Stillways

by Steve Bisley

  I’ve got a job, I’ve got a future … I feel like I could burst.

  Changes

  I was home, but only for a month. Only a month till I started my new life. It seems strange to me. I’m only just coming to terms with my old one. Things were changing so fast. The end of so many things and the beginning of others. I’ve only been back home a week and already it’s started.

  Fish’s dad died while I was away. It was a Saturday and Fish had gone to his job at the pharmacy. The pub had opened at ten as usual and the barman had poured his dad’s first white wine of the day, like he’d done for as long as he could remember. When he hadn’t turned up by three minutes past, the barman knew something was wrong and called Fish at work. Fish rushed home and found his father. It wasn’t the booze that had killed him; he’d hanged himself in the garage. He’d stood on the stool that Fish had salvaged for him from the tip. There was no note. I went to the funeral. There was no other family there, just Fish, and his mates who loved him. Everyone from the pub was there. It must have been a black day for them, losing their best customer. Fish had tried to get in touch with his mum, to let her know what had happened, but nobody knew where she was. We weren’t legally old enough to drink but we had our own private wake in a back room at the pub. The owner put a keg on for free and left us to it. Fish’s old man would have loved it. I guess dying was the only way he was ever going to get sober.

  I stay at Fish’s place that night in the hammock on the front verandah because he didn’t want me to come inside. A lot of people offered to take him in and look after him but he’d battled his whole life to stay in his own home and he wasn’t going to change now.

  I didn’t see him after I moved to Sydney but I heard he’d gone back to school, got his Leaving Certificate and was accepted into Sydney University, where he studied to become a pharmacist.

  I got a job offsiding with a local builder. I needed to earn some money before my job started in early January. Alf was amazing to watch. He had these big square hands that were gnarly and calloused. He was well into his sixties and he was tireless. We’d do a twelve-hour day and I’d be buggered at the end of it, while Alf looked as fresh as when we’d started. He could do anything with a stick of timber. He’d been in the building trade since he was just a kid, working with his old man. That was back in the 1920s, when new towns were springing up everywhere. Alf and his dad travelled in an old truck with all the tools they needed on the back. They only ever built hotels, the big old ones you see on the street corners of every country town. They’d arrive in town and start building the whole pub – the bars downstairs, the giant wooden staircases, the rooms upstairs. Sometimes they’d be in town for a year. And when they finished they’d be off to the next place to do it all again. These days he was living locally and doing mostly restorations and additions to residential properties.

  We were putting a deck on a house on the shores of the lake. One day Dicky Dunn and his old man turned up to do the concreting on a new driveway. When we broke for lunch, Dicky and I took our sandwiches down to the water. We’d just sat down when the big siren sounded the shift change from the power station.

  ‘Julie’s pregnant,’ he said in the following quiet.

  More changes. Julie was Dicky’s on-and-off girlfriend. More off than on. It was a stormy relationship to say the least. She’d left school two years ago when she was fifteen, and they’d started going out soon after. She worked at one of the two hairdressing salons in town.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m going into the army, mate; had the interview a week ago. I go two weeks after Christmas. Hope I get to go to ’Nam – I’ll shoot a couple of gooks for you, mate.’

  ‘What’s going to happen with the baby, Dicky?’

  ‘She wants to keep it,’ he said. ‘So does her mum.’

  ‘What do you want, mate?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t give a fuck, mate, I’ll be in Vietnam. She can do what she likes!’

  I sipped the milky tea from my thermos and looked across the wide expanse of the lake. I remembered Dicky at the show with the love bites on his neck, scaring the shit out of people on the ghost train for five bob an hour and knew that that was the best time of our lives. I was still fifteen, Dicky only a year older, and we shouldn’t have been having this conversation. It was so wrong.

  ‘Have you told your folks yet?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Mum had a yarn to her, told her to get rid of it, and Dad called me a fuckwit – still won’t look at me.’ A silver fish jumps on the silent lake. ‘Hey, listen Bizo, let’s go to the pub Saturday night? I know the bloke on the door, won’t be a problem.’

  With Dicky, nothing would ever be a problem.

  ‘I’ve got to get back, mate.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said and we headed to the house.

  Later, as we’re packing up, I watch Dicky with his silent father trowelling the last of the driveway, his future set just like the concrete.

  Christmas

  When I was a little kid I would put carrots out on the verandah for the reindeer, and cake and milk for Santa. On Christmas Eve I would sit out there, looking out over the dark paddocks, waiting for the twinkling lights of the sled to come till sleep claimed me and I missed him again. One Christmas morning I found the carrots undisturbed where I had left them and the milk and cake untouched. I didn’t tell anyone but it troubled me.

  I believed in Santa Claus. Even when I found a cache of unwrapped presents in the linen press that ended up under the tree wrapped in bright paper with swing tags that read ‘To Stevie, From Santa’. I asked Mum about it and she told me that Santa had delivered them early because he had run out of wrapping paper and had asked my mother, if it wasn’t too much trouble, if she could wrap them on his behalf this year. My mother had agreed only after an assurance from Santa that it would never happen again. My mother could be firm when it was required. I believed every word of it.

  Back then I also thought that Santa and Christ were somehow linked, a dynamic duo, a bit like Batman and Robin. I can remember standing at the front of a department store in Newcastle staring at a nativity scene. In one window was the manger with a small bed lined with straw. In the straw lay the baby Jesus with a few cows and some sheep in attendance. In the very next window was Santa’s workshop with a lot of busy elves getting the presents organised for Santa to deliver. I think this is where the confusion began. For years I thought that Jesus rode around with Santa in the sled and helped him deliver the presents. This was the only miracle I ever believed in.

  And now it’s another Christmas morning. Too hot, too early, airless and still. The grass is browning on the lawn and the big gum trees are sagging. The dog hasn’t left the cool of the laundry slab in a week. I slept under a single sheet last night, but even that was too much and I woke up this morning hot and clammy.

  The Christmas tree in the corner next to the TV has gone all brittle in the heat and doesn’t smell alpine anymore. There are cards on the mantelpiece above the oil heater, where the open fire used to be. The cards have pictures of snow on them. A snowman, a house in the snow, children playing in the snow, Santa with his sled full of presents in the snow.

  I wrapped my presents last night and they’re stacked under the tree. I bought Dad an electric razor last year knowing that he is strictly a blade man. He’s never taken it out of the box, so this year I’ve got him another one. Mum’s easy to buy for, slippers and perfume. There’s a shirt in a box for my brother, some perfume for his new wife and a Bob Dylan album for Kris.

  The house is quiet, just the sound of the fridge groaning from the kitchen. I’m the only kid left in the house. My brother’s married now and living in another fibro house down by the lake and my sister will come from Newcastle later this morning. The sun’s barely above the tree line and already the paddocks are crackling like cellophane. I unwind myself from the sheet and make my way outside in the hope there might be some early breeze but the big gums are s
till and nothing is moving.

  I sit on the edge of the verandah. The kookaburras start their chorus but this morning even they’re a bit half-hearted. The one cow is lying under the shade of the one tree in the paddock. I hear Mum in the kitchen and the kettle whistling and the sound of a spoon in a cup. She’s out through the screen door now with two steaming cups and she perches beside me.

  ‘Having a last look?’ she asks, knowing me too well.

  ‘Yeah, last look.’ And we sit in the quiet, just me and Mum. We sit till the last of our tea is gone and she says, ‘Well, this won’t buy the baby a rug,’ and I know it’s a call to action, that we’re up and into the day. I head for the bathroom and a shower and she’s in the kitchen clearing the decks.

  An hour later we’ve stuffed the turkey and it’s in the oven and it’s the start of the Christmas marathon. There’s a pudding bubbling away in one pot and thick molten gravy in another. Dad’s sharpening the knives for carving and getting in everyone’s way. Bing Crosby’s crooning on the record player about a white Christmas somewhere else and the flies are gathered like gangs on the screen door.

  Richard and his new wife, Lisabeth, arrive with presents and bright pink prawns and more grog to go with the grog that’s already here. Kristin’s suddenly through the gate and the dog rouses and wags himself stupid. She’s through the door and everyone hugs everyone again, the first wine of the day gets poured and I nick one and nobody cares. There are peanuts in bowls and cashews in others and sugared almonds in even more as well as candied ginger and things you’ll never see for another year, but you eat them because they’re there and it’s Christmas and everything is forgotten and let go.

  So Dad plays Santa and hands the presents around and announces who they’re from and who they’re for, and the paper gets torn to shreds and everyone gets everything they’ve ever wanted and we sit in new starchy shirts with the pins still in them and someone’s got tinsel in their hair and the dog’s allowed inside and pisses on the rug in the lounge room from the sheer excitement of it all.

  Dad likes the electric razor for a minute and forgets he already has one. Bob Dylan replaces Bing on the record player and the answer my friend is blowing in the wind, but not here, where it must be thirty-something degrees and climbing. Mum’s had too many wines already but so has everybody else, and we swarm back to the kitchen and everyone gets in everyone’s way and the prawns get peeled and the table gets laid with Mum’s best things and the turkey gets hauled from the oven and Dad’s all over it with the bright knives. Richard’s carving the ham and piles of baked potatoes tumble on the waiting platters with the other root vegetables, and the molten gravy goes into a delicate china jug that once belonged to Nan before she became a chicken and we plonk down around the groaning table and pull bonbons with whoever’s closest and we all cheer at the bang and put the stupid paper hats on.

  Mum’s best plates get piled with too much of everything and we eat and talk and eat like refugees and drink everything that’s open and open more and drink that till everything is forgotten and we laugh at things that were never funny and never will be but are today and that’s the only thing that matters. The frenzy continues through the steaming pudding with the thrupenny bits and the orange peel and glacé cherries and the dense dried fruit and the sweet custard that gulps from the jug.

  We heave ourselves from the table and collapse into the lounge room with the lethargy of over-indulgence to drink more and then some more until the conversations falter and peter out and everyone heads to the waiting beds to collapse and sleep like lizards in the sun.

  Later when the house has cooled we drift from the fug of sleep to the last light of the day on the edge of the verandah. We sit in the quiet of the last of Christmas suddenly like a family together, but alone in the still evening with our thoughts slithering back and further back. Later we curl up with new books or sit together with bits of things to say, until the talk becomes awkward and things get packed and there’s talk of the need to go and the last bus to Newcastle if I’m quick and thanks for everything and thanks for coming and Mum says ‘Mind how you go’ to everyone except me and Dad, who are staying.

  I get two more presents because in a few hours I’ll be sixteen and I’ll eat ham tomorrow to celebrate. Richard will drop Kris at the last bus to Newcastle so they’re all in the car now with Lisabeth in the front seat smiling and then they’re gone, past the swinging gate and under the canopy of bright stars, to their new homes.

  Epilogue

  I waited till my parents were through the screen door and I swung on the big gate till it slammed into the stout corner post and made my teeth rattle.

  I sat in the night for a long time.

  A new moon rose above the dark gums and turned the paddocks all to silver.

  I had always loved the farm in the dark. Things at peace and resting after the coarse brightness of the day. Things stark and defined.

  I walked the track to the creek and stood beside the pump-house shed. I looked back toward the house, to other times.

  To three children, their faces lamp-lit and golden, like small treasures huddled together in the warmth. The bright fire crackling in the dark house. Wood smoke curling from the chimney. My mother weaving stories of wonder in the glow.

  My parents’ hands entwined across the kitchen table, their love unbridled and new.

  To later, and the scissored willow in the corner of the yard, the dark innards of the shed and the start of broken bits, of drowned things.

  I dreamed a waking dream, of my father walking the track between the two paddocks. There is no sack in his hands. His palms are open and his arms outstretched. He is smiling. I run toward him through the silver-edged night. He claims me, close, his strong arms encircle me and he holds me like something precious. His breath warm against my face, his lips as tender as a first kiss as the stars fall to earth around us and I hold the only gift I ever wanted, the one I never had – my father’s love.

  I start for the house, the stars still in their places above me. Things as they were and always will be, unchanged and set.

  Tomorrow I’ll walk the thousand steps to the blue-black highway.

  A thousand steps to freedom and life.

  And a world away from a paddock of sticks.

  Mum’s poems

  Mum is the reason I was able to write this book. She taught me about the music of words.

  Mum wrote poems all the time at home. The beauty of them makes me weep whenever I read them. I remember telling her once that she should have them published.

  I can now make that happen. Here are just a few of many.

  Thanks Mum.

  END OF WINTER LETTER

  Gathered like question marks

  On the edge of the bay

  The black swans ask about the imminence of spring.

  And in the river

  Seventeen great white herons

  Mirrored in silver paper water

  Are flanked by a postscript

  Of busy black ducks.

  POEM AT HOME

  At home there is only a battalion of small things

  Which march up and down my days.

  Washing on the line,

  Leaves on the lawn,

  Cup on the table betokening tea.

  Black smelly beetles on the lemon tree

  Dust in corners awaiting a broom

  A long legged spider spinning his loom

  Unanswered letters in a rack,

  Crying ‘Please Write Back’.

  So I go forth to the garden

  Where I found and lost my love.

  PRETTY SPRING DAY

  There was just

  That calm and lovely morning,

  Wind dropped from yesterday’s ferment,

  Stepping to the green grass’s invitation,

  I flung orange peels to the cows,

  Looked up to the blue, blue sky

  And little darling clouds

  Like feathers or fish bones, but
white

  As babies’ eyeballs.

  There were scents;

  Pittosporum’s heavy-laden breath;

  The faint whisper of wisteria

  And the old nostalgia of clover.

  Bees nosed the poppies’ bright banners,

  Peered into pansies’ monkey faces,

  Touched lightly the pungent marguerites,

  Drank deep of purple stocks

  And sated, flew away.

  Two rosellas

  Sat in the willow’s scanty arms

  While the mickey miner mother kept her babies from the cat.

  Kookaburras’ neat heads disarrayed in the breeze

  And a wagtail proclaimed his love.

  While you and I,

  Old blood rising like yeast

  Smiled at each other and remembered –

  Other Springs.

  KRISSIE’S PEAR TREE

  She found it in the bush

  Brought it home

  Imperious with ownership.

  It must be planted just there

  Where she dug a hole Right by the clothes line.

  They all said ‘What is it?’

  She answered with five-year-old certainty

  ‘A pear tree.

  It will have yellow pears.’

  Twenty years it took

  To blossom and she had gone

  To sow her own life’s orchard –

  Some of her tree bloomed early

  Had little fruit, and withered young.

  Her pear tree now, gnarling –

  Putting out beseeching blossom –

  Remembering that small hand,

  Says – ‘I renew and may have yellow pears.’

  Acknowledgements

  The readers and the listeners