by Steve Bisley
Cracker night
At the start of November each year, when summer had settled on the district, we had Cracker Night at our farm. We invited all the locals. For months before, we worked on building a huge bonfire in the middle of one of the paddocks. We dragged dead and dying branches from the surrounding bush. Fallen trees were stacked onto the ever growing heap. Worn tyres were flung and drums of diesel were poured over the lot. Finally we made a Guy Fawkes figure out of rags and hessian and sat him on top.
We spent every spare penny on crackers. Every newsagent in the big towns had fireworks for sale. They all looked so beautiful in their brightly covered wrappers. There were skyrockets with long sticks, Catherine wheels that spun and sputtered with bright sparks flying as they whirled. Cone-shaped crackers that blew coloured balls high into the air. But best of all were the bungers! There were the bright red penny bungers and fat tuppenny ones, each with a drooping wick that hung from the top, just waiting for the match. We’d take them to the creek, light the wick then throw them deep into the water and wait for the wump to come. If you threw too soon, the water extinguished the wick and ruined the bunger; too late and you risked it going off in your hand or, worse still, beside your ear as you lifted your arm to throw – boom! – and your ears would be ringing for a week.
We put them under metal garbage bin lids and blew them high into the sky. We made cracker guns: a length of water pipe with one end sealed and a hole for the wick to come through. You slid the cracker into the pipe, fed the wick through the hole and dropped a marble into the pipe, lit the wick and aimed it. Deadly.
My Uncle George from across the creek started the bonfire. He first drenched the heap with a mixture of petrol and gunpowder then poured a trail from the heap to the beer tent. He struck a match and lit the end of the trail. A great arrow of fire shot through the paddock and the heap virtually exploded. The Guy Fawkes figure on top shot a hundred feet into the air then fell to earth in a shower of sparks. Luckily, it didn’t hit anyone. People did go a bit nuts on Cracker Night. Maybe it was the danger. There was the reek of gunpowder, the rockets screeching through the sky and exploding overhead, the showers of gold raining down, the bungers exploding …
Even Dad went a bit crazy. One Cracker Night I saw him standing on the toilet roof, he had one of my mother’s dresses on and he was fully made up and, when any of the women went in, he’d throw bungers in through the windows – only small ones, but enough to frighten the hell out of them.
He didn’t really need to throw the bungers, just the look of him in the dress was frightening enough. The weird thing was, he was the only one in fancy dress.
We’d get up early the next morning and scour the paddocks for the unexploded crackers and for weeks after Cracker Night the valley resounded to the sounds of small explosions.
The Wyong Show
There’s a bull with a brass ring in its nose.
There are blokes selling shiny tractors to other blokes who can’t afford ’em.
In the produce pavilion there’s a perfect pear in a glass jar and a giant pumpkin.
There’s a bloke selling car-seat covers and a knife that will cut through a brick and then slice a tomato into perfect quarters.
There are bright-eyed kelpies driving three tired sheep up a race.
There are blokes getting thrown off bulls that weigh a ton at the rodeo in the main arena.
Kids with painted faces suck the life from watery snow cones.
There’s fairy floss.
There are scones with clotted cream and jam on top.
Pluto pups with greasy batter and sauce.
Blokes in sandshoes cut their weight in wood.
There’s a bloke in a kilt trying to find a band, and a copper with a lost kid.
There are clowns down in sideshow alley. Their gaping mouths swing from side to side waiting for the next kid with the grimy ping-pong balls to have a go. ‘Every kid wins a prize!’
There are bullet-ridden tin ducks next door at the shooting gallery, with slug guns all in a row at the front. There’s a wall of furry animals at the back, dusty from too many shows.
At the knock-’em-downs I got a tin clicker with a grasshopper painted on the back for knocking over three cans with two balls, when what I really wanted was the spud gun on the second row.
I click my way deeper into the alley. There are blokes with ruddy faces yelling ‘’Ave a go’; women with weathered bodies take the cash for keeps.
I meet some mates and we slink off to the place we really want to be: the strip show. There are girls on a platform out the front with sequined bras and long legs in high-heeled shoes and veils, lots of veils. You hardly ever see anyone wearing a veil, only at weddings and strip shows, really. The spruiker says, ‘You’ll see it all inside.’ We edge to the ticket window. The woman behind the glass says, ‘I hope you’re old enough?’ and slides the tickets to us, knowing we’re not. We’re not, not by a long shot. We bolt for the tent. Inside it’s jammed full of blokes, sweating and jostling for a better view, the air thick with the smell of stale beer, BO and fags.
There is a small stage at the front with a sparkly curtain. Music leaks from a battered speaker. It feels naughty in here and hot and sweaty. My breath is suddenly ragged. The speaker crackles and a raspy male voice says, ‘Put your hands together for the lovely, the sexy, the beautiful Lolita! And remember, youse blokes – no touching!’
Raunchy music blares from the speaker as the curtains open. Lolita stands in the middle of the stage. I try to think of ice and polar bears to settle myself as I stare at her. I just stare. She begins to dance, her long white legs set wide as she gyrates on the small stage. I try to think of water and calm and goodness, but all I get is the smell of musk sticks and juice.
She runs her long fingers along the length of each leg, over her flat stomach to linger on the curve of her full breasts. I can’t think … of anything. She slides one long finger between the red slash of her full lips and sucks on it, sucks it deep inside her, and grins. I can smell the scent of her body from where I stand. It’s rich and dark and musky and sticky and hot. It is all over me and through me. I look around to see if others have noticed, but they’re all transfixed like me and flustered to a man, cherubic faces upturned, all flushed cheeks and sweat and something like innocence.
She shimmies, she struts. A brassy saxophone growls from the guts of the speaker and the tent trembles in the heat. She is magnificent! She reaches behind her slender back and unclips her bra. Our Father, who art in Heaven … The sparkly top falls to the floor and she is naked from the waist up. Naked. She stands in front of us and silently dares us to look away, and nobody does. Nobody in that musky tent in the middle of the Wyong showground on a hot February afternoon does anything but stare. One half-nude woman holds fifty men and three boys spellbound and dares them to move, and nobody does until the saxophone dies and the sparkly curtain closes.
We head from the tent into the bright glare. We stand in a loose group too shaken to speak till Brooksey croaks, ‘Let’s get a Coke,’ and we’re off, released and fired up. We bump into my brother. He’s with his friends, big guys. They’ve been in the beer tent ’cause they’re old enough. Some have girls with them. Babes, all net dresses and beehive hairdos. Richard’s with his new girlfriend, Lisabeth; she’s from Swansea and works in the cake shop.
‘Been to the strip show yet?’ says Rich.
‘No way, not old enough,’ I say, but my mate Wayney bursts out laughing and I know we’ve been sprung.
‘Did ya get a stiffy?’ says Clarky, one of my brother’s mates.
I did, but then I’d had one for the last two years, more or less. Mostly more. Someone tells Clarky to get fucked and we’re gone. We pick up the Cokes and head to the arena. I’ve still got the stiffy, but I’m used to it.
There are blokes in hats leading squat cows around.
There are blokes following the cows around with shovels, scooping up the shit.
I won
der how many years the bloke on the shovel’s got to do before he gets a go at leading the cow.
We find a spot and settle in. We talk about what we could have done to Lolita and what she could have done to us. That takes about an hour and I’ve got another stiffy or maybe it’s the same one, it’s hard to tell. We head off to the dodgems and crash and bump for a while. I lose the stiffy on the next ride, the Go-Go, from being whirled around so fast – or maybe it was the spewing that did it. Either way, it’s gone and that’s a relief. Sort of.
We head up sideshow alley and bump into three girls from our school: Judy Long, who sounds like a Pom and everyone reckons is a goer; Michelle Gribble; and Cathy Forrest, a blonde. I love blondes. Cathy is all body; there’s so much of it that it’s hard to take it all in. She’s like a junior Lolita, but local. We circle them in some vague pincer movement. It’s a stand-off. They all look so wrong out of uniform, all hairspray and bows. The smell of their perfume arrives about a minute later and falls on us like bricks. The lipstick needs work as well.
‘Where youse goin’?’ asks Judy.
‘Anywhere you are,’ says Dave.
‘Yeah! Let’s go on the Rotor so we can see your panties,’ says Brooksey.
I agree with everyone.
‘Then what are you gunna do?’ Cathy wants to know.
Brooksey holds his ground. ‘You’ll see!’
We head up the alley. It’s on. We wait in line. It takes three more sessions to finally empty the queue and suddenly we’re in. It’s like being in a barrel that’s standing on one end with its lid cut off. We line the curved walls, facing inwards, our arms outstretched as the barrel begins to spin. Now the speed comes on fast and things begin to blur and bleed. The girls are opposite, hair like sea grass, moving, clothes sucked to their bodies. The floor jolts beneath our feet as they start to lower it. It starts to go; the girls scream. ‘Shit!’ yells Brooksey. The floor is now six feet below and dropping fast as we whirl.
I look to my left at Dave, who’s turned himself upside down, his face contorting from the force. Brooksey’s gone as white as a sheet and the girls are all screaming for real. Cathy’s top has crept up. She catches me looking and doesn’t try to pull it back down. Jesus, she’s beautiful. I decide I’m going to ask her to come on the ghost train with me. There are people watching from above. Someone wolf-whistles and I bet it’s for Cathy. Who else? There’s just too much of her. The ride starts to slow and we all slip down the walls to the floor below. I help Cathy to her feet.
‘Wanna go on the ghost train with me?’ she asks, and takes my hand and leads me out into the sudden glory of sideshow alley.
Lord, if you let me live for the next ten minutes, I will serve you till Eternity, I think.
We ride the ghost train six times. It is the day I learn to kiss better. The day the earth moves, sideways.
We leave the ride in a daze and just cruise through the show. I don’t know what I feel, and I don’t care. I kiss her about another thousand times. She says she has to go find her friends ’cause we’d given them the slip. Can we meet up for the fireworks at eight? She goes. My lips feel like they’ve been through a cheese grater. They’ve never felt better.
I decide to go for a wander. I hope I don’t bump into anyone I know for a while, ’cause I’m still in the glow. That’s the only way I can describe it: a soft warm glow. I head back up the alley past the stupid clowns. The spud gun is still on the second shelf at the shooting gallery; I’ll come back later for another crack at it. I pass a show for littlies called Snow White. There’s a group of women out the front with prams and snotty-nosed kids. Up on the raised platform is a girl in a long red dress and a bad wig with a bunch of dwarves around her. Dopey’s picking his nose, Sleepy’s having a fag and Grumpy looks a bit pissed. I drift along. Past the half-man, half-woman show, which I’d been to last year. It was crap – just some poof in half a frock and half a dinner suit sewn together, with short hair on one side of his head and half a wig on the other. There’s a two-headed calf, a dog that can sing and a bloke that can swallow glass.
It’s just weird shit down here.
‘Hey, Bizo!’ It’s Dicky Dunn, the gunslinger. He’s got so many loves bites on his neck that his head could fall off any minute. ‘Saw you on the ghost train, mate, with Cathy!’
‘So?’
‘Did ya get a look at her tits?’
Word travels fast around here. It turns out he’s been working on the ghost train, poking people with a plastic skeleton hand for five bob an hour. He says that if he has to clean up any spew he gets an extra bob. ‘Sounds great!’ I say. He says he’ll see if he can get me some work as well. I tell him I have to meet Cathy later, so I’ll have to pass. He heads back to work and I drift.
I’m just tossing up whether I’ll go and catch Col Joye and the Joy Boys at the music tent when I see Dave heading towards me in a rush.
‘Bizo!’ he yells. ‘Where ya been? Been looking for you everywhere! Your brother’s gunna have a go at the boxing tent!’
By the time we arrive there’s a massive crowd out the front. Jimmy Sharman, the owner and showman, is up on the platform revving up the crowd.
‘Come up here, local fella, come up here and have a go! Come up here if ya think yer good enough!’
There must be a dozen of Jimmy’s fighters on the stand. Their shiny robes flutter and twirl around them as they shadow-box, left, right, the short jab and the lethal uppercut, slicing the air as they dance. They move like fluid shadows, these black boys. They’ve fought in every backwater in the country against all comers. There’s jet-black fellas from the Territory and square-jawed whitefellas from towns and broken farms, the dirt still in them.
‘I heard you Wyong boys are as weak as piss!’ growls Jimmy.
A roar goes up from the crowd.
Jimmy stokes the fire. ‘Well, if you local blokes aren’t as weak as piss, then come up here and have a go!’
There’s a black fighter on the end with a bass drum. He starts the boompah, boompah beat while another rings a clanging bell. Now the fighters from the troupe start to challenge blokes in the crowd.
‘Hey you, baldy, come up here – I’ll ’ave ya!’
More taunts follow and the crowd roars the insults back. Jimmy’s got them right where he wants them and finally up they come, the local boys, led by my brother. Richard, with the gentle heart and the soft brown eyes. He’s obviously been at the beer tent since I bumped into him earlier in the day. I don’t think he’d have been a starter without the fortification. Not that he’s scared; he’s a renowned fighter. I’ve seen him go, and he’s good, very good.
Jimmy Sharman sorts who’s going to fight who. Richard is paired with a black fighter and once all the other matches are set the crowd surges into the tent. They want blood, and they don’t really care who it comes from. Inside is the vacant ring, fresh bloodstains on the canvas and the grimy ropes slack and drooping.
There’s a bloke waiting in one of the corners for the fighters to glove up. His face is a mess. What’s left of his nose is spread and flattened across a pockmarked face. His ears are gristly and his teeth are mostly missing, and he’s just the referee.
The fighters enter the ring. There will be three three-minute rounds, and if the local bloke wins he gets ten quid. The crowd sizes up the fighters and the side bets go on. There are blokes with fistfuls of money trying to get others to take the bet. ‘Ten quid on the boong!’ and ‘I’ll take it, over here!’ and ‘I got twenty says the whitey won’t make it past the second!’ ‘Bullshit – you’re on!’
The bell rings and the fighters join the ref in the middle.
‘Keep it clean, no biting, no low punches and break when I tell ya!’
They retreat to the neutral corners.
Ding-ding goes the bell and it’s on. The local bloke is first out to the middle and he looks impressive, fast hands, good balance. They circle each other, the punches probing, searching, measuring the distance to the strike zo
ne. The black fighter is coiled like a spring, his hands low, his chin jutted like an invite. The local bloke takes the bait and throws a looping left at the target. The black spring uncoils, the head ducks as he steps inside and unleashes the deadly right in a blur of speed and power. The white guy’s brain turns into an instant kaleidoscope of colour and bright light. He remembers a picnic with a girl on a beach … somewhere, and the sound of soft rain, falling, falling. His legs are working on a vague memory of balance which can’t last, and doesn’t. The black fighter gets to him fast, claims him in a safe embrace and lowers him gently to the canvas. ‘Piss weak!’ yells some fool.
Money changes hands in the crowd. They wake the local bloke with smelling salts and care. He used to think he was a fighter and for twenty-three seconds he was.
My brother steps into the ring. His bare torso, white under the light, is thickset and muscled, his dark eyes fixed and determined. I’ve seen this purpose in him before. There’s no bluster about him, nothing showy, just the need to finish what’s been started. His opponent steps through the ropes. He’s blacker than the first fighter, leaner and taller than my brother by a foot.
They join the ref in the middle for the muttered instructions.
‘Come on, Dick, get into him!’ yells a mate, thinking it might help.
The fighters retreat.
The bell clangs.
The black bloke’s done this a hundred times before, faced off against whoever, wherever. He’s saving up to go back to Broome, maybe go pearl diving, or buy a tinnie and go fishing with his cousin Arnold for a living. He thinks of the breeze across Roebuck Bay. The kapok trees flowering now, big mob of crocodile eggs. A girl, tall one, waiting there now.
The punches fizz around his head.
Bang! One gets through.
He’s back now, in a tent, in a fight, somewhere in New South Wales.
He’d kill for a barra.
I can’t remember every punch, but I know I prayed for the third time that day. I can’t even remember what I said in the prayer, though I’m pretty sure it sounded as lame as the other two, unconvincing. I don’t know much about religion but I know you’ve really got to sell a prayer. You’ve got to at least pretend you believe, otherwise you won’t stand a chance of it getting through to the guy with the red face.