Currawalli Street

by Christopher Morgan

  ‘That’s right.’ Rodney nods, impressed at Jim’s knowledge.

  ‘Look, I’ve got some in my pocket. You can have it. This will do the job.’

  ‘Thanks, Jim,’ Rodney says, taking the sandpaper.

  ‘You know a lot about this subject,’ Eve says.

  Jim looks at her. ‘I used to have a job that involved sitting in trees.’

  ‘Wow! What sort of a job was that?’ Rodney asks.

  ‘I was in the army. I would have to sit still for a long time. It wasn’t a very nice job.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t like to have to sit still. I’d prefer to drive a tank across creeks and logs.’

  Eve recognises what sort of job in the army requires tree sitting and so she changes the subject. ‘What are you planning to do now that you’re home? You are home, aren’t you? Or are you going back?’

  ‘Oh no. I never want to go back there again. I’m not sure what I will do now. I enjoyed the building I did for Mary and Patrick and I may just keep doing that sort of work. As of now, the army is still paying me.’

  ‘Exactly three weeks ago today,’ Rodney says.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Jim is momentarily puzzled.

  ‘When that girl you gave the honeysuckle to came and looked at the soldier statue.’

  ‘Oh, right. Well, she might come back again.’

  ‘And then you can kiss her.’

  ‘Rodney!’ Eve says.

  Jim laughs. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. I think I’d like to get to know her first. Find out what her name is, that sort of thing.’ Jim sits back in his chair and pushes his teacup to one side. ‘Rodney, can you tell me what was happening in the street the day all the police cars turned up to my house?’

  Rodney looks at him without answering and then selects a logbook from the stack and begins to flick deliberately through the pages. ‘You mean the day your dad and your mum got fired by the gun?’ he says at last.

  ‘Yes, that day.’

  ‘Well, that morning, your mum went down to the shops. Patrick went to the train station. Val’s cat went straight into the strange man’s house when Val let it out the front door. Your dad walked down to Choppingblock Road and stood there for a while.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘He watched a funeral drive past. You know, when the cars all have their headlights on and they drive in a line slowly.’

  ‘Oh yes. Did he come back after that?’

  Rodney consulted his logbook. ‘Yes, straightaway. The time was nine thirty am.’

  ‘Ah.’ Jim looks at Eve to see if she appears worried by his questioning of her son. She doesn’t. If anything, she looks more concerned about Jim. ‘Rodney, do you remember a woman who used to come visiting my house when my mum wasn’t home?’ Jim senses Eve flinch.

  ‘You mean in the green car?’

  ‘Yes, that’s who I mean.’

  ‘Well, she used to come all the time when your mum was away. I figured that your dad couldn’t wash the dishes on his own and she liked to come by and help him. My mum can’t do the dishes on her own. I have to help her.’

  ‘Yes, I imagine that’s why she was coming by.’

  ‘She didn’t come anymore after her car got smashed by the truck. You should have heard the noise. It made all the cockatoos go quiet.’

  ‘Where was that smash? Here in the street?’

  ‘No,’ Eve says.

  ‘In Choppingblock Road,’ Rodney explains. ‘Just down from the corner. The police and an ambulance came. The truck driver cried.’

  ‘Was the lady in the green car hurt?’

  ‘No, she wasn’t hurt. She was dead.’

  ‘Oh, Rodney,’ Eve says.

  ‘She was. I saw an ambulance man put a sheet over her face. That’s what you do with dead people. So they can’t look out and see what’s happened.’

  ‘That’s right. When was the smash?’ asks Jim.

  Rodney consults his book again, turning back seven pages. ‘One week before the gun was fired and made the apostle birds fly out of the tree. They had just settled back down when the gun went off again. They didn’t come back for a while after that.’

  ‘I think that’s enough,’ Eve says.

  ‘Yes. That’s enough. Thanks, Rodney. Can I just ask one more thing?’ Jim looks at Eve. The question is for her.

  ‘Sure,’ Rodney says. Eve nods slowly.

  ‘Did you see anybody knock on my front door before the shots were fired?’

  Rodney keeps his head down, staring at a page in his logbook. ‘Yes, I did,’ he says finally.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Eve says as she stands.

  Jim sits back from the table and tries to take a deep breath without gasping. He fails. Rodney looks up at him. Jim tries to smile at him and says, ‘Okay, let’s forget about it. There’s no need to talk about it anymore.’

  ‘And your dad buried the silver box in the front yard the night before the guns fired off. That was great. I reckon it must be real treasure. Are you going to dig it up?’

  Jim leans forward again. ‘Where did he bury it?’

  ‘He dug the hole near the big tree.’

  ‘I think I’ll go home now and dig it up. I’ll come and tell you if it’s treasure. Tell me, do you ever get tired of sitting in the tree?’

  ‘Sometimes. But . . . I don’t really know what else to do.’

  Jim opens his two hands, palms upwards, on the table. Rodney and Eve look down at them as if Jim is about to perform a magic trick. He says, ‘You could come up and help me sometimes, if you want. I’m going to build a chook shed for the people across the road. The Albertos in number four.’

  ‘What would I do?’

  ‘Do you know how to hammer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know how to saw?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Great. Then that’s what you can do first. Learn to hammer and learn to saw. I’ll teach you.’

  ‘Would you?’ asks Eve. Rodney and Jim look at her.

  ‘Yes. I’m a good teacher. I’d like to do it, if you don’t mind?’

  ‘I’d love you to,’ Eve says.

  ‘Rodney, can you whistle?’

  ‘Yes, Mum says I’m a good whistler.’

  Jim smiles at Eve. ‘Then in return you can teach me to whistle. I can’t and I would like to.’

  ‘Can we start on the chook shed now?’ Rodney asks.

  ‘Sort of. Rosa has told me what she wants and how big. You and I will have to draw up plans so we know how much timber and wire to buy.’

  ‘And nails,’ Rodney adds. ‘When can we do these plans?’

  ‘I want to talk to your mum about homework and what other commitments you have.’

  ‘What’s a commitment?’

  ‘A promise that you have made to yourself or someone else.’

  ‘I don’t make promises in case I can’t keep them.’

  ‘Good for you.’ Jim turns again to Eve and lifts his eyebrows in a question.

  Eve has already thought about it and has an answer ready. ‘Tomorrow night we have to go shopping for a new pair of shoes for school. The next night is free. How’s that for you, Jim?’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Come for dinner,’ she presses.

  ‘Okay. But Rodney and I will have a lot of work to do. We won’t be able to sit around after dinner and talk.’

  ‘You might have to wash the dishes on your own that night, Mum. Will you be alright?’ Rodney asks.

  ‘Yes, I’ll manage.’

  Jim gets up and heads to the door. ‘I’m so pleased I have an assistant to help me do this job. Oh, by the way, I’ll pay you.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Eve whispers, behind him.


  Jim stops at the door. ‘No, fair’s fair. The Albertos are paying me. And if you like this sort of work there’s more to come. The Hendersons want me to build an arch for their roses.’

  ‘We’ll need to draw plans,’ Rodney says.

  ‘We will. I don’t know how to build an arch.’

  ‘The pub has an old one in the backyard. You can see it from my lookout tree.’

  Jim laughs. ‘Alright. When the time comes, I’ll climb up and have a look. Now, I’d better go. Thanks for the cup of tea.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ says Eve and then out of Rodney’s earshot she asks, ‘The police will want to talk to him, won’t they?’

  Jim opens the door and looks at the new night. He turns back to face Eve. ‘No. I’m not going to say anything to them.’

  She flinches as if she is trying not to cry. She mouths a thank-you to him. He nods and walks out into the night air.

  Eve closes the door. ‘Wow,’ she says.

  ‘Wow,’ Rodney echoes.

  Jim walks straight home, throws open the side gate and grabs the shovel, which is leaning against the side fence. Just before he thrusts the blade into the soil, he pauses, his body poised to dig. He knows that thoughts are quick and that unless he stops and attends to them as they come into his head, they will fly away with the wind.

  Overseas Jim witnessed many injustices that have been left ignored and unremedied. He has seen that these injustices pass into history in the same way as the ones resolved. And so he decides that the information about his parents’ murder in Rodney’s logbook should be left there. And that the boy in the apricot tree should not be disturbed again.

  Only once did Jim try to fix an injustice, and all it did was create another one. The knife he pulled from Mai’s belly he returned to the GI who owned it, by plunging it into his chest. The money that he ripped from Mai’s fist, he stuffed into the mouth of the GI. And the ghosts of both people have been with him ever since.

  *

  Jim feels a sudden connection to his father as he digs out the same soil that his father filled in. His intuition tells him when he is about to hit the silver box before there is any physical indication. He uses his hands to scoop out the last of the soil and soon the silver box shines at the bottom of the hole in the new moonlight. Jim looks down at it, feeling a quiet heartache as if he has just discovered something from his childhood. He reaches down to it. There are letters in the silver box. He unfolds the first one, reads two paragraphs and then refolds it. Jim doesn’t know the handwriting, but it is clearly a woman’s. He takes another letter from near the bottom of the pile, reads a little and then folds it back up too. He empties all the letters from the box into the hole and puts the empty silver tin down on the path beside him. Then he fills in the hole, pats down the dirt and covers it with leaves. The ground looks undisturbed. He picks up the box and carries it and the spade around the back.

  Inside he wipes out the box, finds his dog tags on the table, places them inside and returns it to its former place in the cupboard over the fridge. He sits for a moment at the kitchen table. Where his father always sat, although it doesn’t feel like it’s his father’s seat anymore. He remembers what a forgotten soldier said to him while they were standing out on a street in Saigon, watching as the two sad girls with smiling faces whom they had picked up easily and would most likely never see again walked into a department store to spend the money the two Australian soldiers had just given them. The soldier was married and talked constantly about fidelity. He said that secrets are, in fact, living things. They expand, contract, stay silent, cry out. And like any other living thing, they eventually emerge into the sun.

  Jim smiled because he understood now. He may have sweated in his hurry to rebury those letters, but it didn’t matter; his father’s secret is now stretching itself in the light of day.

  He picks up the photo of Kathleen and Johnny, posing by the side of the house, and tries to decipher some more of the words written on the back.

  All day, the clouds have allowed the sun to pass by undisturbed. The wind blew the smell of a bushfire down the street in the morning but now in the late afternoon it has drifted away and been replaced by the currawalli tree scents. The only real noises during the day were the trains and the cockatoos and now there is the last of the birds and the first of the crickets.

  Upper Lance stops at the First World War monument, the statue of the silent soldier. He looks idly at the list of names. The fallen, from the streets around here. He reads each name aloud and notices there is only one woman. He doesn’t know what that means.

  What do men normally do on their evenings off? he wonders.

  Go to the pub.

  He begins to walk slowly down the street. Although he doesn’t normally think twice about going to work, now that he doesn’t have to go for a few days it feels as if a weight has been lifted from his mind and body. He must dread it more than he realises. He tries to put a spring in his step. He has time to look down driveways and paths. When he is walking to work he keeps his head down and tries to think over the things he has been meaning to do that day because he knows that once he is at work they will evaporate and never come back. He has a dangerous job, though no more dangerous than the man standing next to him on the factory floor. It requires concentration. Safety guards look good as far as inspectors are concerned but they are an impediment to the work. They turn a ten-minute job into a twenty-minute job, and the boss can’t afford that. Upper Lance hates it when the union comes in and talks about safety: he knows how to use this equipment and keep safe; he’s not a child.

  Debra isn’t around and this idleness is starting to irritate him. She has gone into the church to pray for something or other. She likes to do that. He looks at the church door. It is closed. It is after six. Maybe he should go in and pray with her? No, he wouldn’t know what to say. She asked him once if he had doubts about God, if that was why he wasn’t very religious. He replied that he thought God had doubts about him. That was very clever; he always remembers it. He will use that line again if ever anybody asks him about his religious beliefs. So far, though, no one has asked.

  No, maybe he will go to the pub and have two beers. That is his limit and Debra will be home by then, making dinner.

  As he turns away from the church he sees Jim walking ahead of him, no doubt heading for the same place. By the time he walks in the front door of the pub, Jim is standing at the bar, throwing back some sort of spirit. Upper Lance is a little discouraged by the ease with which he drinks the spirit; as if it is water. As a boy Lance was taught by his mum to be wary of men who drank easily. His grandfather cut a swathe through his family life before he died of the drink. But in memory of his grandfather he walks up to Jim, says hello and asks to join him.

  Lance’s two beers turn into three as they talk about all manner of things. Jim is a good listener, Upper Lance thinks to himself, and I must be a good talker. As he finishes his third beer, the fourth is already on the coaster waiting for him.

  Upper Lance looks around the bar at all the faces. He turns towards Jim as a ballet dancer would if he was offstage and heard his name called. It is a sudden movement. Jim steps back, a little shocked at the unexpectedness of it.

  Upper Lance says, ‘I was looking at the statue at the end of our street. That poor soldier. And all the names. I was thinking about him.’ Lance grabs Jim’s forearm. ‘I don’t believe he just stands up there on his own. No, all the secrets of the street—all the ghosts that have been pushed out of the houses, all the memories that have tried to be forgotten; all those thoughts that were believed and then suddenly not believed—all of those things are up there with him. Up there watching what goes on. No wonder he bows his head. All that weight on his back . . .’ He releases Jim’s arm and pauses to drink. The beer spills out of the glass and runs down his hand, under his sleeve.

  ‘. . . And a
nother thing. If his head was up, he would be able to see right down Currawalli Street. See who goes where, see what happens when no one is looking, see who keeps their curtains open when they should be closed, see who is knocking on whose door . . . God knows what he would see.

  ‘Jim, you’re a lot younger than me and I’ve learned a few things over the years. I’ll tell you something: the main difference between then and now is simply this. Then, telling a lie and not telling the truth was exactly the same thing. But now you are able to not tell the truth without telling a lie. And in that,’ he smiles at Jim, ‘lies the destruction of the human race.’

  ‘Oh,’ Jim says, realising that the other man has passed his alcohol limit.

  ‘And it will only get worse.’ Upper Lance comes one step closer and lowers his voice. ‘There are times when I wake up and I can clearly see what is happening to the world. But my clarity disappears within minutes. Sometimes at night when I’m at work, I get a chance to ponder things. I worry about my daughter’s future. I also worry about being at work all night and not being with my wife. Whether she gets lonely . . . if you know what I mean?’

  Jim thinks he does and decides that he doesn’t want to go down this path with a man he hardly knows. But Upper Lance continues without waiting for Jim’s response. ‘Especially because our daughter has been away, so Debra is alone in the house. She says she likes it but I don’t know . . . She used to have an appetite, if you know what I mean, but recently she doesn’t . . . you know?’

  Jim does know what he means. He shared a tent with a soldier from Sydney, roughly the same age as Upper Lance who wondered about the same things, and every time he came across a term or situation or emotion too uncomfortable to describe he would say exactly this: ‘do you know what I mean?’ Jim eventually learned that the issues being resolved didn’t stop the do you know what I means; they continued unabated and ended up saying more about the man in the tent than it did about the woman in the house back at home in Sydney.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Lance collects himself. ‘I’m rabbiting on. I have a few nights off work and I’m a little excited.’

  ‘Maybe we should go home now?’