Arty wrote the names down at the back of his pad. He had two lists — one headed possibles and one headed probables, like trial teams. There were some names in the possibles that I hardly knew. Not even all the probables were at the gate after school on Thursday, though. Arty himself didn’t show up until we were just about to go. We told him he was trying to get out of it. ‘No I’m not. I’m coming, of course I’m coming. I just had to put off other things, that’s all. What do you think of this stick?’ Arty had a short piece of sawn timber. He hit it against the fives courts, and then tried not to show that he’d jarred his hand. ‘I reckon I’m ready,’ he said.

  We began walking towards the river, but a car drew up over the road, and the man driving it called out to Arty. It was Arty’s father. Arty went over and talked with him, then came partly back. ‘Wouldn’t you know it,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go up to the hospital for my tests. It has to be tonight.’ With Arty’s father watching from the car, it wasn’t any use saying much. ‘Maybe the Tech will be there again tomorrow night. I’ll be right for tomorrow.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Ken. Arty walked over the road quickly. As he got into the car he let his stick slip on to the roadway.

  ‘He rang his dad,’ said Lloyd. ‘That’s what he did.’ Arty couldn’t meet our eyes as the car pulled away.

  ‘What a
dunny brush he turned out to be,’ said Matthew and we laughed. I was on the point of telling them what Creamy had said about Arty. Creamy had him picked all right, then I remembered that Creamy had become the enemy.

  That left seven of us. Matthew, Ken, Lloyd, Buzz Swanson and the Rosenbergs. And me, of course. As we got closer to the bridge, I had a strange feeling that our group was becoming smaller, although the number remained the same. Ken was walking beside me, and I saw how frail he was. His legs were so thin they seemed swollen at the knees to accommodate the joints. He had little, white teeth that looked as if they were his first set. Even as Ken smiled at me, I thought to myself that he was going to be useless. I didn’t want to be by Ken when we were fighting. I’d keep by Matthew. Matthew’s dirty knees were comfortingly large, and he plodded on resolutely. ‘Perhaps we should scout around first, and find out how many of them there are,’ I said to Matthew.

  ‘I’ve got to be home by half past five,’ said Ken. I bet you do, Ken, I bet you do, I thought. I resolved that not only would I stick with Matthew when it started, I’d make sure Ken wasn’t protecting my back. I had some idea it was going to be like the musketeers of Dumas, us back to back against the odds of the Tech boys.

  We stood on the raised road leading up to the bridge, and looked over the bank from the fence, across the frothing fennel to the greywacke shingle of the riverbed, where the larger stones crouched like rabbits in the afternoon sun. Creamy stepped out from the cover of the willows two hundred yards away. He raised one arm slowly and lowered it again. It caught the significance of our presence, as a hawk becomes the sky. It had nothing to do with friendship, or compromise: it was a sign of recognition. It was a sign of deeper cognisance too, in that we were there. Unlike Arty and the others on the list, we had come. So Creamy acknowledged our equality of hostility.

  Life was drama when we were young. The power of it made Lloyd’s voice shake when he reminded us to keep together as we broke our way through the fennel. Creamy watched us coming for a bit, then disappeared behind the willows. ‘Where are they?’ said Ken. They were below the bank, where the terrace met the riverbed. As if to answer Ken’s question, they began throwing stones which snicked through the fennel.

  ‘Let’s head for the willows,’ I said. The Tech harried us as we went. I could hear Warwick’s indrawn laugh, and I had a desultory stick fight with a boy who used to be in cubs with me. The Rosenberg twins were the best fighters on our side. They probably had the least notion as to why we were there in the first place, but they were the best fighters all right. They seemed to fight intuitively as one person, four arms and four feet. They rolled one Tech kid over the bank, and winded him on the shingle below. Matthew seemed unable to catch anyone to fight in this sort of guerrilla warfare. Nobody took him on, but he was too slow to take on anybody himself. He kept moving towards the willows, and we skirmished about him.

  I think the whole thing might have petered out, if Rainbow hadn’t come. Even in an all out fight there were rules: you knew that no one would deliberately poke anything in your eye, or hold your head under water longer than you could hold your breath. Rainbow was different. He liked to hurt people, did Rainbow. He stepped up on to the bank by the willows, and halted our forward progress. He had a thick stick. ‘So it’s Tech against High,’ said Rainbow. His features were gathered closely on his round head, like sprout marks on a coconut. He held the stick in front of Ken, and Ken stopped. The rest of us did nothing. We did nothing not just because Rainbow Johnston was a fifth former, but because he was Rainbow Johnston. And deep down we were glad he’d picked on Ken, and not on us.

  ‘I’m pax,’ said Ken. It was the best he could think of, and its incongruity set the Tech guys laughing.

  ‘Pax!’ said Rainbow bitterly. ‘We don’t have any pax between Tech and High.’ He drew back his stick, and speared it out at Ken, catching him on the side of the chest. Ken fell on his back, and as his head hit the soft grass his hair flopped away from his face, making him seem even younger.

  ‘Ah, Jesus,’ said Ken, and he got up and felt his side where he’d been struck. He laughed shakily and picked up his own stick in a show of defiance. Then he dropped his stick again, and began to cry. He slumped down on his knees and held his side. He arched his back and squeezed his eyes closed with the pain.

  ‘We’ve won,’ said Creamy, before anyone else could think of a reaction to what had happened. Rainbow motioned with his stick towards the rest of us. ‘We’ve won,’ repeated Creamy quietly. ‘You can stay and play in the hut, Rainbow.’ Creamy had found the right note as ever. With the fight declared over, Rainbow felt a bit ashamed to be with third formers. He vaulted over the sagging willow trunk on to the riverbed, and slouched off upstream. ‘See you, Rainbow,’ said Creamy.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Rainbow.

  Ken was still crying. There was some blood showing through his shirt from the graze, and Matthew and I helped him up. We began to go back to the bridge through the fennel. ‘They can’t come here again, Creamy, can they?’ called out Warwick. ‘It’s Tech now.’

  ‘They can’t come here again,’ said Creamy. His face was the same, relaxed, and with the upper lip creating the impression of incipient humour. He didn’t speak with any special triumph.

  We broke down the fennel in our retreat, paying no attention to the tunnels Creamy and I had made. I was glad Tech had won. I joined in the talk about the injustice of Rainbow being there, but I was glad they’d won. It gave a more general explanation for the end of our friendship — Creamy’s and mine. There couldn’t be any personal betrayal when it was a matter of Tech and High, a commitment to a cause. Ken was still crying, but with greater artifice as his sense of heroism grew. He leant to one side, and he held his shirt out so it wouldn’t stick to his graze. The fennel fronds were like miniature conifers, smaller and smaller, each in the join of the other as marsupial embryos in a pouch. The oddly coastal smell of the crushed fennel was all about us. ‘I don’t know that we lost, not really fair and square,’ said Matthew. ‘If Rainbow hadn’t been there I mean.’ They could say what they liked, but for myself I knew I’d lost all right. And it was worse that, as I climbed from the fennel, up onto the road, I could understand what it was I’d lost, and why.

  Mr Van Gogh

  When he went into hospital our newspaper said that Mr Van Gogh’s name was Frank Reprieve Wilcox, and that was the first time I’d ever heard the name. But I knew Mr Van Gogh well enough. He came around the town sometimes on Sunday afternoons, and he would excuse himself for disturbing you and ask if there were any coloured bottles to carry on the work of Mr Vincent Van Gogh. Whether you gave him bottles or not, it was better never to enquire about his art, for he would stand by any back door on a Sunday afternoon and talk of Van Gogh until the tears ran down his face, and his gabardine coat flapped in agitation.

  Only those who wanted to mock him, encouraged him to talk. Like Mr Souness next door who had some relatives from Auckland staying when Mr Van Gogh came, and got him going as a local turn to entertain the visitors. ‘Was he any good, though, this Van Gogh bugger?’ Mr Souness said, nudging a relative, and, ‘But he was barmy, wasn’t he? Admit it. He was another mad artist.’ Mr Van Gogh never realised that there was no interest, only cruelty, behind such questions. He talked of the religious insight of Van Gogh’s painting at Arles, and his genius in colour symbolism. He laughed and cried as he explained to Mr Souness’s relations the loyalty of brother Theo, and the prescience of the critic Aurier. They were sufficiently impressed to ask Mr Van Gogh whether they could see his ears for a moment. Mr Souness and his relations stood around Mr Van Gogh, and laughed so loud when it was said, that I went away from the fence without watching any more. Mr Van Gogh was standing before the laughter with his arms outstretched like a cross, and talking all the more urgently. Something about cypresses and the hills of Provence.

  Mr Van Gogh had a war pension, and lived in a wooden bungalow right beside the bridge. The original colours of the house had g
iven up their differences, and weathered stoically to an integration of rust and exposed wood. The iron on the roof was stained with rust, and looked much the same as the corrugated weatherboards. The garden was full of docks and fennel. It had two crab apple trees which we didn’t bother to rob.

  Mr Van Gogh didn’t appear to have anything worth stealing. He used to paint in oils, my father said, but it was expensive and nothing ever sold, so he began to work in glass. No one saw any of his artwork, but sometimes when he came round on Sundays, he’d have a set of drinking glasses made out of wine bottles, or an ashtray to sell made out of a vinegar flagon. My father was surprised that they were no better than any other do it yourself product.

  Although he had no proper job, Mr Van Gogh worked as though the day of judgement was upon him. He used his attached wash-house as a studio, and on fine days he’d sit in the doorway to get the sun. There he’d cut and grind and polish away at the glass. He would even eat in the doorway of the wash-house as he worked. He must have taken in a deal of glass dust with his sandwiches. Often I could see him as I went down to the river. If I called out to him, he’d say ‘Good on you’, still working on the glass, grinding, cutting, polishing. If I was by myself I’d watch a while sometimes before going down to the river. One piece after another, none of them bigger than a thumbnail. A sheet of glass sheds the light, he said. They had to be small to concentrate the light. Some of the bits were thick and faceted, others so delicate he would hold them to the sun to check. Mr Van Gogh liked to talk of individual paintings as he worked — the poet’s garden, street in Auvers, or starry night. He stored the different colours and shapes in cardboard boxes that said Hard Jubes on the sides. Yellow was difficult, the colour of personal expression, Mr Van Gogh said, but so difficult to get right in glass. He bought yellow glass from Austria, but he’d never matched Van Gogh’s yellow. He never thought so much of his yellow glass, he said, even from Austria.