Old Growth

by John Kinsella

  A salesman. What did his father sell? He shook the sand from his hair, clenched up, and tried not to cough. The footsteps and voices crunched off, then faded. All he could think of was that his chamber, his tunnel – they had stood the test. Whoever that was would be wary of stepping there again!

  The boy’s bedroom became an imaginary extension of the tunnel. Down in the real chamber the boy kept tools for digging. An old shovel head he’d found behind the shed, a curved blade of sheet metal he used for scooping at the ground, and a trowel he’d taken from his grandmother’s rose bed. It had just been sticking up there, surrounded by horse manure. She blamed kids, but not him. In his bedroom, studying his plans for extensions, the boy went back over the dimensions of the tunnel and chamber as it existed. The tunnel was exactly six foot. He’d measured it with his mother’s tape measure, which he’d carefully wiped after use and replaced. She was not one to leave things lying around and forget where she had placed them. Not there, she’d know it was taken. Then he heard his father coming down the corridor and he quickly slipped the book under his pillow. His father was standing in the bedroom doorway – an enormous man. How many six-foot-four men do you meet, son? You’ll grow up to be a big man as well. His father was saying something but the boy wasn’t listening. He was laughing inside at the funny clown man, his father, whose mouth went redly up and down, up and down, and spit came out. Then he saw his father lurch across the room and suddenly he was smashing into the wall alongside the bed, his ear stinging. I’ll give you another clout if you don’t come to dinner when you’re called, boy! What do you think, that your mother is your servant, at your beck and call when you feel like it? The boy swallowed his tears and wanted to be anywhere but there. When he’d answered at school what his favourite book was, the teacher had responded, I guess we all wish we had a time machine. The boy had stared at her, wondering what she was on about. Used to his ways, she prompted, You know, the time machine in which the scientist travels back to the past, then way into the future? The boy nodded, but he had no interest in the machine or the time, just in the Morlocks and the Eloi and the underworld.

  He left the trapdoor open. His father yelled and yelled for him. And the boy yelled back, from inside his chamber, his neck arched into the tunnel. And he yelled and yelled until his father tracked the call and said, What the …! The little bugger! Get out of there, you foolish little bastard! But the boy remained where he was, backing into the chamber, and said nothing more. Six-foot-four, six-foot tunnel – and just wide enough for his father to squeeze through, just about squeeze through, pulling the shoring down as he squeezed, as he moved inexorably towards the torchlight which the boy was directing straight into his father’s eyes. The monster man wriggled further and further, pulling himself along. Backed right into the chamber, the boy was out of reach of the long arms, but he could feel them almost upon him. Down there, in there, everything felt closer than it was. Things seemed more real. Like an extra dollop of ice-cream. And then his father braced his hands on either side of the tunnel’s entry into the chamber, and his head started emerging like a baby calf being born. The boy had seen that at his grandmother’s – his father had made him watch and the boy was sick and Grandma had said, Leave the boy be! And then the boy dropped the torch and lunged forward, knowing every millimetre of his world, he lunged forward with the scoop of metal which he’d picked up in the same movement as dropping the torch, and brought it down on his father’s neck, down as hard as he could again and again. He could feel the warm sticky Morlock blood around his knees, mixing with sand and hessian and wood which formed the floor of the chamber. Again and again, and then the shovel head, and the trowel. Morlock life force everywhere hot and cooling. He was sealed in. But with supernatural strength he then rose up against the roof of the chamber and pushed and pushed until the thin boards snapped and he broke through the wood and sand and wild oats into the sunlight, into the Eloi world of light.

  THE WOODSHED

  Their father, a shearer, was away most of the winter. The team was working a bunch of stations out past Leonora and it was too far to travel back down to the central wheatbelt even on the odd weekend. Before he left home, he chainsawed and chopped the huge wandoo that had gone down in the back paddock of their ten acres, and stacked it neatly in the woodshed. He was an orderly kind of bloke. The kids helped cart and stack the wood with enthusiasm. The older boy, Jack, took control of the wheelbarrow and pushed it around with his little sister perched on top of the wood before it became too much, and though he struggled to hold the load steady, the wheelbarrow tipped and she ended up with cuts and bruises. Dad gave them a telling-off for that!

  When Dad was leaving, the kids hung around and their mum told them to give Mum and Dad a few moments to say goodbye. Come on, kids, give us some space – you can say goodbye to Dad in a bit. Scat! she said with a playful flourish of the hand, and they dispersed to those places around the house they favoured in good and bad moments. It made them feel good that Mum and Dad were having a smooch. A big smooch. That was the word for it around their place. A smooch. A few minutes later Dad’s deep voice rattled through the house and they were back at his arm, tugging and hungry for attention. Dad managed to pick the girl up, the small boy, and have Jack hang off his belt. Gee, wouldn’t get much shearing done with you lot round, would I! Yeah you would, Dad, yeah you would. We’d help. We’d help! The man prised them away and they watched him get into the car and drive away – up the long gravel drive and past the dam where their own small flock of sheep, immaculately shorn and healthy-looking, were contemplating the low, glassy water. There hadn’t been much rain but the cold sharpened all surfaces.

  It was the kids’ job to bring in the wood for the kitchen stove and the lounge-room fire which Mum only lit at night. It didn’t take long for chaos to be the new order in the woodshed, with all the stacked heaps gravitating towards each other and forming a general pile in the middle of the shed. This served as a mountain to climb and a playing field on which most things were possible. Weekends were best for getting good games going – and a scenario could last two days and then extend into after-school times. Before school, there were brief visits to get the morning firewood, but they were less rewarding – Mum would be in after you if you dawdled, and they wanted to keep her out of there as much as possible. Come on, kids, tidy this up. Your dad would have a fit!

  As winter wore on, they noticed their mum getting grumpier. On weekends, they got less time in the shed – more time visiting relatives they didn’t want to see, or shopping, or doing other things they didn’t really need to go along with Mum to do. Why can’t you do that while we’re at school, Mum? Don’t be cheeky, Jack! None of them said it, but all knew it was because Mum was missing Dad. They spent hours on the phone at night, Dad ringing from the pub. They heard their mum laugh grow angry laugh cry and coo like a dove. They listened hard from their beds and they could hear it all as she perched on the wobbly ‘high chair’ in the hall, clutching the phone.

  And as winter wore on, worst of all, the wood pile started getting so small that the mountain was really a hill, and then a mound, and not much fun to conquer, and the mystery slowly went from the chaos as the chaos became absorbable in a glance, and every stick too well known. One day while they were playing in there, Mum poked her head in, and rather than telling them to be careful or to stop making such a mess or to get on with bringing the wood into the house, she said, Gee, I don’t know if we’ll have enough to see us through until your dad gets back. I might have to get out there with the chainsaw myself! As the kids stared at her with a look that was a mix of bemusement, wonder and admiration, she snapped, You reckon I can’t? Of course I can! I just let your dad do it because blokes like to do things like that!

  So the excitement returned, and they willed the remainder of the wood away – some of it even finding its way under bushes and in hollows around the block. Where will we get the wood, Mum, where? Dad had cleared up all the wood from around the block, a
nd there were only living trees which Mum said wouldn’t burn – wouldn’t dry out, and I wouldn’t chop them down anyway. Better off leaving them upright – lots of creatures live in them. Jack said, Dad will know where to go for wood, ask him when he rings next, Mum. He’s way out this week, Jack, so I won’t be speaking to him until he gets into Leonora on the weekend – he’ll give me a ring from the pub then.

  Jack studied his mum before saying, There’s a dead tree down near the school – maybe we could chop that up? He emphasised the we so hard. Jack knew he was the man of the house. He knew it. Dad always called him ‘my little man’ and said ‘look after the family when I’m away, Jack’. Mum said she’d check with the shire, though it annoyed her to do so. Should be able just to get that wood. It’s as much ours as theirs, said Jack, like a little adult. It’s more ours than theirs! snapped his mum.

  So plans were laid for more wood for the shed, but they never came to fruition. It happened that one morning before school, as Jack tiptoed his way to the shed with bare feet over the frosty ground, to collect some of the last pieces of wandoo – pausing to look at a spider’s web that had set like a kaleidoscope, the rising sun rearranging the threads of colour into endless patterns – he heard a rustling and thumping sound from inside the corrugated iron. He started, but crept to the door, and noticed that the latch was open. His breath froze in the air. He peered through the crack between door and doorframe and could see a pair of boots, then legs, then a man with a huge beard and a jacket spread over him on the dirt floor. The man looked asleep, but was tossing and turning and striking the shed wall with his arm, and pushing the remaining stray bits of wood aside as he tried to make himself comfortable. He seemed very cold. And then Jack saw a whisky bottle on the floor next to him, empty and lying on its side. He ran back up to the house and burst through the back door.

  Before he could break the news, his mother asked, Where’s that wood, Jack? There was enough left for this morning, I checked last night! Mum! Mum! he yelled, then paused long enough for his siblings to run to the kitchen to see what was going on. Mum could see terror in Jack’s face; she gripped his arm and said, What is it, Jack? What’s wrong? There’s a man asleep in the shed, Mum. A man in the shed. A white man asleep in the shed!

  Their mum told them to wait in the kitchen as she grabbed a knife from the drawer – the really big knife – and ran out the back. The kids clustered around the window and could see her vanish around the far side of the shed where the door was. They couldn’t see anything else for a while – not a long while, but long enough to put their hearts in their mouths over again.

  When Mum appeared, she’d been crying. The knife was at her side. They didn’t want to look at her tears but stared hard at the knife. They expected to see blood dripping from it. There was no blood. When she came in she dropped the knife into the sink and then collapsed into a chair and opened her arms. They automatically went to her, let her close her arms around them all. They stayed that way forever. For longer even than all the games in the woodshed combined. Their mother sobbed and sobbed and kissed them. She was a mountain that couldn’t be conquered. Then, matter-of-fact, she said, Dad’s dead. Dad’s dead. An accident in the shed. That’s one of his mates. Came to tell us late last night but the lights were out. Could wait till the morning. Didn’t want the cops telling us before he did, one of Dad’s mates. He came himself. Your dad’s dead, kids. And the cold kitchen stayed cold and the man in the woodshed was long gone by the time they looked in the shed again – one of Dad’s mates they had never met before.

  ARM WRESTLE

  He walked into the front bar, head down, hoisted himself on a stool, and said, A beer and a sherry chaser. He sculled the beer, sculled the medium-dry sherry, checked his pockets for cash, then asked for the same again.

  The barmaid, familiar with Josh, asked him how his missus was, and he said, She’s in the refuge again.

  Did you hit her again, Josh?

  He looked at her with a defeated aggression, then laughed.

  You look like you’ve eaten a lemon …

  Then he swilled his beer, planted it mock-gentle on the beer towel, and said, Nah, she just went there because she thought I was going to lose it.

  Were you? The barmaid started polishing an already clean glass, clearly agitated.

  I don’t know … can’t really remember. Well, I do, I know I was yelling … she’d poured my stash of sherry down the drain. I was, you know, pissed off. But I didn’t touch her.

  Well, you’re looking bloody sorry for yourself now, Josh. Think about what it’s like for her and your kid.

  He flamed, and struck the counter hard enough with his fist for her to jump, and the other early drinkers to look around from their crystal-ball beers. I’ve never touched the kid. Never would!

  She gathered herself and stepped forward – there was no going back in this. And you shouldn’t touch her, Josh – that wisp of a thing. I remember when you picked her up in here. In with her friends for a drink after work, blind to your tricks.

  The barmaid knew those tricks well. They’d been an item for a few months five years earlier. Not long before Josh had upped the ante, gone out of his league, scored an ‘up-herself bitch’ just to show it could be done. Her university degree meant nothing and everything. He’d left school at fifteen because his old man had thrown him out, not because he wasn’t good at his work. He was smart, he’d tell the bar most days. They all knew he was smart. He made them test him with mental multiplications and division – he was quick, even plastered, and he brought a calculator along for them to verify his answers.

  Just because he was in and out of work, just because he’d been on the dole for years at a time, didn’t mean he didn’t know. And he read, read heaps. He could recite Tennyson’s ‘Lady of Shalott’ off the top of his head, just like that, and could sing every Australian ballad known. He loved Banjo Paterson.

  Fuck off! Mind your business!

  Watch your mouth, Josh, or you’ll be banned from here again.

  He was going to let her have it, reduce her, as he liked to brag he could do to any woman, but he thought better of it and started rocking dangerously on the chair. He was a skinny strip in T-shirt and black Levis in mid-winter, with Winnie Reds under his right T-shirt sleeve, epaulette of his rebellion. He hadn’t washed for days.

  The barmaid – he refused to use or even think her name at the moment because she had crossed him – was gathering her strength. She leant near him and said, Phew, mate, you’re a bit whiffy. Go upstairs, you know where the showers are.

  He registered she was actually being kind, and kept his hands down low, but they twitched. He turned and looked out over the pool table through the gilt-lettered plate glass of the front bar. Cars were hustling their owners to work. It was about 8.30 am and damp and drab out there, out in the ‘real world’ he hated so much.

  *

  Benny came in with a swagger.

  Here’s trouble, Hester said to an old-timer, who lifted his head a centimetre, grunted, then dropped it back to its flatline horizon, perched over a pony.

  So what’s happening, gal? he asked Hester.

  Nothing much, matey, what can I get ya? Hester didn’t usually speak like this – she was putting on the dog, and this made Josh turn from his present perch by the silent jukebox which he’d been studying for the ten-thousandth time. He had put away four beers and four sherries, hadn’t slept for two days, and had dozens of sherries and beers and a whack of speed in him from a couple of days ago, worn out and irritating him through lack. He was muttering Sweet Child of Mine, ha, Sweet Child of Mine, ha, over and over. But he looked over at Hester, whose name he would now allow himself to think after unsobering a little, and at the new jerk who’d just come in. He knew Hester’s interested turned-on voice. And now he was interested in the scene, the scenario.

  Benny pulled up a stool and put his elbows on the counter and said, You’re a looker! And before Hester could take it in and respond – I
’ll have a double bourbon, thanks, and he slammed a tenner on the bar, adding, Keep the change.

  Josh hated Benny already. Hated him with a dangerous hatred everyone in the bar could pick up on. They shuffled restlessly and concentrated on their drinking, or thinking about drink, all the harder. And Hester’s hand ever so slightly shook when she poured the double shot into the tumbler.

  Thatta girl, said Benny. He tossed it back and asked for another.

  Benny. About forty-five, big, well-dressed, confident. A West Australian wheatbelt cowboy down for business, then – that business successfully concluded, out on a bender?

  Maybe. He certainly added fuel to this theory when he started telling Hester her hair was the colour of last year’s harvest. As the whiskey bit, he joked that she’d be beautiful even if it was the colour his crops were now – fluorescent green! And she did that awful flirty giggle thing, which made Josh want to lash out.

  But he didn’t. He kept his back mainly to the goings-on at the bar, with occasional glances intended to rivet Hester into her place. Her job was to serve the old-timers and give them a bit of a thrill with her low-cut tops and short skirts, her reaching up to get bottles down, or bending over at the tables collecting glasses. That was it; that was within the tolerance settings. She knew the deal – she’d been working there for six years and was a professional, as far as these things went. She was demeaning herself behaving like a teenager, all twenty-five years of her. Enough to make you puke.

  Josh lit a cigarette and dragged on it hard a few times. He stubbed it out on the jukebox, then threw his seat back so it tumbled, made a big sorry sorry show of putting it upright, then planted himself, one foot on the rail, elbows down, at the bar next to the hick, and said, Gimme a shot, doll!