by Gee, Maurice
‘Are you Miss Betts, ma’am?’
Miss Betts threw a look of amazement at me, then wiped it off as though with a flannel. She put her strap on the table.
‘Am I in the right room?’ His voice, at least, was American.
‘I imagine so,’ Miss Betts replied. ‘Is this your American soldier, Pascoe?’
‘Yes,’ I mumbled.
‘Well, introduce him.’
‘He’s Private Coop.’
‘Private Coop. From where?’
Dawn slipped into her seat. I was having trouble with my throat. Jack answered for me.
‘Chicago, ma’am.’
Miss Betts nodded. ‘Well, do come in, Private Coop; don’t just stand there.’ Jack advanced across the front of the room towards her table and stopped by the stove. He was working the cap in his hands and I saw his Adam’s apple bounce, a movement I’d never noticed in anyone else and thought must be Negro.
‘Books away,’ Miss Betts said. ‘Up straight, fingers folded.’ We obeyed. ‘Say good afternoon to Private Coop.’
‘Good afternoon, Private Coop.’ We sounded like a primer class.
‘Hi,’ Jack said; and Miss Betts jerked her head at the slang. Then she smiled – inviting us into complicity.
‘Private Coop, from Chicago, is going to tell us about America.’
That alarmed Jack. ‘I’d just as soon answer questions, ma’am. I don’t do much’ – he searched for a word and chose her own – ‘tellin’.’
She smiled again, and seemed to say, ‘Listen to how he drops his g’s.’
‘Questions, then. Does anyone have a question for Private Coop?’
Jack stood twisting his cap. I sank deep into my seat, but there was no escaping Miss Betts.
‘Pascoe. Sit up. Private Coop is your guest, so you start.’
I had no question. I saw Jack’s eye on me. He was asking me for help, but I had no thought for anyone but myself. All I could do was sink again, hide in my seat.
Jim Whittle shot his hand in the air. ‘Were you ever a slave?’ One or two children laughed nervously.
Miss Betts smiled. ‘The slaves were freed almost a hundred years ago. Sensible questions.’
‘Chicago’s where they have gangsters,’ someone said.
‘And G-men.’
‘Do you know Al Capone?’ Whittle asked.
Jack could answer that. ‘Bad man. I never met him.’
Miss Betts took control. ‘What sort of people live in Chicago?’
‘Ma’am, there’s all sorts. There’s Irish and Italians and Polacks and Swedes and Germans.’
‘Dalmatians?’ Leo said.
‘I never met none of those.’
‘Squareheads,’ Whittle said, and got his laugh.
Jack gave an uncertain grin, a little frown. ‘There’s a whole lot of black people like me.’
‘What do they do? What do they work at?’ Miss Betts asked.
He shook his head. ‘Lotsa things. They work on the railroads and in the stockyards. In the meat works, you know, the cannery. Lotsa things.’
‘Perhaps Private Coop can show us Chicago on the map.’
She reached behind her, pulled a cord, unrolled the world like a blind. Jack started at the rushing sound of it, or perhaps at the flashing of multi-colours – in which the red of Empire stood out bold.
‘If you’d care to.’ She offered him her pointer from the table.
‘Yes, ma’am.’ He wet his lips. ‘I don’t get to see many maps.’
‘Here is the United States,’ Miss Betts said, tapping with her finger. We could see she was enjoying herself.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Jack said. ‘Chicago…’ He could not get his bearings, either in our class or in the world.
‘Is here,’ Miss Betts sweet-smiled. She took the pointer from him. ‘On the Great Lakes. Lake Michigan, to be precise. I always liken the Great Lakes to a hand, or a bunch of bananas, you see the shape, children? Private Coop lives on a very great lake, almost as big as the North Island of New Zealand.’ And he can’t find it on the map, her smile said.
Leo spoiled her fun. Leo had been brooding. Looking round earlier, I had seen him licking his palm.
‘Private Coop?’ His voice shocked us out of the trance of delight and cruelty she had put us in. ‘Do Negroes still get flogged with whips?’
It did not help Jack. But it angered Miss Betts. She could not believe that Leo, after the strap, would interrupt. ‘You, boy! I’ve had enough of you.’ She rushed up the aisle and grabbed his ear in her fingernails. She pulled him upright, marched him to the front. With a palm in his back, she rammed him in a corner. ‘You wait there. I’ll deal with you later.’ Then she looked at Jack. She would have liked to do the same to him. Instead, she turned to me.
‘Pascoe. You invited Private Coop. Ask a question, boy. Toot sweet.’
I said the first thing that came into my head. ‘How old are you?’
‘I’m twenty-two,’ Jack said.
‘Another.’ Miss Betts.
‘Did you volunteer?’
‘No. I get called up.’
‘Keep going.’
‘Do you like the war?’
‘Nobody likes it. Nobody likes the chance of gettin’ killed.’
A shameful answer. Miss Betts gave a nasty smile. ‘Someone else.’
Nancy Barnhill put up her hand. ‘Have you ever been to Hollywood?’
‘I’ve never been there.’
‘Hollywood is here, in California.’ Miss Betts tapped the map. ‘Nancy?’
‘It’s where the film stars live. Alan Ladd and that. They have swimming pools – and leopards tied up on chains. Instead of dogs.’
‘Aw, aw.’ Sounds of disbelief.
‘They do,’ Nancy cried, and looked at Miss Betts for help.
‘Private Coop?’ she smiled.
‘I never heard nothing about no leopards.’
‘Nothing? No leopards?’
‘I can’t go to that sort of place.’
‘Why not?’
‘Ma’am…” Jack said, and tapped his forefinger on the back of his hand, very plain.
‘Nonsense,’ Miss Betts said. ‘The darkies of America are equal. They’re treated very well since Abraham Lincoln.’
Jack had been very patient. He’d been careful. He was in a strange place, feeling his way, trying to find the customs and the rules – but he’d had enough. He was sharp himself, as sharp as Miss Betts, and just as clever, though nothing we’d seen so far had suggested it. Now we saw.
Just for a moment he stood still. Then his face split open. Jack gave a watermelon grin. ‘Ye-es ma’am.’ Oh that ‘yes’, I hear it still, mellow, rich, submissive, marvellously false. ‘We’s happy folks, us darkies.’ He let his body fall with a rag-doll flop and the joints all wonky and let his head roll. He shuffled his feet and started to dance. He turned himself into a golliwog. Jack could tap-dance a little. He could tap out a simple rhythm. He went around Miss Betts in that way, floppy arms and legs but fast feet, and that sugar smile on his face. She could not move fast enough but was half a body-turn behind. She could not catch up and bring him in control. No one had ever got the better of Miss Betts, but Jack had her beaten. The fury and bewilderment of her! She could not find a way to stop him.
We stood up to see his feet. We crowded into the aisles. Boys at the back stood on desks. I stood on a desk. And at the end the door opened and Mr Dent came in and smiled delightedly at what he took to be a concert.
Jack went down on one knee and threw his arms wide. Wasn’t there a singer once, was Jolson his name, who specialised in that sort of thing? Jack did Jolson’s act. He sang: ‘I’d walk a million miles, For one of your smiles, Ma-a-amee.’ And held the pose.
Mr Dent clapped. So we all clapped, wildly. We cheered, standing on our desks. Jack stood up and dusted his knee, and gave a smile, shy, not sure again. After that Mr Dent led him away to meet his class, and Jack had a good time with those younger kids, h
e told us later. Miss Betts gave a lecture, getting her own back, on how some races, Negroes, yellow people, Russian peasants, were not exactly inferior – we all, in the end, were equal before God, as the Christian Church said – but not so far advanced in developing. Brains not formed, if she might put it so, like fruit that wasn’t ripe yet, crisp and ripe, but hard and green and – how should she put it? – not full of sweetness and nourishment. One day they would – well, might – be equal to the civilised races of the world. But not yet, by a long way, poor things, and we must help them and be charitable.
It did not work. She lost. Miss Betts had lost. Jack had danced around her. That answered all Miss Betts’s arguments. Leo sat and grinned (she forgot to strap him again), and Dawn just looked away out the window; and I – well, none of her explanations worked on me. But still I wasn’t ready for Jack. I was pleased he’d made a fool of Miss Betts, that was good. But Jack was not the one I had expected. And Jack was frightened of the war.
I wasn’t letting him have a place.
Chapter 6
Amphibian
After school he handed out gum in the playground. There wasn’t enough to go round, but he kept Whittle and his mates at bay and made sure the primers got a share. I stood with one leg over my bike and watched Jack become everyone’s hero. When that was done he snatched a basketball from a girl and spun it like a top on his finger. He flicked a pass at Dawn walking by. She caught it, only just, it was so sudden, and threw it back and walked on, pulling her schoolbag over her shoulders. Jack started dribbling the ball in and out among the boys and bouncing it between his legs and behind his back. We’d never seen basketball played the American way and didn’t know what he was doing, but saw his skill and went ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’, and cheered again when he went up and popped the ball through the hoop. At least, the others cheered. I did not.
I wheeled my bike up to him and said, ‘We’ve got to go.’ I did not know whether he would follow me or not but when I got out the gate and looked round there he was twenty feet behind, strolling along with Leo at his side.
‘Croatians, yeah, we got them all right. Lotsa Croatian slaughtermen.’
‘I’m a Croatian,’ Leo said, ‘but they call us Dallies.’
I fell back and told Leo we were going to visit my grandma, meaning that he needn’t hang around. I hadn’t forgotten yesterday. But he grinned and said he’d walk with us. Grandma’s place was on the road to the vineyard. We went into town first and looked in at the shop. Dad was sitting in the barber’s chair marking horses in his racebook with a pencil.
‘We’re going to Grandma’s, Dad.’
‘Okey doke.’ He grinned at Jack. ‘I hope you like turnips.’ To Leo he said, ‘You tell your old man?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tomorrow morning, eh?’ And he explained to Jack, ‘Deliveries. If the law allows.’ He jerked his head up the road. Looking out the door, we saw Davies washing his car outside the police station. ‘Keeping an eye on me,’ Dad said. ‘Poor old Bob.’
We turned back through town and passed the domain. Leo had his cricket bat on his shoulder – a home-made one with the blade and handle carved out of one piece of willow. ‘That’s the funniest lookin’ baseball bat I ever see,’ Jack said.
‘It’s a cricket bat. For cricket.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You have to knock the wickets down. You hit fours and sixes,’ Leo said.
‘What’s wickets?’
‘Those over there.’ Leo pointed at the cricket pitch. Someone had left some tea-tree wickets in place. ‘Do you want a hit?’
‘We’re going to Grandma’s place, we haven’t got time,’ I said.
Jack saluted me. ‘Yessir, sergeant. Permission to play ker-ricket, sir?’
I felt my face turn red. But I parked my bike and followed them on to the pitch and watched as Leo showed Jack how to hold the bat. Then he went away to bowl, and Jack at once shaped up as though for baseball. He swung cross-batted and the ball rattled the stumps.
‘How’d you do that?’
‘A yorker. It went under your bat.’
‘This time I hit you out the park.’
Leo bowled, Jack swung, and missed again.
It was too much for me. ‘You’ve got to keep a straight bat. You’ve got to keep your elbow up.’ I grabbed the bat and showed him.
‘That looks painful.’
‘He’s going to bowl you every time.’
‘Okay. Lemme try.’ He looked as if his arms were dislocated. Leo bowled again and Jack made a stroke.
‘You had it crooked.’
‘I break my arms that way. Throw me a pitch,’ he said to Leo. ‘Baseball, eh?’
Leo wasn’t sure what was meant but he lobbed the ball underarm at Jack, who stepped away from it and swung the bat and smacked the ball hard and high. In cricket it would have been a six. It bounced over the running track and sped down a path, passing Dawn Stewart walking home with her schoolbag on her back and a kitbag of groceries in her hand. She looked at it, looked back at us, walked on.
‘Chuck it here,’ I yelled.
She took no notice.
‘Come on, Stewart.’
‘I don’t think that little girl likes you,’ Jack said.
It’s time I told you more about Dawn. She keeps on coming in, and comes in all the time from now on.
She lived on the farm with her grandmother, that tough grey stringy lady who delivered milk to Kettle Creek. Mrs Stewart was a widow. Her husband went away to World War One and came home gassed and died soon after. Mrs Stewart ran the farm with the help of her daughter Rose. But Rose was a schoolgirl and Mrs Stewart did most of the work.
It wasn’t the work that broke her, my grandmother said. The work was hard and it melted her down from a plump happy lady to the sinewy person I knew, that man/woman creature in the gumboots and tartan shirt. But no, it wasn’t work, it was Rose that broke her. Mrs Stewart hired a young man to do some fencing. It was just before the Depression. Things weren’t going too badly then.
‘They fell in love,’ Grandma said, ‘Rose and Jimmy. And oh, it was wonderful to see – real love. You’ve never seen so much kissing and cuddling. It was all so innocent and natural. How could anyone have disapproved? But the way Joan Stewart carried on you’d have thought poor Jimmy came from Mars and had two heads and purple scales instead of skin.’ Jimmy was a Maori.
‘Well, they ran away,’ Grandma said, ‘and I don’t blame them. They took off for town and Joan was all alone on her farm. It was her fault, losing Rose, but you couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.’
Then Jimmy died. ‘TB I think,’ Grandma said. Rose came home with a baby. That was Dawn. Mrs Stewart let them stay, but she made life so hard for Rose that Rose left again; and left her baby on the farm with her mother, and hardly ever came back again. She lived in town, sent money, sent gifts, and Mrs Stewart took the place of mother and brought Dawn up. Most people in Kettle Creek thought she’d been treated badly and was doing a good job with the girl.
Dawn helped on the farm, as Rose had done. She helped deliver the milk. But the farm went back and back, the fence posts rotted, the paddocks grew thistle, the cowshed rusted red and leaned to one side. In the creek the launch Rose fell into decay. But Dawn was well looked after, cleanly clothed, her lunches at school were no worse than anyone else’s. At home she didn’t get hidings. But she grew solitary like her grandmother. When I think of Dawn in those days before Jack, I see her sitting in her desk, keeping to herself; or walking alone in the playground, threading through the other girls with a neat turn of her hip, never touching; or in the street after school with her kitbag of groceries drawing one shoulder down. And, of course, delivering the milk.
She had a photo of her mother in her drawer at home, hidden from her grandma under clothes. She had a tiny bottle of scent her mother had given her on her last visit, months ago. (Her grandmother went down the back of the farm on those visits.) She had letters in an old bi
scuit tin. They started ‘Darling Dawnie’, every one.
On the afternoon Jack played cricket and Dawn refused to throw back our ball – refused because of me not because of Jack – she found another letter Mrs Stewart had left for her on the kitchen table. She took it to her room and tore it open. A ten-shilling note fell out. She put it on her bed and sat beside it and read her letter. ‘Darling Dawnie,’ it said, ‘How’s my great big lovely girl…’ And it said, ‘I wish I could see you more often, but honey it looks as if I’ll have to go away to Wellington…’ She saw her grandmother watching from the door. Mrs Stewart held out her hand with the palm up. Dawn put down the letter. She picked up the ten-shilling note and went to the door and put it in her grandmother’s hand. She watched as Mrs Stewart went to the kitchen, lifted the stove ring, dropped the money in, and banged the ring back hard with her poker. ‘There!’ New bright flames showed through the cracks at the edge of the door.
Dawn went back to her room and finished the letter. She put it in the biscuit tin with the rest. Then she changed into her old clothes and climbed out the window and went down to the creek. She climbed through mangroves and came to the broken jetty and the launch.
In the deckhouse Dawn had made another home. She had a table made of planks and doorless cupboards made of butter boxes. She had a cushion and a patchwork rug. She had a mug and a plate and a knife and fork and spoon. A photo of her mother was tacked on the wall beside an old lifejacket hooked on a nail.
She sat on her cushion with her back to the wall. She took a sandwich saved from lunch from her pocket and ate it, sitting there, looking at her smiling pretty Mum; and said, she told my grandma, said out loud, ‘Take me with you, Mum. Why don’t you take me?’ Tears got in her sandwich later on, but it was only marmite so it didn’t matter much.
While Dawn was at the launch, Jack and I and Leo arrived at Grandma’s. It’s odd how I say ‘Grandma’s’ because I had a Grandpa too and he wasn’t someone you could overlook. But Grandma was the one you noticed first. Grandma was unforgettable.
