Hill of Grace

by Stephen Orr

  As the inspectors drove off, rain started to fall in a light shower. William was undeterred. ‘Jesus wants to know how much you love him: wet or dry, one or two arms, crippled with polio or riddled with the cancer. Jesus is Lord! Amen!’

  And again, principally the Millerites. ‘Amen!’

  The reporter covered his head with his jacket and kept writing. Bruno and Edna took their chairs and scurried back across Langmeil Road. A few of the onlookers competed for space under three umbrellas Bluma had handy, but when they ran off she gave them to Mary and Catherine and the children. Arthur, Seymour and Joshua shared the rain with William, standing with their arms crossed as they soaked through.

  Bluma held the blackboard above her head but it did her no good. C’mon, William, she was thinking, we’ve heard it all before. But he wouldn’t be moved. ‘This is a baptism of the faithful … rain down, rain down!’ Looking up to the sky and opening his mouth. ‘Amen!’

  The chorus had given up, defeated by cold rain which stuck shirts to backs.

  Mary and Catherine had had enough. They took the children and ran back to Bluma’s house. Bruno and Edna watched from their porch and couldn’t believe what they saw. ‘It’s like a cult,’ Bruno whispered.

  A police car pulled up on Langmeil Road but no one got out. Mary and Catherine and the children ran past them, slipping on the wet grass, splashing mud and laughing. The reporter saw the police, ran over and climbed in the back. ‘G’day, Dave.’

  ‘What’s goin’ on?’

  ‘Jesus this, Jesus that … I wouldn’t get yourselves wet.’

  At last William stepped down and stood beside his wife and three friends. ‘Unconventional,’ Seymour said, smiling. As they walked back towards the house the rain stopped nearly as suddenly as it had started. An Oracle photographer arrived in time to snap William and the others talking to the police.

  The next morning’s paper showed this picture. The headline read ‘Millerites Defy Police’. Shaking his head as he showed it to Pastor Hoffmann the following night, Ron Rohwer said, ‘See, we were right to have done what we did.’ Pastor Henry agreed, reaffirming how they’d tried everything to save him from himself.

  … Mr Miller-Muller continues to spread discontent within the Lutheran community. Some would say the debate he has generated is healthy. Not so, says Pastor Braunack, head of the Lutheran church in South Australia. He was one of the few who braved the weather to hear William Miller-Muller speak. He said, ‘Mr Miller’s reasoning is all wrong. He has distorted the chronology of the Bible to suit his needs. The Bible is full of dates which can be read in a variety of ways. Unfortunately we have no control over Mr Miller, he is a free agent. I only hope that those who listen to him develop a healthy sense of scepticism …’

  William bought every copy of the Oracle he could find. He kept one copy of the article to stick in his scrapbook and burnt the rest in a pile in his backyard.

  The next morning Bruno walked to the offices of the Oracle and, finding the reporter, told him what he’d seen.

  TANUNDA ORACLE, 3 AUGUST 1951 EARLY GUY FAWKES FOR MILLERITES

  … an anonymous source reports that William Miller-Muller purchased more than three dozen copies of this newspaper yesterday. The story as reported was entirely based on fact. Perhaps this is what Mr Miller-Muller fears …

  A few days later William wrote a letter to the editor threatening legal action. The reporter argued he hadn’t even come close to defamation but was warned off anyway. Soon after, William saw Bruno in Murray Street. Stopping to shake his hand he whispered in his ear, ‘You’ll be the first, Hermann,’ and passed on.

  Bruno returned home shaken. So convinced was he that William was wrong, he spent the rest of the week planting a row of oleanders down the fence-line. In a few years he’d be free of him.

  Over the next few days, William’s thoughts turned to Pastor Kavel, and how he’d been killed by the doubters of his own day. The story had it that Kavel suffered a stroke and was rushed to Dr Scholz’s hospital. An Adelaide newspaper, the Register, believing him dead, published an obituary which concluded with the words: ‘Pastor Kavel’s one folly was to predict and preach a second coming of Christ … to many of his followers, and the public at large, this made him a figure of ridicule’. The next day, Kavel, sitting up in his hospital bed, read his own obituary and started to fume, throwing his breakfast dishes across the room and dragging himself out of bed. He got to his feet, stood momentarily and dropped down stone dead, the blocked vessel around his brain breaking wide open like a split grape.

  Chapter Twelve

  William’s vines started early. Buds opened and offered fresh, green shoots to the air; finding it warm enough, they mimeographed themselves into small leaves, tendrils and what would become new canes, growing out from rods and spurs which had been happily sleeping since May. It was enough to warm his heart, walking up and down between rows, re-tying loose canes and encouraging new leaves with the tip of his finger.

  The sun came in the kitchen window, lying itself across Bluma’s hands and up her arms as she washed dishes. The black kitchen’s flagstones were forever cold, bringing up dampness from earth the sun never reached. It left the house with a musty smell she’d carry to her grave, like the miner’s dug-outs she’d seen along the Burra creek on some dimly remembered holiday. Fire, or the smell of cooking food couldn’t shake it.

  Nathan had a week off, on full pay, something Lilli and the Apex mob couldn’t boast. Bored by the end of the first day, he made for the Tanunda library, bypassing Marx and Mies van der Rohe for a volume of Bruegel paintings he guessed had never been opened, the spine cracking like dry chicken bones.

  Apparently Bruegel had been to Tanunda. Edna was there as the Head of a Peasant Woman and the Parable of the Blind was a picture of the Millerites, stumbling down Langmeil Road on a Saturday afternoon, feeling about with sticks and falling over each other, staring up into the sky with skin-fused eyes in search of a God who’d abandoned them. The Allegory of Lust was Goat Square, market day, togs off, every man for himself. Nathan smiled as Seymour-as-a-lizard tweaked Lilli’s nipples and his father, half pig, half fish, mounted a squealing Thea from behind as he ripped at her Apex uniform.

  On Wednesday, the second day of spring, he accompanied his parents to the market in Goat Square. As they moved from stall to stall, tasting preserves and over-priced gourmet cheeses, Nathan said to his father, ‘Mr Drummond says my papers need to be done.’

  William felt a cucumber and replied, ‘He does, does he?’

  ‘Have you read them?’

  ‘I’ve read them.’ Talking to a young boy who’d been left in charge: ‘These are soft, you shouldn’t be selling them.’

  The boy shrugged. ‘They look okay to me.’

  Passing on, William ignored his son, whispering to Bluma, ‘Was a time people would be ashamed to put that out.’

  ‘Dad.’

  William toyed with him some more. ‘Your indentures? These oblige you for six years. Six years … not so long ago you couldn’t commit – ’ Bluma took his arm. ‘William.’

  ‘No, I’m not convinced – ’ ‘Dad, you just have to sign them.’

  ‘I have to do no such thing. I have to exercise my judgement. If I don’t believe …’ He trailed off, stopping to haggle and eventually purchase glass-house tomatoes. Nathan watched him count his coins and wanted to push him into a pile of fruit boxes. Hate was a strong word and, considering his up-bringing, he thought he was a pretty reasonable person; but hate was the only word he could think of. Or was it disgust? William’s fat, unshaven cheeks flapping like the waste of air he’d become.

  As they walked along Nathan said, ‘I need my papers signed to continue.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Does this mean you won’t sign them?’

  ‘For now.’

  Nathan stopped. ‘They won’t wait.’

  But William kept walking.

  In the middle of the square, where Maria and John St
reets met, a group of Aboriginal women followed Pastor Henry towards a patch of crumbling concrete and stood waiting. They wore loose, billowing dresses which were dyed vibrant greens and yellows and reds; the parts of their bodies that showed were painted with Dreamtime water-holes and elongated wombats.

  Earlier, they had emerged from the Langmeil rectory bare-breasted and Henry had had to explain to Pastor Flint (who’d been up north too long) that it just wouldn’t do. Improvising with costumes from the Christmas Passion they soon had them covered, walking towards Goat Square bearing myrrh, incense and rhythm sticks. A pair of which Henry appropriated, clanging them together in a way the Rainbow Serpent could never imagine. ‘Thank you ladies and gentlemen.’

  For a while the commerce stopped. Hats were adjusted, displays rearranged and tills counted as Henry continued. ‘Today we’re lucky to have, as our entertainment, some ladies from Hermannsburg, in the middle of Australia. These ladies are from the Aranga – ’ Pastor Flint stepped forward. ‘Aranda.’

  ‘Aranda tribe. Pastor Flint has brought them down in his bus.’ Henry stepped back and put his arms around Pastor Flint and everyone applauded. ‘David, would you like to say a few words?’

  The Aboriginal women stood staring into the sky, oblivious, the twelfth time in just under a week they’d been shown off. The Lutheran Synod had insisted it would be inspirational for those in the south. It would give them the opportunity to see the Lutheran church at work: moving dynamically among those less fortunate, spreading the promise of salvation. Later, Flint would explain to Henry that he considered them a lost cause: lazy and ungrateful and, truth be known, doomed to extinction. Still, you did what you could. There was hope for the kiddies, some of them, if they could be removed and have the black bred out of them. The rest, those who weren’t full of clap, could be fed and taught some useful habits.

  ‘Each of the ladies before you,’ Flint began, ‘has accepted Christ into her life. Either myself or Pastor Kempe has baptised each one personally. To them, the Hermannsburg Mission has meant clothing, shelter, food and of course, God. It promises a brighter future for their kiddies.’

  The Pastor prompted one of the girls to step forward. ‘Big fella in the sky,’ she said. ‘He tells the Pastor what to do for us. We very thankful for our togs, and the Pastor’s white sauce.’

  Applause. Nathan looked at his father smiling, despite the fact that Henry had organised the event. At the end of the day, Nathan thought, Lutherans were all the same. Stripping down engines in a different order, killing pigs and pickling them according to different recipes, blitzkrieg or sitzkrieg, either way, harnessing their will to a cartful of cucumbers and pulling them towards the ends of the earth.

  Pastor Flint quietened the crowd to say his last few words. ‘We don’t seek to rob the Aranda of their culture. They can use their own ways to praise God. I have left some paintings with Pastor Henry, traditional pieces …’

  So many red and yellow and black dots coming together to form a vision of God. Ochre crosses receding into a background of blurred meaning, snakes and earth serpents diluted, as if by metho, into a wash of colour and formlessness.

  The ladies were left to do their thing: ‘“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord …”’ Stamping their feet on the concrete and following each other in a circle like so many elephants trunk to tail. Clanging their rhythm sticks and droning in the best Langmeil tradition, moving onto the spokesman in her own solo, ‘“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me …”’

  But that was it. There was pickled pig and fresh lamb to be sold. The ladies were led back towards Langmeil in a line, not talking, tripping on kerbs and gutters. Arriving back at the rectory they changed into cotton dresses of their own making and squeezed into Pastor Flint’s bus for the trip to McLaren Vale.

  Nathan pursued his father. ‘This is because of Lilli.’

  ‘Partly.’ Going on to explain how it was a little like killing a pig. You had to know where to cut, how to turn the knife and later, how to skin it and remove the blood and organs so nothing was wasted. And the meat itself. Preparing and salting the right cuts in the right order. ‘Maybe, Nathan, another twelve months.’

  ‘Twelve months?’ He looked at his mother and she looked at William.

  ‘William, are you saying Nathan should leave his job?’

  William had started tasting cheeses. ‘It’s up to them, but if they’re asking me …’ He shrugged.

  Nathan stood staring at him as he kept walking. Bluma took his hand. ‘It’s just your father’s dramatics. He’ll sign.’

  Nathan turned and ran off towards Murray Street. They didn’t see him again until nine o’clock that night, when he walked in the back door, opened the door of his father’s study and stepped inside. ‘What have you heard about Lilli?’

  William refused to look up from his book. ‘Not as much as I think you think.’

  ‘I’ve scored top marks for all my tests. Tomorrow you can come with me and we’ll call Bob, Mr Drummond. He’ll tell you how I’ve been working.’

  ‘Nathan, I’m not stopping you.’

  That’s exactly what you’re doing, Nathan thought. He stared at the bald patch on the top of his father’s head. The old bastard was playing with words again, saying one thing but meaning another, trying to make everyone do what he wanted, when he wanted, how he wanted.

  ‘I’ve done everything at home,’ he continued.

  ‘I know you have.’

  ‘The weekends I missed I was busy.’

  No reply. Bluma appeared behind Nathan. ‘William, just sign the papers.’

  No reply. Nathan stepped forward. ‘If you stop me in this, there are other things.’

  William slammed his book shut and stood up. ‘I won’t be threatened.’

  It was enough for Nathan. As his mother clawed at his arm he packed his clothes in his duffle bag. ‘I’ll spend the rest of my holiday with the Drummonds.’

  ‘And next weekend?’

  After a few hours in the Langbein grandstand, watching a pair of foxes sniffing out a dead tabby in the Tanunda Titans change room, Nathan wandered along Murray Street, down an alleyway beside Wohler’s furniture shop and through an unlocked window.

  Making a coffee in the tea-room he set up a gramophone beside a locally made divan and slipped in between factory fresh flannelette sheets: Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto Number 3 was enough to send him off. The record finished and the stylus clicked over as the turn-table turned and Nathan dreamt Axminster dreams of steam and copper piping and the squeal of stuck pigs.

  The next morning he woke with a hand on his shoulder and one of the Wohler sons standing beside a policeman. ‘You Miller’s son?’ the senior constable asked, and Nathan shook his head. The policeman and Wohler’s son retreated into an office. Nathan sat up, pulling on his shoes and sneering at a couple of girls from his old school who were staring in the front window with their noses squashed flat.

  ‘We’d only be making his problems worse,’ the constable said, staring out at Nathan, reminding Wohler of the pamphlets and all of the business in the Oracle. ‘He’s not a bad kid. I say we don’t drag the religious nut into it.’

  Which is how Nathan ended up spending his morning loading deliveries. Just before lunch he was dismissed with a combination lecture-commiseration. At one o’clock he waited on the platform of Tanunda Station, watching Mr Fritschle pick weeds from between cracked tarmac. Looking up, the older man said, ‘You fix a fridge yet?’

  He smiled. ‘Most things.’

  ‘Handy to have a fridge man around town. When you finish up you could set up here.’ Gunther grinned, as if to say, Six years, don’t you think the Railways would’ve known about Revelations?

  After all, the Railways knew about everything: the man in blue, giving platform numbers and departure times which extended well beyond next March.

  Nathan smiled back at him but didn’t voice the thought they shared. Broadcasting it to Fritsch
le, and beyond, would be a final burning of bridges with his father. To disagree was one thing, argue another, but to go behind his back …

  Just to be sure he sat at the opposite end of the carriage, avoiding eye contact and studying a Gravox ad. Coal smoke blew in the window and he felt assured, moving through a landscape of endings into one of beginnings. Fraction equivalents. Three eighths equals 0.375, a row of red ticks on a trade-school paper – even the smallest details were a consolation: a crack in the glass of the emergency stop, hastily repaired with electrical tape, a list of rules and their equivalent fines, foul language coming in above fare evasion.

  Arriving at Islington he searched out Bob and explained his predicament. To Bob it was history repeating, more melodrama than Blue Hills, taking on problems of other people’s making. Busy wrestling with a pipe bender he said, ‘You’ll just have to sort it out with him …’

  Nathan stood staring. ‘He won’t change his mind.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Is there some way around it?’

  Bob dropped the pipe. ‘I don’t know, go see personnel.’ But Nathan knew he meant, I don’t care, it’s not my problem, I have enough of my own. When Bob locked the pipe in the vice and started bending it again, Nathan turned and started to walk off.

  But Bob just couldn’t do it; next he’d be leaving nuts off of wheelchairs, returning them with broken spokes and treadless tyres. ‘Eh, strudel boy.’

  Nathan stopped and looked back.

  ‘Give it a week or two.’

  Nathan nodded his head. ‘He won’t change his mind.’

  ‘Okay … you want me to talk to him?’

  ‘Arthur, next door, has a telephone.’ He returned and put his hand on the pipe. ‘If you tell him the papers can’t wait …’ And shrugged.

  ‘Okay, now piss off, you’re meant to be on holidays.’

  Nathan walked home past cottage gardens in the first throes of spring. Tulips, freesias and lisianthus; coloured beds of dying soursobs and potato weed. Barely warm soil promised a regeneration of life for the folks of Kilburn, grown fat and pale and wheezy over a winter it seemed would never end. Unpicked lemons dropped from tree tops, hitting the earth with a thud, waking up leaf mites and ants drowsy with morning frost. The smell of jasmine blew over from a trellis around someone’s water tank and shrivelled passionfruit hung heavy over broken, paling fences.