He closes his hand over it, thinking, dreaming, and then he hands it back.
“Keep it. It’s your sign, not mine. An’ maybe you should get along now, eh? ‘S been a big day.”
She takes the Mintie and slides it deftly under his pillow before taking his hand in both of hers. "I know it was a sign for me,” she says softly. “But I choose to give it to you – to be your sign. God worked a miracle through you today, Johnathon. For reasons of his own, He’s singled you out. Let this be the first and the smallest of the rewards He has in mind for you.”
There’s more to her chatter but there’s little more that he actually takes in. Little by little, he reclines into the recesses of his own memories.
“Killed the goat!” she hears him murmur at one point. She knows he’s rambling. But at least he’s not in a coma. “Billy goat, nanny goat. Play the goat. Old goat. Scapegoat. Part of him the Devil can’t change. Little hoofs are always there.” Suddenly, he nudges her thigh. “You sure it’s dead?”
Before she can answer, he’s off again, his eyes darting about behind his closed lids. A nurse comes in and goes out again without comment.
After a while, Bridie goes to the second bed and lies on it, on her side, to watch him and to think about the strange purposes of miracles.
The last thing she remembers him saying before she falls asleep herself is, “You were so good. So brave! Didn’t cry. Never a word.”
* * *
No place is far away in a small town and that included Amalthea’s house. A half century old worker’s cottage, it was a fifteen-minute walk from the show grounds, down a side road that led only to her house and to one section of Alf Caletti’s cane paddocks. In sugar country, there are heaps of such dead-end access roads that branch, like promising ideas, away from the main.
Like most of them, Amalthea’s road promised bitumen at the start but turned quickly to gravel, then grass and finally to knee-deep headlands that criss-crossed between canyons of cane. Amalthea’s house was the only one on the road, a hundred metres north of the bitumen and a hundred metres south of the grass; leaning against an empty car shed, the pair of them snoozing in the shade of an ancient Poinciana. Behind it, invisible from the road, there was a small fenced yard and, beyond that, untold acres of sugarcane. Looking left from her door, you could just make out the line of gums that marked the levee bank along the river. Straight ahead, across more cane fields, the smoking stacks of the mill.
After a brief period of fawning and commiserating, that was where we took Garlic. Shoulder pressed to shoulder, Asael, Amalthea and I each bore a portion of his weight, while Rosemary bumped morosely along behind us. Kevin had started out with us but, when it was clear that four meant we were tripping over each other, he’d veered off.
“Listen, you three don’t need me for this, and I’ve got someone I promised to look up today. So I’ll call you later, okay?”
I would have liked to be the one to let go, but I couldn’t abandon Asael and he wouldn’t abandon Amalthea. I think he’d have carried that goat all the way to Brisbane, just to stay near her.
That’s not to say he wasn’t wheezing and gulping and puffing the whole way. I asked him at one point if he was going to make it and he started on about latissimus muscles or some such thing. I figured if he had enough wind for that, he had enough to carry on. Anyhow, I was more interested in keeping Amalthea in the corner of my eye than listening to him. Reminded again of why males – even junior ones like Asael – were drawn to her. She was like one of those billowy, luscious-looking clouds you see gliding serenely northwards along the coast.
She caught me watching and smiled. “You’re a good sister,” she said. I suppose commenting on my concern for Asael. She was the second person in a day to make that mistake about me.
“Rosemary and I . . . we really appreciate your help, you two! Garlic too, I’m sure! ”
I kept waiting for her to break down but she didn’t. She muttered little phrases now and again that were clearly part of some internal discussion, and once I heard the hum of a tune! If that was what passed for distress in Amalthea-land, I definitely wanted to go there.
“I guess he wouldn’t have seen it coming,” I said, to see if a little conversation would shake her composure. “Being blind and all! At least that’s a comfort!”
“Oh yes, I’m sure! Though when you think about it, probably not much of anyone gets to see it coming! All of us being blind in one way or another.”
“Mm? Oh! Right! Well! Probably, I guess!” I felt like such a dweeb.
* * *
Finally, all of us strained to the limit, we grunted the two steps up onto her veranda.
“Ohmygod!” she groaned. “If I’d realised he was this chunky, I’d have had him on a diet ages ago! Put him down! Put him down! Just here’ll do!”
We bent together, Amalthea protecting his lolling head, and we laid him out as gently as we could before Asa’ and I stepped back, wiping the sweat from our faces, and she went lightly to her knees. Asa’ was completely mesmerised – though whether by the bodily signs of death in Garlic, or the bodily signs of life in Amalthea, I wouldn’t have cared to guess. We watched as she passed a hand over Garlic’s closed eyes then touched the barely exposed tip of his poked tongue. I couldn’t help but notice the tip of Asa’s peeping out when she did that, before he put his own finger up to push it back in.
“Sit here in the shade for a bit, guys,” Amalthea puffed, rising to her feet. “Would you mind? Just for a minute while I get us drinks?”
She started away, but the intensity of Asael’s stare momentarily captured her. She smiled a question at him and the tip of his tongue popped out for a second time. For one dizzying second, I thought he was inviting her to touch it as she had Garlic’s! Which normally would have sent him berko! I mean, what kind of diseases might be on the tip of a finger that has just touched the tongue of a dead goat? Happily, she settled for patting his head before going inside, leaving him and me and Rosemary and dead Garlic to sprawl on the ancient boards.
When she came back, she sat on the step, edging close to Rosemary.
“Poor Garlic,” she crooned. “Old greybeard. We didn’t expect this, did we, Rosemary? To lose him so suddenly! To have Death come visit us again, so soon.”
The ‘come again so soon’ part of that was only beginning to register with me when she turned her attention back to us.
“Where is he now, do you think?”
To my great relief, she was looking at Asael who, not surprisingly, blinked in confusion. I suppose, if I’d really been a good sister, I would’ve made some attempt to save us from what followed. (‘Dunno where he is, but I know where we should be! Seeya!’) I didn’t though; being more than a little intrigued, to find out where she thought Garlic was. So I waited. And sure enough, she repeated the question, only this time addressing it to Garlic himself, and adding a pair of hints.
“Where are you now, my man? In sun? In wind?”
Then there was a long, uncomfortable silence during which we stared half-expectantly at the corpse. Knowing someone’s a bit unorthodox in their beliefs doesn’t really prepare you for downright nuttiness. Surprisingly though, Bridie’s long hours of indoctrination kicked in with Asael.
“He’s with his Maker!” And he nodded beatifically at me, as if to say, ‘See? I have been listening!’ Whatever forces were working on the little dude that day, they were producing exceptional, if unoriginal results! And, as if his little motor had gotten away on him, he carried on, doing what Bridie always did with difficult questions – spouting a platitude.
“Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof. For sure. Ecclesiastes. I think.”
Amalthea had washed the blood off her face but the lolly-made slash on her forehead was ragged and still weeping, just a little. She put a fingertip beside it and a small frown skimmed, kingfisher quick, across her face. Then she shook her head.
“No. I doubt that, As?
??.”
If it’d been up to me, I’d have escaped that conversation right then – a nod and a, ‘No, I can see why.’ But Asael was like a possum on steroids when he decided he needed to know something.
“Not Ecclesiastes?”
“Not better! I don’t think endings are better.”
She leaned away, far enough to touch Garlic’s flank, and Rosemary popped a hoof out to do the same. When she glanced up, she couldn’t help but catch Asa’s look of expectancy, or mine, of scepticism.
“Well, I mean!” she defended herself. “If the end was better than the beginning . . . it wouldn’t make sense, would it? Because for one thing, some beginnings are unbearably beautiful! You know? Like spring mornings! And new friendships! While some endings . . . like the end of Garlic’s time with Rosemary and me . . . !” She turned a warm, sympathetic gaze on us. “Well, I don’t have to tell you two how painful endings can be, do I?” (Adding to my newly sprouting conviction that my family’s history, though mostly a mystery to me, was readily available to virtually everyone else – even outsiders – in the public streets of Sugar Town!) “So no! I don’t think endings are better than beginnings, Asa’. What I think is that endings ARE beginnings.”
There’s a sort of clear-eyed, invitational look that people adopt when they want to share their personal puzzles. Like, ‘I got something here that’ll knock your socks off, bud!’ It wasn’t a look I’d ever knowingly given anyone, to that stage – not even Kevin! But it’s the one she gave us and, not least because her willingness to trust was so . . . in need of testing, I jumped straight in.
“Oh yeah? So how does that work?”
“Well for instance, I know that your mother died.” (Hmmm, I thought. Showing off her knowledge? Trying to stir me? Oblivious? What?) “When that happened, that was an end – a very sad end – to your time with her! But it was also a start, yes? Of a life that you had to be more responsible for! Same when your gramma died and your father went away! Each was an ending: each brought new beginnings! See what I mean? Today, when we met at the Festival . . . that was an end! An end to our time as . . . passing acquaintances! But it was also the start of our time as friends! And here you are at our house, for the first time ever! Hopefully something that will happen lots more times! Do you see? All endings have new beginnings built into them! And vice-versa, of course!”
Not a complicated theory, actually. Translated, it just meant that every solution clicks you along to the next confusion! Like, the solution to my curiosity about her was just clicking me along to including her in my resentment catalogue; for her access – not granted by me – to the mysteriously twisted McFarlane family history! My day had practically been birthed in resentment of the fact that, on the subject of our history, we McFarlanes seemed to be the least informed people on earth! And intentionally or not, Amalthea was demonstrating the proof of that – that even outsiders with smudgy reputations could be insiders on the topic of us!
Anger was a near option. On the other hand, though, she’d said we were ‘friends’! And that ‘hopefully’ we’d be visiting more! Statements which, to be honest, were like honey on a bee to me. She was an outsider! Refreshingly, completely un-Sugar Town! The only other person who was remotely like her in my whole world was Kevin who, lovely though he was, was still a source of affection that I couldn’t fully account for. For someone like Amalthea, though – an independent, free-willed, free-thinking female like her – to consider me a friend – someone who wanted to be around me (which, I have to admit, even I didn’t particularly enjoy!) . . . that was something!
Then again, (there I was, as usual, arguing myself to a standstill) I understood that friendship came with trade-offs – rights for obligations. I didn’t particularly want it to be her ‘right’ to casually discuss Rita and Gramma Gracie and the Reverend. Especially Rita! No one – hardly even us (except for Asael, in his dreams; and apparently Kevin, when he was miffed with Bridie; and I guess the Hoggitts, when they had too many prunes for breakfast) – no one ever talked about Rita! Could I impose an obligation not to talk about her? Or would that shatter the bargain? That was the rubbish going through my head as she chatted on, revealing further tidbits of her personal puzzle.
“However, if Garlic did get to meet his Maker, well . . . he’d have some curly questions to ask, I’ll bet! Most likely, though, he’s just camping.”
“Camping?” Again, Asa’, who didn’t seem able to resist picking up and examining every crumb that fell from her lips.
“Mmm. Since he has to be out of his home for a while! Out of the world, you know? I’d like to think he’ll be resting in a pleasant wilderness full of lovely bushes to browse on. And soon . . . or later . . . when the time is right . . . he’ll pack up and come home.”
“Home?” (Oh look! Another crumb! Let’s have a nibble at that one, shall we?)
“Oh, not ‘home’, as in this house, of course! Not even to this house,” she indicated the corpse. Then she leaned over and placed her palm against its ribs. “But somewhere! Somewhere this side of the wilderness.”
Okay! So one obligation I definitely place on my friends is not to treat me like I’m an idiot!
“Wilderness?” I said. “What, so he’s like, in Kakadu or something?”
I thought it was an excellently sharp bit of sarcasm but Asael who, in Amalthea’s presence at least, was entirely oblivious to being taken for an idiot – or even for an empty bucket with a very large hole in the bottom – trampled right over it.
“What would make him come back, Amalthea?”
It seemed to me to be a ‘nobody’s dumber than me’ question, but to Amalthea it seemed exactly the right one. Her eyes lit up like sparklers.
“You’re right! You’re exactly right, Asael! Why are we moping here? What’re we thinking?”
She and Rosemary both jumped to their feet.
“Ceremony! Ritual! A send-off that’s full of life! That’s what’ll make him come back!” She reached for our hands and began tugging us upright. “Come on, you two! We’ve got a funeral to arrange!”
And just like that, we were caught up in preparations for a goat send-off.
* * *
Our first task was to arrange Garlic on a blanket in the centre of the living room. Then Amalthea fetched a hairbrush and, drawing Asa’ down beside her, she began lovingly, exaggeratedly, to brush the dead goat’s hair, following each stroke with a slow, sensuous sweep of her other hand. Half a dozen strokes. Then she put the brush into Asa’s hand.
“Like that,” she said. “Make him handsome.”
He took to it like a goose to gooseberries and she shot off into the kitchen, launching herself into a flurry of cupboard opening, drawer sliding and maximum bumping. I went to see and found her creating a pile of candles on the table. Tall and thin, fat and short. Candles that had been rescued from birthday cakes and candles the size of birthday cakes. Wax and wicks enough to fill a bathtub!
“Whadya think?” she asked, sweeping a hand over them. “Do I have enough?”
“Enough to light a basketball stadium! If you want to light up something bigger, you’ll need more!”
I could hardly fathom the enthusiasm she’d mustered for ‘sending-off’ that goat! But I was even more gob-smacked by Asael’s willingness to participate – to actually be touching something that was dead! I could hear him in the living room, rabbiting happily on, possibly to the living one, possibly to the dead one, and the only thing that would’ve shocked me more would’ve been for one of them to answer!
“He’s a special boy, isn’t he?” Amalthea said, nodding in his direction.
“Is he what! Every day’s a revelation!”
She stopped moving around and looked at me closely. “Ruth, can I talk to you for a minute? Girl to girl?”
My attention flitted from Asa’ immediately and I wagged my head. Prepared to be thrilled if she was sharing a confidence; underwhelmed if she was sharing ‘life’ advice. I already had pl
atitudes aplenty in my life.
“The thing is,” she said, “I owe you a better apology than the one I gave at the Showgrounds. For climbing on The Gourd. And for being a sticky-beak – reading those notes and letters. I knew it was a ‘thing’ here in Sugar Town and I went ahead and did it anyway.”
I shrugged again. How quickly a little plane crash and a minor lolly-bombing can change your perspective! “Ah! Why would I care? It’s just a stupid old Sugar Town thing! Doesn’t mean anything to me!”
“No? Well I guess we’re sort of sisters in that, then. It’s just that . . . I know I’m a curiosity in town, and that people tell stories about me. And, well, sometimes my nose-thumbing is a little heavy-handed.”
“Yeah.” I thought of myself, standing up the mayor at the showground gate. “Yeah, I guess I know how that goes, too! So! But no harm done, eh? What the folks don’t know, won’t hurt ‘em.”
“Well, I’m not sure about that! In my experience, ‘not knowing things’ can hurt like hell! But then, of course, so can knowing too much! Which is why I want to mention the letter. Your letter . . . that I read!”
I gave her a look that I hoped would say, ‘My letter? What are you, nuts?’ It’s a look I still haven’t perfected. It tends to blur into wounded self-pity, which I hate.
“It had your names at the top,” she explained. “Yours and Bridie’s and Asael’s . . . in the salutation. And also, Asael told me you’d put one there.”
“Did he? Well! His anti-idiot medication must be wearing off!”
She smiled thinly and went back to sorting her candles, but I knew she hadn’t made her point yet and I did my best to anticipate it.
“I don’t know why I put it there. Aside from messing with Bridie’s mind! I promise you, I’m not some superstitious yokel who communes with pumpkins!”
“Ruthie, I’m the last person to judge anyone that way! I’ve communed with some very strange people in some very strange places over the years! Part of what makes us human, I think!”
“Oh? So talking to pumpkins makes us human?”