After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

by Unknown

  ‘Right,’ Leon said, the sweet hard against his cheek. ‘S’pose it’s easier if you’ve got a girl in a nice dress to think about.’

  Cray reached into his thigh pouch and brought out a wallet. He snaffled through it. ‘Tell you what, old matey,’ he said. ‘Just for today, youse can borrow my wife. Just till you get used to holding on to that gun.’ He handed over a folded photograph. It was colour, the woman was small-nosed with prominent canine teeth. Her dress was dark with an orange spidery flower print. Her hair was long down the sides of her face. She held her hand to her forehead in a salute. The beginnings of a pregnancy showed around the front of the dress.

  ‘Just before training started.’

  Leon handed the picture back, nodding. ‘She’s a lovely-looking woman.’

  ‘Careful.’

  ‘I mean she looks lovely.’

  Cray looked at the photograph and smiled, his chest rose. ‘Haven’t seen the boy yet. S’posed to be a picture coming, but what with the post . . .’

  Leon nodded. ‘How old would that make him?’

  ‘Seventeen days.’

  Leon bit the barley sugar in half and blinked away an image he didn’t want to know about. Cray sprayed with bullets against dark green, blood leaking from his mouth. He looked away and breathed through his nose. Something coursed through the leaves to one side of them, but Cray didn’t seem to hear it.

  The sound of the Hewie caught in the wind. When he was hoisted up, they all waved but Flood was still, a crust of a man, his mouth a hole.

  ‘Pretty crook way for a soldier to go, I reckon,’ said Pete but Leon wasn’t sure he agreed. He thought about the clean sheets Flood would be tucked into, about the quiet at night, the soft touches of nurses.

  11

  ‘Life is a cabaret, old chum. Come to the cabaret. Life is a cabaret, old chum. Come to the cabaret,’ sang Sal to no tune, so that Frank stopped blocking up the mouse holes behind the bed and watched her pushing canes into the ground for tomatoes to grow up. The vegetable patch looked good, nothing fruiting, but green tips were popping up and the soil was black and freshly turned of weeds. She was setting up an arrangement of chicken wire so that the new shoots would be safe. She moved about like a black beetle, feeling through the soil with her fingertips, scrabbling at loose stones and roots as she came across them. On days when she was over, he found himself busying around, doing little jobs he felt she might approve of: like sanding down a large tree stump for an outdoors table, clearing the guttering and setting a barrel at the edge of the house to catch rainwater for the garden.

  At the mosquito-biting time of day she appeared in the doorway dragging the machete behind her like a big fish. ‘What do you use this for?’ she asked.

  Controlling a bark, he took the knife off her and lobbed it into a stump by the side of the shack. ‘That’s to scare the chooks with. Remind them to keep laying eggs.’

  She nodded gravely.

  Once they were sitting down at the new table, Frank served up lunch. ‘Hope you like omelettes!’ he said as he slid the mess on to her plate. She did not reply.

  It was strange to eat at a table. Normally, he’d wander around shovelling the food in and not taking much notice.

  ‘Do you know how to kill a chook?’ she asked, forking the food around her plate.

  ‘Whose chook do you want to kill?’

  She shrugged. ‘Any chook. Just wondered if you knew how.’

  ‘Your mother never showed you how?’

  ‘She takes them mostly into the shed and I’m not supposed to watch.’

  ‘How come you want to know?’

  She shrugged again.

  ‘Well, you can wring their necks, or you can chop their heads off.’

  ‘With an axe?’

  ‘With an axe.’

  She looked through the open doorway at Kirk and Mary, scratching in the dust.

  Frank felt tense. ‘What d’ya need to know that sort of thing for?’

  ‘Just like to know. What else do you know?’

  ‘I know how to fish.’

  ‘I already know that.’

  ‘Light a fire?’

  ‘I know that too.’

  ‘Well, okay. Tell me what you know, then.’

  Sal sighed. ‘How to fish, how to make a fire, how to build a bivouac, how to hold a crocodile, how to change a tyre, how to get water in the desert, how to dress a crab, how to peel a prawn, how to peel a prickly pear, how to skin a pineapple.’ She took a deep breath. ‘How to get a stamp off a letter, how to make damper, how to spell SOS with flags, how to get a fish hook out of a lip, who Ned Kelly was and how to kill a chook.’ She sat back, her plate now empty, and arranged her knife and fork neatly in the centre.

  Frank’s eyebrows were far up his forehead. He could feel them there. ‘Tell you what, kiddo, I’d ask for a bit of help with that last one.’

  Sal looked again at Mary and Kirk.

  ‘I’ll show you how to gut a fish next time I knock a few on the head, eh?’

  Sal studied his eyes. ‘Hokay,’ she said as she slid from her chair. At the door she turned back. ‘I like omelettes with capsicum in.’

  ‘That one didn’t have capsicum in it.’

  ‘No.’

  She took off down the steps, hopped on her bike and hared off down the track to home, leaving a line of red dust in her wake.

  ‘Hokay,’ he said and to fill up the still space she’d left he wandered outside with a beer to talk at the chooks.

  Sea mist ghosted through the yellowed evening, painting the blue gums and wetting his face. A sea eagle coasted just above him, eyeing where the water’s surface ripped up, white and hairy, probably a feeding school of bream. He cast to that spot and sensed the wobble of fish sucking his bait. He felt expectant and a little bit drunk, his feet wide apart, the tips of his fingers resting on the drag. He’d been fishing with Lucy on a few occasions – once, before he’d got bad, they’d taken a long weekend and camped next to a river, a little inland, and there were a few windless days when the place seemed to be there entirely for their benefit. They’d caught fish from the river when they were hungry. A jabiru stalked them as they sat by the bank, taking off and flying close enough for them to feel the wind move on their faces. There were no other people at the spot and it was easy to imagine, when the sun started to go down and deer and echidna and paddymelon melted out of the bush, that they shared some secret with the land, that they and they alone lived in a way that set the precedent for all future campers. The two most perfect people on the planet. They made love in the open on a quilt that he wrapped round her afterwards, keeping the fading rays of the sun from touching her shoulders. He stayed awake, feeling the trees and dirt and water and breathing in the gloaming air. Even the mosquitoes gave them room, barely wingeing, just a whisper by his ear that made him put his hand over hers in case the noise woke her.

  When the sun was fully down he carried her to the tent and laid her on the mattress, where she opened her eyes. She’d smiled, and locked her arms round his neck and grabbed at the hair there. ‘Beautiful boy,’ she’d said and he’d kissed the sand from her belly.

  By the time he saw what was going to happen it was too late. A regular tugging at his line that he had taken for the ambling of his bait over rocks became the urgent yank of a caught fish. The fish had swum up to the surface and the eagle was swooping for it, as he stood there, gormless, his mouth working around words his brain hadn’t instructed him to say yet. Just too late, he let out as much line as he could, hoping the fish would take it and swim back down, but the eagle was keen and it easily grabbed hold of the fish in both claws, not missing a beat with its huge black-tipped wings. The drag screamed and he watched in amazement as his line began to go, his rod bouncing like old buggery and he yelled at the bird, ‘Let go, you idiot!’ but the eagle only angled its head at him, giving him no more of a look of understanding than it would have a rival bird.

  Frank floundered, holding the rod firmly i
n one hand, searching for a knife with the other, thinking in horror of how it would feel to reach the end of the drag, to have the bird pull and then plummet down into the water, tangled in line. With one hand he found the knife handle and held the blade to the line, and there was an elastic snap as the line was cut. The eagle kept on flying as if nothing had happened, the long string of line trailing from its claws, the fish still weaving in its grasp, shining silver where the sun caught it. The eagle flew out of sight round the bend that was the mouth of the river and Frank knelt down, his hands on his knees, breathing hard, a lump in his throat.

  That night he lay awake, hearing the noise that echoed over the tops of the cane. Sometimes it sounded like a dog or a fox and other times it had the lightest touch of man or woman about it, like it was trying to shape a word it couldn’t finish. He couldn’t sleep for a memory of Lucy sitting at the end of their bed. He’d lain there watching her through half-slitted eyes, just lain there when he could have touched her or spoken to her, heard her voice directed at him. She’d brushed her hair without ever getting any of the tangle out of it, just pulling the teeth through, ripping, the noise of it like tearing cabbage leaves. She wore too many beads, so that they caught in everything: her clothes, her hair, the curtains. Her lips were raw like she’d been in the cold. She looked in the mirror and ran a finger round the side of her mouth. There. Better. She turned to look at him and he closed his eyes. ‘I know you’re watching.’

  He said nothing. Let his eyes close fully.

  ‘I know you’re awake, Franko.’ There was a laugh in her voice, and he thought he might laugh too, but he stayed still, slack-faced, gummy-eyed. He felt their old soft mattress sink at the foot, felt her clambering towards him, up his body, saying softly, ‘Frank. Franko. Woohoo, is anybody in there?’

  And her voice was soft and she was warm on top of him, and he felt the pulse of his penis under the covers, a separate heartbeat. And from nowhere he could place, anger. She had the backs of her fingers on his throat, she was stroking him, he could feel her smile next to his face and he shoved her, hard. ‘Will you just let me sleep?’ he bellowed and he saw that she nearly laughed, even as she had the wind knocked out of her. Her face a pale half-moon in the dim light, took the shock slowly as she understood he was not joking, and he turned his back to her.

  The silence thickened, so that the room felt soupy. There was one sniff from the foot of the bed and nothing more. He kept his eyes closed, his heart beating strong in his chest, the anger remaining all the while the silence did. The sound of her gathering her things about her, the snuffle of old tissues, the heavy greatcoat with the grub holes in it shifted over her back, he heard it swamp her. She zipped something up and left the room. Out in the hall, he heard her find her keys; the scented silver jangle of her key chain. The front door opened. Closed. Her feet clacked down the street. He opened his eyes and the room was soaked in red light, the morning sun coming through the rag-rug curtains. He let the breath run out of him, the anger evaporated like it had gone out of the door with her, like he had simply given it to her.

  He rolled over and reached for the phone, but her mobile rang on her side of the bed. The anger rose again in his throat. There would be no getting hold of her then, no chance of getting in there quick and making things better. What did she expect? That he would chase her out into the street naked? He threw his phone at the floor and again the anger went, and he just felt sore and sorry and lonely. That was the beginning of when he’d got bad, that was the first time.

  In his camp bed, Frank plucked at the frayed edge of his blanket. There wasn’t much space, but there was space enough for another body next to him, a length of mattress that was cool and vacant, an open hand waiting to receive something. The teeth in his head ached and he sat up to pour himself a drink to get him to sleep while the night dripped slowly by. Jesus was in the cane again, and that didn’t help matters, cooing and growling at the heavy air. It didn’t seem right to drink beer, so he unearthed a bottle of brandy he’d bought to cook with and it smelt like Christmas. Something, Jesus or maybe a frogmouth, barked not too far away and Frank raised his cup to the window, ‘An’ you sleep tight too, sweetheart.’ After a pause he added, ‘Don’t let anything bite.’

  12

  It had started as a tight feeling under his ribs, like a drawstring for his lungs, but then in the thickest part of the night, Leon found himself sweating and gulping like a drowning fish, clamped to the open-air dunny. After the bouts of scorching liquid that shot from his bowels came a moment of wonderful cold. He sat, shitting by starlight, sweat coming off his face while his teeth chattered against the after-frost, and frog song echoed up around him, drowning out the sound of what was going on in the toilet shute. The meaty thick air around the dunny and an ache in his tail bone made him feel worse, but there was no getting off the seat, and he looked up at the cool space of the night sky and wanted that air to come down closer to him. Over by the cookhouse someone smoked, the orange glow of it lighting up a shine on his rifle. Cripes, he thought, if there was trouble now I’d just sit here and let it come. No one’d come near me anyway with the smell of it. They’d have to grenade me.

  There was the hollow-wood sound of an owl, beyond that the chirrup and hiss of the night-time things. The moon looked damp nearly hidden by banana leaves. As another cramp struck him in the guts so that he bent forward and a creak escaped his lips, he saw a star move. He panted with his tongue out and watched as the satellite drew, smooth and slow as melting ice, right through the centre of his patch of sky, happy as a larrikin.

  At breakfast Pete clapped him on the shoulder. ‘You look crook, mate.’

  ‘Not feeling great.’

  ‘They call that acclimatisation. You’ve got the acclimatising shits.’

  ‘Beaudy.’

  Pete turned to face everyone and held up a couple of letters. ‘Post for Clive,’ he said. ‘Won’t be much more of this for a while.’ He wasn’t able to hide a greedy look at the sealed envelopes as he handed them out. ‘Posties are on strike. Hopefully it’ll get sorted out soon, but.’ There was a long silence.

  ‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Cray and he spat, then held the back of his head with both hands, his elbows far out to the side like he was limbering up for a fight. He stood on the balls of his feet and took his hat off, slamming it down on his thigh. The others swore and shook their heads, stubbed their toes into the dirt and looked at the floor. ‘Who in the fuck do they think they are?’ Cray walked away, his hat still held at his side; drawing his thumb over and over his forehead, he disappeared behind the cookhouse.

  ‘All a bloke fuckin’ needs,’ said Pete. ‘Our own cunting country. Fuck ’em.’ Leon dug in the dirt with his heel. There was nothing he’d expect in the post except maybe another crazy-faced postcard from his mother. But he thought of their own postie, the miserable bastard who’d delivered the conscription notice, with his low unfriendly looks and the way he’d never say hello. He’d get a kick out of it for sure. There was a loud clang from behind the cookhouse where Cray was kicking something hard enough to dent it, but nobody took any notice, because Clive was crying. He was holding the opened letter up to his head with both hands, his eyes closed, his lips drawn back over his teeth and his body rocking in time with the quiet sobs that came out of him. They all moved close, and Pete went and took the letter from Clive’s fist and swept his eyes over it. He nodded, patted Clive on the back and walked over to the noticeboard. He ripped off a flyer that warned about drinking still water, and used the tack to pin up the letter. He took the pen that hung on a string from the board and wrote SELFISH FUCKING BITCH along the side. Clive was still holding his face, and Leon reached out and touched his shoulder, patted it awkwardly, felt the prominent bone that wouldn’t have been there a month ago.

  Pete looked at his watch. ‘Right. Let’s get some grog inside this man.’ They all moved, with Clive in among the middle of them, prodded and patted and trundled him on, sat him down on a bench and
put a small bottle of whisky in his hand. He drank long and deep from it, his nose ran and he hiccuped.

  Later, when Clive was drunk, Leon stood in front of the board and read the letter. Someone had drawn a stick lady with enormous tits that had been turned into targets and a badly drawn weeping dick was pointing towards them. Written underneath it said GET THIS OFF YOUR CHEST, BITCH! In several different hands were the words FUCK HER! and WHAT A WHORE! The letter was written on paper with a drawing of a light pink bow at the top.

  Dear Clive,

  It’s really not fair to keep on pretending, I know you’d want me to be straight with you. You remember Mike? You met him at the Summer ball at work? He’s an objector, Clive, and I have to say I admire his strength. I just feel like he’s the kind of person I need in my life, and I’m sorry if this hurts you, I just wish there was a nicer way of putting this.

  I’ve been to see your mother and she knows how it is, so there’s no need to worry about telling her. I’m sorry if this is all a shock, but I just had to get it off of my chest.

  Yours regretfully

  Sally

  PS Take care.

  Leon picked up the pen on the string. Amy Blackwell, what did she think about the war and everything? He imagined her turning up at the shop, all finished up, and seeing it closed. He thought about Mrs Shannon bumping into her, whether she would tell her where he was, what he was doing. Maybe she’d write him a letter. Not like Clive’s letter, perhaps she’d write and say she always thought of him and how terrible it was that he was at war. And how brave she thought he was. Or maybe she objected and he’d get a letter telling him how it was better to tell them to stick it, that he was a murderer. But either way there was no mail any more, so it wasn’t such a problem. He left the pen on the string dangling, the token words he’d written, FUCK YOU, meaning nothing to him and directed at nobody in particular.