by Stephen Orr
‘So?’ she asked, when she’d finished.
William half-smiled. ‘I’m not going to let it affect my blood pressure.’
‘Damn your blood pressure, what about me?’
‘Bluma, it’ll work itself out.’
‘It won’t. He’s determined. Sign the papers and let’s have peace. Otherwise it’ll go on forever.’ She paused, staring at him.
‘My brother didn’t talk to my sister for seventeen years.’
‘No wonder.’
‘We don’t all measure up, William Miller.’ She used his full name on purpose, explaining how you didn’t throw away underweight tomatoes, how they were the ones that had the flavour.
But William was unswayed. ‘It’ll work itself out.’
She stamped her foot on the ground. ‘William, I want to see my son.’
He pointed his paint brush at the letter. ‘He’s the one with the dramatics. The door will never be locked.’
‘Tell me why he should come home, to this.’
William just kept painting. Bluma stormed off, half dreading she’d never see her son again, half believing that William was right and it would work itself out.
That night William locked himself in his study and wrote a letter to the ‘Director of Adelaide Railway’. Although Bob Drummond had been doing a good job with his son’s accommodation, he explained, he was failing to reinforce family values. Some days later William received a letter back saying that Mr Drummond had been consulted, and that host families had the right to run things their own way. Mr Drummond had done his best to consider Mr Miller’s wishes but in respect to ‘grey areas’, Mr Miller was advised to resolve differences with his son directly.
As there was no definition of ‘grey areas’, William didn’t know what had been said, or by whom. He wrote back (THIS SHALL BE MY FINAL CORRESPONDENCE) saying that the Drummonds of the world could be teaching their children anything.
‘I’m not responding, then we’d be at his level,’ Bob said to Rose, showing her the copy of the letter, lighting it and throwing it in the laundry trough and making her promise never to mention it to Nathan.
It was true, they’d ended up in the middle of another soap opera, but Nathan’s best hope was the Railways, and a fresh start. He couldn’t imagine asking Nathan to leave.
William had created a mental folder. Into it he’d placed Rohwer and Fritschle, Streim and Bruno Hermann, allowing his various poisons to drift into his realm. Doms and Rasch and Pastor Henry were in there too, although not so deeply. The Drummonds and the insipid little mail sorter, and now his own son. It was getting full. His chances of retrieving people from it were getting fewer. He’d tried nearly everything, but in the end there was little he could do. In a way the whole world was in there, except for those of like mind, who lived across the oceans somewhere, who he’d eventually get to meet.
In another folder were his followers, and there were degrees of those too.
Chapter Thirteen
Saturday a.m., Joshua Heinz preparing himself for worship, increasingly unhappy that he should lose nearly an entire weekend praising God variously through Miller-Muller and Hoffmann. It was okay for William, he was self-employed, weeding his turnips and pruning his vines in his own good time, but for those who kept more regular hours … But Joshua was only left with the vacuum that was a Sunday afternoon, managing to fix a few tiles or spray a few roses before dark, devotion, in the name of the Father, Catherine’s curried sausages, bakelite Mozart, the Oracle in its third re-reading, sleep and then insurance.
Joshua worked out of Strehlow’s offices in Sobels Street, daily packing his satchel and setting off on a doorknock of a different kind. ‘Yes, I am a friend of Mr Miller, but that’s not why I’m here.
You have a husband?’
‘Yes.’
‘He works?’
‘He does.’
‘Have you ever wondered what would happen if he had an accident … or something more permanent.’
‘Death?’
‘Yes. You have, how many mouths to feed?’
Canvassing the options of house fire, automobile accident or flood damage, all very real and regular. ‘Although no one thinks so until it happens to them. I could prepare a package of options which would allow you to sleep soundly at night.’ Something they couldn’t do after the images he’d invoked: mothers clawing the sides of trees as they listened to their babies scream from inside homes engulfed with flames; wives visiting husbands in hospital wards, trying not to look at the place where their arm used to be; half-sized coffins; burnt out Austins sitting in police compounds; roofs blown into cow paddocks by the one-in-a-hundred wind they hadn’t seen since the days of Kavel.
Joshua employed scare tactics to make a good living, selling more policies than the rest of Strehlow’s office cobbled together. And yet, doing a real public service, giving people protection they hadn’t realised they needed (‘We grow complacent in our valley, Adelaide people wouldn’t dream of being without cover. And what’s it cost, a few lousy pieces of copper … c’mon, you’d spend that on a bar of Cadburys’).
Apart from eating into his weekend, William’s work hadn’t made Joshua’s job any easier. Now, when people realised who he was, they’d say, ‘You, selling insurance?’ And he’d have to explain how Christ was returning to establish a thousand-year ministry. Legs will still be broken, cars crashed, windows smashed. But for most it seemed a bit rich. At least once a day someone would say to him, ‘Wouldn’t it be one or the other?’ and although he did his best to explain the need for post-apocalyptic protection, he was starting to see a real down-turn in numbers.
Not that he’d tell William. He knew this was just one of the prices he’d pay for a comfy seat in eternity, for a spot for his whole family. Nonetheless, that week he’d started introducing himself as Joshua Heinemann.
‘But aren’t you Aaron Heinz’s boy?’
Laying his policies across various kitchen tables, stopping to explain his dilemma and apologise for a little white lie and say, ‘I realise most people don’t agree with us – so, why should I put myself out of business? I still have a family to feed, and a house to keep going.’
As the morning warmed up, Bruno Hermann closed his front door and crossed the road to the vacant land. He jumped a small picket fence he’d helped William and Arthur erect, paint white and, for most of the years up to now, maintain. It was hard to think of them doing it now, working together in the summer sun with their shirts off. They had built it to keep their cattle in, leaving them there to graze native grasses as their own pastures grew.
Come October, they’d lead them back across the road, leaving a trail of hot, sloppy shit the colour and consistency of Catherine Heinz’s curried sausages.
Bruno drained a cattle trough and used his hands to muck out grass and mud. Checking his three Hereford steers and Angus heifer he stood contented, lighting up a recycled rollie and farting. The weeds were all there, flourishing – it would never be used as a proper paddock again: spurge, echium and capeweed, three-corner jack and paddy-melon. A few sugar gums survived here and there but they were mostly pale, lignin skeletons, branching low, vainly sending coat-hanger limbs into the atmosphere. Every day salt seeped up through a landscape of outdated agriculture, still practised by Bruno and others with the aid of tractors and twelve-tine ploughs.
Arthur Blessitt was deep in his flowers, cutting gypsophila and tying it in bunches to take to the florist. In the distance he saw William, waving and pointing to his watch. ‘Have to finish,’ Arthur called, but William couldn’t hear him, continuing to pace and look back every now and again as Arthur whispered, ‘The world doesn’t stop for you.’
In the Hicks’ lounge room, Ellen Tabrar switched off the radio and said to her husband, ‘Are you serious?’
Joseph smiled. ‘Yes, I am bloody serious.’
Mary Hicks tried to leave the room but Ellen grabbed her arm. ‘Mum, talk to him.’
‘Ellen, they’re his
children too.’
Joseph crossed his arms. ‘Too bloody right.’
Victoria, David and Chas sat in ascending order of age on the lounge, dressed in their best Sunday (Saturday) clothes, hair combed, shoes polished – legs dangling, sometimes swinging like pendulums marking time. The routine of warring parents was becoming so familiar that they didn’t say a word, frown, sigh or even listen.
‘What is it?’ Mary asked Joseph.
‘I’ve decided to take them to Adelaide, to the pictures. Tarzan, eh, Chas?’
And with that the youngest beat his chest and imitated Tarzan’s call.
‘There’s Mario Lanza,’ Vicky sighed, looking longingly at her dad, but David elbowed her in the ribs and nodded his head in disgust.
Ellen looked at her mother. ‘He could go any time, but he picks today.’
‘Any time, they’ve got school!’ Joseph replied.
‘And holidays coming up.’
‘Every Saturday they have to sit there listening to him. Tarzan makes as much bloody sense. What would they rather?’
The three adults looked at the children. Ellen folded her arms and sneered back at Joseph. ‘It’s not a case of what they’d rather.’
‘It is.’ Thinking, you heartless bloody bitch. Waiting for her to turn to her mother, which she did.
‘Maybe this once,’ Mary replied, to keep the peace. And with that Ellen stormed into their bedroom and slammed the door.
Waiting at the train station, Chas asked his father, ‘Is the world really going to end?’
But before Joseph could reply, Vicky said, ‘Of course not.
Don’t you listen to people? Miller’s the village idiot.’
‘Vicky.’
‘He is.’
At which point Joseph became the diplomat and explained to his youngest how some people just go off the tracks, but how they had to try and get along with them anyway.
‘Why?’ Vicky asked.
‘Because he’s your grandpa’s friend.’
‘So?’
‘Your grandpa married your grandma, she had your mother, I married her and we made you. Blood’s thicker than water,’ whispering, ‘… apparently.’
Vicky smiled, ‘I heard that.’
‘Just don’t repeat it.’
Sitting in the dark at the Regent, Vicky decided she did like the world of African jungles more than Saturday at the Millers. Still, the old crackpot’s play was a lot of fun and she was sad to be missing their final rehearsal. In the end, popcorn and Coke were more than enough consolation, Johnny Weissmuller’s abs a dream more vivid than any apocalypse.
William, sitting at the head of Arthur’s ark, passing the potato salad to Seymour, could feel his folder getting thinner. Seymour, who hadn’t known about the excursion until they were gone, insisted it wouldn’t hurt as it was something the kids seldom did.
(But when Seymour saw Joseph that night, he repeated Ellen’s words. ‘You had to take them then?’
‘Yes.’
‘But they love their afternoons with the Heinzes.’
‘They loved their afternoon at the Regent.’
Seymour started shaking his head. ‘Ellen was quite distressed.
She barely said a word. Think of what it looked like for her.’
‘To whom?’
‘William.’
‘Seymour, please …’)
Around Arthur’s ark the remaining followers joined hands to pray but somehow the spell was broken. William thinking, How can I sustain this when there’s so much against me? Whispering to his ever-diminishing ring of supporters, ‘Lord, let us be true believers. Let us pray for those who’ve turned away.’
Rising early the following Wednesday, market day, William and Arthur pulled Arthur’s movable stage down Elizabeth and then Maria Street, setting up on the crumbled concrete of the Tanunda corroboree. Bluma raised the children’s banner as Arthur chocked rocks under wheels salvaged from a shopping trolley dumped in the North Para River.
At ten a.m. the market was buzzing, the price of lettuce and tomatoes mingling with whispers. ‘He’s determined to make a complete fool of himself’, ‘Fancy humiliating the children in such a way.’
At the Hicks’ house, Ellen saw Joseph off to work without a word. When she was sure he was gone, she helped the children iron their costumes. Mary helped her herd the kids into the back of the hearse and Seymour drove the family to Goat Square.
Locking the door of Strehlow’s, Joshua Heinz took his lunch break early. He stopped by the Apex for a dozen Cornish pasties and hurried to meet Catherine, Sarah and the rest of their children beside the stage, where they shared their lunch. Some of the children were already pulling on costumes and one struggled with a bottle of Rosella tomato sauce which would double as blood.
Just before lunch, when the market was at its busiest, William mounted the stage and started clanging a wooden spoon on one of Bluma’s best saucepans. ‘Welcome,’ he called, ‘to our Play for the Apocalypse. Our story is not a prophecy. It is fact. If you haven’t heard of us, then this will explain our vision. Afterwards, you have two choices: return to your sausages and flowers, or come and talk to us. We’re a friendly group that meets of a Saturday at my house. We’ll continue to do this until the great day of Christ’s return. At that time, we’d like you to be there with us.’
‘He’s comin’ to my place first,’ a voice rang out, and the crowd laughed.
William smiled and raised a finger knowingly. ‘Do you know what Hell is, sir?’
‘Listenin’ to you.’
A variety of comments were called out, most of which William couldn’t decipher. The young cast stood in the open-air wings, taking it as a bad sign. Lilli Fechner, on her own lunch break, called, ‘You dirty old man, you should be ashamed.’ Ron Rohwer stood beside Gunther Fritschle, both with their arms crossed, refusing to join in the derision – William could dig his own grave without their help. Pastor Hoffmann stood at the front, beside a grinning Bruno and Edna, silently observing William’s impending humiliation.
Part one went off smoothly, with William himself taking Nathan’s part. The only incident was a tomato thrown close to the kids, William stopping the show to explain how people could lose eyes. Part two started with David and Chas reclining in a ‘cinema’, as Vicky swooned the part of Maureen O’Sullivan in leopard skins. On the other side of the stage, the Heinz children variously worked their fields, read the Bible, prayed and, in Sarah’s case, ventured north as a missionary. Addressing an imaginary native as she clutched a Bible, she recited, ‘Have you heard of Jesus Christ, Lord of Heavens? No? Well, sit with me as I read you this book.’
‘Not all that bad,’ Bruno said to Edna. She had to agree: the kiddies were well turned out and none of them muffed a line. They were having fun and it showed. When Vicky and Sarah knelt in fear before the appearance of the archangel Gabriel, the crowd erupted in laughter at a scene reminiscent of Laurel and Hardy. Lilli dropped her defences to applaud and the Rohwer-Fritschle combination called out, ‘Good on you kids,’ as if the presence of Miller and his agenda could be temporarily overlooked.
After Gabriel came the big fella himself, Seymour as Christ bearing script. ‘Who among you have heeded my words?’ he asked, and all of the children stood around him with their arms raised.
‘I have a test,’ he continued. ‘Like eggs in water, the rotten ones always sink.’
Lilli couldn’t resist it. ‘Is that the best you could come up with?’
William thought he recognised the voice, but couldn’t be sure.
‘Your metaphors stink,’ she continued, and the crowd laughed again.
Seymour, desperately searching for his place, looked up and said, ‘A bit of respect, please,’ and their audience laughed even louder.
And then, exactly on cue, the children started running about on stage, screaming, squeezing pork sausages open to simulate human viscera, smearing sauce across their faces and tearing at their clothes. As an apocalyptic vi
sion it was more Hoovermatic spin than Bruegel – an attempted miasma of smell, screams, crushed bodies, trees and houses and livestock flying through space, human devils being cleansed from the earth for ever, faeces in motion with blood and vomit and Coca Cola, all drawn from William’s experience of swinging on Nathan’s swing.
Ellen, Catherine and Mary stood around the stage popping party streamers and throwing confetti, banging saucepan lids and adding their own screams of pain. Catherine, taken by the spirit, started casting alfoil-covered thunderbolts at the children, careful to avoid her own.
William stood up in front of all this, and spreading his arms, said, ‘It’s not so far off. Are you prepared? Like water being sucked down a drain, there is no way to avoid it.’
And after the judging, who would be left, he asked. As if in reply, David, Chas and Vicky screamed and cast themselves down dead on the stage. The noise and motion stopped and everybody looked at their bodies. Lilli nodded her head, ‘Oh please, spare me,’ but most of the market crowd seemed determined to see the story out.
‘There’s no secret to salvation,’ William said, ‘it’s just hard work. Nothing comes from nothing. The Bible has all the answers.’
And with that the saved souls joined hands and danced around the bodies, joyous but not gloating. William explained how this was his mission, to save people from themselves. This time next year they’d be thanking him. Buying and selling vegetables in a market place of many empty stalls. He had studied the Word and seen these things.
Joseph Tabrar, on his lunch break, walked down John Street into Goat Square and couldn’t believe what he saw. Fighting his way through the crowd he made his way to the stage and told his children to stand up. ‘Home,’ he said, pointing, and they ran off without a word. He looked at Ellen and then at Seymour and then at William and said, ‘That’s it.’ Catching up with his children he grabbed their hands and pulled them down Murray Street towards what they called home. Throwing open the door, he told Vicky to run a bath for the three of them and take off their ridiculous costumes.