‘Shit on a duck!’ he thinks. ‘What’s goin’ on here?’
* * *
If you could take all the little bits of annoyance and anger and frustration and sadness and regret that pop up in various parts of your life and put them into a big funnel so they come out in a concentrated, focussed little stream of poison, you’d know what was happening to me as I rode Dale Sutton out into the yard. All the answers that I couldn’t get, all the blank faces that were turned to me, all the stupidity that I saw in myself and the helplessness that I saw in Bridie and the incomprehension in Asael; all the resentment of being abandoned by people who should have loved me – I was taking it all out on Dale. In the moment, I had no sense of what was happening. I didn’t feel him get his fingers into my hair and I didn’t feel myself fly through the air, over his shoulder.
It wasn’t until I slammed into the earth on my back, hurled from a great height, it seemed, that the rage oofed out of me. As did my ability to breathe. No air in, no air out. Ears ringing, eyes closed, lungs simply lounging in my chest, taking a break. And I thought, ‘Okay, so he’s killed me. At least that’s an end to it!’ And then I thought, ‘What stories? What stories have they been hearing about me? What trouble have I made?’
I lay there for long seconds wondering about that. Then I heard a little gasp. And another. It was my lungs clocking back on. I opened my eyes and saw Amalthea’s face. And Asael’s. Their lips were moving. Something was frightening them, but I didn’t know what. Then I saw, above and behind them, shouldering into view, the faces of Lyle Hoggitt and Sergeant Morrow. And I knew that ‘the trouble’ I’d caused had come looking for me in at least three forms: the least of which was probably the Sutton brothers!
* * *
Sergeant Morrow’s upside-down face was the one I focussed on. Expressions are hard to read when a face is upside-down, but I could tell by the bulge of his eyes and the colour of his throat that he was in a blue rage. Someone turned my ears back on then and I heard Lyle Hoggitt, who’d disappeared from view, squawking at the boys, cursing and threatening and ordering them back to their cars. One of the answering voices, swearing innocence, was that of Hoggs, his own son, which disappointed me a little. I couldn’t concentrate on it much, however, because feeling, which had also temporarily abandoned me, suddenly returned, in a very cranky mood! And my breathing apparatus, my back, my head and my every joint all started screaming at me: We’re busted! Look what you’ve gone and done to us!
Thank God for Amalthea, who brushed away the onlookers and half-carried me into the house, oozing me gently onto the sofa. A ruckus followed us in but, for the moment, it wasn’t the police or the mayor or any of the boys. It was Asael and Rosemary, both of whom were dancing and bouncing like a pair of spring lambs. Rosemary bucking and bleating merrily while Asael jumped on the furniture, sparring with the air. It took me a minute to recognise it: a war dance.
Very very slowly, I pushed myself onto my bum as Amalthea came cooing over me, brushing dirt away, swabbing my face with a cold cloth and fretting over what might be broken.
“Did we win?” I groaned.
Amalthea winked. “Ask Dale next time you see him. Assuming he gets his hearing back!”
Outside, the remnants of arguments were still skittering about like sparrows. Sergeant Morrow, I learned later, had insisted that the boys track down and extinguish every last flaming spark from the petrol explosion. Under his supervision, they’d scoured the yard, sprayed water onto the walls and roof and even into the Poinciana. When finally he was satisfied, last threats were muttered, car doors were slammed and we all breathed in the silence. Briefly.
For the sake of decorum, before opening the screen and letting the authorities come in, Amalthea warned Rosemary and Asael against resuming their dance. And by the time Sergeant Morrow and Mayor Hoggitt stood before me, I was fairly certain that even the Great Bandini would have seen survival in the dirt of my palms.
* * *
Morrow, good cop that he was, glared about the room. His posture said that he knew evidence of crimes was nearby and woes betide anyone who tried to conceal it. I thought of the flowers I’d stolen and said a silent thankyou to Rosemary, who’d finished them off for breakfast. Mayor Hoggitt edged in to stand a step behind Morrow, his whole expression one of shocked disbelief.
“You!” the Sergeant said flatly, looking at me.
I nodded. I was far more frightened of him than I could ever imagine being of Dale Sutton.
“You didn’t come.”
I shook my head, slowly, showing my confusion. I’d expected him to ask if I was all right.
“I told you to come to the station yesterday. You didn’t come.”
I shook my head more rapidly, trying to remember why. So much had happened and it was all stirred up in my brain.
Somethin’ wrong with your neck, girl?” he demanded and my head shook even harder.
“Be still then. Stop floppin’ around.” With a great effort, I stilled myself and tried, this time without success, to hold his gaze.
“Now I’ve had to come lookin’ for ye. Ye see? Ye think I might have better things to do with my time than come lookin’ for you?”
Having barely gotten control of my head, I set it to nodding again and Morrow frowned with disgust. Amalthea, I noticed, had merely crossed her arms, in imitation of his stance, and was waiting to see what developed. Lyle Hoggitt was casting his eyes rapidly about, as though he’d just realised he was in a maze.
Morrow’s eyes, having seen all there was to see in me, swung to the corpse of Garlic. He studied Garlic’s stillness and thoughtfully compared it to the upright wariness of Rosemary. He stepped closer, nudging the corpse with his foot. When nothing happened, he bent to touch it.
“Dead goat,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Ye’ll wanna get rid o’ that.”
Next, he turned his attention toward Queenie which, I suddenly realised, had moved half-way across the room, into a corner. When had that happened? Had Asael shifted it during his dance? Or had Amalthea’s theory of its immobility just been shattered?
“What’s that?” Morrow demanded.
We all looked at it, balancing delicately on the impossible point of its round bottom.
* * *
Asael smiles warmly at Queenie and sees, in return, a flash of purple from within her depths. There and gone. He doesn’t understand what Queenie is, but he understands the message. Stand off! The noise of the fight and the explosion – his every instinct tells him that the flash is a sign of warning. He glances at Ruth, at Amalthea, at Morrow and at Lyle Hoggitt. None of them have reacted. Perhaps it was too quick for them. He looks at Rosemary who is looking back at him. She nods a slow confirmation. Asael looks back at Morrow whose hand is now resting on the leather cover of his holstered pistol. It’s okay, he thinks toward Queenie. No one needs to get hurt.
* * *
“It’s nothing,” Asael blurted before anyone else could respond. “Just a thing we found in the cane . . . me and Ruth and Amalthea. Bit of junk.”
“Junk? That the thing Isak was talking about seeing? Thing he had with him when yez found ‘im?”
Asael’s shrug – his attempt to put the policeman off – turned to a rapid nod when Morrow barked a loud, “Eh?”
“Well I’ll be buggered!” said Morrow, bending to study its surface. “So this is his space sausage Queen o’ Sheba freakin’ thing? Whatchu doin’ with it here?”
“Well, I . . . I . . . !”
Amalthea interrupted. “We’re just keeping it safe for the moment. The boys came looking for it yesterday and we were afraid they’d damage it. You know, before the authorities came for it.”
“Yeah? You notified any authorities yet?”
“Well, no, not yet! We only fetched it this morning.”
“Course ye did! ‘Bout to ring someone any minute, I imagine, eh? Bit o’ space junk . . . might be worth a few quid, d’ye reckon?”
“We wouldn
’t know about that, Sergeant Morrow. But probably not! A bit of ruined scientific equipment can’t be worth much.”
“That what it is, is it? Not an alien, like Isak reckoned? How’d you get it here? You carry it?” While speaking, he put an exploratory hand on Queenie’s surface.
* * *
And Asael sees once again the flash of colour from deep beneath its skin. Once, twice, like a flush of blood past a peephole. He looks around expectantly but, again, no one seems to notice. Whatever is to be done, it seems, must be up to him.
* * *
“You . . . you . . . you shouldn’t touch her!” Asael stammered.
If I was dumbfounded to hear Asael utter something that sounded like a warning to Morrow, even in such a mild way, it was nothing compared to what Morrow must have felt. He hadn’t, I suspect, fully calmed down from dealing with the boys and Asael’s remark instantly re-called that deep red flush up from under his collar.
“What? Shouldn’t touch it? Shouldn’ touch this thing?” He slapped at it hard, and it fell, as a natural thing should, out of balance, leaning into the corner. “I touch whatever I bloody well think I need to touch, little man! I’m the freakin’ representative o’ the legal system here! Get me? Who the hell’re you? Bloody cheeky little grub who thinks he can lay claim to government property? Well, I can tell you, young McFarlane – tell all of you – if that’s what you think, you got your heads somewhere where the light don’ shine! And that’s a fact!”
He slapped his hand against Queenie a second time, then moved proprietarily to put his arms around it. He rocked it, testing its solidity, then bent his knees to lift.
I knew – we all knew, straight away – that something bad was happening. We could tell by the buzz that filled the air and the choking noise that filled Morrow’s throat: “Uuunnngggggg!” The man’s entire body began to vibrate and the hairs on his head, I noted with fascination, rose slowly to attention.
There was nothing any of us could do. Mayor Hoggitt raised his hands to his mouth and retreated to the door. Asael and Rosemary had stepped back the moment Morrow stooped to put his arms around her and Amalthea and I moved back when the buzzing sounded. We all watched as the policeman’s eyes rolled toward us, in painful appeal. There was nothing any of us dared to do.
I don’t know how long it lasted; maybe for a slow count of seven or eight. Then, with what must have been a super-human effort, Sergeant Morrow threw himself backward, away from Queenie, somehow breaking his contact with her.
The momentum threw him tumbling to the floor, where he scrabbled backward like a crab until he ran into the wall; and there he lay, panting – like us, watching Queenie’s final spin. For a moment, she wobbled and whirled precariously on her round bottom, flashing and buzzing frantically, bumping the chairs and ricocheting off the table until, at last fatally unbalanced, she began toppling slowly forward. Only Asael, impelled by his new-found courage and despite her obvious electrical charge, lunged to catch her, snatching her into his arms.
No one could have anticipated him doing that; or been quick enough to intercept him. I shouted his name and reached for him but I was already too late. Adding his momentum to her own, Queenie flipped and spun, dragging them both to the floor where, locked together, they came at last to rest against the body of Garlic.
We were all of us frozen in place as she buzzed a last time or two. The sound faltered, became intermittent and stopped. The room filled with silence. The only sound, I expect, that intruded on any of us would have been the sound of our own wildly beating hearts. Six wildly beating hearts. Then a seventh joined in. The little pink protrusion of Garlic’s tongue disappeared back into his mouth, chased in by a shallow breath – just enough to force a cough – and then a deeper breath. His eyelids popped open.
* * *
Kevin says that sometimes there’s no point in asking for explanations. Sometimes, he says, we’re just not meant to know. Life would be a whole lot easier, I think, if there was some way of telling which times those are; but I guess nobody’s in the business of making life easier.
Amalthea, of course, for the moment, wasn’t interested in explanations anyhow; she had her hands full restraining Rosemary and weeping over Garlic who struggled, but was unable, to rise. Sergeant Morrow also, was in no condition to ask questions as he limped away, his limbs shuddering, in the equally shaky grasp of Lyle Hoggitt. Lyle managed to shout a defiant threat from the yard: “That thing is a menace! It oughta be destroyed!” But he had no questions to ask.
That left Asael and me. And I had plenty. I started with the panicky ones.
“Now you see? It’s nearly killed someone! Didn’t I tell you it was dangerous? Do see how lucky you were, not to be electrocuted? Didn’t it shock you? Don’t touch it! Asael! I said don’t touch it! Are you listening to me?”
He wasn’t listening to me. He was busy righting Queenie which, to my added confusion, had returned to complete passivity. No glowing or sparking or buzzing or twirling! He simply pushed her gently upright and she returned to attention, balanced easily once again on a square centimetre of her round bottom.
Asael patted her gently and said, “Thank you, Queenie.”
At that moment, I could have grabbed his ears like I had Dale’s, and shaken his smug little head like a baby’s rattle and kicked The Thing into a corner and walked out of the house to plant my feet on the ground and hold my head in the breeze and insist that the world had not suddenly turned upside down. I could have, but I settled for snuffling helplessly.
“Can we at least get her out of the middle of the floor?” I said at last and made a not very convincing move toward it.
“I’ll do it,” Asael said. “You’d best not touch her just now.”
They were almost the same words he’d said to Sergeant Morrow and Morrow had ignored them. I wasn’t about to make the same mistake. Asael moved her easily. And I let him.
Then he said, “Have we had breakfast yet? I’m hungry!”
* * *
We had had breakfast. Twice! Once at home and once at Amalthea’s. We’d also, in the four hours since we’d left home, acquired a Space Thing called Queenie, been in a fight with a gang of boys, nearly electrocuted a policeman and resurrected a dead goat. Not bad going! And yet, as time would show, not apparently enough for whatever Fates were in charge of organising that Sunday morning.
For the moment though, I couldn’t think of anything more appropriate to do than to put Amalthea’s kettle on to boil. I sent Bridie a text, telling her where we were, hoping that, at best, her migraine had passed or, next best, that she was still asleep. I didn’t want to ring in case she pressed me for details which, despite our new ‘nothing but the truth’ pact, I would obviously have to lie about.
And lastly I went back into the living room to ask Asael when he’d last taken his medication. He smiled blandly and assured me that I needn’t worry about that.
* * *
Hot, milky, highly sugared tea is a great soother. Asa and I like it that way and Amalthea just got what she got. Rosemary got leavings from the rubbish bin – orange peel, onion, the broken ends of broccoli – all of which she seemed to enjoy, and Garlic got raisins, fed to him one at a time by Amalthea. And Queenie got the cold shoulder from me and plenty of happy nods from Asael.
For a while, Amalthea and I chatted in soft amazement, wondering about Queenie – whether she could, contrary to all appearances, somehow be alive. And if she was alive, what kind of life did she have? Then our talk turned to Garlic. He had rolled his legs under his belly and was holding his head up, taking the raisins the way a sick person takes spoonfuls of soup – dutifully. Now and again he turned his blind eyes in the direction of one of our voices but his every attempt to stand ended in collapse.
We wondered then if he had really been dead! And if he had been dead, what was that like?
Eventually, with no other thought but to keep my mind from dwelling on what we’d been through, I asked abou
t Garlic’s blindness. And that led us, naturally, back into Amalthea’s and Rosemary’s and Garlic’s history.
* * *
Philippa had stumbled across the ‘Nothing matters; everything counts’ phrase when she was only ten or eleven and had barnacled them onto herself so that, in the remaining months of her life, only those willing to risk a slashing would venture near her. They became a kind of motto that she relished flaunting, more so as it became clear that her illness could not be controlled. Not even Amalthea, her attentive eighteen-year-old sister, was immune from attack.
“Mum and dad,” she’d say to Amalthea, “think it matters that I’m going to die. “But it doesn’t really, does it, Am! I mean, look!” She’d point to animals on their parents’ small farm, Rosemary and Garlic amongst them. “When you take the arrogance out of it, we’re just like them. We’re born and we work and we produce milk or eggs or cardboard cartons or whatever and then we die! And the sun still comes up, just as fresh and new, every day! Time doesn’t stop. Time doesn’t bat an eye! Because none of it matters in the big picture! I’m right, aren’t I Am’? Go on, admit it!”
She debated with Amalthea because their mother refused to argue and because Philippa’s father, in his gentle, smiling way, had retreated behind an argument that he would not abandon.
“We love you, Pip!” he would reply. “Surely that must matter? In the great scheme of things?”
Too smug, Philippa had grumped to Thea. Too smug and adult by half! And ultimately she had, at least to her own satisfaction, found an argument that seemed to suit. “If love mattered to the world,” she had carefully explained to him, “then it would change the world. It would be a kinder world. But it’s not. Ipso facto, not even love matters!” She’d wagged a cheeky finger in his face. “It does, however, count. It counts very heavily in your favour, young man!”
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