Hill of Grace

by Stephen Orr

  Re-read Revelations. This is your insurance. It’s free. You will need it. I am not the loopy-loo my enemies suggest. I am a simple farmer with not much land. I have never made much money or held much influence.

  Please. It will be as sudden as a flash of lightning.

  To one lady who’d listened he’d conjured up a scene of Monday wash-day, reaching up to peg one of her husband’s shirts when bang, like a shot from a .303, looking around but feeling herself dissolving between the cracks in the concrete path beneath her Hills Hoist. No, he said, Jesus won’t have time to form tribunals, trying individuals in the manner of Nuremberg. That would already be worked out, people marked with invisible crosses on their foreheads, crosses that he, Wilhelm Muller, had the ability to see and wipe off with a rag and a bottle of God’s own metho.

  That night they copied another fifty and the next day, as the southerly dropped and the temperature jumped another ten degrees, he set off again. Birds retreated into the deepest parts of trees, managing the occasional note which split the silence of empty streets. People stayed in their stone homes, hibernating, shutters drawn and knocks ignored over the hum of fans. William wondered whether he should be catching the train to Adelaide, blitzing suburbs full of folks who hadn’t yet heard of him and weren’t yet familiar with his knock: four hard raps, like Death in a mask, scratching his chin whiskers in a frenzy. But like the Watkins and Rawleigh man, you had to work your own turf, the day was only so long.

  Out along Para Road the footpaths turned to dolomite and the houses became sparser. William kept trudging, reading his own pamphlet, The flower man has gone, the insurance seller.

  Joshua, too gutless to tell William himself. Instead, as William had been told by Seymour, turning up on the Hicks’ doorstep and asking Seymour for a walk.

  A slow walk, during which they kept stopping and starting, picking daisies from hedges and admiring impatiens flourishing in full sun. Joshua started by saying, ‘I can’t tell William. I was hoping you’d understand.’ Seymour bypassed the whole conversation Joshua had planned and asked, ‘You had a visit too?’

  ‘Ron and Gunther? Yes, but it wasn’t just that.’

  ‘So?’

  Joshua tripped on the root of a bottlebrush. ‘He’s probably right … but I don’t feel like it’s going to happen, now. I mean, look around you, all of this has been here forever. Why now?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘And then they told me about this other fella in America.’

  Seymour walked on with his hands in his pockets. ‘Exactly the same speech they gave me. They’d spent a bit of time cooking it up, but so what? They don’t believe, we do.’

  ‘I dunno, Seymour.’

  ‘There’s probably been a hundred people said the same thing in the last two thousand years. Difference is, they didn’t know the things we do. See, it’s like Hercule Poirot. Book starts with a murder. Who knows who did it? No one. Then we get the clues, everyone starts to have an idea, but only the clever ones work it out. Most people only know at the end … few people work it out just before, that’s William.’ He looked at Joshua. ‘I’m not going to convince you, am I?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so … no you’re not.’

  ‘Well, that’s that then. It’s a pity – you might doubt William, but there were never times like this, Joshua.’

  Joshua looked perplexed. ‘Maybe there were.’

  ‘There were rotten bits here and there, but never the whole planet. Just about to go up in a mess of bombs. If you ask me, that’s how it’s gonna happen … bang!’ They walked on quietly for a few moments, and then Seymour said, ‘The thing I don’t understand, is how you could believe in something so important and then … not believe.’

  Joshua shrugged. ‘It’s just how I feel. Maybe I was swept along a bit. Either way …’

  Seymour thought of the implications of this for him: the most gullible would stay the longest, caught up in the gravity of the Supernova Miller. Maybe he too would eventually succumb to the stronger gravities of common sense and the minor stars Hoffmann, Streim and Doms.

  Joshua left Seymour at his front gate. Waiting until he’d turned the corner, Seymour got into his hearse and drove to William’s, knocking, entering and finding him asleep on the back porch. Waking him up, he told him how he’d come on behalf of Joshua. William knew straight away what he meant, containing his anger, offering him a lemonade and asking for the details.

  Seymour left as the sun set, explaining how he’d never trusted Joshua anyway, and how in him he had a faithful disciple right up to, and including, the final moments. After he’d gone, William went into his study and started tearing paper into pamphlet size pieces, taking his pen and writing, I, Wilhelm Muller, have lost several followers … Explaining to Bluma how they would hit the letter boxes again, tomorrow morning, and would she mind fixing some coffee.

  William sat on a fallen log at the far end of Para Road. He took off his shoes and socks and rubbed his bare feet on the stubble of last winter’s vetch and barley. He was surrounded by empty, weedy paddocks, rusted car bodies overgrown beside tractor spares and piles of tyres no one would ever use. People still hoarding, when they should have been giving everything away. People unwilling to be convinced. Waiting around for a hell of barbecue forks stuck eternally up their arses.

  Blood rushed to his head and he steadied himself. He lost his balance and almost fell back over the log. Wouldn’t that be funny, he thought, beaten to the prize. But pleasant in its own way, not having to stick around to suffer the politics and personalities, martyrdom narrowly avoided, death by slammed doors and shiraz returned to his doorstep. A dozen bottles in total, appearing in the mornings like rolled-up Oracle’s, protests from people whose disgust he couldn’t begin to comprehend.

  He fell forward, clutching the log and listening to his racing heart and uncontrolled breathing, spreading his hands out on the earth and steadying himself. And then whispered, ‘“It is also taught among us that out Lord Jesus Christ will return on the last day for judgement.”’ Becoming louder as he became more aware that he wasn’t going to die, ever. ‘“To give eternal life and everlasting joy to believers and the elect but to condemn ungodly men.”’ Stopping, like Melba herself, on a high, loud note. Spitting into the dust and catching his breath.

  He walked home slowly, deciding he’d try again tomorrow. Hoffman and Weinstock Streets, Second, Bridge and Bilyara. Then he noticed a figure walking behind him, calling, ‘William.’ William walked faster but the figure responded, breaking into a trot as he turned into Langmeil Road. The figure was closing, ‘William, I just want to talk to you.’

  Maths was on his side. Unless Joshua sprinted he wouldn’t catch him. William walked through his front gate, up the path and in the front door, locking it behind him and collapsing on the floorboards he’d watched his father replace when they were eaten out by termites.

  Bluma came up to him, kneeling down. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Ssh!’

  They sat silently as Joshua came up their steps and knocked on the door. ‘William, I want to talk to you.’

  Nothing, only the smell of disinfectant from Bluma’s freshly mopped lino. William moved his lips close to Bluma’s ear and whispered, ‘He chased me halfway across Tanunda.’

  ‘If you don’t stop delivering those pamphlets I’ll take legal action. This could affect my business.’

  William couldn’t help it, calling out at the top of his voice, ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘I could say things about you, William, but I don’t. I could go to the newspapers.’

  ‘Feel free.’

  Indeed, William thought, they’d soon be coming to him, asking for a quote or two, waving a few pounds in his face or maybe a year’s free subscription.

  ‘William, listen,’ Joshua continued, ‘think how you’ll feel after March. You’re making it hard for yourself.’ As he had for others, testing and rejecting them like sardines in a cannery. ‘Think of Bluma …�
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  William didn’t reply.

  ‘What if you kept it to yourself and came back to Langmeil?

  People would forget. You’ve gotta have a bit of faith, no one’s set out to make it hard for you.’

  Nothing. After a few more seconds of mutual silence, Joshua walked off. William opened the door and let some air in, returning to his study to continue transcribing like a monk.

  William’s father, Robert, had once told him that no piece of paper could be folded more than seven times. By this, William took it to mean that once something had got so bad it couldn’t get any worse. From then on, any time either of them were in a spot (such as the time Robert was caught baiting the local tabbies) his father would look at him and say, ‘Seven times’.

  William could count more than seven, probably more than seven hundred, this time around. As a result of his betrayal at the hands of Joshua-Judas, he started to believe that things were about to turn a corner.

  Arthur Blessitt had also started thinking this way. With his reintegration into the Langmeil community, his brush with minor stardom, his feeling of renewed vigour and energy and purpose, he’d come to believe he’d won the lotto of personal happiness. Nothing could stop him now, barring a heart attack or runaway truck, and even these could be seen as part of God’s grand design.

  But for both men there was more to come. For Arthur this realisation began the day after Joshua turned up at William’s front door. He’d just completed his walk to Clare, stopping in at the Tanunda Club on the way home for a celebratory Southwark beer. He soon had a small group listening as he described the highlights of his journey: a night spent with the Brothers at evenhill, tasting sweet altar wine into the wee hours, a photo opportunity with the mayor, a complementary meal at the Miner’s Hotel and three blissful nights spent sleeping under the monkey-bars in the Rotary playground.

  Then there were the bits he didn’t mention. The swaggie he’d approached on the road between Auburn and Riverton, asking him, in an uncharacteristically evangelical tone, if he’d accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour. The swaggie dropped to his knees and asked to be prayed over. Arthur put down his cross and obliged, putting one hand on his matted hair and lifting the other in a sort of slow-motion seig heil. Minutes later the swaggie stood up, took out a thick wad of bank notes and stuffed five hundred pounds into Arthur’s pocket. Arthur gave it back and they sat down to discuss everything from Genesis to sago pudding. In time it got dark. They lit a fire and brewed tea which they drank sweet until three the next morning, blocking their ears every time a truck rushed past. The next morning when Arthur got up the swaggie was gone and the money back in his top pocket. Arthur wondered whether it wasn’t the swaggie’s way of unburdening himself. Either way, he used the money to shout drinks at the club on his way home. Surely he’d won the lotto, he thought, and others thought. Or the Bingo at the Nuri RSL.

  He came out of the club half-pickled, the night still warm and light. As the door closed behind him, muffling the din of laughter he was responsible for, he walked over to the bench where he’d left his cross, breathed deeply to clear his head and stood motionless.

  Gone. There was no doubt. That’s where he’d left it.

  Logic. Someone had moved it, to keep it out of harm’s way. He looked down a side-alley, behind the club (where the Apex girls got their free grog), back up along Murray Street and over into the reserve. He sat on the bench to think. Other explanations. He popped across the road to a shop to ask if they’d seen anything. He returned to his bench. His next thought was the local kids, playing a prank. If that was the case it would turn up again somewhere, sometime, perhaps. Then there were the farmer’s sons with their utes or fellow parishioners from Langmeil having a joke. The fellas from the pub keeping him busy inside while some of them popped out to move it.

  Or William. Surely not. He didn’t have the cunning, or the agility, to whisk it away unseen. But then again, he could’ve arranged for it: Seymour, Ellen’s kids …

  Either way, there he was, without his cross. If it was gone it was gone. The worst thing was the suspicion the theft would leave. Tanunda becoming like some parts of the city he’d passed through, where people had warned him to sleep with his cross tied to his leg.

  He went back to the front bar of the club and screamed out, ‘My cross is gone.’ A hush, just in case another round was involved. ‘It’s been stolen,’ he whispered, and everyone heard him. One man said, ‘It’ll turn up,’ and in these words Arthur heard the promise that it wouldn’t.

  He asked for a pen and paper, writing a note and pinning it to the hotel notice-board, complete with a sketch of the cross and an approximation of the tyre tread. He returned to his bench outside, asking people who walked past, ‘Have you seen my cross?’

  The tourists had him figured as the village idiot and Ellen Tabrar, returning home with Chas and a string bag full of groceries, stopped to ask what was wrong. Eventually he said, ‘You don’t think it was William, eh?’

  She leaned back and almost laughed. ‘Arthur, he doesn’t have to try that hard to make enemies.’

  ‘No, I didn’t think so.’ But the thought persisted, as he walked home with his head bowed, as though he might stumble across a clue: a tyre tread, an unwashed sock. Arriving home he took off his shoes, climbed into bed and fell asleep without so much as switching on a light.

  But there was worse to come for Arthur. His nose tingling as he woke the next morning to the sound of rustling pampas grass outside his window. He pulled the window closed, blew his nose and stepped out onto the back porch.

  Dead. Half a paddock of lisianthus Bruno had promised to water. He ran out in bare feet and flannelette pyjamas, kneeling beside the white, purple and mauve flowers. Whole rows, with a few valiant plants surviving here and there, others already brown and broken, lying flat in the dust. He ran back and turned on the irrigation tap but nothing happened. Fighting through an outgrowth of wild, dense lantana, he eventually found the isolator and turned it back on. Water slowly started flowing between the rows, gathering dust and turning it into a stream of mud.

  He stood up and turned towards William’s house. Various thoughts passed through his head and he nearly called them out. Instead, he walked over to Bruno’s house, knocking on his front door and reminding himself not to become emotional. ‘Bruno.’

  ‘Arthur, you’re back. How was Clare?’

  Arthur put his hands on his hips. ‘Fine, until I had my cross stolen.’

  ‘No, where?’

  ‘Bruno, my flowers.’

  ‘I couldn’t get any water. I looked everywhere for the stopcock.

  I was going to call the water people but the flowers looked okay.

  And Edna said you’d be along directly.’

  Arthur sighed. ‘Someone turned it off.’

  They both looked over at William’s place. ‘You don’t reckon?’ Bruno asked.

  Without a reply, Arthur walked out of Bruno’s yard and followed the path up to William’s front door. Knocking, he called out, ‘William, do you know anything about my water supply?’ There was no reply and he knocked harder. ‘William!’ He looked over at Bruno, watching from his front porch. ‘Thanks anyway, Bruno,’ he called, ‘at least some of us still try to live as neighbours.’

  Bruno waved and went back inside, unwilling to become more involved, lest William become more irrational. He’d read about such things in the city: neighbours building high brick fences or filling their yards with barking dogs, playing Beethoven until four in the morning or burying broken glass in vegetable patches.

  Arthur went home to check his carnations, which had fared better. He pumped the soil with water until it would take no more, emerging from his house every hour or so to check his lisianthus, looking over to William’s vegetables and well-watered vines and trying to remind himself that he was still a Christian.

  There were other possibilities: kids again, or locals playing a joke, maybe someone responding to the publicity he’d brought
to the town. But Arthur had never had a single enemy, let alone such an organised one. If he accepted that it was malice then he’d have to start installing locks on his doors, fencing his flowers with wire and buying a guard dog.

  The next morning, when William came out into his backyard, he found Arthur’s cross lying on the ground, cut neatly with a saw at ground level. He walked over to his fence on Arthur’s side and called out, ‘I didn’t touch your water.’

  Arthur lay in bed smiling, wondering what would come next. In time William went in for breakfast, calming himself with a devotion from Hebrews, hearing his father’s voice whisper, ‘Seven times,’ and wondering what he’d done to deserve all of this hate.

  That afternoon Arthur rang Lawry’s and had two lengths of Tasmanian oak delivered. Setting up trestles in his backyard he started sawing and planing in full view of William’s back porch and side window.

  Bluma emerged with a basket of washing and called, ‘Hello, Arthur, what you doing?’

  ‘It’s my new cross. To replace the one that got stolen.’

  ‘That’s terrible. What’s the world coming to?’ she said, before passing into the wash-house as Arthur started cutting tenon joins and fitting the pieces together. When his cross was glued and screwed and a new wheel fitted, he warmed his iron poker and branded the words again: What shall I render to the Lord, For all his bounty to me? Just before sunset he put on the first coat of varnish and settled into a chair beside his creation, drinking unlabelled wine and listening to the last chorus of birds.

  Just after dark he turned off the tap to his flowers and walked among the garden beds, looking at a hundred-plus lissies drooping face first into the mud.

  William was watching him from a crack in his back window. Bluma came up behind him and said, ‘For goodness sake, get out there and talk to him.’

  William didn’t reply, making a beeline to his study and his pamphlets.

  Next morning William was up early. He didn’t want to miss seeing Arthur’s reaction when he found the table and cross he’d made for the Millerites sitting in his backyard. William had opened the cocky’s gate between their two homes and pushed them through.