by Stephen Orr
On the way over, Gaby said, ‘The leg doesn’t seem to stop him doing anything.’
Trevor agreed. ‘It’s not so much the leg …’
‘You’re a worry wart.’
He smiled. ‘A worry wart?’
She took his arm and held it against her body. ‘Your life will be a succession of good things.’
‘You reckon?’
Murray, walking behind them, noticed. It was the first real proof he’d had of their love, like, lust, or whatever it was. He searched his fag-pocket for a cigarette and felt one of the plastic-covered packets she’d given him. No, he thought, looking at her. No.
Trevor was aware of her arm, his father, his kids, already racing each other around the track. They arrived and Harry rode past and waved at them.
‘See,’ she said. ‘He’s fine.’
‘I never said—’
‘He was gonna fall off and break his neck and you were gonna be left feeling guilty for the rest of your—’
‘Bullshit.’
‘Bullshit nothing.’ She nuzzled her head into his neck and kissed it and lingered. Murray stood back, watching. Harry and Aiden pulled up.
‘You can be the starter,’ Harry said, over the growl of the motors.
The boys lined up; nudged their wheels forward. Then they revved, and waited for their dad.
‘Go!’
The bikes jumped forward. Harry, Aiden, Harry, as they closed and opened the gap. Aiden dropped his head, streamlining his body, leaning into the curve of the track. Soon he was ten metres ahead of his brother. But Harry wouldn’t be beaten. He opened his throttle and almost touched his chin to the handlebars. It didn’t matter. Aiden flew past him again.
Both boys returned to them and Harry demanded another go. Aiden agreed, but beat him again. Harry asked for the best of four, five, six. On the final circuit, as Harry passed his brother for the first time, Gaby stepped forward and reattached herself to Trevor. ‘He’s gonna do it,’ she said.
But he just called to his son. ‘Slow down.’
Harry ignored him. He wasn’t going to be beaten. He flew past them and Trevor dropped his arm. Gaby jumped up and Murray just stood looking at her.
‘See,’ she said to Trevor. ‘He’s a marvel.’
‘Yeah,’ he managed. ‘He’s very competitive.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’
‘Sometimes.’
The boys pulled up in front of them. ‘Gotcha,’ Harry said to his brother.
‘I let you have one.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘Good boy, Harry,’ Gaby said, but he just looked at her. He noticed how she was clinging to his father, and how he looked stiff and uncomfortable. ‘He doesn’t let me win,’ he said to her.
‘I always have,’ Aiden said.
Aiden shook his head. He, too, noticed their bodies. It was apparent she was trying to claim him. He turned to Murray for some sort of explanation, but he just stood there, avoiding eyes.
The boys returned to the track, revolving, again and again, in the thought of their father, the claws, and what this woman was really after.
20
It was close to midnight. Murray, lying on his stretcher, could hear his son and the woman talking in the lounge room. He could hear them touching glasses, and laughing, and long silences. Words, a blur, a phrase; the creaking of springs, a mug on the coffee table, and her voice, again. ‘He came in and without so much as a thank you …’ Before she hushed to a whisper.
He studied the wall of his iron-clad life; every dent, every lifted nail; an old snake skin on a wooden ledge. Left by the stranger, he often fancied. Lying in this same spot, thinking these same thoughts. He could imagine him waking in the morning, pulling on a dirty white shirt, an old suit jacket with its arms turned up, grey canvas pants and old boots. He could see him going outside, noticing Mary in the chicken pen and approaching her. Saying, ‘Good morning … need a hand?’
Mary holding a knife. ‘Bill usually does it for me.’
The stranger going into the yard, picking up the fattest chicken he could find and saying, ‘What about this one?’
‘She’ll do.’
Murray could see Mary turning away as the stranger knelt down, put the chicken across his knee and removed its head with three passes of the blade. Standing up, returning the knife and saying, ‘Finished.’ Finally, holding up the twitching chicken and smiling.
Mary taking it by the legs. ‘Thanks.’
The stranger picking up the chicken’s head and throwing it out of the yard; wiping his bloody hands on his pants; picking up a bowl of scraps and scattering them about.
Mary saying: ‘Can I ask a favour?’
The stranger telling her to be careful as blood dripped onto her shoes. ‘Of course.’
Her putting the chicken on a nearby bench and saying, ‘Could I ask you to talk to Bill?’
‘About … John?’
‘Yes.’ Mary stopping to think. Looking at the chicken, and back at his broad hands. ‘I mean, we talk, but it’s not the same coming from your wife, is it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s not. Maybe from … someone he can talk to. The thing is, all of this business has hit him hard. John was his boy, he meant everything to him.’
‘I could imagine.’
‘He was gonna share the farm. They were mates, and these last few months … Bill’s been lost.’
The stranger had seen it—in the pictures on the wall, the way they’d left his room, full of old bears and zebras, tin soldiers and a golliwog she’d made. The way they talked about him like he was due home any time, and the way she always cooked an extra portion. He’d heard it in the stories—how Bill and Morris and John had built a raft out of old timber and a couple of 44-gallon drums. How Bill had bought a pirate’s flag from a shop in town and flown it above the raft. How they’d stripped down to their underpants and sailed on the little bit of water in the turkey nest.
The stranger had seen the raft, broken up, overgrown with weeds.
The stranger saying, ‘I can talk to him but … what do you want me to say?’
Mary moving closer. ‘I want you to tell him … it’s not worth it.’
‘What?’
‘I think he might kill himself.’
‘Jesus …’
‘I think. When they published the Cowards’ List … you heard about that?’
‘Yes.’
‘John was no coward.’
‘I know.’
‘But Bill … he’s taken it to heart.’
The stranger shaking his head, taking her arm and saying, ‘What was he gonna do?’
‘He has ropes, in the shed.’ Explaining: the knot she’d seen in a length of rough twine the day after the list was published; Bill’s changing moods; his despair; his talk about selling the farm. ‘A few years ago he had all these new ideas: fertilisers, machinery, new types of wheat. He was determined to improve things. But now he’s just let go.’
‘Maybe we should both talk to him?’
‘No, you, please.’
Murray strained to hear what the woman was saying. Give me time, I’ll bring him around. Or something similar.
And Trevor. ‘You’ve gotta be kidding.’
Then there was something about memory, hypocrisy; someone refusing to face up to something. He moved his ear closer to the wall and pressed it against the cold brick.
Trix. Yes, he was talking about her. He wouldn’t, would he?
He stood, went out, and watched them through the sliding door. Trevor was lying on the couch. She was nestled against his body, holding a glass of red wine, swirling it, looking up at him and down at the silent images on the telly. He was half-asleep. ‘Not a word, ever,’ he said.
‘He’s told you not to?’
‘No, but she’s never discussed. Never has been. If she comes up he just leaves the room.’
There was a short silence. ‘Strange,’ she said.
‘Not really. If it gets discussed, then it turns to blame.’
‘So what happened?’
‘We used to have yards, a lot closer to the house. Dad had a bull tied up. I think it was on loan. Mum comes out, and she gets talking to him. Next thing, she drops something, leans over and the bull kicks her in the head. Dad’s screamin’ at her: Jesus, what were yer thinking? But she was already on the ground, with a big fracture, here.’ He rubbed the soft spot on the side of her skull.
‘That’s terrible.’
‘All I can remember is him shoutin’ at her: Come on, get up. Shaking her.’
‘You must have been horrified.’
‘I just sat there screaming, watching Dad and thinking, Why are you doing this? It wasn’t her fault.’ He waited, remembering. ‘Then the plane took her to town … but she was dead before they got there.’
Murray opened the door and glared at his son. ‘I don’t believe it.’
Trevor sat up. ‘What?’
‘How can you—’
‘Aren’t I allowed to talk about her?’
Gaby also sat up. ‘Murray, we were just—’
‘It’s none of your bloody business.’ He wanted to slap her. Reclaim his story. Explain how it really was. But there was no point.
Harry was up early collecting a few eggs, cleaning out the tubs of water, coming inside and asking his father (sitting with Gaby, looking through a box of old photos) why chickens shat in their own water.
He stopped to think. ‘Maybe they’ve just got a bad aim.’
Harry could feel his neck, and ears, cold. Even the skin on his scalp, freshly shaved with his mum’s clippers. Gaby had done the job. He’d sat silently, feeling the buzz down his side, feeling goose pimples, feeling ashamed. It was a sensation that belonged to his mother’s hand. It was an extension of her touch, her hold, her hug.
Aiden was lying awake in bed, listening. He didn’t want to get up; couldn’t see the point. Murray was off inventing jobs for himself. Gaby was dreading his return. As she studied photos of the old bastard she could see he was almost human. One image showed him and the boys in the overflowing turkey nest. They were all squeezed into an inner-tube, smiling, laughing. ‘When was this taken?’ she asked Trevor.
He looked at the photo, then his son. ‘Four, five years ago, wasn’t it, Harry?’
He studied the photo. ‘Yes. Then we had hot weather and it all dried up.’
She could see the boy had remained a child—the clear eyes, the small nose, the thin lips—but now his hair was darker and his skull, perhaps, narrower. ‘Are there yabbies in the dam?’ she asked him.
‘No.’ As he thought, How could there be?
She could see Murray looked no different. Down to the white flab on his arms, the liver spots on his cheeks, the fine capillaries across his nose. But he was laughing. ‘He seems happy here,’ she said to Trevor.
‘He has his days. He can even be quite funny, believe it or not.’
This was an image she didn’t want to invoke. It was easier to think of him as a miserable old bastard. ‘How cute,’ she said, holding up an old photo.
It was the interior of one of the Tea and Sugar carriages. There was a screen at the front and wooden chairs set out in rows. A porter stood beside a poster featuring an unshaved Glenn Ford with gloves and a gun, too-clean denim and a sweat-soaked hat. Burnt letters proclaimed: Heaven with a Gun.
‘Is that you?’ Gaby asked, pointing to a small boy sitting in the nearly-empty theatrette, smiling back at the photographer.
Trevor squinted to see. ‘Yes.’
Harry came around behind them. ‘Look at your clothes.’
‘I was made to wear them.’ Long socks, polished shoes, a shirt and tie and his hair slicked back with poppy oil.
In contrast to the scene that Harry could make out on the screen. An old barn with a sign:
MISSION CHURCH OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD
J. KILLIAN—PASTOR
A ladder, horse-rails and two cowboys about to draw. He wanted to ask who got killed but realised there was no way his father would remember. To Gaby, it was her versus Murray—the bent legs, the hovering hands, the long shadows across the compound. Yanga might have even been there, and Fay, waiting for them to finish so she could hang out the washing.
Trevor looked at the photo. He was sitting alone. ‘It was only a couple of times a year,’ he said. ‘If you didn’t like the movie, bad luck. I remember once, Mum asked for a musical. They brought South Pacific. Grumble-arse just sat there with a scowl on his face saying, Why couldn’t we have another Western?’
‘Why’s there no one with you?’ Harry asked.
‘They were probably sitting up the back. Maybe Dad was workin’ the projector.’ He explained how the Tea and Sugar butcher was also the projectionist and how, after he’d started the show, he’d return to his carriage to make up more orders.
‘Pop still likes Westerns,’ Harry said, thinking how the barn didn’t look quite real, how someone, apparently, had ironed the cowboys’ clothes.
‘Well, he’s living in one, isn’t he?’ Gaby said.
Harry took this to mean the cattle, the dirt, the weeks without showers, but Trevor knew this isn’t what she meant.
There were other photos: a smiling Morris holding a cow skull, a fag hanging from the corner of his mouth; Morris and John as boys, leaning against the water tank, the crew hut half-built behind them; Murray as a teenager standing in front of a pub in Port Augusta, his tie crooked and his shirt untucked; the Wilkie brothers, again, John with his arm around Morris, pointing at the camera accusingly as Bill (perhaps) joked with them from behind the photographer.
Harry took a handful of colour photos and sat in Chris’s spot.
Nineteen ninety-seven. He was standing beside this same couch, looking at Chris (watching a movie) with a puzzled expression. Aiden was sitting at the table, writing, biting his bottom lip as he clumsily clutched his pen.
‘Look at me there,’ he said to his dad, holding up the photo.
‘One of your few quiet times,’ Trevor replied, turning to Gaby. ‘He didn’t say a word for two years. Then one day he started talking, non-stop. Questions, twenty-four hours a day. Daaaad, what makes the lights work?’
Gaby laughed. Harry wasn’t sure that this was her memory to share. He shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘Daaaad, why do I gotta wipe my bum?’
Aiden could hear. He smiled. He could remember his brother going through the pain-in-the-arse stage. Was still going through it. He was a creature, a thing that had to be tolerated—his voice, his face, his smell. He knew that soon he would be human, bearable, reliable. ‘Daaaad, how do they make the peas green?’
Harry returned to his photos. A trip to Adelaide, a cruise on the Port River, grey dolphins (although he didn’t think they looked that interesting); in a carriage at the Railway Museum, Aiden’s head hanging from the window, him, bigger than a fish but smaller than a person, being thrown into the air by Carelyn, her arms strong, straight and ready; her face glowing, as if his return to earth was the only thing that meant anything to her, as if these few inches of air between them were too much to bear, the bits of seconds too long.
He studied her face. He didn’t mean to, but he shivered, his eyes filled and he felt like he couldn’t draw breath. The moment was gone. He’d fallen and she’d caught him. She’d hugged him before moving on to other things: the journey home, purée to feed him, his shitty arse.
Gaby could see all of this. She stood and moved beside him. Trevor realised this was his job but she was already there. He was unsure. He didn’t know what photo it was, but guessed it might’ve been the one at the museum.
Gaby looked at the photo, and at Harry. ‘You okay?’
He could feel her presence filling, but not filling, a void. She was like some sort of wall, keeping him from his old life. She put her arm around him. He winced. Tolerated her, but stiffened.
Trevor could see it coming. ‘H
arry?’
Then she squeezed and rubbed his arm. He grimaced; his face tightened. He let out a sort of growl. She felt this tension and released him.
‘You’re not my mother,’ he said, looking at her.
‘Harry!’ Trevor said.
And then to his father. ‘Why?’
‘What?’
But he was up, across the room and out the back door. Aiden heard it all. He was quickly out of bed. He went into the lounge, still in his pyjamas. ‘What happened?’
‘He’s upset,’ Trevor said.
‘Why?’
‘He was looking at photos.’
Aiden looked at Gaby, and knew. ‘Where?’
Trevor pointed to the back door.
He went out, stood in the compound and called, ‘Harry, where are you, it’s only me.’
No reply. He worked his way around the yard, checking the sheds and crew quarters. Nothing. He made his way back to the compound, and Yanga, sniffing about. ‘Where are yer?’ he shouted, studying Gaby’s bomb, its balding tyres and Greenpeace sticker. He stopped to think then walked down the roadway searching shadows between the pines, the honey-brown litter shifting in the warm breeze.
‘Piss off,’ Harry said, jammed a few metres up between a trunk and branch.
He walked over to him. ‘What’s up?’
No reply.
‘You got the shits on?’ He climbed the same tree and found a solid branch opposite him. ‘This better be good,’ he said. ‘It’s sore on my arse.’
Harry handed him the photo and he studied it. He could remember the day—lunch in the old Tea and Sugar cafeteria car; climbing over dozens of trains. He could remember rides in the miniature carriage, the steam, the rumble of the rails through their feet and spines; and the driver letting them pull the cord for the whistle.
But, he could see, the photo showed more than this. It showed their mother, happy, starting out on a journey with them, and not so long ago.
‘She’ll never be our mum,’ Harry said.
Aiden looked up the hill at the old car. ‘Well, she’s never actually said …’ He trailed off, confused about what she wanted. ‘All I can remember is Pop getting his rocks off,’ he said.
