The louvres go back in like they came out. They look alright except for the crack in the middle one and the blood all over. The tools chink and ring on the way back. All the way across the paddock and up the firebreak I watch the light above the house. It shows me where to walk.
‘The first Christmas we were married, I wanted a Christmas tree,’ Mum is saying as I sneak up the side of the house. ‘Sam couldn’t understand why, and anyway there was nothing like that around here then. That was before they tried re-foresting down near Bankside with all that crappy pine. Christmas Eve I come into the lounge and there in the corner is a sunflower in a bucket of sand, decorated with old pieces of foil and bottle tops. Oh, I cried. I really love him, you know. People say they don’t know what love is. Everyone says it now. They’re scared to know. I’d suffer for him and be humiliated for him. I’d be ashamed for him and let people hate me for him. I have and still will. People don’t want to know love. They might have to get dirty.’
Then she goes quiet, like she’s said a whole lot more than she thought she would. I can hear Dad’s slow awake whistle. Henry Warburton’s shadow grows out across the dirt of the yard. He must be standing up at the edge of the verandah with the inside light behind him.
‘Yes,’ he says, just loud enough to hear. ‘You’re close to things, Alice. Close to all things.’
‘And what does that mean ?’
‘Hmm? Oh, sorry. Nothing. I’m just waxing a bit lyrical tonight.’
‘Oh.’ She doesn’t sound sure.
All of a sudden I’m real tired. This talk is way over. I climb back in real slow, pushing the curtains and the flywire away, holding the tools real tight so they don’t chink.
Chapter Nine
YESTERDAY I SAW Henry Warburton and Mr Cherry down at the fence. Their faces and hands were going like mad but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. This morning I found Errol hanging off the clothesline with his neck wrung, and I’m not coming out all day.
Before lunch Henry Warburton carries Dad down the hallway to the bathroom in his arms. Dad looks so small, like he’s my little brother now and my new dad’s taking him to the bath. When we were small, Dad used to come in the night and take us to the toilet in case we forgot. He used to say to me: ‘This is how I picked you up when you were still wet from Mummy’s belly. So big now,’ and I would still pretend to be asleep so he might talk more but all he would say was ‘So big, so big now’ as we went down the hallway with the wind going outside and the rain rattling hard on the roof.
I hear the water running and Henry Warburton’s voice bouncing around in the bathroom. Later when the water stops, those crazy words come out, too big and weird to understand. Always those strange words.
A knock. Mum comes in with a tired face and her hair all down. Her face is so brown that when she looks tired or sad, white lines cut her cheeks up.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ I say, making room for her on the bed.
‘Don’t be angry. It doesn’t help.’
‘I know Mr Cherry did it.’
She puts her hand on my face. ‘He drinks a lot, now, you know. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.’
I don’t say anything.
‘Henry’s going over to speak to him later.’
‘Tell him not to.’
‘Why?’ she asks.
‘Don’t let’s even talk to them anymore.’
‘Well, I’ll talk to Henry,’ she says. ‘He’s not feeling well this morning, anyway. Says he feels funny in the head.’
I push my pillow in two and lie back on it. Mum puts my feet in her lap and squeezes all my toes, one by one. Her green shirt has got patches on it.
‘What does he talk about in there with Dad?’
‘Henry? Oh, I don’t know. I never noticed really.’
‘He talks to him all the time.’
‘I notice you don’t any more.’
‘I forget,’ I say, looking at the wall with its cracks and holes. ‘Sometimes I even forget he’s here. Why isn’t he normal now?’
She sighs. ‘They don’t know. You know what doctors are like. Talk a lot and say nothing. I reckon they don’t know. And if they did they wouldn’t bother telling us.’
‘He doesn’t look like a spaz or anything. He just looks like he’s far inside like Grammar.’
‘Sometimes he looks so sad.’
‘Are you sure he’ll get better?’
‘He came back from the dead, didn’t he?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Have some faith, then.’
‘Faith?’
‘Just don’t give up on him.’
Lunch is quiet and I feed Dad his salad. His hands are going white; even under his nails it’s white.
After lunch Tegwyn goes off into Bankside on the old crate Henry Warburton brought back. Mum sits in the lounge, mending clothes. Henry Warburton just sits with his eyes closed. I lie on the floor; it’s cooler there.
‘What was it like when you went to high school?’ I ask him.
‘Best years of my life,’ he says without opening his eyes.
‘Did you like it?’
‘Hated it.’
‘But you said —’
‘Listen, leave it, will you?’
Mum raises her eyebrows at me. Henry Warburton sighs and gets up and goes outside.
‘What’s up with him?’
‘I think he’s crook, Ort. Don’t bother him.’
‘I just asked him a question.’
Mum shrugs. She pushes the needle into Tegwyn’s jeans. I get up and go out. From the back verandah I see Henry Warburton going into the forest. All over the backyard, Errol’s feathers muck around in the wind. Makes me angry again, and the dark patch that shows where he’s – she’s – buried makes it worse; I pass it on my way to the fence. Only a chook.
I follow Henry Warburton, keep behind him a long way so I can see him but he can’t see me. His white shirt flashes in the red and brown trees. Birds scoot across. I walk careful over logs and dry sticks, make myself small to go through prickle bushes. I stop sometimes and look at him through a blackboy or around a tree trunk. He walks without thinking of snakes, and he doesn’t mind making a noise. You’ll never see any animals if you walk like that. In the bush you walk real wary, real slow. You put your feet down like you’re not sure it’s quicksand or not. You listen with your eyes and see with your ears. The same as when you walk through the house at night, keeping an eye on everyone.
We go down near the creek and pass the big black patch from the fire. He doesn’t look. We go past the old sawmill. He doesn’t look. Then I know. He’s going to the bridge. But when he gets to the bridge he doesn’t stop. He walks under and along the bank for a while till he comes to the swimming hole. I stop back quite a bit, high up the side of the slope, and get in between some blackboys. Henry Warburton stops at the swimming hole. On the other side, the bit of green grass and the piece of rope look kind of funny and out of place. Henry Warburton sits down and takes off his shoes and socks. Then he takes all his clothes off and folds them and puts them over a log. Midges move over the water. Little helicopters. He walks into the water with his white back and bum showing. Then he slides under.
Flies get in me shorts while I’m watching and it nearly makes me giggle. Two of them going like a duck and drake, buzzing together all the way down me leg and into me shorts. I watch Henry Warburton float and swim and blow water. He gets out once on the grassy side, takes a run-up and chucks a bombie. He hits the water curled up like a baby. Water goes high up, almost to that tassel of rope in the big redgum. He comes up laughing. Makes me wanna get in too.
When he gets out he stands in the sun a bit. Then he picks up his clothes and walks back under the bridge. I follow him down and come closer because it looks like he’s gonna stay for a bit. I breathe with my mouth wide open – it’s quieter that way.
Under the bridge he just stands there in the raw, talking. Talking! To no one. His bum wobbles when he t
alks. Water still drips down his white back and arms.
‘I hide and you see. I run and you follow.’ I get squeamy; maybe he’s having a go at me, like he knows I’ve been here all the time. ‘To the ends of this earth, to the limits of the pit of myself, you will see and know me. Your love is terrible. Its gentleness a blow, its patience a judgement. Its silence thunders all about. Help me, Giver of All, I am unfaithful to men and to you, and even myself. Make my great weakness your strength. Oh, God, my Father and Mother, help me, let me love them, make me love them. I . . . I . . . carry . . . carry . . . you like a live coal in my chest . . . my . . . my. . .’
He’s puffing like he’s gonna cry or be sick and his bum cheeks go mad shaking and his legs all shivery. He holds his head with his hands.
‘. . . my . . . God . . . save . . . take . . . wh . . . wh . . . whaa . . . ghh . . . nghh . . .’
He falls down and gurgles and his back goes like a bridge trying to come up through his belly. His hands dig in the dirt. All his muscles come up like polished bits of wood, popping out his skin. He’s hard all over like a piece of wood and sap comes out his mouth like he’s turned into a tree.
‘. . . nngth . . . nngth . . . ogh . . .’
While Mum is in the loungeroom watching Henry Warburton sleep on his mattress on the floor, I stash the pillowcase of tools and the Pirelli calendar under Dad’s side of the bed. I look around, too, for Christmas presents, just in case, but there’s none under there yet. Probably too early. I go back into the loungeroom. Henry Warburton is still asleep under the sheet.
‘Get the mercurochrome, Ort.’ Mum looks tired and dirty and her scratches are worse than mine. There’s a cut under her eye, skin missing off her knees and elbows. I bring the little bottle from the bathroom and a clean rag from the bag in the linen cupboard. Mum puts the red stuff on me. It stings and makes the scratches look worse. When I put it on her it makes her look like she should be in bed herself. It was a long, long way back with Henry Warburton. I was already stuffed from running home and then back with Mum to the bridge. We could only carry him a little bit and then we had to rest. We dropped him sometimes. Mum fell over a stump and hacked her toes. I was crying ’cause I was frightened and sore. All stuff had gone dry on his face. He looked dead.
‘Now we’ve got another one to look after,’ I say.
‘Don’t get it in my eye,’ Mum says. She tries to show how much it doesn’t sting.
Tegwyn comes in, sweaty and red from riding. ‘What’s up?’
‘Henry chucked a mental,’ I say, ‘down by the bridge.’
‘It was a fit.’
‘Is he an apoplexic or whateveritis?’
‘An epileptic, Tegwyn,’ Mum says. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Lucky he wasn’t swimming,’ Tegwyn says, putting her bag on the sofa.
‘He was in the nick,’ I say, with a grin that won’t go away.
Dad sniffs; it makes us all look around, but there’s no kind of look on his face that’s special.
‘Beaudy,’ says Tegwyn. ‘Now there’s three.’
She goes down the hallway again and soon we hear music from the piano. It’s kind of nice: up and down sounds, up and down.
‘That’s Grammar’s music,’ Mum says, just sitting there. ‘She used to play it all the time when she first came here. It’s the kind of music they never let her play at the socials and in the dance halls.’
‘It’s nicer than plonky-plunk music.’
‘Yeah. It’s German.’
‘How long’s Grammar been here?’
‘Since the day after you were born.’
‘I don’t get some things.’
‘Understand, you mean?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What don’t you understand?’
‘Why Dad’s crook. Why Grammar is so old and inside herself. Why he’s here, and why he baths Dad and talks funny and chucks a wobbly in the bush so we have another one to look after.’
‘Is that all?’ Mum says with a laugh.
‘Why Tegwyn doesn’t like us. Why Mr Cherry is . . . Mr Cherry . . .’
‘You’ve got me there, mate. I don’t know either. Crazy, isn’t it?’ She’s got wet eyes. ‘Bloody crazy.’
Henry Warburton wakes up and doesn’t know who the hell we are. He walks around real soft. He doesn’t remember. He’s all arse-about. Doesn’t know his own name. He starts laughing and then bawls his face out into Mum’s Sydney Harbour Bridge teatowel. We put him back to bed and he sleeps and sleeps until morning.
Just as the sun is up I find ten chicks under the chook I call Bruiser. She pecks me away but I get a look and count ’em real quick. I go to the shed and get them some mash. Bruiser gets off for a while and I grab a little pecker and take him inside.
‘There’s chicks,’ I say at the kitchen table. I open my hands.
‘New life,’ Henry Warburton says. He looks at the chick like it’s hard to see. He goes on eating.
‘That means there’s chook for dinner tonight,’ Mum says with a smile.
‘Why?’ asks Henry Warburton.
‘Because we always do,’ I say.
Mum shrugs. ‘A kind of celebration, I s’pose. Will you do it for us?’
‘What?’
‘The chook.’
‘That? Kill it?’
‘No.’ She laughs. ‘A big one, silly.’
‘No.’
‘You eat chicken, don’t you?’
He nods. ‘I won’t kill.’
‘Sam always says everyone who eats vegetables should grow their own at least once, and everyone who eats meat should kill it at least once, so they know what it means to be responsible. And so they remember who and what they are and why they keep living.’
Henry Warburton gets up and goes into the loungeroom. Mum looks at me, and I know what it means. Me guts goes funny.
After breakfast I put the chick back and catch a fat young hen. I tie her up like Dad does and hang her upside down from the clothesline so she goes calm. I bring the machete from the shed, take the chook down the back and take her head off on the block. I don’t let her go. Dad says it’s an abomi-nation to let an animal run round without its head. Mum brings the hot water out. The feathers come off easy. It stinks. I pull the guts out, wash it, and it’s all over. Henry Warburton can go hungry tonight for all I care.
For two days he walks round like he can’t remember what he’s doing in our house. He shouts things in his sleep like: ‘They have given the dead bodies of your servants as food to the birds of the air, and the flesh of your saints to the beasts of the earth!’ He cries in his sleep. Mum washes his sheets every morning because of the sweat, and then one morning when we’re looking at the little chicks running around on their own, yellow and brown, he comes out in his pyjamas and says, ‘I’m better now’.
Mum and Tegwyn and me just look at him. The pyjamas are too small; the leg ends are nearly up to his knees. Tegwyn says to him, ‘Are you sure?’ and we all laugh because he looks such a dag and the chooks stare at us like we’re dumb animals and don’t know any better.
Chapter Ten
AND THEN OUT on the verandah in the warm dark he blurts it out. We’re all quiet, just sitting listening to the night in the forest and the chooks sleeping and Dad whistling in-out, and Warburton starts talking like it hurts him but he won’t stop. I look at the stars and try to see what they’re saying with those bright little mouths going open and closed all the time. The sky goes way back tonight; it’s like looking into water, and you wonder why you can’t see your reflection at the bottom, but you know you can see something. Henry Warburton makes us all jump with his quick words.
‘It’s time I stated my purpose. I haven’t meant to be deceitful; God has sent me here.’
Dead quiet. At the end of the dead quiet Mum says, ‘What do you mean?’
‘So very hard to explain. I know you won’t believe me, but I had a vision.’
‘What’s that?’ I ask.
‘It’s so
mething you see that no one else sees. It’s real, it’s there, but only you see it.’
‘Like the light,’ I say.
‘What light?’ Mum says.
‘The one up the roof. It’s a cloud kind of thing. Look, it lights up the yard. You can see rabbits’ eyes in it all round the fence.’
‘Don’t talk crap,’ Tegwyn says. ‘There’s no light, there’s no rabbit eyes. It’s pitch black out there. If your brain worked as well as your imagination you wouldn’t be so thick.’
‘Tegwyn,’ Mum says, ‘leave off.’
‘Well, what did you see?’ Tegwyn says to Henry Warburton.
‘It’s not important. I just saw.’
‘Oh, bollocks.’
‘Tegwyn, another word like that and you can go to your room. Don’t be so damned rude. Go on, Henry.’
‘God told me to come to you.’
‘Who’s God?’
‘Ort, be quiet.’
‘No, it’s alright,’ Henry Warburton says, sounding like it really does hurt to talk like this. ‘God is who made us and made the birds and trees and everything. He keeps things going. He sees all things. He is our father. He loves us.’
‘I thought it was just a word. Like heck. Is he someone? Mum?’
‘I never really thought about it, Ort . . . I, I —’
‘So what did he send you here for?’ I ask Henry Warburton.