by Peter Kocan
Yes, a question about the brothers would do nicely. It felt good to have it up his sleeve.
At the moment, though, he was trying to think what “peons” were. Simon and Patrick were talking about “peons.” They were very amused with the word and were looking across at other chippers and giggling between themselves. It sounded like a really good joke. The youth wished he knew the gist of it. He kept a grin on his face in case they looked across at him, so they’d know he was on their level and understood how funny it was.
Then they burst into loud laughter. Simon had said something about ruling the peons with a big hat. Patrick replied that the Yanks were working on a new super-hat that would control the world.
The mirth stopped suddenly. Denny was coming along behind them, checking their work, his big white hat bobbing. He did not say anything to them. He stepped across several rows and went back to where Long John was lagging a longish way behind the broad line of chippers. He stopped and spoke to him and then the youth heard Long John’s voice rising and falling. “Goin’ like steam!” he said. And, “These young blokes today don’t know they’re born!” And then there was low mumbling that sounded like excuses being made. Denny stood with his hands on his hips, listening to the apologetic mutter, then he said something in a soft voice and walked back to his jeep and drove off. Long John watched him go, then called to the chippers nearby, “One time a man woulda told that mongrel where to stick his fuckin’ job!”
But when the truck came at lunchtime, the youth saw that Long John could barely drag himself to it. His face was very red and his breathing harsh. The false leg didn’t seem to be bending when it should and he had to keep stopping to bang at the knee-joint with his hand. When he got to the side of the truck he could not hoist himself up and the second time he tried he fell backwards and sprawled on top of some cotton plants at the end of the row. Panos and another couple of blokes helped him.
“Jeez, mate,” said one of them, “let’s get movin’ before the Hat-rack notices them busted plants and wants to dock yer friggin’ pay!”
“Yes,” said Panos, in his soft Greek voice, looking around at all the men. “Best we go. We have seen no damage of Product, okay?”
There was a chorus of responses.
“Seen nothin’, mate.”
“I was lookin’ the other way, meself.”
“Glare o’ that friggin’ sun blinds a man!”
“I wouldn’t know a busted cotton plant if I fell over it.”
“What, are there cotton plants round here?”
They helped Long John onto the truck, a couple of the men lifting him by the armpits from above.
“Once upon a time . . . a bloke woulda hopped up here like . . . like a flamin’ sparra,” he said, “but that was when . . .” It was coming out slower and more slurred than usual and it trailed off without finishing.
Long John did not return to the fields after lunch. He was having a lie-down, Panos said. The work was too much for a man with a false leg. Simon murmured to Patrick that that might be a false premise, and Patrick replied that a false leg was nothing compared to a false premise. The men were discussing how Long John had lost his leg in the first place. Someone said he’d lost it in the Korean War. The youth was asked what he knew, being the room-mate. The youth was embarrassed. He didn’t like the room-mate thing being mentioned in front of Simon and Patrick. They might think it meant that Long John was a friend of his or something. He felt like making it clear to everyone on the truck that he’d hardly spoken three words to the man, and that he kept out of the room as much as possible because of him pissing in the tin and stuff. But he just shrugged and kept his eyes lowered.
Someone said they’d heard Long John had lost the leg in a train accident.
“He accidentally left it in a train,” muttered Patrick.
“Along with his umbrella,” Simon shot back.
“And his premise,” Patrick answered.
The youth wasn’t sure what “premise” meant, but he could tell it was a really clever joke and he chuckled, to show them he was still on their level.
When they returned to the camp they heard that Long John had had a bad turn and that Denny had driven him into town, to the base hospital.
“Poor old bastard’s feet never touched the ground,” said one of the cook’s helpers who’d seen him taken away. “As soon as they realised how bad he was they had him off company property like a shot. These Yank companies are always scared of gettin’ sued.”
“How did he look?” someone asked.
“Turnin’ blue in the face.”
“Did he say anythin’?”
“Nah, he looked unconscious.”
Later someone said that Denny was in the shit with the Yank bosses for letting Long John have a job at all. A man with a bung leg, and a bit long in the tooth as well.
“Must’ve felt sorry for him.”
“What, Shadrack? That’d be the day!”
“It’s the Yanks who are the bastards.”
“Shadrack’s a Yank himself.”
“No he ain’t. He was born and bred at Mulangumby. He’s no more of a Yank than you are. Mind you, his hat’s from fuckin’ Tombstone, Arizona!”
“And the hat does all the thinkin’.”
“That’s right. They didn’t give Shadrack the hat to wear. They hired him for the hat, because it needed a set o’ legs to walk around on.”
“Anyone ever seen Shadrack without the hat?”
“Yeah, once, when the wind blew it off.”
“What happened?”
“He started runnin’ round in circles like a chook with a missin’ head!”
“Like a big chook, eh?”
“Yeah, an enormous chook.”
“Did someone put the hat back on him?”
“Yeah, after a while.”
“Why after a while?”
“We needed the eggs.”
THE YOUTH had the room to himself after that. It was nice to have privacy again. He could get the White Book out of his bag and look at pictures of Sweetheart before he went to sleep. And when he woke he could have another session with her. It was so good to lie there in the first fresh light, gazing at her face. She was as sweet and natural and trustworthy as the morning. Nothing could change that. It went without saying.
Different photos in the White Book drew him at different times. For a while it’d been the one he called “The Lonely Princess,” an unposed shot of her at the opera. She is standing at the foot of a grand staircase with a program in her hand. Her hair is up and she’s wearing a gown that shows the whole contour of her neck and shoulders. She is with a group of people—men in fancy suits and other women in ball-gowns—but they have all turned momentarily aside, so that she seems alone and ignored in their midst. How could those people be looking away, even for an instant? That picture called forth all the youth’s tenderness. Even in the midst of the fame and glamour, she could be alone and unappreciated. Poor darling.
The picture he dwelt on now was the one he sometimes called “The Sword Maiden” and sometimes “The Highwayman.” She is having a fencing lesson and is dressed like a man, like the most beautiful slim graceful man you could imagine. Her hair this time is fastened back. She is wearing high shiny boots and has a ruff of lace at her throat. She has just removed her mesh face-guard and is holding it down beside her with one hand while with the other she flourishes her rapier in a gesture of salute. The photo is being taken over the shoulder of the fencing teacher and she is looking and smiling directly at him, which means that she is looking almost directly at you also. As ever, she’s cool and poised and lovely. But there is something else. It is apparent that even in her blonde coolness she is flushed and excited. She is scared of the sharpness of the blades, even with the safety tips on, and of the desperate quickness of the swordplay—but her fright has brough
t her fully alive. You almost feel the hum of it in her body. He had no experience of such things, but he knew that at the moment of that photo she was in a mood to make love. That was why he found the picture so thrilling.
Yes, she was all the beauty and thrillingness of the world, nothing would ever change that. Except that now that wasn’t the whole story. Now there was another aspect.
The youth had seldom dreamt, or if he had he rarely remembered it. Now he was having a particularly vivid dream—or nightmare—that stayed with him. It took place in an amusement park. Sweetheart is operating the ticket booth of the Tunnel of Love. The youth is the customer and buys a ticket, not because he wants to take the ride, but to have an excuse to approach her and speak to her and have a moment of her attention. She seems to read his mind, and she tells him it is a serious offence to buy a Tunnel of Love ticket under false pretences. She will have to report him, she says. He reluctantly gets into one of the boats, which takes him into the tunnel. It is pretty and soothing at first, with the glimmer of fairy lights and the lapping of the water. Then the air becomes hot and oppressive and there’s the reek of harsh perfume. The boat keeps turning up new tunnels until the youth fears he is hopelessly lost. The boat stops and he cannot make it go again. There is hardly any light. He knows that the water around him is dangerously hot and deep and he dares not leave the boat. Her voice comes from nearby:
“You’re in a jam now, aren’t you,” she says.
He replies that he is.
“Would you like me to help you?”
He replies that he would.
“Tell me how much you want my help.”
He replies that he wants it very much.
“Not good enough!” she snaps.
The youth begins to see a little better in the dark and makes out a cave or grotto near him.
A giant web extends out of it and is strung across the tunnel, and he sees that the prow of the boat is caught. He peers into the grotto and can almost make out a huge spider as big as a person. He realises that Sweetheart’s voice came from the grotto. She is right where the spider is! He must warn her, save her. He senses that the spider is raising its huge fangs to strike. There comes a foul reek which he knows is the spider’s breath as its mouth gapes for its prey. The youth tries to cry a warning but he cannot utter a sound. He tries to paddle the boat with his hands but the water is scalding hot. Then someone is coming up the tunnel behind him, wading knee-deep through the water. How can that be? The youth is mystified. He peers again into the grotto and makes out Sweetheart’s face. She is very pale and anxious-looking and is trying to call him closer. Her face is right where the spider is. The fangs must be poised just inches away . . . Then he sees the person who has waded up to him. It is Diestl. The youth tries to tell Diestl that Sweetheart is there with the spider and in terrible danger.
“She isn’t with it!” Diestl growls back. He grabs the youth by the arm and pulls him from the boat. The youth finds the water isn’t hot at all and is only shallow. He and Diestl wade back along the tunnel until they see a chink of light in the roof. They climb up to it and break open a hole big enough to squirm through. They sit on the roof of the Tunnel of Love and look out over the amusement park. The youth is trying to fathom what Diestl meant by saying Sweetheart wasn’t with the spider. He turns to ask him, but Diestl has vanished. The youth climbs down to the ground and thinks to return to the ticket booth, but an instinct warns him that if he does the whole horror will be repeated, that he will have no power to avoid it. Then he understands something. Only the top half of Sweetheart is visible in the ticket booth. The bottom half, unseen below the counter, has spider’s feet. He hurries away from the amusement park, shrivelled with the horror of that knowledge.
There was something else. It was the truly haunting part, the part that made him wake up heartbroken. Even as the youth hurries from the amusement park, he knows that Sweetheart can be saved only if someone is brave enough to confront what she is. It’s like the fairytale of Beauty and the Beast. If he returned to the booth with an axe and smashed it open to reveal the spider’s feet, there would be a fearsome, inhuman shriek, then the spider’s feet would scuttle away into the deeps of the tunnel and Sweetheart would be her sweet self again. But the youth is too afraid to venture back.
He wants to ask Diestl to return with him, but he knows that Diestl has no interest in saving Sweetheart, none at all, and that it comes down to an intolerable choice: he can have Diestl or Sweetheart in his life, but not both.
The youth understood that the dream wasn’t Sweetheart’s fault and that it shouldn’t influence his feelings about her. And it didn’t, really. It was merely that there was an extra dimension to those feelings now, a dark area at the back of them. You didn’t need to take much notice of the other dimension, or of the dark, except of course when the dream was actually happening, or during that first minute or two after you’d woken and before the vividness faded.
You could speed that fading by getting the White Book out straightaway and gazing at “The Lonely Princess” or “The Sword Maiden.” Almost at once the dream or nightmare would seem quite far off and almost unconnected to you. If you were lucky you could go the whole day without a single thought or image of it coming to mind.
Yes, the mornings were okay, mostly, now that he had his private space. He could cope with the Tunnel of Love thing. What he could maybe not cope with was the Terror Waking thing, but it had only happened once. He’d woken in a panicked gesture of trying to shield his head with his arm because Long John had stumbled across and swung a tomahawk at him. Except it wasn’t Long John on a gammy pin, but an inhuman scuttling thing that hissed in a voice like Long John’s but higher pitched: One time we would’ve split your head open before you saw it coming, but that was when a girl still had two good legs!
It was so nice to get out to the cotton rows and feel the sun and earth and air, to feel the solid weight of the hoe in your hands, and the action of your body as you worked. The youth had always lived most fully in his mind, but there were times now when he just wanted to exist in his physical self, like a tree or a bush, like a cotton plant having its leaves ruffled in the sunny, earth-smelling breeze, and not ever having to think.
THEY WERE paid at the end of their first week. Rita came with a tray of brown envelopes and sat in front of the cook-shed with her white hat pushed back and gave each chipper his pay as he came up and signed for it. Rita looked after all the clerical matters of the camp and she and Denny both lived in Company quarters elsewhere. They were said to be on together. They did seem very suited. Someone reckoned that if they mated they’d have a baby hat.
There was some unpleasantness because one bloke claimed he’d been underpaid. He was getting stroppy with Rita when Denny came up and took him aside. Denny explained that you only got paid for the time you spent out on the rows with a hoe in your hand, and that the bloke had been absent the whole of Wednesday morning. The bloke replied that he’d had a toothache somethin’ terrible and had gone to Weegun to look for a dentist. Who was Denny to say a man couldn’t get a crook tooth seen to? Denny explained in a patient voice that, funnily enough, the Company employed cotton-chippers to chip cotton, not to go to the dentist.
The bloke began to bluster some more. Denny told him to please get his gear and leave the Company’s property. The bloke yelled that Denny couldn’t sack him just like that. Denny replied that he just had. The bloke was a lot bigger than Denny and seemed for a moment to want to fight. Denny didn’t do anything other than take his hands out of his jeans pockets, but there was something in the way he did it. The bloke walked away swearing and a minute later was in his car, churning up dust as he headed for the front gate.
A lot of the men went into Weegun on the Saturday afternoon, to go to the pub. The youth could’ve got a lift with someone if he’d wanted to. There was a picture theatre in the town and he thought of going to see what was on at the
matinee. But he was feeling unwell. His arm and shoulder had seemed at first to have recovered from the hurt they’d got when he was pinching the bike, but the first few days of cotton-chipping had brought back the throbbing ache. He had tried to ease the strain by varying his method, using different actions and postures, even hoeing left-handed at times, but none of that had helped. He was sore all over, really, from using muscles he didn’t know he had, and felt headachy too. He lay on his bed till mid-afternoon, then decided to go for a walk.
He left the camp and headed towards the big machinery depot that he could see in the distance. After a few minutes of walking he felt less unwell. There were wisps of white cloud in the sky, very high up, and a gentle breeze came over the fields. The land stretched away in the green-and-brown pattern that was everywhere and that he was accustomed to now, the green of cotton leaves and the brown of the soil. He walked with his head back, letting the sense of the sky fill him. Then he walked with his head down and focused on the smallest pebbles or puffs of dust or the tiniest leaves of the cotton plants. Then he walked with his eyes closed, concentrating on the sound of his own steps on the dirt road, or trying to catch the faint whisper of the breeze coming along the rows and through the leaves. It was like being the only person in that whole enormous landscape and having every sense filled. Every sense except taste. He wanted to taste the landscape as well as see and hear and feel it. He bent and poked his finger into the soft rich soil beside the stem of a cotton plant and then touched his tongue with it. It wasn’t a bad taste, apart from a hint of chemicals.
The machinery depot had high wire fences around it, and signs warning that the wire was electrified, and that you shouldn’t touch it, and that Continental Cotton bore no liability if you did. The vehicles inside were like machines from some bigger-scale world. The youth assumed they were cotton harvesters. The tyres were taller than a man, and the control cabins were far up in the air. He walked slowly round the perimeter looking at the machines from various angles. Their size gave you a watery sensation in the stomach, as though there’d be nothing you could do to escape if they suddenly sprang to life and came after you.