Connections

by Robert Nicholls

For Tim, whose stories ended all too soon.

  Connections

  By Robert Nicholls

  Copyright 2013 Robert Nicholls

  Contents

  Connections

  Have-Chat’s Last Burn

  Peach Whiskey

  Rat Dance

  Party-Arty and Eve

  Tower Zero

  A Good Innings

  Belinda and the Beast

  The Bunyip

  The Send-off

  The Notorious Fence

  Shadow Play

  Sheddings

  The Chicken-Boy

  Mermaid

  Also by this Author

  Connections - (first published ‘Australian Short Stories’, No 49, 1995)

  The tropical sun falls like a leaf through water. In its wake the haze of smoke and dust glows like a pale corona, a benediction, a promise of relief. Darkness is near. As cool and smooth as a sheet, it brings comfort, respite and renewal.

  * * *

  Six o’clock.

  * * *

  Old man Ridley thumps the dust from his broad brimmed hat, scratches his head and begins to think of home. He’s been slashing the headlands on the ten acre block of sugar cane that straddles Whiskey Creek. After tea, he hopes to put the fire through it but, with the creek dry and the drought-stricken forestry preserve shouldered up behind, conditions are worrisome.

  “She’s an iffy bastard,” he states solemnly to his tractor as they idle along between towering walls of cane. “Go like a bomb,” I reckon. Be a real show.”

  Ahead the stalks of sugar cane lean into the track like spectators at a parade. Ridley stands formally in his place, one hand on the wheel, and bows deeply.

  In the farm kitchen, Mother Ridley rattles the pots and pours steaming water from the vegetables. She hums as tunelessly as the kettle, all the while marshalling the questions she’ll ask him as he eats. Is the burn going ahead? Is anyone coming to help? What’s the breeze look like doing? It’s what she needs to know and what he needs to tell.

  When a stray gust flicks dust at the window, she glances out to the speckled sky. The sunlight cowers in the west and the air grows clear again. To the pawpaw tree, clapping its leaves in the wayward current, she clucks her disapproval.

  “Looks a bit iffy to me,” she says.

  * * *

  Six o’clock.

  * * *

  In the houses of the town, doors begin to whisper open and screens to slam shut. Mrs Grimble turns on the lights and places Mr Grimble’s meal before him. Their childless rooms are cold and white, like a surgeon’s office. Opposite one another at table, they operate quietly on their meals and on their relationship. Thirteen dry years of marriage have turned the little idiosyncrasies of each into untenable provocations.

  But worse than that, in recent months, Mr Grimble has been unfaithful to Mrs Grimble and Mrs Grimble knows. Indeed, they’ve dissected the problem, carefully analysed its innards and decided to persevere. But trust on the one side and tolerance on the other have been sorely tried.

  “Did you remember my meeting tonight?” she asks around a morsel of sausage.

  With his fork, Mr Grimble rakes slow, deliberate lines across his mashed potatoes.

  “Mmm,” he answers.

  “I’ll likely be a couple of hours,” she says, piercing a solitary pea with her fork. “The district adviser is supposed to be there.”

  Mr Grimble draws his potatoes up into a pale volcanic mound and imagines a spud eruption that would scatter his molten plate throughout the room.

  “Mmm,” he answers.

  “I hope we shall have all this sorted out before your fortieth next year,” she sighs, daubing reproachfully at the corner of her mouth. “If you take that as hard as you did your thirtieth and . . . well, with everything else . . . I don’t think I’ll be able to stand it.”

  Mr Grimble’s potatoes ooze slowly up between the tines of his fork.

  “Mmm,” he says.

  * * *

  Six o’clock.

  * * *

  Children turn their bicycles homeward. Old Tom Ricketts, the high school teacher, eases out of his therapeutic shoes and huffs ruefully at the arthritic knobs of bone that surround the knuckles of his toes. He isn’t really old at forty-six, but he isn’t young either. Tonight, like every other Monday night, he plays basketball amongst the tall timber of his students.

  Molly Ricketts hears him groan and they both remember it’s Monday. She fetches an anti-inflammatory pill to place by his plate. She doesn’t watch him play anymore.

  Every week his endeavour to retain a faintly youthful zest rewards him in a different way. Sometimes he lags dejectedly and considers quitting: other times, it’s like the old days – his timing, his shots. Monday nights are a lottery for Tom.

  “You’ll need to check the bicycle tires before tea,” she calls. He pedals the kilometre to the courts as a way of limbering up his joints – not to appear too slow to start on the court.

  “Righteo,” he answers. “Just in a minute.”

  He lays back with an arm over his eyes and hopes the gods will be generous.

  * * *

  Six o’clock.

  * * *

  Flocks of pewits flutter and squabble into their nesting trees in an isolated gully of eucalypts at the end of Brown’s Road. Below, young Mrs Little rolls the hot, limp hose out to her vegetable patch. The beans are thin and bedraggled and, like Mrs Little herself, they struggle against the dry earth to push forth a crop.

  She drops the sprinkler and nudges it into place with her foot. As pregnant as she is, it’s too difficult to bend. Cradling her belly in her arms, she smiles at the swirling, family natter of birds.

  Mr Little will be home soon from his job at the sugar mill. He does, however, sometimes stop for a few drinks with ‘me mates’, the crowd of boyish men whose demands, in truth, touch him far more deeply than do those of his girlish wife.

  “You are my sunshine,” Mrs Little hums as she steps back along the hose; “my only sunshine. You make me happy . . . ”

  In her little valley, it’s almost too dark to see where the water flowers up but, high above in the western sky, the trail of the sun glows smoky red for a few final minutes. As she watches it recede, she is surprised by a warm liquid gush down her legs.

  * * *

  Nine o’clock.

  * * *

  There is no twilight in the tropics. The darkness, when it comes, is sudden, complete and as absolute as circumstances permit. The grack and rabble of crickets blows down the early night breeze. Bandicoots scoot from bush to brush and the dogs yap in bewilderment at the fleet shadows.

  Old man Ridley works alone, spreading flame along the down-wind side of the ten acre block. In the flickering light it’s a familiar ten minute walk to the headland and another fifteen up the eastern side. At the southern boundary, with the breeze in his face, he turns west and quickens his pace, spurting the flame sporadically into the ten foot high bank of cane. It’s enough. The fire roars up behind him like a fever, igniting the night, racing through the crop, he knows, as fast as a man can run.

  When he reaches the boundary, he finds that he has, indeed, been running, with the heat slashing at his back. He ducks under the trees, feeling his heart race and the air howl past him into the heart of the fire. Within moments, it has become a monster of flame that will rip out a thousand tonnes of dry fuel in a ten-minute orgy of unstoppable fury. He has given it life and it exhilarates him.

  Ridley has taken, in recent years, when alone with the fire, to screaming it out. A man standing beside him could see his eyeballs bulging, the cords in his neck distending, the rattle of exertion as the old man, who rarely speaks above a whisper, opens his throat to the fi
re. With his voice, he kills the beast that he has created, though not even he can hear his shout over the fire’s maniacal roar.

  * * *

  Nine o’clock.

  * * *

  Mr Grimble has no such luck with the steely voice of Mrs Grimble. It hisses up at him out of the darkness. She has come home early from her meeting and he has come home late from his tryst.

  “You’ve been to see her, haven’t you!” sizzles Ms G from her chair.

  Mr Grimble sighs deeply, turns on the pallid light and moves to put his keys on the table. Where, he wonders, can it possibly end.

  “Don’t put those keys down!” she commands. “Don’t put anything down!”

  Mrs G has simmered long enough with the desire to inflict some retribution on this perfidious man. “You bastard!” she spits, hurling a heavy glass at his head. He fends off the blow and recovers in time to dodge the bottle, the ashtray, the lamp. But he stands stolidly to accept the blows of her tiny fists.

  “Get out!” she screams. “Out of this house, you bastard! Go to her, and I hope she gives you the pox!”

  He nods in his abashed fashion, backing slowly away.

  “Okay,” he mutters listlessly. “I’ll just get some things. Then I’ll go.”

  “Yes, get some things, you mongrel! You just get some things. What’s she got, eh? What can she give you? The bitch! It’s a joke! You’re a joke! She’ll throw you out as well because you’re a joke! You’re just a hump-happy bastard! You . . . you bastard!”

  She strides about the room, dry-eyed and furious, hurling clothes and insults, searching for something – anything – that will strike at his leaden heart. Finally she reverts again to her fists and drives him out the door. He stands in the night, underpants and shirts dripping from his arms.

  In the distance, a great red cloud, crawling with worms of fire, rises above Ridley’s inaudible scream. Mr Grimble says softly to the silhouette in the doorway, “I just want you to know. It’s not to do with you. The blame is mine.”

  “You bet your ass it is!” she snarls, pinching off the light with the slamming of the door.

  * * *

  Nine o’clock.

  * * *

  Through the neighbourhood, the crash ricochets like a stray bullet. Tom Ricketts, swaying gently from side to side, wearily pressing the pedals on his bicycle, hears it distinctly. He looks around for its source, but his attention is caught by the glow of the distant cane fire. Even at this distance, it rumbles like a far-off train.

  “What a beauty!” he whispers aloud as his feet come to rest on the street. The heat of the day still bleeds out of the bitumen, as palpable as water around his ankles. His knees quiver with recent exertion and his toes cry out as the swollen knuckles take his weight. He barely notices. Tom turns his face to the sky, searching out the Megellanic Clouds and the Southern Cross.

  “Thank you, my Man!” he whispers into the ancient darkness. “Thank you for that jump shot. Thank you for those jab steps through the key. Thank you for eight points and a good night. You are a beauty, if I do say so!”

  Filling his lungs with the cool night air, he places his rump on the saddle, his foot on the pedal, and bears down.

  * * *

  Nine o’clock.

  * * *

  In the isolated farm house, Mrs Little also bears down. She has stripped off all her clothes and, on her knees and knuckles, like a great cat, is growling her way through the last seconds of a contraction. It’s come upon her so suddenly. And there’s no phone. And Mr Little is not yet home.

  Between contractions, she has gathered a whimsy of items around her on the kitchen floor where the tiles are cool and clean and white. She has sheets, a basin of water, soap and a new, fluffy towel.

  When the contraction ends, she lowers her flushed face to the floor and rolls her forehead on the tiles. Looking back up at her torso from that position, she sees beads of perspiration edge tentatively down her breasts, to drip from her nipples like pale milk. The thought brings a trill of laughter to her throat. Like milk. There’ll be a baby there soon, feeding from her body. It’s just there, butting against that balloon of flesh. She reaches down to touch herself, wondering what the exact state of affairs might be.

  “A mirror,” she whispers. “I’ll need a mirror, too.”

  While she considers fetching one, however, her muscles begin to clench and she rises onto her haunches once again, hunching her shoulders against the pain. Somewhere in the night she can hear the pop, crackle and roar of a distant cane fire.

  * * *

  Twelve o’clock.

  * * *

  Midnight. The peace has resolved itself, settled like a dream. There is the chitter of crickets and whine of air conditioners, but only the shadowiest creatures remain abroad. Fruit bats glide over the roof tops and loop into backyard mango trees where they hang, red-eyed and hungry. A dog barks at a dreamed sound, setting off a train of answers across the town.

  Old man Ridley lies abed beside his missus. In sleep, he opens his mouth wide and dreams of swallowing fire; so much fire that his eyes begin to glow and smoke billows from his ears. In his dream, he becomes a tornado of flame that no one can control, leaping across the country, lancing out of the sky like a vengeance.

  “Haaa!” he hisses, shaking his head from side to side as the power builds within. Mrs Ridley, half sensing the movement, places a hand on his burly arm and he immediately subsides. Through the night their dreams continually collide, entwine and spin away again.

  In the Whiskey Creek paddock, the stalks of sugar cane stand charred, black and desolate. Tendrils of smoke continue to rise like spirit wraiths from the blasted earth. Down in the creek bed, an orange spark winks to life on a dry length of cedar and grins its little freedom. By first light, its spawn will have edged along the creek bottom to the forestry preserve. In the canopies of those trees, it will flow uphill like mad water, laughing down on the soft creatures below.

  * * *

  Twelve o’clock.

  * * *

  Mrs Grimble, in the lightless shamble of her life and living room, sits as still as a log. In her hand, in her lap, blacker than black, is a small pistol, long and lovingly maintained by her departed husband. He should have taken it with him.

  The room around her is a ruined citadel, laid waste by the heartlessness of a stranger. There is nothing left to mark their years together; nothing whole, nothing significant. In the end he gave her nothing – not even the satisfaction of regret; not even fear. With his fancy woman bedraggled and blubbering behind him, he had only sighed in that exasperating way.

  “It’s just the way of things,” he’d said, not even deigning to use her name. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  What Mr Grimble knew of hurt, she’d told him, you could poke in the eye of a gnat. And then she’d taught him. Taught them both. And now it is over.

  What the neighbours will think, Mrs Grimble will never know or care, alone and still in the long, dark night.

  * * *

  Twelve o’clock.

  * * *

  Tom Ricketts sits on the railing of his veranda, absorbing the night air. For more than an hour he has laid half in and half out of sleep, perspiring like a horse, his knees jerking spasmodically. In his shallow dream he had run without pause, terrified of stopping lest all his joints ossify and leave him rigid as a statue. Flinging himself out of that dream, he has found himself awake, unsure if he’s truly slept.

  Nearby in the neighbourhood a small explosion, like the slamming shut of a heavy book, has drawn him onto the veranda. There’s been no repeat of the sound. He listens to a round of dog barks echoing off across town.

  Beneath the street light a clutch of cane toads squats, lunging fitfully at the beetles that tumble to earth around them. It is almost a religious scene, thinks Tom. Every night they congregate there, in the small bright circle, and gaze reverently up at the distant, unknowable light.

  High above, t
he stars twinkle dimly. Perhaps to the toads they are only more distant street-lights, showering manna down on some other level of bitumen. Strangely comforted, Tom goes back to his bed and his sleep and his gentle wife.

  * * *

  Twelve o’clock.

  * * *

  Mrs Little squats on her heels, panting like a hot dog. Her hair is wet, black and ropey, her muscles as taut as old cables. She grips the edge of the counter-top and focuses what she feels must surely be her last particle of strength. She focuses down. She focuses out. She locks a chest full of air behind her throat and drives it down, down, until the blood trills in her ears and her skin flames like a dawn sky. The mirror has shown her the strange thin fur of the creature inside her. So close. She feels nothing for it. All her care is for the agonising spasms to end, for her racked, exploding body to have peace.

  She affects a lightning change of air and down she drives again. Her head swivels from side to side. A moan chops between her teeth, exploding instantly into a howl of rage and renunciation. She curses the pain, the baby, the night, her missing husband and the undisturbed stars that sit so benignly at her window. She curses to the last, convulsive, minute expulsion of air until, like a dropped melon, her flesh splits and the tiny creature slides out of her onto the piled sheets and towels below.

  Mrs Little rips a great gasp of air into her lungs, like a half-drowned woman breaking the surface. It is done. It is done. She is astonished and amazed that such agony can end so abruptly. She seems always to have lived within an empire of pain – always to have been writhing, like the child she now bends to – alone, naked and frightened in some long, hot, tropical night,

  In the distance, the silence is broken only by the haunting cry of curlews. It is the start of another day.

  Have-a-Chat’s Last Burn (first published ‘Australian Short Stories’ No 29, 1990)

  Well, your Honour, anyone who knew him will tell you that’s a damn lie! I mean, maybe he did have a temper – who hasn’t? But there wasn’t an unstable bone in his entire body, see! I mean, to my knowledge, he never intentionally hurt nobody. An’ if he did do his block on occasion, well, he undone ‘er just as quick. He was a good bloke, ol’ Have-a-Chat was. Yessir! One o’ your genuine, rock-solid individuals. Now I can’t say why he done what he done, but I’ll tell you this! Have-a-Chat wasn’t a man to be easily confused. He always knew what had to be done an’ he got straight in an’ done ‘er, no questions.