For Simon White
From the otherworld of action and media, this
interleaved continuing plane is hard to focus;
we are looking into the light –
it makes some smile, some grimace.
Les A. Murray, ‘Equanimity’
I
Chapter One
DAD HAS THE ute going outside. I am behind Mum. Her dress has got flowers all on it, none of them much to look at. Her bum moves around when she laughs. Dad always says she has a bum like an angry mob which means nothing to me but a lot to him, I reckon. I can hear the rooster crorking out the back. He’s a mean rooster – goes for your pills when you collect the eggs.
‘Seeyaz.’ That’s Dad going. He revs the ute up. He’s in a hurry, going to town for Mr Cherry.
‘Wave him off, Ort,’ Mum says to me. She always reckons you should show people you love them when they go away because you might never see them again. They might die. The world might end. But Dad’s only going to town for an hour. It’s business for Mr Cherry. And there he goes, out the drive and onto the road.
Mum puts her hand on my shoulder and flour falls down my arm. The rooster crorks again. That’s a mean rooster. Dad dropkicks him on Saturday mornings just to let him know who’s boss.
‘Hop inside and do your homework, Ort,’ Mum says.
‘In a minute,’ I say.
‘What you learnin’?’
‘Burke and Wills.’
‘Uh-huh.’
Mum doesn’t know what Burke and Wills is, I bet, but she won’t let on. But that’s orright. I don’t know what it is yet, either. Gotta learn it. That’s why it’s homework.
‘Well, get in there, my second man,’ she says, putting up her dress a bit for some air. It’s hot.
‘In a minute.’ I pick at the flap of skin on my stubbed toe. Stubbed toes are something you have to live with in this life.
That mean rooster goes again. I can just see his red dishmop hairdo wickering around all over the place as he yells his lungs off. The sky is the same colour as Mum and Dad’s eyes. When you look at it long enough, like I am now with my nose up in it, it looks exactly like an eye anyway. One big blue eye. Just looking down. At us.
My name is Morton Flack, though people call me Ort for short. Ort is also a name for bum in our family. It means zero too (you know, like nought), but in my case it just means Morton without saying all of it. My Dad’s name is Sam Flack. Mum is called Alice. Her last name was different when she was a maid. Tegwyn in the next room with her magazines is my sister. She finishes school next month. Grammar lives in the room behind with her piano she never plays. She never does much these days. That flamin’ rooster going again.
The light slants down funny on my desk from the lamp Dad fixed up there on the wall. I should be doing Burke and Wills. They don’t seem very bright blokes. Instead I’m listening to the night coming across from the forest – all small sounds like the birds heading for somewhere to stay the night, the sound of the creek tinkering low when everything gets quiet, the chooks making that maw-maw sound they do when they’re beginning to sleep all wing to wing up under the tin roof of the chookhouse. Sometimes in the night I can hear their poop hit the ground it’s so quiet. Sometimes it’s so quiet, Dad says you can hear the dieback in the trees, killing them quietly from the inside. At night the sky blinks at us, always looking down.
The sounds of night aren’t really what’s keeping me from Burke and Wills, though. It’s Dad. He’s not back. But I’m not worried.
Fat Cherry is my best friend. He’s got a head like a potato, eyes like a baby pig’s, and his belly shimmies all over the shop when he walks. Until we got separated, Fat and me sat together in school. His real name is James, but even Fat is better than that. Fat Cherry is a good name all round. So’s Ort Flack. All the other kids in the district have got names like Justin and Scott and Nathan and Nicholas which are pisspoor in anyone’s book. And no kid wants to be called Mary or Bernadette if he’s not a girl. Even my chook (my private chook – my pet one) has got a better name than the kids at school. Errol is my pet chook’s name. Mum says it’s a sacrilege but I haven’t figured that out yet. When Errol was a chick I found him outside the chookrun with his leg all busted up and caught in the wire. I put tape on his leg and kept him in bed with me for a week until Mum went off her face about the sheets.
Wait . . . wait on . . . I can hear a car. No, it was someone passing. Someone leaving the city. If you climbed the dying jarrah trees down there towards the creek, you’d see the lights of the city. From here, the only lights in sight are from Cherry’s roadhouse a hundred yards along the highway on the other side of the road. You can see their bowsers glowing, and sometimes you think you can actually see the numbers rolling in them, but you’re just kidding yourself.
The tail lights of that car burn the bush up and go slowly out. Burke and Wills.
Ah, another car. That’ll be the old man. He’s late. Boy is he late. Mum’ll be mad.
The car comes up the long drive towards us, but the engine noise is all wrong. Mum is going out. If I could, I’d go out too, but I’m all stuck, like the chair has hold of me. I’m scared, a bit. I am scared. I’m scared. There’s fast talking out there. Isn’t anyone gonna turn that engine off?
‘Morton? Morton!’ Here she comes, setting all the floorboards going, there she is, my Mum, with those eyes full up and spilling, the dress shaking enough to shed all those dumb flowers off it.
The big, strange car shoots us down the driveway and out onto the sealed road with Mum and me rolling across the big back seat that farts and squeaks under us. Headlights poke around in the dark. A man with a bald moon at the back of his head is driving and talking – both too fast. My belly wants to be sick. Mum’s eyes are making me wet.
‘How far, Mr . . .’
‘Wingham, Lawrence Wingham,’ the man pants.
‘How far?’
‘A couple of kilometres, only a couple.’
The speedo is like a clock gone mad. I don’t know why, but I feel like I just swallowed a whole egg, shell and all. I can tell something bad’s happened – I’m not stupid – but no one has told me yet. I don’t know. If my Dad is dead, we just won’t live anymore.
The moon sits over the road like a big fat thing. It looks useless as hell tonight. I never felt that about the moon before. As the road goes downhill I can see the pale lights of the city far away. Trees hang all over the road.
‘Where’s Tegwyn?’ I ask.
‘She’s home looking after Grammar.’
‘I could’ve done that.’
‘I want you . . . with me,’ she says. I know she’s crying. All the door handles glow in the dark. It’s like I can see her face in them and she’s crying in all of them. Tegwyn will hate looking after Grammar.
Now the road is winding down towards Bankside, the place where my school is. There’s two shops, a pub, a bowser, a big church place, and a post office as well. It’s not as big as the city.
The orange light makes me jump. I can see it through the trees and it gets stronger as we round the bend. Mum’s arm is around me, pushing all the air out of me. A tow truck. Some cars on either side of the road. A big mess in the bush. The flashing light makes the road and the ground and the bush jump. It makes the men walk in jerks.
No one even looks at us when we pull up. Mum is out and running. Dad’s ute is all pushed back on itself something horrible. I can see Ted Mann from the Bankside Garage shouting at Bill Mann his brother. It’s their tow truck making the orange light. There’s not much for them to tow. I stay in the car. Mum has Ted Mann by the singlet. They shout.
‘The ambulance has been and gone,’ he says.
‘When?’
‘Ten minutes
ago.’
‘Tell me, tell me.’
‘What, Mrs Flack?’ Ted Mann does not like us because we work for Mr Cherry who is competition.
‘Is he alright?’
‘Looked pretty bloody crook to me,’ he says, turning back to Bill Mann to keep up the argument. They’re always arguing. Their wives went away to live in the city. Or so Tegwyn says.
I’m all sick. But I can see alright. I’d be sicker if Dad was dead. I know he’s not. I know it. But I feel sick enough.
The man in front of me, the man who has driven us here with his bald moon of a head coming up out of the seat, is still here. Mum comes back to the car.
‘Can you take me into the city?’ she asks the man who starts the big car again.
‘That’s where I was headed in the first place,’ he says, moving around on the seat.
She gets in front with him and then twists around to me. ‘You get a lift back with Mr and Mr Mann. I won’t be back till late. You’ve got school tomorrow.’
‘School? Mum!’ I can’t believe it.
‘You’ve got one week of term left. You’ve never missed a day yet and you’re not gonna. If you start something, you finish it. If I’m not back before morning, you get a lift in with Fat and Mr Cherry. Tegwyn will cut your lunch.’ She kisses me on the nose hard enough to make me eyes fog up.
Outside the car, there is the dry smell of wild oats and the brown smell of the paddocks and the talk of Ted and Bill Mann. I get in their truck. The big car pulls out and passes and I see Mum wave and fix her hair. Her hair is the colour of white wood. Ted and Bill Mann argue. I get out because it’s hot in the cab. Ted Mann looks at me and shrugs.
Dad’s ute is so small. I look inside. The seats are all back and forward and up and over everywhere. Everything inside is sticky. It’s blood – I’m not stupid. I go round the side to where the open tray is. A bale of hay has come loose and spilt itself all over. There’s his big tool box still there, and on it, the big rag that he wipes his hands on. It used to be a pair of my pyjama bottoms until the bum came out. I pick it up. It smells of turps and oil and grease. It smells of my Dad. A long way away there is a siren. That will be the police. It’s a long way for them to come. I suppose they will look at the skid marks and those trees over there that are all flat and sprinkled with glass.
Mr and Mr Mann are arguing about how they’ll tow the ute. I stand here waiting. The sky blinks down at me.
Chapter Two
IN A COUPLE of years they’re going to pull this school down. It’s only a tin shed, so it won’t take much. Next year I have to go to high school in the city anyway. That means I’ll get home at six o’clock like Tegwyn; six o’clock when there’s only three hours of light left – and that’s in summer. High school. I don’t like thinking about it. Tegwyn’s been there three years and she still doesn’t like thinking about it. Funny to think this school will be gone. Bankside used to be the country. Now you can see the city at night. Soon the city will be here.
Across the classroom I can see Fat. He’s trying to get me to look at him. One little pig eye winks, and I want to wink back but I can’t. He keeps winking a message in morse code but I can’t even look properly at him. His Dad was all strange in the truck this morning when he gave us a lift. Tegwyn kept looking at me as we twisted down the hill in low. Mr Cherry didn’t say a word. Sometimes he drives us nuts with his talk and showing us his funny eyes, all black and shadowy. He says he looks like Eddy Canter whoever that is. Bores us dead. But today not a word. When the truck bumped around and I hit my head on the door, he gave me a funny look as if to say ‘Don’t even say ouch or I’ll dump you out on the side of the road’. Tegwyn burped then and giggled and Fat got a clip on the ear as if he did it.
Mr Cherry isn’t very big. He looked even smaller this morning, as if the steering wheel had grown. He hadn’t shaved and his chin was full of little grey iron filings like the ones on his workshop floor. He didn’t say one word about my Dad.
‘James! James Cherry.’ Mrs Praktor has seen Fat’s spastic winking. Praktor-the-tractor. Good ol’ Max Factor. That’s what we always say. ‘Sit up straight and do your work.’
Someone giggles. Someone always giggles. There’s all grades in this class. It’s the only class in the school. Nathan Mann is year six. Bernadette Mann is year four. Mary Mann is year four, too. Bernadette and Mary are twins, but you wouldn’t know it. One like a horse, one like a camel. Billy Ryde is only year two. There’s all grades, but me and Fat are the only year sevens.
It’s hot in here. You can hear the bush moving around outside like it’s tossing and turning in the heat.
At lunch Fat and I play french cricket under the big tree with the bits of lumpy lawn under it. I keep chipping the ball away near his feet and when he dives for it, his whole belly goes nuts.
‘Have you heard about my Dad?’ I say, knocking one a bit too high.
He snatches the ball.
‘Gotcha.’
‘Made it easy for you.’
‘Ah yeah.’
‘Did ya hear anything?’
‘Carn, gis the bat.’
‘Well?’
He takes the bat and faces up. Across the yard the Mann twins are playing skippy. Their plaits jump around like propellers. They look like they’re gonna take off any moment. Chuck-chuck-chuck, a camel helicopter and a horse helicopter chopping across the paddock, over Mann’s Garage and the Bankside Arms down towards the city. I take the ball. It’s a furry old six-stitcher Fat’s Dad gave him. I put it at him high on the bat and Fat jumps back out of the way.
‘Well?’ I say, grubbing in the lumpy grass for the ball.
‘My Dad told me not to talk about it.’
‘Don’t then.’ I throw low and he hits sideways and I miss the catch and I’m angry all of a sudden.
Errol and me sit out on the back verandah. His beak is all hooky and busted. His eyes are pink. The way he looks at me, sometimes, you wouldn’t know he was a chook. My schoolbag is all hot and leather-smelly from being in the sun. I toss Errol across the verandah and he garks and fluppers and I go inside to the cool of the house.
‘Is that you, Lil Pickering?’ Grammar calls out.
‘No, jus’ me, Grammar.’
She makes mumbly, spluttery noises and then goes quiet. As I pass her door I look in. There she is with her feet up on the window sill and the breeze up her nightie.
‘Lil Pickering?’
‘No, just Ort, Grammar.’
In her hand there’s a big red apple. She likes to have things like that around, bright things she can still see. Sometimes she just looks at her feet which are the colour of boiled crayfish and stink twice as much. Old people are a bit boring and a bit scary. But I go in because something makes me. And there she is, all tears down her face, big branches of them. You’d think they were our family tree. Her arms are all old and bag down under. I just shine her apple with me hanky and leave our family tree on her face and go out.
There is a bit in me, you know, that tells me my Dad is not dead. But it isn’t enough. Fat won’t come over to muck around today – I just know it. I don’t want to muck around anyway. I’m just sitting here in the cool kitchen thinking of all the things I don’t want to do. It only takes one thing to make you unhappy.
I should go down to the old sawmill. I should be thinking of all the funny things that have happened to us. I should chop some kindling and start the fire for Mum – Tegwyn will be home in a minute. I should . . . I should figure out why all . . . Mum’s glass jars along the shelf above the stove are all full of . . . jewels. Crikey! In the flour jar there’s big red stones like the big lumps you get with a blood nose. And in the rice jar there’s diamonds! Eight big, fat jars with their lids pointing at me, all full of shining things. Jewels!
‘Oh, Ort.’ There’s Mum standing in the doorway with her arm against the frame. Her hair is across and up and all over the place and her eyes are red. ‘Thought you might get the stove going for us.’<
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I don’t say a word. I’ve still got one eye on those rubies and gems. I point at them. Mum looks and then looks back at me.
‘What?’ she whispers.
And then they’re gone. Flour and rice and lentils and icing sugar and tea are back in their jars.
‘No. Nothin’.’
Mum looks at me and I look at Mum.
‘Is that you, Lil Pickering?’ Grammar calls from down in her room.
‘No, Mum, it’s me,’ Mum calls. ‘Come on, Ort, get the stove going. Tegwyn’ll be wanting her bath.’
‘Is Dad dead?’ My mouth just says it – I can’t help it.
‘No,’ she says, tying an apron on, the one with Sydney Harbour Bridge on it. ‘No, he’s not dead.’
‘Is he crook?’
‘Pretty crook, yes. He’s in a coma, Ort. He’s not awake. In a coma. Like you were once. You probably don’t remember.’
But I do remember. I was only small, but I do remember. I was dead. Twice. Two times my heart stopped and my brain stopped.
‘You had meningitis. Your head was all full of water. You screamed like you were on fire. And then you went asleep and didn’t wake up for two weeks.’
I remember. It was like a sea, up and down on waves and the light was like after the sun has just gone down, and voices called.
‘Twice, you know, they said it was all over. But I didn’t listen to them and neither did you. In hospitals you just don’t listen to them ’cause they don’t know any better than us. They don’t really know what it is that makes people work. They just guess.
‘In the end there was me and these three nurses – rebels they were – and we just kept talking to you, talking about the weather and how’s yer father —’ she stops for a moment and I look at me toe-scabs – ‘and the doctors went crook and tried to keep us away. He can’t hear you, they said. But we just kept on chatterin’ away there until one morning you just woke up. You were a baby all over again. You were born all over again. Had to have you in nappies. Three years old – in nappies. God, I cried.’