by Joy Dettman
Margaret and Jimmy were impressed with the house they now owned. They spent half an hour roaming their father’s new acquisition, climbing down to Monk’s cave of a root cellar. Lorna was more impressed when a few months later Vern bought a house in Balwyn. It was next door to his half-brother’s house and he got it for a song. Certain that it was her father’s intention for her and Margaret to live in that house, chaperoned by their uncle next door, Lorna was not pleased when Vern left the previous owners in as caretakers.
He’d been a young bloke during the depression of the nineties. He couldn’t remember much about it, other than listening to his grandfather lamenting the fact that he’d sat on his money instead of buying while prices were low. Joanne had left Vern a small fortune, which he considered to be safer in land than in the banks right now. He had five hundred a year still coming in from his first wife, money sitting in banks bringing in little interest. Property was easier to keep track of. It was there. You could walk on it, pick up handfuls of it. He bought old lady Wilson’s house when she moved down to Willama to live with her daughter. He bought the paddock next door to his mill. He went property mad while his mill lay idle one week out of two.
‘Stop it, Vern,’ Gertrude said. ‘People are talking about you.’
When a man has work and money enough to live on, there is little envy. When a man starts flashing his money around while others can’t find coin enough for a beer, that’s when envy grows and memories of worthy deeds grow short. When you sit all day watching your wife unpicking the seams of her best dress then stitching it back together, its unfaded inside now on the outside, what else can you do but envy that pair of stuck-up Hooper bitches walking out to do their shopping in fancy city suits. Envy of his neighbour can eat into a man’s heart.
Vern paid his skeleton crew of mill workers to cut a few railway truckloads of firewood he freighted down to Melbourne marked For Relief. The railways carried it free if marked For Relief. The Methodist mission handed it out to those in the greatest need.
‘There’s folk in town who could use a load of wood,’ people said. ‘And he sends it down to bloody strangers in Melbourne.’
Lonnie and Nancy Bryant’s city son and his family had moved back home. Horrie Bull had his sister and her husband living in one of the pub’s sleep-outs. Melbourne’s population decreased during the worst years of the depression as those who could, fled from its destitution to rural areas. Twelve squeezed into houses hard pushed to hold six. Sheds in backyards were made habitable.
‘The city’s no place to be if you can’t find work,’ they said.
‘There’s wood for the taking up here. A kid can drag his billycart down to the bridge and pick up a load in five minutes.’
‘A man can trap a rabbit, toss a line in the creek, fire his shotgun into a flock of galahs and bring down enough for a stew . . . and there’s nothing wrong with parrot stew either, if you can find an onion.’
‘You need to live in that city to know what it’s like down there. It’s all right for them with money. They’re still trotting off to their theatres, still driving their fancy cars and turning their eyes away so they don’t see their starving neighbours.’
No one starved in Woody Creek. But a split had opened up in the fabric of the town, separating those who had from those who had not, drawing a heavy line between complaining bludger and silent battler.
The strong men, the proud, could still make a few bob felling trees, splitting logs with metal wedge and axe, hand-cutting sleepers for the railways. They could cut foot blocks to freight down to those who could afford to buy wood in Melbourne. The strong men and the proud worked from daylight to dark, determined to keep their families off relief.
Big Henry King, father of stuttering Ray, champion drinker and wood cutter, was one of the biggest, the strongest of men, proud of his strength too — until the forest turned on him one day and felled him. Gum tree branches can be snappy bastards; they’ll kill you when you’re least expecting it. That branch didn’t do the decent thing by Big Henry; it didn’t kill him outright. Vern drove Gertrude and Constable Denham out to the accident site. Gertrude sat beside Vern. Denham sat in the rear seat. They spoke only to Vern. But the three worked together to get Henry out of the bush, to get him down to the hospital.
‘You couldn’t kill that big bastard with a ton of bricks,’ the drinkers said that night in the pub’s back room. ‘He’ll pull through all right,’ they said.
Big Henry spent three months in hospital and returned to Woody Creek a cripple with the use of one arm. He was a strong man. He might have lived that way for years, but a month of his wife’s derision was enough. He told his boy to bring him a basin of water and his razor, that he wanted to clean himself up for Sunday. He didn’t waste the water, and he didn’t see Sunday. His one good arm was strong enough to do what it had to do.
He was Woody Creek’s first suicide, though no one saw it as such, and not a soul blamed him. The timber men made him a red gum coffin and gave him a send-off the likes of which hadn’t been seen in many a year. He ended up two rows down from J.C., the stranger who had come to Woody Creek and remained. Ten days later, they opened up his grave and put his nasty bitch of a wife in with him. No one believed she’d died of a broken heart. That woman had never had a heart to break.
Then Ray, that hulking great stuttering boy with his big brown innocent lamb’s eyes, disappeared.
For a week the men had something to do. For a week they felt like men again. They combed the forest calling to Ray; they dragged the creek for his body. They didn’t find him. Eventually they gave up looking, and a few more men gave up being men and went on susso. What gain was there in fighting it? The life they’d known was gone and Big Henry lucky to be out of it.
Ray King’s disappearance was big news at school. The Macdonald twins swore they’d caught a fish at the weekend and when they were taking it off the hook it said, ‘L-l-leave m-m-me al-l-lone.’
Robert Fulton, father of nine, feed and grain store proprietor for twenty years, not built to cut wood or trap rabbits, took his rifle out to Three Pines Road one morning. They found him at nightfall, a bullet through his head. Some said he must have fallen on his gun. Some called it suicide. His wife called it cowardice.
‘You had no right,’ she howled in Moe Kelly’s cellar. ‘How do you expect me to feed those kids now?’
She fed them. Gertrude gave her a young milking goat and taught her oldest boy how to milk it. Jean White gave Emma, her fourteen year old, a job in the shop. Miss Blunt passed on a few sewing jobs — Mrs Fulton was a fine seamstress.
Tom Palmer, mill boss at Mick Boyle’s mill for fifteen years, paying off his own house for ten of those years and still managing to put a bit away, had been doing what he could to keep up his house payments. He’d tried sleeper-cutting but he never was an axe man. He sewed wheat bags for cockies, allowed his oldest girl, Irene, who looked sixteen but wasn’t yet fourteen, to take maid work with Hooper. And Christ how he hated watching his girl walk off to work each morning, hated knowing she was running around after two grown women capable of running around after themselves; hated it, but had to swallow it and keep it down.
‘If a man can keep a roof over his head, he can keep the wolf from his door,’ Tom said. ‘It won’t last forever. It can’t last forever.’
He took a job as a shearer’s cook, which meant leaving his own roof for three months, but Geoff, his oldest boy, was fifteen. He put him in charge, told the rest of his kids to help their mother, and off he went. They brought him home two weeks later, his leg broken, and that was the end of that.
Or maybe it wasn’t.
‘You still need a cook, I take it,’ Wilma Palmer said. ‘I’m used to cooking for a crowd. My boy and I will cook for your shearers.’
Her husband was in the hospital. She was in the early stages of pregnancy, but she and Joss, her twelve year old, travelled with the shearers for those months, her younger children left in the sole care of the
ir big brother, until Tom came home on crutches. She was six months gone with that baby when the shearing season ended, when the boss shearer took her to the train and told her his blokes were planning to kidnap her next year, that they’d never eaten so good, so she’d better be on the lookout. They’d passed the hat around for Wilma and her baby, and she and Joss returned home with more money than they’d seen in one place before.
Wilma and Tom Palmer would make it through. When a man and his wife are prepared to do what it takes, they’ll always make it through. Pumpkins and potatoes now grew where flowers had once bloomed. Chooks stalked their proud front yard and a cow lived in their backyard, the younger Palmer kids picking grass for her on their way home from school each day. That cow kept milk in their bellies.
ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES
In December of 1931, George Macdonald went to a farm auction and bought a new Chevrolet truck. He didn’t know how to drive it but considered it past time he did. The previous owner delivered it, offered George a few pointers on driving, then lifted his bike down from the tray and rode away.
The following morning, George got it started up. He found a forward gear, the thing let out a howl and took off towards the railway station.
‘Whoa, you bastard. Whoa!’
George jumped for his life before it hit the currajong tree, or tried to climb it.
Denham wandered down to stick his nose in. ‘Are you licensed to drive, Mr Macdonald?’
‘Shove your licence up your . . .’ A cigarette administered with a shaking hand got his mouth closed.
The tree was well grown. It had shed a few pods, was still trembling, as was George. The earth was trembling, or maybe it was the train coming in.
The accident drew a crowd. The train driver and fireman walked over to take a look, the bank manager and Charlie White walked down together, then Norman came and a few of the male passengers wandered over. One was a rusty-headed, freckle-faced, underfed lad with sixpence in his pocket and a sugar bag containing his worldly possessions over his shoulder. He’d spent the last twelve months on a cousin’s farm, fifty-odd miles further west, where they were surviving on boiled wheat, treacle and a rabbit if anyone could catch one. He was hungry, he was homesick, and George Macdonald, now walking in circles around his truck, sounded like Collingwood on a bad night. The youth made a beeline towards that glorious sound.
The twins were there. The youth thought he might be seeing double; starvation did that to you. Then he saw the damage to that beautiful truck and it damn near broke his heart.
‘Made a mess of it,’ he said to Denham, who was studying the bumper bar curled halfway around the tree trunk.
Denham eyed him but said nothing.
‘Beautiful pieces of machinery, these,’ the kid said, taking the makings from his pocket, rolling a smoke like he’d been rolling smokes for twenty years. He looked fifteen, looked like someone had taken hold of an unshorn twelve year old and stretched him long. He was taller than Denham. George came up to his elbow.
‘Where are you from?’ Denham said.
‘Round and about,’ the kid said.
‘City?’ Denham said. A city man could always pick another. They spoke faster. They had a different way of moving.
‘Was,’ the youth said.
‘Where have you been?’ The train had come in from the west.
‘Fighting the bunnies for a blade of grass.’
Smoking was contagious. Norman offered his pack to the train driver and fireman. George lit another, then Denham lit up.
‘I could get her off that tree,’ the kid said to George, who looked more worried than the rest of the crowd so no doubt owned the truck.
‘What are you? Fifteen?’
‘Eighteen. Me and my old man used to drive a truck like this one for Maples, carting furniture. Back when folk could afford to buy furniture.’
The twins had climbed up to the cabin. George dragged them out, told them to piss off, watched them go as far as the fallen fence where a dozen or more kids were standing. They’d never seen a truck try to climb a tree.
‘I’ve got sixpence says I can move her,’ the kid said, squatting at one of the front wheels lifted off the ground, walking around to the other. It was on the ground.
‘Then put your money where your mouth is, boy,’ George said.
The kid looked around, walked off to help himself to stacked timber no one wanted to buy, aging, greying, in the railway yards. The men stood back, watching him jam two thick boards beneath the front wheel. Then, with a grin, he climbed up to the driver’s seat. He got her started on the second attempt, stuck her in gear, stuck his head out the window.
‘It wouldn’t do any harm if a few of you pushed . . .’
He let out the clutch, they pushed, the tree shuddered, chucked down a few more pods, metal screamed, and the truck pulled away.
‘Keep the bastard going while she’s going,’ George bellowed.
‘Where do you want it?’ the kid yelled.
‘Over the road.’
George ran ahead, hunting kids out of the way, as, expertly, his truck was driven out through the railway yard gate. A minute later it was back in the place where it belonged.
‘You’re a bloody godsend. What’s your name?’ George said as the kid swung down to the ground.
‘Harry Hall.’
The entertainment over, the train hooting, passengers headed back to continue their journey.
Harry reached for his sugar bag. ‘You owe me sixpence,’ he said.
George found two bob and flicked it at him. ‘Who taught you to drive?’
‘Had to learn when my old man’s sight went on him.’
George watched the kid put his two bob in his tobacco tin, watched him roll another slim smoke and strike a match like a bloke who’d been lighting up for forty years.
‘You’re going home then, are you?’
‘Going somewhere,’ Harry said around his fag. He got it burning, then, with a wave of his hand, walked off towards the train.
George watched him cross the road. ‘Do you reckon you could show me how to control that bastard? I’d pay you.’
The kid turned. ‘I’d drive that truck for nothing,’ he said. ‘Though I’m not averse to taking your money.’
It wasn’t a good day for George. Maisy had picked up a letter from the post office posted at that same post office. John Curry, the headmaster, had considered saving the postage stamp, and handing it to George, then escaping before he opened it. The envelope contained the twins’ exam results and a letter stating that Curry would not have the disruptive swine back in 1932. He had offered the name of a good school outside of Melbourne, which, to use George’s own translation, guaranteed to turn obstreperous little bastards into something better.
Denham spent his life harassing those boys. Maisy couldn’t control them. She’d been pleading with him for twelve months to send them away to school, though suggesting they be split up, sent to schools well separated. George considered his options, considered separation — until he learned that he got a discount on the fees for two. He paid twelve months in advance and in January of 1932 he delivered them.
‘It’s for your own good,’ he said. ‘I would have given my back teeth for the opportunity I’m giving you.’ They looked sick and he felt sick. ‘If someone had sent me away to school when I was twelve year old, I would have kissed their feet.’
‘We’re eleven.’
‘Then I would have licked their feet before I kissed them. Now get in there and learn something.’
They stood staring at him, green-capped, slack-jawed, wet-eyed, looking for all the world like a pair of stranded frogs, their bellies full of stinging ants. He walked away. It was for their own good. Denham was threatening to have them locked up as juvenile delinquents.
The town breathed easier. Curry breathed easier.
Sissy Morrison didn’t breathe easier. Back in first grade, girls had learnt to give her a wide berth. They gave her a wi
der berth now. The twins were her only friends. She’d walked to school with them, walked home with them, tormented Jenny with them, talked about interesting things with them. She had no one now. She came straight home from school each day, came home to an empty house, and nothing to do there other than to eat what she could find, and if she couldn’t find anything worth eating, she stoked up the stove and made toffee — and ate the lot before her father and Jenny came home.
Gertrude filled the biscuit tins on Fridays. Sissy ate them by the handful on Saturdays. Jenny played with friends on weekends; Sissy ate. She was close to her thirteenth birthday, her face was an eruption, her shape that of a bag of wheat. Sissy was a misery.
Then Jimmy Hooper happened, Jimmy the gangling, big-eared loner. If a child chose to walk a while at his side, Jimmy walked. During her first years at school, Jenny had walked by his side. She walked with little girls now. Simon Denham had hung around Jimmy until he’d found other friends. Ray King had watched ants with him until he’d gone missing. Joss Palmer had discussed tractors with him before he’d left school.
Jim was working that year from ninth-grade leaflets posted up from the city and posted back when they were done. He worked without supervision in the utility room, which he was forced to vacate when Miss Rose required it for her group.
Sissy sat in the fifth grade row of desks, at the rear. She was taller than John Curry, and heavier. He kept her at a distance, attempted to ignore her. When he could not, he sent her from the room. Sissy was always pleased to go.
He sent her from the room on Miss Rose’s music afternoon, which meant Jimmy had vacated the utility room and taken his books out to an old desk on the verandah. The day was hot, the desk in the only patch of shade. Sissy shared his shade, staring at him as he leafed through a book and took notes on what he found. Then she saw a photograph of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. They’d been building that bridge since before her mother left. She looked at it over his shoulder.
‘We’re driving up to see it opened, Pops said.’
