Hare's Fur

by Trevor Shearston

  She turned to the boy. ‘You’re here on your own, but, right. Em and me are goin with Russell.’

  When twenty minutes later they started along the path the boy trudged in their wake.

  He set a fire, gave the boy the matches. He’d cheered up by the time they closed the door on bright flames. Russell sponged clean a space on the benchtop and set out batts to build on and a selection of gravers and old bamboo turning tools, then carried in from the annexe the bucket of balled earthenware and dumped a ball on the bench. Jade had stood with folded arms observing the preparations. When he turned to her, arched his eyebrows, she said she didn’t want to make anything. If he didn’t mind she wanted to watch him work. He didn’t mind, he said. It was just that what he’d be doing might not be very interesting, he wasn’t throwing fresh pots, he was finishing some bottles. It didn’t matter, she said. He pointed to the stool, then to a spot by the wheel.

  He got the two started, tearing off a chunk of clay and quickly fashioning his party-piece, a smiling owl. They grinned and clapped, then went silent, calculating, he saw, how to emulate and surpass. They hadn’t ever built with clay, but had used playdough. A legacy of the creek perhaps, they weren’t finicky about getting their fingers sticky. They clawed from the ball the raw makings and announced what the lump was going to be, Todd’s a predictable dog, Emma’s a crocodile.

  He unwrapped the bottle chuck of hard unfired clay from its plastic and stood it on the wheel-head, then set the wheel turning and centred the chuck with gentle pressure from index fingers and thumbs. He stopped the wheel and made a rough coil of the lump he’d lifted from the scraps bin and, as he thumbed it around the base of the thick flared cylinder, began to talk her through what he was doing and why, speaking not at her but at the clay under his thumbs. A bottle couldn’t be stood on its neck, to turn the foot you needed to stand it upside down inside the chuck, its shoulders gripped by the chuck’s rim and another, thinner, coil he’d make in a minute. She’d snagged on ‘turn’, asked what it meant. He had the same thought as at the dyke, don’t speak down to her. ‘It’s cutting the excess clay from the base, bringing the curve you want right down to the foot. Then you cut a circle, or at least a depression, out of the centre so it’ll stand. A flat base is rarely dead flat, or it bulges in the firing, and you’ve got a pot that rocks.’ He looked at her, saw the information go in.

  He had forgotten the intensity children were capable of. The two worked in a trance of concentration broken only by a delighted giggle or the occasional grunt of annoyance. Each time he slid from the saddle to return a bottle to the racks, fetch the next, he paused to allow them to show him what they’d done, describe what they intended. Only once, after a series of increasingly cross sighs, did the boy come to the wheel and stand waiting. Russell dropped a shaving in the tray and let the wheel slow. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘His tail keeps fallin off.’

  Russell lifted his foot from the kick-bar, put down the tool. ‘That’s a common problem. I’ll show you the answer.’

  He sat on the stool, and, their heads now level, the boy leaned into him, his chin on Russell’s shoulder, breath warm on his neck. Russell quelled the impulse to draw him onto his lap. The price of keeping him clamped to his side was restricted movement of his left elbow, which he gladly accepted. He fashioned a stumpy prop, then reattached the torn tail and instructed the boy to hold it up while he slid the prop under. ‘There. That’s all we do. Then later we take it away.’

  The boy stood straight, removed his breath. ‘Thanks.’

  Jade had the same intensity, watching like a hungry magpie and weaving her head when the movement of his arm obscured the tool. It was several times on the tip of his tongue to ask about school, using the pretext of whether she’d done art and hadn’t that included pottery. There was only the one government high school, down near Echo Point. It must be where she had gone. What, he wondered, happened to truants these days? She would certainly know. The last two weeks wasn’t the first truancy for any of them. She broke her silence and into his thoughts with a question far from his.

  ‘Where’s all this clay come from? Not what they’re usin, the red stuff. That the bottles and all those —’ she gestured towards the racks —‘are made from.’

  ‘Well, the same as I go and get rock for glaze, I dig up clay. At Shipley. From an empty dam on what used to be an apple orchard. I’ve been going there for a very long time. It’s now a horse paddock.’

  ‘How far is it?’

  He stared at her. ‘What — Shipley? It’s up here, the Mountains. Out from Blackheath.’

  ‘Oh. We stay just round Katoomba.’

  He almost, again, muttered the fatal words I see.

  ‘One day, though, I’ll likely have to do like most potters and buy clay in bags, get it delivered.’ He smiled. ‘Or maybe dig a lot now while I still can.’

  She didn’t return the smile, studied him as if he were slightly thick. ‘You pay someone. Town’s full of dole kids.’

  The words were almost Adele’s. He said, ‘It’s crossed my mind,’ and, to end a conversation that had veered unexpectedly into the personal, peeled away the coil holding the bottle in the chuck and lifted and turned the bottle right side up, thumbed off a smear, and slipped from the saddle to carry it to the racks.

  At just after eleven — longer than he’d thought they’d last — the boy and girl said they were hungry. Jade stood, said she’d do them something. First, though, they wanted him to inspect what they’d made. The boy had two dogs, more generic quadrupeds than recognisably dogs, but each with a successful tail, and a little thumbed-out bowl for water. The girl’s crocodile had grown in proportion to the skills and confidence she’d acquired as she worked, and was a brute, the scales incised with the curved tip of the old nib-holder he’d given them, and, her pièce de résistance — not there when he’d last come by — the jaws clamped on a human figure waving its arms and legs. She was smirking with pleasure at the look of horror he knew was expected of him. ‘My goodness. Whoever they are, they’re in big trouble.’

  ‘And they deserve it,’ she said with relish. She spared him the need to respond by jumping to her feet and asking breezily, venom gone, ‘How long to it goes hard?’

  ‘Oh — properly hard, about three days.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She broke the bow at her waist and ducked her head through the loop, dumped the oversized apron on the stool.

  It was both a relief and oddly lonely not to have their presence behind him, and the small noises — the squeak of the stools, the soft clack of bamboo being picked up and put down, squirts of laughter. An hour passed. He hadn’t expected the two would come back, but had hoped Jade might. He turned the last bottle and carried it to the racks, halted at the bench on his way back, his gaze again caught by the figure in the crocodile’s jaws. She’d given it neither clothes nor hair, it was impossible to tell whether the figure was male or female. Along the croc’s side she’d scratched her name in bold capitals. He ran a finger along the letters to remove the frills of drying clay. The other three bore the ‘modern’ names parents copied from magazines and television. Who had chosen ‘Emma’? The dead father?

  She’d hung out the clothes. Washing had brightened the windcheaters, but removed little of their engrained filth. When he came into the kitchen he heard the television. Three washed plates and three glasses were stacked neatly in the dish rack. He made a cheese and pickle sandwich and took it back to the workshop.

  He returned at five, the yard in dusk. The television was still on, cartoon voices drifting into the kitchen. He didn’t disturb them. He got trackpants and a clean tee-shirt from the bedroom, and his house jumper, and had a shower. Then he cooked one of his standards, bolognese sauce and spaghetti. The smell lured the three out. Curiosity satisfied, the young ones returned to their cartoons, but Jade stayed, asked for a job. He’d already set th
e block of parmesan and the grater on the cutting board, to do when he had a moment. ‘You can grate some of that for me. About half.’

  She studied the grater then tentatively gripped the handle. ‘Up and down, yeah?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘This that same stuff like in a shaker?’

  ‘Yes, but a fair bit fresher.’

  He didn’t get the grin he’d angled for. She gave him a grave nod and glanced at her fingers. ‘Back in a minute.’

  He heard her return, but deliberately didn’t watch her. But the sound was right. She stopped twice to show him how much, and, when told enough, swept the pile with the blade of her hand into the dish he’d set out, and laid on top, after surreptitiously studying it, the carved ebony spoon. She asked which plates she should get. Bowls, he told her, and pointed to the ash-glazed ones on the lowest shelf. ‘Four of those, but not the chipped one.’

  They’d eaten other pastas — ‘them tubes’, the boy told him — but had tackled only tinned spaghetti. He demonstrated how to twirl a fork and in seconds they had it. Again he was struck by their fierce natural intelligence. After emptying her bowl for the second time Emma leaned to her sister and whispered. Jade lifted a finger, ask him yourself.

  ‘Can I have bread, Russell? For wipin?’

  ‘Of course you can, we all will — me too.’

  Jade washed, Emma dried, he put away, the girl telling him what she was going to make tomorrow, a house, and wanting to know if he had ‘one of them things’, miming its use.

  ‘A rolling pin.’

  ‘Yep!’

  Jade and the boy returned to the lounge room and the television. Emma hovered in the hallway. He nodded, and she dived into ‘her’ seat, shoving its cushion aside. He set up the board with all its pieces, giving her white. A few minutes into the game Jade appeared carrying the cane armchair, a thick book under her arm. She placed the chair at right angles to the board and opened the book on her lap — he glanced, The Reptiles of Australia — lifting her head to watch when he explained a move and turning pages when her sister’s pondering dragged on. It was a lot of instruction to take in and after an hour the girl was flagging. He suggested they leave the pieces where they were and continue tomorrow night. Jade had closed the book on her finger and was studying the board. ‘Unless you’d like a go?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. But in the mornin can I have a go at makin a pot? Not with fingers, spinnin one.’

  ‘Throwing. We can certainly have a go. It’s just I’ve never tried teaching anyone on a kickwheel. The places I taught had electric wheels.’

  She stared at him. ‘You got electricity.’

  ‘Yes. But the man I started with didn’t. I used to say it’s like preferring to stay on your old pushbike even after you can afford a motorbike.’

  She laughed. He saw for the first time a gap where the cutting teeth met the molars. She promptly shut her mouth.

  He asked her to help get the young ones started. She sat with the boy, who, inspired by his sister’s crocodile, wanted a triceratops. Russell fetched the marble slab and sat with the girl, showing her how to hammer out a ball with her fist then use the rolling pin to work it into a sheet. She would need six, he told her, four walls and the roof. He gave her the rolling pin, told her he would come back when the sheet was flat and even and they would cut the wall. Now, though, it was Jade’s turn.

  He sat her at the wheel without clay, told her she was spending ten minutes just using the kick-bar till she got the feel of it, could speed up and slow down. She gave him the look she must have given teachers who chose to waste her time. He shrugged. ‘I can’t turn the wheel and at the same time guide your hands. Not unless you’d like to sit on my lap.’ He got the response he wanted, she laughed, but controlling her top lip.

  He knelt and positioned her foot on the bar, then gripped her ankle and gave her the rhythm, keeping her foot firmly planted until the head was spinning, then slowing the action, telling her the flywheel would now do the work, but she needed to give the bar a push when the head began to slow. He stood and watched. At this, too, she was a fast learner. He patted her shoulder. ‘Good, you’ve nearly got it.’ He pointed at the clock. ‘Ten minutes, speeding up, slowing down, up again. And smooth, yes, not jerky.’ He had, he heard, fallen as smoothly into his old teaching voice.

  He worked with the young ones, his back deliberately to the wheel, but his ears tuned to the rise and fall of its hum. At the end of the ten minutes the boy had a barrel on legs, the girl a wall with pre-cut windows. He told them it was Jade’s turn again. He went out to the annexe and made up eight half-kilo balls. He displaced her at the wheel and, talking her through what he was doing, threw three simple cylinders. Was she ready to try? She nodded. They threw two wonky ones, she giving no sign of discomfort at his hands on hers. On the third he took his hands away, and she continued the throw, finishing with a cylinder that pleased her with its height, but not its wavy rim. He congratulated her, told her to set the wheel-head spinning again, and took up the corked needle and cut the rim level. Then shocked her by tearing from the new rim a thumb-sized chunk. With the shock still in her face he told her to set the wheel going and passed her the needle.

  She threw two more cylinders unaided. He deflated her again by telling her she was keeping none of the three and showed her why, the fat walls. He squashed his three into one another, then, avoiding her eyes, made her do the same with hers. He slapped the sculpture into a lump which he took to the other end of the table from the kids and re-wedged. He made eight new balls, delivered them to the wheel and left her to it, reminding her only to keep slurrying her hands.

  The boy was dejected, had given up on his dinosaur. That was okay, Russell said, he’d show him how to make coils and build a pot. The lure of the new was too much for the girl and she abandoned her half-made house, wanting to make pots too. In minutes the two were in near-hysterics at the worms and snakes that, instead of his neat coils, rolled out from under their palms. He blundered to his feet, telling them he needed to go to the toilet. Once outside, he stumbled to the back of the glaze kiln and stood staring blindly at the brickwork of its chimney until his turmoil subsided to a level where he thought he could sit again between their merry laughters.

  At twelve they stopped for lunch. She had kept two of her attempts. Was that all right, she asked. Yes, he said, clay was re-useable until fired. But tomorrow the better ones she’d make would change her mind about these two. She scowled. He knew what at, the ‘tomorrow’. He apologised, but after lunch he needed to be on the wheel. She was welcome to watch if she wished, or she could do what the little ones had been doing, coil and build. She turned away, said over her shoulder it didn’t interest her. The two were following the exchange, the boy puzzled, the girl worried.

  ‘There’s only one wheel, Jade.’

  ‘Do I look like I’m blind.’

  Emma caught his eye, gave an almost-imperceptible shake of the head, startling but also silencing him.

  In the kitchen she emerged from her sulk enough to ask did he have pottery books.

  ‘One or two, yes.’

  He ushered her into his study and left her gaping at the wall of spines.

  They didn’t return with him to the workshop. He fed the fire, then covered her cylinders and their half-made hand-builds with plastic and took his hat from the peg by the door. He did a walking meditation to the cliff edge and back. They weren’t removed entirely from his mind, but shrank to a distant corner. He wedged and balled the buff clay from the base of the dam wall and threw ten large blossom jars. They, too, he covered with plastic.

  All three were, like yesterday, watching cartoons. He showered, then baked gemfish fillets and, following the instructions on the packet, the frozen potato wedges he’d bought for the photograph of happy children tucking in. When they came to the table she apologised. He glanced at Emma. Her eyes sta
yed aimed at her plate, but the smug mouth gave her away.

  After the washing up he and the girl sat in the window seats to continue the suspended game. They’d been sitting only a couple of minutes when the front door opened and closed. The girl said without lifting her gaze from the board, ‘It’s only Jade.’

  ‘It’s dark, where’s she going!’

  He’d spoken before realising the trespass. He couldn’t retract without sounding foolish. The girl gave him a courteous out, placing her index fingertip on the head of a pawn as if conflicted and asking her own, but deliberately foolish, question, ‘How many again can I move him from here?’

  You’re her sanctuary, not her keeper, he told himself. And don’t pester this one. He lowered his weight again to the bench’s hard padding.

  ‘Have a think.’

  ‘Oh — yeah! Dummy me.’

  She had not returned an hour later when he halted the game and made hot chocolate. But when he carried a mug in to the boy he heard the door and a moment later she was standing in the lounge room, cheeks burnished by cold.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘You look a bit nippy. Would you like a hot chocolate?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  She actually appeared pleased, her eyes were alight, her mouth had lost its customary tightness. When he continued to look at her she gave a small shake of the head and crossed to the couch and sat beside the boy, whose eyes had not left the screen.

  When he and the girl resumed the game, Jade carried out the armchair, then went back and fetched the book she’d chosen to peruse while watching them play. His heart threatened to choke him when he saw what it was, Chinese Glazes. He fought down the urge to snatch it from her, turn to the Song bowls, lay it back in her lap. She would eventually reach them. The suspense, though, made it difficult to give his full attention to the game and the girl’s questions.

  He didn’t insult her by allowing her to beat him. When he told her the game was over, he’d won, she gave him a serious stare, then, for what seemed fully a minute, roamed the board with her eyes. At the end of it she nodded as if to say, yes, I’m satisfied you’re telling the truth, and asked could they have another game. Yes, he said. But first he needed to talk to Jade about the book she was reading. She looked up. He asked had she seen any pots she liked. A few, she said. But she was looking more at the photos of guys throwing. And at the kilns. She tilted the page. ‘They’re like your long one, but they’re big as caves, they got people standin in em.’