by Joy Dettman
‘Fred,’ she says, pointing to the bar. ‘Reckons you’ll need ya strength. He reckons ya gunna help him dig the grave fer old Bert.’
‘They dig graves with machines,’ I said, knowing it was some trick and they were all in on it, but I was hypnotised by that steak. I watched the plate move away from her stomach and settle on the table in front of me.
‘Dunno what they do in the city, love, but up here old Fred digs ’em,’ she said, handing me a knife and fork, a bottle of tomato sauce and a platter of bread.
I meant to eat and run, but when it came to the crunch, I couldn’t. If that decrepit old bastard could dig a grave, then so could I.
Me hands were raw meat two hours after picking up the crowbar. He knew they would be, the bloody old sadist, but he gave me some mutton grease and a pair of gloves.
‘Keep digging, boy,’ he said. ‘I seen the size o’ that steak.’
We finished it by moonlight, beneath a sky of stars. Between us we went through two sixpacks of stubbies. I remember lying in the bottom of the hole, laughing drunk, laughing like a crazy man because I’d helped dig a grave, and laughing because I was too sore and too drunk to climb out. I was howling, choking with laughter, until the knot of hell and hate and hopelessness in me guts burst open, and a tidal wave of self pity washed over me. I stopped laughing then and just howled.
I thought he’d be long gone by the time I dragged myself into a corner and looked up. He was sitting on the mound at the grave-side, a strangely silent silhouette against the moonlit sky – an overgrown old leprechaun sitting on his toadstool, sipping on his dram a poteen.
I felt about as big as I had the day me old girl dumped me and they took me to a house full of kids where I wet me pants and the kids laughed. He wasn’t laughing. His head turned as I half sobbed, trying to get under it, trying to reclaim a bit of guts.
‘Let it out if it’s still in you, lad. Not a bloody soul can hear you out here. They’re all dead,’ he said. ‘Pour it all back into the dirt. That’s all it’s any good for. Curse the injustice of life and the self-satisfied bastard who sits up there dishing it out to us. This is where I let it out, lad. There’s times I can’t wait until someone dies, so I come out here, sit on a tombstone and I call God a bastard.
‘He took my boys. I had three of them. Big lads like you. Big tough lads, they were, and he took them. Not content with one, he wanted the bloody lot, and one way or another he got the bloody lot. I’ve cried out here, lad. I’ve been in that hole with you and wished some bugger would do me a favour and toss the dirt in. Want me to start shovelling, or do you want a hand out? Me hand is reaching out to you, lad. You can take it or leave it.’
I took it. I crawled out of that hole.
I woke up at midday in Fred’s spare room, and not too certain of how I’d got there either, and I met his Julia in the kitchen. She was a frail, bewhiskered wisp of fossilised female, her hair so sparse and fine her pink scalp came shining through; her hand, when she took mine, a bird’s misshapen claw.
I ate, ill-at-ease, while she fussed over me, patted my arm, then old Fred came in and handed me half the cash he’d been paid for the grave.
‘Keep it,’ I replied, shrinking away from the notes I wanted so bad to snatch.
‘You earned it, lad.’
He took me hands in his calloused old paws and they made mine look small, small like a little kid’s hands are small, and he shook his head over blisters on blisters.
‘A man is a cruel bastard,’ he said. ‘I reckon you’ve got enough evidence there to prove you earned it, all right.’ He tucked the notes into me shirt pocket, then patted me shoulder, allowing his hand to rest there a moment.
Me eyes were turning into leaking traitorous bastards. Just the touch of kindness, the warmth in his old hand. It choked me up. I had to get out of there.
I gave the money to Wally, spent me five bucks change on petrol, except he kept on pumping it in. He filled the tank for me, even though he knew I couldn’t pay him. As I drove away, I yelled, ‘I’ll send ya a twenty, Wally.’
‘Yep, I know ya will, son,’ he yelled back, and I left him as I’d found him, picking at his front tooth with a screwdriver.
Me hands on the steering wheel burned like the fires of hell all the way back to the city, but it was a satisfying sort of pain. I’d pick-and-shovelled, pulled me weight all night beside old Fred, and I think maybe I was feeling a sort of lopsided pride in that pain.
Well, come Thursday and I’m withdrawing me dole, replacing the fifty bucks insurance into the zip section of me wallet when the bloody note baulks, refuses to go in. It sort of sits up and snarls ‘bludger’ at me – with old Fred’s voice. So I bought one of those pre-stamped envelopes at the post office next door. I addressed it to ‘Wally, The Mechanic’, and shoved in a twenty for me petrol. As I’m about to do the big lick and stick, I get this urge – or something. I cut a five dollar note in half and scribble on one side, Give this to old Fred. Tell him I’ll be back one day with some sticky tape.
There was something uncanny about posting that envelope, like me fingers were fighting to change their minds and hang on to me money, but old Fred was in the postbox, tugging on it. I let go, heard it hit the pile of other mail inside but stood on, sort of staring down that slot while smoothing the other half of that five dollar note, like maybe I was seeing something deep down in there that was . . . that was maybe something better.
‘You’re an interfering old bastard, Fred,’ I said, tucking the half-five into the insurance section of me wallet. It slipped in real easy, and I zipped it in – safe.
One Small Potato
Like a pink prehistoric slug convulsing over a tasty morsel, Malcolm Fletcher oozed over his table, savouring, praising its offerings, devouring them with small, near-sighted eyes.
Six eggs, poached in milk and garnished with tasty cheese, sat on two chunky slices of toast, each crust removed neatly, methodically. Four rashers of bacon, barely crisped, lay in perfect symmetry around the central pile of eggs. It was an artistic triumph. With a wheezing gasp and a shudder of anticipation that shook the man mountain from his sagging jowls to his ballooning belly, he picked up his knife and fork, his wet, baby lips pursed in concentration as the point of his knife delicately halved one golden yolk, and his fork carried it dripping to his mouth.
Carnal things he had long forgotten, eyes that once feasted in libraries now strained to see fine print, but his tastebuds compensated. Age had not wearied them. A naked, bloated, boneless thing, perspiration trickling in rivulets through the crevices of his fat, he quivered there until the task was done.
Then he stood. It was an earth shattering eruption, legs trembling, feet spread wide in an attempt to find a nominal balance so early in the day, his unlined baby face contorting with the effort while his eyes peered closely at a watch worn low on his wrist.
‘Eight thirty,’ he grunted, forcing one foot away from the empty plate, loathing it now, panting with the exertion of placing distance between himself and a fresh crusty loaf still sitting temptingly on the tabletop. ‘Eight thirty,’ he snarled, and waddled down the hall to his bathroom.
A simple equation of mass versus container, combined with an embarrassing experience two years ago, had convinced him that bathing was a pleasure he must forgo, thus he used only the southern end of the bath to stand beneath the shower for his usual five minutes.
The water in the mains was warm. Cold was a forgotten word in this land where heat and dust and flies ruled his life. He’d sailed with his family from England, seeking peace and plenty after the privation of the war. He’d found hell, and for ten years now had been stuck there, trapped in a termite infested two-room school by disinterest and obesity, and his wife, buried in the dust bowl the locals named a cemetery.
Grey mouse of a woman, the pink man thought while water rained down on his sweating form and splashed onto the wall and floor. Silent little mouse who had recreated him, made him whole and perfect in his s
on, his bright, beautiful boy who had grasped the world by its tail.
Quickly the water was turned off as memory was turned off. His son was dead. Malcolm Fletcher wished himself dead on that last day of the school year, and he pondered the possibilities of achieving his goal. Digging his grave with a knife and fork was taking too long.
Naked, dripping, wondering why he bothered to keep up the charade, he plodded to his bedroom to clothe his form in the camouflage garb of headmaster: the dark green trousers, the light green shirt, the flat shapeless shoes. A small green thermos flask in one hand, he slammed his back door with the other then ambled across the playing field to the schoolhouse, arriving as the bell pealed out its call to the tardy and the disinterested.
He could have bought his students’ approval on that last day, released them early to run from his classroom, some never to return, but Malcolm Fletcher chose not to. He stung with his sarcasm and whipped with his tongue, goading them, driving them, teaching the unteachable.
Ben Burton had returned to the classroom after lunch with the mute. She sat with her brother in the row of fifth graders, ousting the one-eyed Dooley boy from his seat. It angered the fat man. An invitation to the end of year ‘break-up’ party did not extend to supplying babysitting services in his classroom.
‘Will you take that child into Mrs Macy’s room, Burton, and leave her there,’ he commanded.
The boy remained seated. ‘Mum said, please sir, can she sit with me this afternoon, please sir,’ Ben replied, his eyes down, studying his shoes, but the mute’s eyes stared relentlessly into her headmaster’s until he was forced to look away.
Inscrutable eyes, Malcolm thought, black as two smouldering coals. They were defying him to move her from her brother’s side.
‘Mum says she stays, I say she goes. What do you say, Burton?’ he tormented.
Dark red blood flushed Ben’s already sunburned face and his chin dropped closer to his chest. ‘Can she stay with me, please, sir? She doesn’t know anyone in Mrs Macy’s room.’
‘So be it, Burton. Would you like to take over the position of teacher today? You make the decisions. Shall we finish off the day with arithmetic or do you prefer English? Speak up, Burton, the class is waiting.’ He continued on with his own brand of wit, while studying Jack Burton’s duo.
The sandy haired boy and the dark girl, diverse as dawn and dusk, yet clothed in the same faded rags, the same canvas shoes and in their pride. They’d rot in this filthy little town.
His mind wandered back then to a better time, a kinder year. He’d tried to guide the oldest Burton boy, John. He’d offered to coach him to a full scholarship, a passport out of town.
‘Pearls before swine,’ he muttered, and dragged his eyes away from the twin dark coals, allowing his gaze to traverse the almost skeletal frame of her.
The mark of a whipping was on her thigh, the broken skin already scabbing, but the fat man flinched away from a fact he didn’t wish to know. Knowing meant involvement. He had a permanent appointment with a brandy bottle and no time left over for involvement.
‘School magazines open at page fourteen. Read “The Team”, note the author. I’ll question you on your reading later. Take that as a warning.’
He waddled back to his table and sank down onto the abused chair, his eyes turning to the eastern window that looked out over the barren schoolyard. Every Australian country school he had seen had this same look of desolation, of earth worn bare of grass by little feet that came to stay for six long years. Each day they carried home more soil on their stinking sandshoes, until all that was left could barely support the complementary peppercorn trees that minded not the heat nor lack of rain, but grew on in grotesque shapes, their potent white sap tainting the hands, the hair and the very air in the barren yard.
‘Barren world. Barren life,’ he murmured, and reached for the green thermos conveniently placed in the drawer beneath his table, pouring a cup of what he hoped looked like weak black tea.
Heads lolling, propped in hands, bodies leaning, waiting, perhaps dreaming too of cool drinks – of raspberry cordial with chunks of ice floating, and of cream-puffs and jellied lamingtons the town ladies always provided at the shire hall on that final day of the school year.
The mute appeared to be reading, the two Burton heads close together, sharing one school magazine. No doubt copying her brother’s actions, Malcolm decided, and reached again for his thermos, shaking it to test its level. It would last him until three thirty when a tender leg of lamb awaited his culinary skills. He’d serve it with a crisp lettuce, tossed lightly in cream – but not too lightly. The barest sprinkling of mustard, but no potato, definitely no potato; a concession to his doctor.
He drank too fast. His cup again empty, he up-ended it to make quite certain.
‘Too soon a pleasure taken, then forgot,’ he quoted, measuring out a small refill before tucking the thermos out of reach inside the drawer.
He was feeling better by the minute, the knots in his neck unravelling, his skin stretching to fit his limbs, while memories fighting for supremacy that morning now slid away to the smudged grey corners of his mind where he need not pursue them. Mornings were always worse than afternoons, afternoons worse than evenings. Dawn was the killer.
‘Dooley!’ he bellowed
‘What, sir!’ A drowsy carrot-topped teenager sprang to attention in the sixth-graders’ row.
‘“The Team”, Dooley. The poem we have all been reading. Who was the author?’ the headmaster asked. He stood and moved between the aisles, slapping a desk here and there with a chubby pink hand, his walk a pulsation, each hump and lump moving independently, sluggish and slow.
‘I dunno, sir.’
‘Do you know anything, Dooley?’
‘I dunno, sir.’
‘Do you know where you will be insulting the sensibilities of the teaching fraternity in the new year, Dooley?’
‘I’m goin’ to high school – on the bus. If I pass this year, sir. If that’s whatcha mean, sir.’
‘Indeed I do, Dooley, and indeed you will pass. If it means I must go down on bended knee, begging forgiveness for my gross connivance, you will pass this year, Dooley,’ he replied and pulsated on, sidestepping a broad bare foot placed strategically in the aisle to trip him.
With a baby fat elbow, he jabbed at a near mature youth’s rib cage. ‘Tell me, Mr West. Dare I contemplate the day when I have no more a West’s big splayed foot attempting to trip me in my grade six aisle?’
‘Don’t count on it, sir. The old man and lady was hard at it again last night.’ Robby West cackled and the elbow nudged again, harder this time.
‘Were hard at it, Mr West,’ the headmaster corrected. ‘The old man and lady were hard at it. They were. We were, but he was. I was –’
‘When, sir?’ the class clown asked, poker faced, and the elbow with twenty-eight stone behind it near lifted him from his desk. Unperturbed, Malcolm Fletcher moved to the next row, stopping beside the Burtons.
‘Give me the author’s name, Burton,’ he said, knowing the youth would freeze, wanting to punish him for his timidity, his acceptance, his very name. ‘On your feet.’
The boy stood, licked dry lips. ‘Henry Lawson, sir,’ he said, before sinking back in his seat, eyes down, chin down. Not so the mute. Her chin lifted defiantly as her eyes darted from her brother to the headmaster then back again.
She was all points and angles this girl-child of Jack Burton. ‘Tense as sprung steel, coiled too long in unnatural bend,’ the fat man muttered, approaching her side of the desk.
The child’s eyes obsessed him. They were the eyes of a wild thing, like two saucers, circular, incongruous amid so many angles. Eyes without trust, without hope. A feral thing, trapped in his classroom, but only for as long as she wanted to stay.
Determinedly, he lifted the hem of her skimpy frock and studied the scabby welts crisscrossing her thigh.
‘How did that happen, Burton?’ he asked the boy.
/> ‘She fell out of a tree, sir,’ Ben replied, studying the desk.
The headmaster released the fabric, sighed. ‘You violate the truth, methinks, Burton. Do you know the meaning of the word?’
‘They violate the graves of the dead, sir. Break into them and rob them, sir.’
‘Indeed they do. Indeed they do, Burton. To break into, to disturb. You and yours violate my peace of mind,’ he admitted, then he wheeled again on the class.
‘Rhyme, rhythm and alliteration. A poet uses musical language to make his poem easily remembered, he uses rhyme and meter, his poem becomes a song without music. However, modern poets are now leaning towards free verse. It has no meter at all. I have heard it said that the rhythm of a metrical poem can be compared to a heartbeat, but free verse is like the wind in the trees, so take up your pens and create for me a breeze, write me up a storm. Make me a poem.’
His request was greeted by groans and the slam of desktops. His pupils had still hoped for an early release.
Ben’s hand was raised. ‘Please, sir, can I give Annie my maths book to write in?’
‘I dare say you can, Burton. What you mean is, may I give Ann my maths book.’
‘May I, sir?’
‘You may, Burton. Perhaps she would prefer a slate and chalk, to draw Christmas trees in the snow with Mrs Macy’s brood. Consider for a moment her needs. You may be denying her some small pleasure by your worthy desire to protect.’
‘She can use a pencil, sir,’ the boy replied and Malcolm Fletcher sat again at his desk.
The child’s hand was moving backwards and forwards across the page. She appeared to be writing. He watched her while thoughtfully massaging the bridge of his nose with his index finger. The heavy spectacles he was forced to wear irritated him, as the weather irritated him and the level of his thermos flask irritated him, as did this dark-eyed brat. Her hand was still moving, mimicking her brother’s. Finally, curiosity got the better of him.