by Stephen Orr
There was a deeper silence. Dread. Shallow breath. The apprentice was looking into the cold, blue sky, searching for a Sunday school Jesus, his legs almost giving way beneath his weight. ‘I am Protestant,’ he said, slowly.
None of the four men responded. One of the other builders said, ‘You’re acting like cowards. This won’t solve anything.’
Then the tall man repeated, ‘If you’re Catholic, please step forward. Let’s get this sorted, gentlemen.’
Patrick knew he was the only Catholic on the bus. He knew each of the other men, their families, the Protestant churches they worshipped in. He didn’t know the driver, but he guessed he was Protestant too.
‘I’m only going to ask one more time,’ the tall man said.
No one moved.
No way to know who the four men were. No clues that might help: a voice overheard at St Mark’s church, a limp, turn of phrase, familiar pair of boots. There was only one choice: to step forward or stand still. That’s what their lives had come down to—a flip of a coin. There was no point trying to reason, plead, explain or offer photos of children and wives.
Patrick knew he’d have to step forward, or they might all end up dead. He imagined how he might do it—one foot forward, then the other. Wondered if it’d be a quick shot to the head, or if they’d take him aside, into the irrigation ditch that ran beside the road. Which of the four would do it, and what they’d say. You Catholic dog. You and your IRA mates.
‘Where does our church say anything about this?’ one of the other builders said.
‘Shut up.’
‘We’re not political people. We build homes.’
‘I just drive them,’ the driver repeated.
Patrick thought of his wife. Juggled words of gratitude and thanksgiving. Nothing he’d ever say to her face. They’d been married too long for that. He wanted to turn to one of the other men and give him a message to give to her but that, he sensed, would be the last irony. Still, she’d know. Turn their lounge room into a sort of shrine. Take down photos of dead cousins and uncles and hang him beside their cross.
There was silence in the small patch of country. He heard a flock of birds in a tree somewhere but dared not turn to look. There was still a chance he’d survive, somehow.
He knew what he was about to pay for. A group of Protestant paramilitaries, perhaps this lot, had shot and killed an IRA leader in some town (as he tried to think of its name) to the west. The next day a bomb had exploded in the vestry of a Protestant church, killing seven, including three boys who were preparing to sing in the choir. Perhaps, he thought, these were some of their fathers. That might explain their awkwardness with their weapons. The images of the blast had appeared on the front page of every newspaper in the United Kingdom, and beyond, accompanied by headlines such as ‘IRA Atrocity’ and ‘Pity The Innocents’. Photos of prayer books, a woman’s shoes and a pram in the rubble.
So, there was nothing for it, he thought. He could see his son’s face, and the chrism rolling down his skin, and chin. ‘I mark thee with the signs of the cross,’ he whispered, and one of the four men looked at him and said, ‘What was that?’
He shrugged. Took a deep breath and decided, in a moment of clarity and grace, that it was time to step forward. Just then he felt a hand touching his. It was Aidan, and he knew he was saying, Keep still, keep quiet, we won’t turn you in.
For a moment he felt safe, and hesitated. Imagined the four giving up, getting in their car and driving off. But then thought, What if? What if they kill us all, not so much as to be sure, as to finish what they’d started.
So he stepped forward.
‘Thank you,’ the tall man said, moving towards him.
He wondered if he should try and fight him, but he allowed himself to be dragged back, by the collar, to the bit of grass behind the four.
Silence. He knelt, and dropped his head. ‘Send forth upon the sevenfold Spirit,’ he whispered, before the loud fugue of firearms filled the green Irish afternoon with death and smoke. He leaned forward and tightened himself into a ball. Heard the bus driver say ‘Christ’ as he fell against his bus. Heard a groan, and the apprentice managing the words, ‘It’s all wrong,’ before he slid to the ground.
The firing stopped. He dared not look up. The four gunmen didn’t speak. He heard a tractor on the hill behind them and airbrakes from a truck on a distant road.
Then the tall man said, ‘Next time, when you’re asked … And I reckon you might pick some better friends.’
He heard them walk off, disturbing spent cartridges on the road. Listened as they talked as they got in the car, slammed the doors and drove off.
He looked up. Saw Aidan sitting against the bus, blood on his shirt and a black hole in his throat. Bullet holes in the side of the bus, and legs and arms.
He stood and watched the car disappear into the distance. Turned away from his friends and saw a farmer in a distant paddock, sitting on the idling tractor, watching him.
The Adult World Opera
21 December
ALTHOUGH ONLY SIX, Jay Foster had built his own fort, stocked it with food and drink, books, a blanket and other necessities, and even made plans for its defence. Its walls were an iron fence, a diosma, a pile of bricks and a piece of plywood. It was dark in Jay’s fort, from an overhanging cherry plum that dropped small, bitter fruit on his head most of the summer. To him, the best thing about it was that his mum and her boyfriend didn’t know it existed. They’d appear at the front door of the house and call out, ‘Jay, y’ little fuck, where are yer?’ and he’d retreat into the darkest corner of his terra-rosa world.
Then Chris, his mum’s boyfriend, would come down the front steps and look under the old Datsun some relative had left on their front lawn years before. He’d flatten the grass that grew up around the car and say, ‘Wait till I get my hands on you.’ He’d look in the car through the non-existent windscreen, and perhaps shoo the cats that had lived and raised families on the vinyl seats. He’d look behind the piles of tyres that Sean Foster, Jay’s real dad, had stacked there before Jay was even born.
Then he’d come back up the front steps. He’d look behind the old fridge—full of mouse shit, and shells Jay had collected when Sean had taken him to the beach. He’d look under the cane lounge he’d taken from someone’s hard refuse. Then kick a cardboard box, half-full of empty bottles, and go inside.
Jay stood on the dolomite driveway, listening. He could hear three types of birds, but when he looked up into the big wattle that grew beside their gas box he could only see a single honeyeater. He stood watching it, and then smiled. Tried to replicate its call but had trouble whistling because of the scar from a split lip. ‘Hey,’ he called, as he clapped his hands.
Jay Foster had his dad’s wild hair, starting flat at the top and falling in long, loose curls. He had big brown eyes that reflected most of the light that came near them and a nose that only lifted from his face as it reached its tip. His mouth was such that by doing nothing he seemed to smile, his teeth receding towards dimples that Sean used to poke and promise (one day, when he was asleep) to fill with Polyfilla. Jay’s arms and legs hadn’t begun to stretch into boyhood proper and sometimes Melanie, his mum, would pinch his baby fat with its light and deep purple bruises and say, ‘Look how much you been eatin’.’
He could hear noises from inside the house—from his mum’s bedroom. Chris telling Mel to mind her business; a lamp falling onto the floorboards; silence. He’d been led to the back door by Chris, pushed outside and shooed like the fat tabby who was Lord of the Datsun.
He shifted the broken plywood and entered his fort. Sat with his face resting on his knees, and closed his eyes. ‘Godly,’ he started whispering to himself. ‘Godly.’ He picked a dictionary from a pile of books, opened to a bookmark and continued. ‘“Godmother: parent; Godown: storehouse; Godsend: good fortune.”’ Then he closed the dictionary, and his eyes, and repeated: ‘“Godmother: parent; Godown: storehouse; Godsend: good fort
une.”’
He was the only one in his class who read the dictionary. His teacher, Mrs Partridge, had told Mel he was a clever boy. She’d smiled with pride, but when the teacher had said, ‘We must start him reading harder books,’ she’d just replied, ‘What, you mean we should buy them?’
‘No, I have some I can give him.’
These now made up most of Jay’s pile: Journal of an African Safari; A Descriptive List of the Birds Native to Shearwater, Australia; explorers; spaceships; middle-primary readers and even a 1950s Boys’ Guide to Working Timber that Mr Partridge had been encouraged to surrender.
But Jay had read them all. He’d moved on to the dictionary—letter by letter, word by word, marvelling at the sound and shape of oxalic acid and lincrusta, ballerina and anachronisms like heretofore (which he’d try out on Mrs Partridge, as she grinned and turned to sort the lunch orders).
Jay retrieved a butter knife he kept hidden under some branches. He used it to dig the soil. A few minutes later he retrieved a small wooden box from the hole, sat it in the valley of his crossed legs and opened it. Inside were the things his dad had given him: a pocket knife (he opened it, ran his finger along the blade and pressed the sharp edge into his leg without cutting it), a leather key ring, more shells and a packet of chewing gum. He took three pellets, put them in his mouth and started chewing. Then he heard Chris calling, ‘Jay, come on, your mother wants you inside.’
He stopped chewing.
‘Don’t make me come look for you.’
He took the gum from his mouth and put it in the box. Reburied it, hid the knife and opened the door to his fort, letting the sun stream in.
It was hot inside. There was a small fan blowing warm air into every corner of the room, through Mel Foster’s hair and across Chris Collins’s shaved head. This was Mel’s job: to set Chris up in a chair in the backyard with a tea towel wrapped around his neck; to run an extension cord from the kitchen and connect it to the clippers; to shave his head. Then Chris (stretched back with a cigarette dangling from his hand) would say, ‘Go a bit easy,’ and she’d reply, ‘You do it then.’
Mother and boyfriend were sitting on a couch in the lounge room. They were watching a man demonstrate a duster that rotated for more efficient cleaning. Chris said, ‘Forty bucks, for that piece of shit?’ He kept watching, regardless.
Jay came in and said, ‘Can I have breakfast?’ Neither of them replied.
Chris was sitting in his singlet and footy shorts. He had a flat chest he worked on every morning and afternoon. This was the focus of their backyard—an outdoor gym consisting of bench press, weights, an old exercise bike and a rubber mat where he did his sit-ups.
This was another reason Mel loved Chris. As she sat on the couch reading her magazines, all she had to do was reach over and run her hand across his chest, or feel the solid muscles on his arms. He’d never protest, no matter how often she did it. In fact, most of the time it ended with Jay being led to the back door and locked outside.
Jay stared at Chris, sitting slouched, drinking from a bottle of iced coffee. Chris looked at him and said, ‘What?’
‘Can I have breakfast?’
‘You know where the kitchen is.’
Jay walked past the dirty clothes that had spilled out across the hallway. He attempted to push them into a pile. Even at his age he sensed there must be some sort of order, some alphabetical sorting of things that made up the world. There was dirt, body odour and blood on the clothes and he wished they were clean, folded, sitting neatly in one of his drawers.
He passed into the kitchen to find more of the same: a pile of dirty dishes in the sink, empty beer bottles, butter left open and melted on the table. He found some two-minute noodles in the cupboard, removed the plastic wrapper, pulled back the lid, emptied the flavour sachet, then used a chair to get up to the bench, and put the kettle on to boil. As he waited he looked out of the kitchen window. His mother had hung some clothes on the back line but she hadn’t bothered pegging them. A towel and T-shirt had fallen to the ground and mixed in the dust of their dead lawn. He made a mental note to pick them up and bring them back in.
The kettle boiled and clicked off. He lifted it, but it was over-full and he had to use both hands. As he started pouring the water into the foam cup his foot slipped off the chair and he fell. A few moments later he was on the ground and the kettle was on top of him, emptying water onto his left hand and forearm.
He screamed.
‘Fuck,’ came the reply from the lounge room.
He could feel the pain on his skin and see how it was turning red. He sat up, still screaming, and as he did Chris entered the room. Without saying a word, he grabbed him under the arms, rushed him into the bathroom and turned on the shower. He took the boy’s arm and thrust it under the cold water.
Jay’s voice modulated between groans, whispers and more screaming. He tried to reclaim his arm but Chris held it under the water.
‘What the fuck were you thinking?’
‘I slipped off the chair.’
‘On a chair, with boiling water? Are you stupid?’
‘I wanted breakfast.’
‘I wanted breakfast.’
Mel was standing behind them with her arms crossed.
‘You okay, pup?’ she asked.
‘If you’d just got his breakfast,’ Chris growled at her.
‘He’s okay.’
‘Obviously fucking not.’ Indicating the welts that were rising on Jay’s arm.
‘Don’t blame me,’ she said. ‘You coulda got off your arse.’
Chris filled with rage. He stood, lifted his fist and drew his arm back before stopping. ‘It’s your fucking kid,’ he said. ‘You can fix this mess yourself. And while you’re at it, clean the fuckin’ place. It’s a disgrace.’ He stormed from the room, down the hallway and out the front door.
She looked at her son, who was grimacing. ‘Look what you’ve done now.’
It was just after seven that evening and Jay was standing at the window in his room, staring out at his neighbour’s Christmas lights. There was a cardboard Santa in his sleigh on the front lawn, and four reindeer with broken legs repaired with gaffer tape. Every year there were less reindeer. It had become a local pastime to steal them, tear them up and frisbee the parts over the fence into the Big W Garden Centre or the high school with its razorwire-topped six-foot fence.
Jay had been locked in his hot room for almost three hours while his mum and Chris were out. He was red-faced, covered in sweat. His curls had flattened in clumps against his scalp. He’d stripped, and stood at his window wearing nothing but underpants with broken elastic, and a bandage wrapped around the burn on his arm.
The burn was aching, pulsing with pain. He tried his door again, shook the handle, pushed and pulled it a few times. Then he returned to his window and looked out again.
The tap—the hose.
He worked at the two latches that held his fly screen in place. After a while it moved, loosened and dropped out. He squeezed under the window, through the opening and jumped down into what was left of a vegetable garden he’d planted with his dad. His feet crushed the husks of old peas and he could feel small carrots between his toes. He moved but tripped on an old tomato stake and fell hands down in grass full of cat shit.
Standing, he walked over to the tap, turned it on and started running cold water from the hose over his bandaged arm. He stood for ten, maybe fifteen minutes as the worst of the pain subsided. Feeling the sun on his shoulders and back, he covered the tip of his hose with his finger and sprayed his face and body with a fine mist that made a rainbow from one side of the yard to the other.
He turned off the tap, retreated to the shade of a plum tree and sat down. He leaned against the tree and the bark bit into his back. The little bit of pain was a distraction from his arm. Looking down the road, he wondered where his mum and Chris might have gone. If he could find them, and ask them, he thought, they might take him to a doctor, and the doctor m
ight put him in hospital, and then he’d have clean sheets and cold custard.
Maybe they’ve gone shopping, he thought.
He could see them walking down the biscuit aisle, arguing over cream versus plain, Chris slipping off to the bottle shop as his mum piled cups of noodles, fish fingers and party pies into the trolley.
Maybe it’s the tavern, he thought.
He was waiting in the car watching people come and go. They were all dressed up, their hair slicked back, the men’s faces shaved clean.
Yes, the tavern. He’d heard Chris say it, they were going to win money, and Chris was going to buy himself some boots.
He stood, ran to the fence and jumped over. Headed down the street—towards the shops, the tavern. The footpath was hot on his feet so he walked on the nature strip, the gutter, the road. Stopping at an intersection, he looked both ways. Then he chose left. He could remember turning left more often than right. It led to the tavern. It must lead to the tavern. It should. Perhaps.
He stepped onto the road. A tall boy in baggy white clothes, with his baseball cap on the wrong way, smiled at him strangely and said, ‘Hey, little man, you got some clothes?’
Jay looked at him.
‘Some shoes?’ the teenager asked.
Jay kept walking across the hot intersection. A car slowed and sounded its horn. It stopped and an old man opened his door, stepped out and said to the boy in white clothes, ‘Your brother just about killed himself.’
‘He’s not my brother.’
‘Where are you from?’ the man called to Jay.
Jay looked confused. ‘Mum and Chris are at the tavern.’
It was after eight when the old man returned Jay to his house. As he pulled into the driveway, Mel and Chris were sitting on the cane lounge on the front porch, eating chips and drinking Coke. The old man stopped the car, looked at Jay and asked, ‘Is that them?’
Jay smiled and nodded.
The old man had taken him home to his semi-detached, with meticulously clipped lawns and old black and white photos of his dead wife. Jay had listened as he’d rummaged in a back room, eventually appearing, smiling, holding a school uniform hanging from a fabric-covered hanger. ‘Here it is,’ he’d said. ‘I reckon it’ll just about fit you.’
