by Stephen Orr
Chris came in with the books from his fort. He dropped them onto the ground and said, ‘If it rains, they’ll get wet, and we won’t buy you new ones.’
Jay was groaning, fighting for breath. His body was shaking, again, and he was hot.
‘What now?’ Chris asked.
‘When will Mum be back?’
‘When will Mum be back? You put on yer little fuckin’ act, mate. It might work on her.’ He took out his phone, pressed a few buttons and started filming the boy. ‘Go,’ he said, smiling, ‘we’ll show her when she gets home, eh?’
‘Mum …’
‘You weak little fucker.’
And then the boy was quiet, still. Chris turned off his phone and put it in his pocket.
Then he went out for a smoke.
The lounge room was hot, and the light warmed dust in the air. The television showed a couple of flowers with human faces, singing about water and sunshine and the taste of fresh fertiliser and how one day they might end up in someone’s vase.
The Syphilis Museum
Reeves. Four blocks, Civic Park, monkey bars and a self-flushing toilet. Immaculately conceived. In need of Resurrection. A sign on the way into town says Population 1245, but no one believes that. The Davids had a saw-mill, but that closed. A thousand, perhaps, although god knows where they work. There’s a chicken shop, and a pub, and Boston’s Motor Repairs, although they put off Rose Shaw’s boy. Eight hundred at a stretch. Sign looks good. Makes you think someone’d want to live here. Maybe five hundred. But judging from all the ‘FOR SALE’ signs …
Which leads me to Bill Redman. Bill did a lot for Reeves. As people moved on he bought their shops, put them to good use. It started in 1983 when the Dukes closed their record parlour. Before that it had been a haberdasher, but when Bill bought it he cleaned it out and set up his own little museum. Guessed it might attract a few tourists. Museum of Pestilence. No one really understood. It was the year after a bad locust plague, and Bill had worked it out. The First Horseman was on his way. Insects as a sign of God. He’d studied his Bible, Revelations, Daniel, and worked it out. There was no point worrying about people leaving, or grain prices. After 21 March 2012 it’d all be over.
Bill lined the walls with photos of locust plagues. Display cabinets with larvae, pupae, adults, a giant papier-mâché mock up, bones, real bones, of people who’d died in locust-induced famines. Can’t remember which Horseman. Wasn’t the pale one—maybe he was blue. He’d spend his days in his museum. Taking the one dollar entry. Showing people around. Starting with Chortoicetes terminifera in copulation, explaining the differences between the American and Rocky Mountain varieties, Desert, Red, Jesus, God, an eternity of damnation. That was all up on the wall, too. Pictures of Messianic A-bomb detonations, cleaning out the sinners.
People’d stick their head in the door. ‘How are yer, Bill?’
‘Good. Comin’ in for a look-see?’
‘Maybe later. Got a boot full of pullets.’
The word got around. The old boy’s lost it. Too much Bible. You could only feel sorry for him. He put up a sign on the way into town: a March 21 Jesus standing in a field of locusts. The mayor at the time, Sid Lehman, told him to take it down, but he refused. Said it was the only tourist attraction Reeves had left. Which was sort of right.
Bill was what you’d call catholic, and Catholic. His little house, tacked on to his only remaining museum, was full of holy cards and framed verses and Matthew and Luke. Pictures of a Charlton Hesty Jesus. A big Bible, with everything underlined. Little bottles of holy water to boil his eggs. Ryvitas, which he cut into hosts using a scone-cutter. Altar wine; two bob a gallon. Lived alone, although he had the visiting priest, Ken MacLeod, over once a fortnight after their session at Saint Jabber-Jaw. Just them, and a few shakers they wheeled across the road from the at-capacity nursing home (oh, I forgot, there’s a few more jobs).
Back to the museums. 1989. Middle of a particularly bad drought. Mrs Maxwell died, so the Public Trustee sold her wool shop, and Bill bought that too. Museum of Famine. Horseman number two. Don’t ask, I couldn’t tell you. Maybe red. Bill was up and running again. Photos of the Okies, and Dustbowls, and barren paddocks around Reeves, and more Jesus, God, A-bombs with Jehovah saying, ‘For thou art my child, and walk with me, blah, blah’. Pestilence was open Monday to Wednesday, Famine Thursday and Friday (Saturday to wash his Kingswood and put on a few bets, Sunday for a couple of hymns, a strong cuppa and Midsomer Murders).
People grew concerned. Bill wandered town at night, writing in chalk on the footpath: ‘21.iii.2012’. With a copperplate flourish, like that Stace fella. He’d go into the front bar of the Commercial and hand out Famine and Pestilence leaflets and say, ‘Oi, Sid, haven’t had a visit yet’. And Sid (or whoever he was pestering) would say, ‘Come on, Bill, give it up, mate. Bowls Club is looking for new members’. Worse, he’d set up a chair and bang a tambourine whenever someone stopped on the way through to somewhere else (we get a lot of that). Excuse me, missus, thought you might be interested in visiting my museums.
Then Bush went into Iraq, and Bill had it all figured. War. Number three. Purple, perhaps. About then the Black and White café closed, and Bill was in like Flynn. Pulled out the cookers, all the furniture, painted the place white and put up another sign. Museum of War.
Monday-Tuesday Pestilence. Wednesday Famine, Thursday-Friday War. And so it was, for another twelve years. As Bill aged, and shrank, and scampered from one shop to another. All well and good, until ABC 736 Country heard about it and sent a fella with a digital recorder, and it was all over the place. City radio. Breakfast television. And a decent spike in numbers, according to Kurt Westermann at the Hacienda. Of course, me and a lot of other people reckoned it was for the wrong reasons. The nation’s not laughing with us … Within a year it all died down, and people forgot. Bill was happy. He’d done what JC had asked. ‘Spread the message, Willy Redman, and I will prepare a seat by my side.’
Speaking of which. About this time Bill had some hip problems. Had an operation, but it didn’t take. Could barely hobble down the street, and we were thinking, Hi-ho, here we go, he can’t keep it up. But then he appears in a wheelchair. Says, ‘Just as well, I guess, the gout was makin’ it hard to stand all day in Pestilence-Famine-War. Look at this. Press the button. Forward. Press it again. Backwards. Fellas, I reckon I can go another twenty years. Maybe, maybe …’ (and you could see the glimmer in his eyes) ‘… maybe I’ll make it to 2012. What do you reckon? We can all go together.’ Although he gave us this look like he didn’t think we’d be going anywhere.
Which leads me to why you’re reading this story, I suppose. 2003. Conrad’s Shoe Shoppe closes and Bill’s there again. Goes into the estate agent and says, ‘Listen, you got ten empty shops in the main street. No one’s buying nothing. I’ll give you two thousand dollars.’ Of course, Haddy Gabman argued a bit, but that was two grand he hadn’t been expecting. So, a few weeks later we had the Museum of Syphilis, or the Syphilis Museum, as it became known.
Now, Famine-Pestilence-Plague is one thing, but clap’s another. We got together and went to the front door, and I said to Bill, ‘Why can’t you just call it plague?’
He said, ‘This is the modern plague.’ Then some stuff about fornicators, and whores, then, ‘This is my greatest achievement. People can bring their kids and show them the price of transgression. What better way to prepare Reeves for the End of Days?’
There wasn’t much we could do except insist (and he was accommodating) he black out the front windows so the kids couldn’t see anything. Still, they’d look in the door, and see the posters on the wall: bacteria blown up ten thousand times, scurrying in and out of tracts, a model donger the size of a Sherrin football. Completely infected. Secondary syphilis.
Of course, no one went. Not the sort of place you’d take your girlfriend. Bill would just sit there for hours at a time. No one knew what he was doing. Vacuuming the rugs? Cleaning the cabinets? Keeping the tea urn
topped up (losses entirely due to evaporation).
Then, one day, the strangest thing. These fellas came in a truck and emptied Famine-Pestilence-Plague. Took it all away. Till there were three empty shells, and three signs: ‘21.iii.2012’. Bill told me he was getting too old for the Four Horsemen, so the One would have to do. And what did it matter? He could still preach his gospel in Syphilis. Yep, he’d miss his locusts, and American Army hand grenades, and the smell that droughty soil gave off, but his spiral pallidums would have to suffice.
And so, to the events of last November. Bill had been cutting back. Opening later, closing earlier. You’d go in (I did) and he’d smell uriney, his clothes never washed or ironed. Permanent five o’clock shadow. His chair was seizing up, so a few of us greased it and welded a few spokes. But more than this, he rambled, never quite made sense. It’d be, ‘Well, the Commandments were quite clear, thou shalt not … Oh, my sister used to leave the gates open, and the ewes’d get out … And the third one said yer shouldn’t covet yer neighbour’s wife …’
So we organised Meals on Wheels, and someone checked him every day. Mrs Horowitz did his hoovering once a week, and a few of the old girls washed his clothes and hung them out across Redman’s Farm. That’s what he called it. Redman’s Farm. Wasn’t much of a yard, but enough for a few rows of veggies (which, despite his condition, he kept perfect), Rhode Islands, a goat and six pigs. Landraces. Fat bastards. Stunk like hell, and Trevor Lehman, Sid’s son, who’d inherited the mayorship, told him he couldn’t have pigs in town, but Bill pretended not to hear him. Man needed a few pigs. Cut up a pig, you could feed a family for three weeks, and maybe, if the End was drawn out (say some sort of heatwave that went on for months), you’d need some meat. So, that was it. Pigs.
He’d be up at the crack of dawn, feeding his animals, watering his cabbages. Then in for a shower in his wheelchair-friendly bathroom (courtesy of Rotary). Put on his jacket and tie and polish his shoes and open the front door of Syphilis. Look, wondering who was there. Which was no one. Ever.
That was his life. Infected lymph nodes and lesions in jars of preservative. And a texta sign: ‘Bacteria grow in their billions, and this is the result. “For thus said the Lord, Thy bruise is incurable and thy wound is grievous”.’ Mrs Horowitz covered his cabinets with towels so she didn’t have to look. Plaster-cast torsos with warts and maggoty old noses dripping mucous. And she’d say, ‘What you got all this for, Bill?’ And he’d tell her about the Naaman, and their seed, and the clinging clap, and she’d just turn up his Tom Edmonds and the old cross.
Then, the strangeness began. It was a warm night. We’d asked Bill if he wanted an air conditioner, but of course he’d said no. If God wanted to test us, to make us toss and turn and sweat all night, then you couldn’t challenge His will with a two-horsepower Kelvinator. He’d just locked Syphilis, turned off the light, wheeled himself into his room, hoisted himself onto his bed, changed into his pyjamas, read a few pages of Paul and switched off his light.
Midnight, one am, two. Poor Bill and his insomnia. Comes from a man thinking too much. Analysing a world full of things that happen just because they happen.
Anyway, Bill’s drifting off. Maybe three, maybe bit after. Then he hears his pigs. Squealing. The lot of them. On and on it goes. And he thinks it’s the cats from next door, because this happens a bit. But the noise keeps on, then, suddenly, silence. That isn’t right, he thinks. So up he gets, into his chair, down the hall, through Syphilis, out the back door, pops on his torch. ‘Who’s there?’
Quiet. Just a bit of grunting, and the goat coming over to see if there’s any food. Down the ramp, the path, to the pig shed. Two. Dead. Lying together like Hitler and Eva. Shines his torch. ‘Who’s there?’ Nothing. Just the sound of the generator from the IGA. So he gets closer and manages to stand and have a look but there’s no sign of any interference. No puncture marks, indentations, cuts, nothing. Sits down, goes in, calls this new copper by the name of Bullock but he says, ‘Mr Redman, it’s very late, I’m not coming for no pigs.’
‘They don’t die in pairs, son.’
‘I’ll pop round in the morning.’
‘If there’s a prowler, he might come back for the others.’
‘Who’d wanna hurt your pigs?’
‘Couldn’t say.’
So he went back to bed, but just rested, thinking. Who? He hadn’t made any enemies. Unless … unless Satan had murdered his pigs? That was a possibility, although, he believed, angels rarely manifested themselves in such obvious ways. Droughts, perhaps, and meningovascular syphilis, but not a couple of pigs. Bita hot weather, perhaps, car crash, someone’s aunt with the cancer, but swine?
Despite all this, he managed to get some sleep.
The next morning the constable came, and they had a good look-see at the pigs, but they seemed perfectly okay (apart from being dead). The copper suggested changing their feed, but Bill told him it wasn’t that.
So, he went in, got changed, and opened Syphilis an hour late. Just in case it was the Devil. He’d show him. The light forever shineth. Sixty watts. Crusted with dead moths.
That day Bill had a couple of visitors. It’d been quiet. He’d been inflating wine bladders, so he could hang them over his nectarines, stop the parrots. He was blowing when he heard a knock. Wheeled himself over to the door and welcomed a blind lady, with a stick, sixty, not much older, tapping and smiling and saying, ‘Mr Redman, is it? I’ve heard all about you.’
‘All good?’ he asked.
‘Yes. And your museum. You’re famous.’
‘Well, it ain’t all about me. Not even this bug, scientifically called Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. No. It’s about something else. Someone else.’
But she didn’t seem interested. Just moved into the middle of the room and stood waiting for her tour. ‘You’ll have to help me, Mr Redman. Perhaps a bita description?’
‘I understand Mrs …?’
She took a moment. ‘Bly. Flora Bly.’ And offered her hand.
He shook it.
‘And this, Mr Redman, is my granddaughter, Annie.’
Bill looked around. No one. Some sort of phantom memory? Gone, like her ability to focus on objects, consider sunsets, admire Russell Drysdale’s drought pictures.
‘Annie?’ she said.
He wondered. Annie? Felt grateful. Yes, the bladder was leaking (he’d torn up a towel, and used the strips in his jockeys), the mind wandering, but he could still tell real from imagined.
Then the girl appeared at the door.
‘Nan?’
‘I told you to come in.’
She came in, looked around, screwed up her face and turned to Bill. ‘They reckon you’re a disgrace.’
‘Annie!’ Flora Bly thundered. ‘Don’t be so rude.’
Bill just smiled. ‘Don’t matter, Mrs Bly, I’m used to it. Whole places thinks I’m nuts, but they reckon it’s better to humour me. They figure I can’t keep going more than another five, six years.’
The girl and her nanna waited.
‘But they might be surprised.’
‘How’s that?’ Flora asked.
‘I’m on a mission, Mrs Bly. And I’m not alone.’
‘No?’
‘Twenty-first of March, 2012.’
‘Flora. Call me Flora. And this is Annie. Annie?’
Annie stepped forward, offered her hand, and Bill wheeled himself closer, and managed a wet, weak shake.
They started with a cup of tea and two stale biscuits. Bill had made a sort of lounge area, cluttered with literature, a pile of old Watchtowers, some Gideons the Gideons had left, giveaway holy cards and a bowl full of crosses he’d carved from a fence post, each with the date of the big day burnt onto the beam. Bill was curious. Always. Why someone had come to Syphilis.
‘What brings you to Reeves, Flora?’
‘You, Mr Redman.’
‘No?’
‘I read about your museum.’ She looked around, although she did
n’t. ‘I always say, Mr Redman, best way to learn …’
He waited.
‘Is to see the outcome? Don’t you agree?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Quick tour and Annie’ll be set for life. Won’t you?’
Annie didn’t answer. She was too busy studying a model. She looked at Bill. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Spirochetes.’
‘Sorry?’
‘That’s what the bacteria are called. They grow and grow, and that’s what you’ve got.’
Annie shrugged, and ate her biscuit. She asked her nan, ‘What’s for lunch?’
‘We’ll worry about that later, when we’re done.’
Bill was wondering if it was suitable for a child, but then thought, So what, God’s coming to gather everyone.
‘You mentioned a date?’ Flora said.
‘Yes, March twenty-one. Still a few years off, but I believe we have to be ready, Flora.’ At which point he explained the Four Horsemen, his three defunct museums, syphilis as plague, but it might just as well be AIDS, HIV and such abominations.
‘AIDS?’ Flora said.
‘That’s God trying to tell us something.’
‘What’s that?’
‘We’re not listening. He’s trying to get our attention.’ He turned to Annie. ‘Do you understand?’
‘What?’
‘Pardon?’ Flora said.
‘Pardon?’
‘The End Days are here.’
Annie took another biscuit. You could do that with a blind nan. ‘I dunno about that,’ she said.
Bill indicated the displays. ‘The proof’s all around, isn’t it?’
Annie noticed the specimen jars. ‘Sorta like that movie?’ she asked. ‘You know, where there’s a meteor headed for earth.’
‘Exactly,’ Bill said. ‘But in this case, it’s survivable.’
Annie just looked at him. Silly old prick.
Flora was biting her tongue. AIDS. Didn’t some kid get it from a dodgy transfusion? How was he or she responsible for the sins of mankind? Still, if a quick visit could save Annie from a life of hepatitis.
