“Now, dear! After nearly two days of being dead, he ‘woke up’!” She snorted with derision. “Your sainted father the Reverend wouldn’t have dismissed such a thing so lightly I don’t think! Do you? Raising the dead? And Lyle says that Sergeant Morrow tried to intervene in some way but was rejected by the Heavenly object and nearly done to death! My goodness! Can that also be true?”
“Well, it did kind of bowl him over I guess!”
“But it didn’t shock Asael?”
“No!”
“Have you touched it?”
“Oh yeah! A little! Not much, but.”
“What about Amalthea? Has Amalthea touched it?”
“I . . . I don’t know! Asa’ carried it on his own from the paddock, you see! It’s very light, he says!”
“So mainly only Asael can touch it?”
“Well . . .!” I was about to say that Isak practically draped himself on it and survived quite nicely, thank you very much. But I pulled myself up just in time. I hadn’t told Alf about Isak and I wasn’t ready to tell anyone else, either! Not yet! “Rosemary, the other goat, she rubs against it! No problem!”
“Ah, well, now there’s an interesting thing! And tell me, dear, which one is Rosemary? Is she the ‘Force Gathering’ one? Or the ‘Gather in You’ one?”
“She’s the ‘Gather in You’ one.”
“Is she? So the one brought back to life then . . . he’s the ‘Force is Gathering’ one! My my my! That is interesting, don’t you think?”
I had no idea what was interesting about that and was about to say so when Marybeth chirped, “Oh! Excuse me, dear, there’s Alice! She won’t have heard the news, I don’t expect. I’ll just pop back and see how she is.”
Alice, it seemed, was in a second car that had pulled up behind us. In fact a short queue was building there. In Sugar Town, two stopped vehicles make a town meeting and people were already stepping off the footpath, willy-nilly, for gossip and greetings at car windows. In the side mirror, I watched Marybeth lean through Alice’s window and I could hear their excited chatter. Her arm came up to point at Alf’s Ute and her head reappeared briefly to check on us. I had the uncomfortable feeling that my name was being bandied about.
I looked to Alf, to encourage him to move off and I couldn’t help but tune in on the end of his conversation with Geoff, who was squatting on his heels, gripping the window ledge, rocking the vehicle gently.
“Gone back to the station, they reckon!” Geof was saying. “You know Mash! ‘Member two year ago that big concreter bloke, Angelo Ferrari, belted him with a four be two out back o’ the G.C.? Would o’ killed a black dog, they reckon, he hit him that hard. Took Mash about half an hour to shake it off before he come back lookin’ for Angelo.”
“Yeah,” said Alf. “Reckon when he dies, they’ll have to strap him to the slab.”
The two men shook with silent laughter.
Then, without another word, Geoff pulled himself to his feet, patted the side of the Ute as though it was a favourite dog, and slouched back to Alice’s car. We stayed where we were, Alf contemplatively watching in his own side mirror. He seemed to have forgotten the task of driving.
“News travels fast in Sugar Town, eh Alf?”
“Only thing that does, Ruthie.”
He leaned over the wheel, to change his view in the mirror and I looked around the street. On the opposite side was Johnathon Cranna’s Grand Central Hotel. ‘Sunday Special!’ said the chalk board out front: ‘Chicken Kiev - $11.00.’ And below that: GET WELL SOON, J.C. The windows on the top floor were closed and curtained and I thought again of Johnathon’s private suite up there where, I supposed, there would be maids keeping the dust from settling while he was in hospital. I was wondering how he’d cope with the two flights of stairs when suddenly an apparition rose up in front of us like the ghost of Christmas past. Rap-rap-rapping on the vehicle’s bonnet with a rolled newspaper.
I jumped half out of my skin before I realised, unhappily, that I was looking into the flushed face of a slightly unfocussed Mayor Lyle Hoggitt.
“Ye broken down, Alf?” he demanded, giving the bonnet several more whacks.
“Eh? No! No, jus’ stopped for a word with Geoffo, Lyle.” He poked a thumb rearwards.
It was obvious that, in working the crowd, the mayor had worked himself right up to the edge of frenzy. His hair and clothes were dishevelled, the little veins in his cheeks were inflamed and his eyes were darting about like a pair of black ants on a drain board. He leaned on the Ute as though defying it to move and, “You!” he stammered, pointing and shaking his newspaper at me. Then he swung it to point at Alf.
“You!” he started again. “You got any idea what this lot’s been up to on your property? Bloody assault an’ battery, that’s what! On a police officer, no less! And an elected public official! Not to mention innocent, unsuspecting boys who only stopped to offer their help gettin’ rid o’ that friggin’ dead goat! An’ that don’ even begin on the interferin’ with government property charge!”
I could see little drops of spit flying from his lips, pattering onto the Ute’s bonnet. Passing pedestrians were drifting to a stop and people actually got out of the cars behind us, the better to hear. Alf’s eyes rolled lazily from mirror to mirror, to me and back to the mayor. He hung his elbow out the window and leaned his head on his fist, a picture of patience.
“That a fact, Lyle?” he said.
“Too bloody right it’s a fact! I was there, mate! A booby trap! Bloody near fried Masher right there on the spot!” He turned his attention back to me, pointing and shaking his rolled newspaper as though hoping words would spill out onto me like droplets of holy water. Then he turned it into a wand to encompass the gathering crowd. “After all we done for your mob! Your father’d be ashamed o’ you! Askin’ questions! Stirrin’ the pot! Where’s your respect? Where’s your gratitude? Where’s your sister? Why isn’t she lookin’ after you, teachin’ you to mind your betters?”
As far as I was concerned, he could say whatever he wanted about me and probably not be too far off the mark. But there was no way he was going to start bad-mouthing Bridie! Bridie, who’d given all she had to this town and been supported by lies throughout it all. Bridie, who someone in this town had taken as a child and slammed into the ground and . . . ! My hand was on the door handle and steam was roaring out of my ears. I didn’t know what I was going to say, but I knew it was going to be very loud and very angry and delivered from very close to the mayor’s screwed up little face. And then, if I had to get up on the Ute’s tray and belt it out for the rest of the gogglers, I reckon I’d’ve been up for that, as well!
Before I could get a leg out, however, Alf very neatly brought the harangue to a fitting end. He brought his big arm up and dropped it on the horn. The sudden blare threw Lyle’s restraining hand up off the bonnet and sent him staggering. A sound very like the sound of a squeezed bicycle horn tore out of his throat. “Waaaaaaaaah!’ And his face turned instantly into an ashen sheet, with dark rents where his eyes and mouth popped wide. Alf, his head still resting on his fist, said lazily, “Sorry ‘bout that, Lyle! Mus’ be a short circuit. You right?”
And then Frieda came, like the force of nature that she was, shouldering her way through the crowd. She swung her gaze around, lethal as a cane-cutter’s knife, and the entire crowd shuffled two steps further back. Then she went about the job of straightening Lyle up, patting down his clothes and pushing his hair into place. Only when she was satisfied with him did she turn to look at us in the Ute. Nobody else moved.
“Alf,” she said softly, nodding acknowledgement.
“Frieda,” he answered equally softly.
“Ruthie,” she said, turning her eyes to me.
“I know,” I said, with barely any voice at all, “the truth!”
She didn’t look nearly as stunned as I’d hoped she would but she looked at me for that extra couple of seconds that seem to indicate someone wants to spit on your sh
oes. Then she put her hand in the mayor’s and they moved off. The crowd cranked itself into its little random motions and Alf, at last, put the Ute in gear. All back on our original trajectories.
The rest of the short distance to my house, we passed in silence, Alf with his lips set in a thin line. When we rolled to a stop at our fence, he nodded to me curtly, dismissing me from the cab. I felt that, before I let him go, I should at least offer my thanks – an acknowledgment that he probably saved me from making an ugly situation even uglier. I turned to him, hands still folded in my lap.
“That was . . .!” and I couldn’t think how to do it. So I finished abruptly with, “Thanks Alf,” and I opened the door.
“Ruthie,” he said and I turned expectantly. “Nobody knows the truth, Ruthie. You might think you do. But nobody does.”
I got out and he drove away. I stood there, watching him go, wondering. My understanding was that, with the exception of my immediate family, the truth was common knowledge in Sugar Town. Everyone knew what had happened to Bridie and to Gramma G. They just wanted to keep it under wraps! But even the best of wraps wear out. And that was a truth I was sure of.
* * *
The house was empty. Bridie’s bed was messed, which wasn’t like her. And there was an empty pill bottle beside it. I began to get a very uneasy feeling. Back through the house I went, looking for her in each of the rooms. In the study, there was a letter open on the Reverend’s desk, which was also unusual.
I read it, then sat down and read it again. My hands were trembling but some of the phrases seemed to burn on the page: changes in her body; crushed and broken inside; fooled into believing this baby is yours and mine.
Shit! Shit! Shit! So she knew! I could only guess she and Bessie had somehow gotten together and this letter was the outcome. I read it through a third time. What if the baby’s a monster? What if we can’t love it?
I thought of Asael, as I was so used to seeing him, cradled in Bridie’s arms. And Bridie . . . where was Bridie now? I went back to her room and picked up the empty pill bottle.
The very next thing I knew, I was standing at the front door, at the top of the stairs, gasping for breath, screaming her name. She had to be in the yard! Or working in the room under the house! Or walking back from the shops! She had to be!
* * *
I sat alone by her bed for the longest time, watching her chest rise and fall, rise and fall, half expecting at some point to see it fall and refuse to rise again. People came and went but she didn’t move. I’d watched Bridie sleep before. She sucked at it. She was always twitching and making little strangled noises. That time though, in the hospital, she was motionless and still beneath the sheet. Pale and beautiful.
When Asael arrived, he was owl-eyed but ten times calmer than I would have expected. There was definitely a new Asael amongst us by that time. Matron had walked Asael to the room and they arrived at the door at the same time as Doctor Dabney. The two of them, man and boy, stood for a moment, facing one another, each with his hands in his pockets.
“She’ll be okay,” Dabney finally said.
“I know,” Asael answered. His glasses were sliding forward and he twitched his nose exaggeratedly, tilting his head to urge them back into place.
“I mean, I don’t want you to be frightened. She’s not conscious, but that’s only because, right now, we don’t want her to be conscious. She’s not in any danger.”
“I know,” Asael repeated.
Dabney stared, meditating for a long moment before drawing forth a hand and grasping Asael’s chin, which he lifted and moved from side to side, as though checking a worrisome hinge.
“You been taking your medication, Asael?”
Asael lifted his head away in a movement that could have meant yes or no or nothing at all. Dabney looked in at me then.
“Matron can organise a couple of cots if you want to stay on later.”
“How long will it take?” I asked, not knowing what else to say and, before Dabney could answer, Asael said, “Not long.”
Dabney looked at him sceptically before placing a deliberate finger between Asa’s eyes and pushing his spec’s firmly into position. Then he stepped aside and gestured roomwards with his head. Matron’s face had betrayed no reaction whatsoever. But she waited until Dabney had moved off.
“Does she know we’re here, Matron?” I asked.
“On one level or another, Ruth . . . I’m sure she does.”
And then, from out of sight, Dabney’s voice rumbled. “See you for a moment please, Matron?”
* * *
He doesn’t touch her, doesn’t take his hands from his pockets. They are charged, he knows, with an energy granted him by The Thing – by Queenie. He has rubbed her before leaving Amalthea’s house and, like a magic lantern she has produced a jinni and placed it within his power. It’s a thing she can do. How else explain the revival of the dragonfly and the resurrection of Garlic, who was surely dead? Even the old man, Isak, whose mind everyone said was gone, has been granted a return of his senses. Asael can see the progression from simpler tasks to harder ones and each of them a lesson surely intended to show him the increasing magnitude of her power.
He thinks with pleasure of Ruthie, who saw the truth of things and made him able to see as well. ‘God strengthens,’ she’d said. ‘Your name means ‘God strengthens’. Don’t be afraid.’
‘And when it comes to the Gathering of the Force,’ she’d told him, ‘there are three types of people. We have to learn which we are.’ He knew she would be proud of him.
So he waits for the moment when Bridie’s breathing will falter. When the moment comes, he will lay his hands on her and release the jinni which will make his sister live.
* * *
Asael and I touched briefly, as you do for reassurance, and I gave him my chair at Bridie’s bedside. The room had two doors, one into the corridor and one into an external courtyard that was shady and overhung by trees. I opened the door to the courtyard and stepped out. There was a chair and solitude and time to think. Then, from the next room, I heard Dabney’s voice.
“Listen! I need you to get on the phone and try to track down Morrow. I tried to hang onto him this morning after that shock he got but he wouldn’t have it. He should be at home resting, but he might well be at the station. You know what he’s like if he doesn’t get to play his part, so we have to at least give him the option of investigating. Did you give her exactly the prescription I ordered the other day? Because if not . . . !”
Matron’s voice interrupted him with a command. “Keep your voice down, Doctor!” And then her own fell to a barely audible pitch. I wasn’t really listening. They had their jobs to do. A minute later, though, the doctor’s low bass rumble rose again into my hearing.
“Bloody stupid business! You know what this is about, don’t you?”
“Who ever really knows what this sort of thing is about, Doctor?”
“Don’t be coy with me, Matron. You know as well as I do what we’re talking about. Listen, when you do get onto Morrow, you’d best mention this letter that Kevin Truck talked about. If Rita named names in it, well, the police need to know about it.”
The rumbling continued for a moment then, “Any word on Isak yet? Hasn’t been found? Hasn’t been seen?”
I figured I knew the answer to that. The voices faded into the corridor.
I sat there, shivering in the shade despite the October warmth. She was going to be okay. Doctor Dabney said so.
* * *
Around that point, I heard a rubbery squeak somewhere in the corridor and Johnathon Cranna’s voice. He was apparently getting acquainted with a wheelchair and trying to manoeuvre it through Bridie’s door.
“Gimme a hand, will ya kid?” I heard him say to Asael. “I haven’t got the hang o’ this thing yet.”
I could hear the shrug in Asael’s voice. “Can’t.” I’d noticed that his hands seemed to be glued into his pockets.
�
�Oh! Righto! Fine then!”
I should have gone into the room myself and helped, but I didn’t much want to face anyone. It seemed to me that everyone must look at us McFarlanes and think, ‘If only you knew what we know!’ Or, if they were really up-to-date with the gossip, they’d be thinking, ‘You’re barely holding it together, aren’t you?’ I was pretty certain Johnathon would be up with the gossip and I just couldn’t bear to see pity in his eyes.
“I heard the commotion earlier,” I heard him saying to Asael. “When Truckie brought her in. She gonna be okay?”
“Yep.”
“Good. That’s good. I heard she . . . kinda had some flashbacks or something. From way back. That right?”
Asael said nothing.
“Deceptive stuff that. Like sometimes you think you remember stuff but it might never really’ve happened, you know? Manufactured memories, that’s what they call it. All a matter of suggestion. People grizzle away at you until you start to lose touch with reality. Might o’ bin guilty of it yourself sometimes, eh? You know?”
Asael not only wouldn’t have known, but wouldn’t have cared what Johnathon was getting at. It did make me think though! Not the ‘manufactured’ part, but the ‘memory’ part. It’s one thing to have someone tell you something happened and something else entirely to actually remember it happening. I began to wonder if reading that letter could have provoked actual memories in Bridie. Would there be a place in her mind where she actually now had to relive the experience of being held down, having her clothes ripped – looking up into a face or faces that she knew? And if that was the case, could she ever live again, let alone live in Sugar Town?
“So you wouldn’ know, would you?” Johnathon was asking in a tone of exasperation. “No, course not. Well . . . you know . . . I thought Ruthie might be here. I know she’s been . . . asking around about things – things she imagines might have happened. But she put herself in harm’s way for me the other day, at the crash. So, I’m indebted aren’t I? Definitely owe your mob at least one return favour, wouldn’t you reckon?”
Asael remained quiet and Johnathon gave up the struggle. “Tell you what! When Ruthie shows up, whyn’t you tell her Johnathon Cranna stopped by. And tell her . . . tell her . . . ! Ah never mind. I’ll catch up with her and tell her myself.”
Sugar Town Page 36