by R. L. Holmes
But he was generous as well. He gave back, especially when he needed something tended to. A great trading town all revolved around Daniel Parker.
When his socks needed patching up he would drop them off at Mrs Hausman’s on Park Road, in exchange for some lamb steaks from the farm. If he needed his hair cut he’d visit chubby Rachel’s mother Mrs Oakley from the dairy, who is pretty good with the scissors, in exchange for mouse bait or pesticide for the garden. And he visited my gran when he was feeling poorly he exchanged the best trade yet, Rainbow trout cooked by him in our kitchen.
I still remember the last time he came over to cook a trout. He delicately sliced his knife through the middle of the fish and opened it up to pull out all the guts. Then he cut the tail off, then the head, and chased me around the kitchen table with it, which of course I enjoyed immensely. Then he peeled the skin off, sliced it into fillets and drowned them in mayonnaise and bread crumbs.
At this point Gran pulls out her cast-iron frying pan that is about hundred years old and he proceeds to fry the thing up. While he cooks, my gran and I harvest some leafy greens from the back garden to make a salad. We planted the salad plants with marigolds, rosemary and basil to deter the insects. The vegetable garden lives behind the camellia hedge. It got bigger every year as Gran added various tomato plants, legumes, potatoes in tyre planters, zucchini, spinach, carrots and many others, all accompanied by flowering herbs with strong fragrances such as lemon balm, rosemary, the mints, lavender and thyme.
I don’t like trout much. But I slid it down my throat pretending that it’s the best meal ever. Daniel just grinned, that charming, dimply grin and then as if he had some pressing engagement to attend to, he’d get up, thank us for having him and swagger out the door, leaving us to a mountain of dishes.
He did that every time. As if he was so heavily in demand he could only possibly spend a small amount of time with us, saving himself for the others that wait with fluttering hearts and sweaty palms. I think he knew his affect on women.
Geoff on the other hand is a completely different specimen altogether. He is skinny, real skinny. His jeans hover in mid air around his lean waist and his tee shirts hang off his bones. He has long arms with big hands, whose fingers were often blue even in the hot seasons. His skin is always ruddy and dry, and in summer when he’d been working outside his skin burns and blisters.
But everything that is fascinating to me about Geoff is from his shoulders up. He has the strangest neck, somewhat like a turkey’s with a huge protruding Adam’s apple. It must be so annoying having to shave over that thing. Then perched on top of that skinny neck is a big square head, somewhat like a St Bernard dog, but with a mean expression. It’s all so bazaar to me, as his neck just seems too narrow and too long to hold that big head. I often wonder what his parents look like. I imagine Mr Turkey bumping into Miss St Bernard in the supermarket, flirting with gobbles and tail wags.
I think the reason Geoff hates me is because he can read my thoughts. Whenever I see him, I imagine his parents and laugh to myself and his eyes burn right through me like hot pokers. He is not a happy person. I rarely see him smile even when he was with Daniel. I guess that’s what happens when you mix two species together - you get miserable genes and an angry, mean personality to match.
Geoff works for Maxwell’s, a contracting company that hires out farming equipment, including huge tractors to deal to the land. Geoff is one of the tractor drivers. I often see his funny shaped silhouette propped up on a big green rig, with a look of severe determination. He does frighten me though. I am best to stay away from him and since he can read my thoughts, I should really think only nice things when I’m around him.
Geoff was working for Max Richardson when Daniel died. He was contracted to propagate the corn field, rotating the earth and replanting the soil in one of those huge, green tractors. Max Richardson is mostly a sheep farmer, but like many farmers these days, he has taken to using the land in a variety of ways. Some of his land is corn and some is broccoli and cabbage. But the rolling hills behind are covered in Romney sheep, fattening up to be eaten.
Daniel worked mostly with the sheep. He had a bay coloured horse called Sonsy that he rode up onto the hills wearing a cowboy’s hat. Sometimes, he’d disappear for days then reappear with lost sheep and a hungry belly.
Max Richardson was very fond of Daniel. He invited him into his home and treated him like a son, so you can imagine how devastating it was for him to find two burnt bodies in the back of a utility truck on his farm. Then to brush away the black soot off the number plate to find out that it was Daniel’s vehicle.
What was strange was that someone had put the fire out. It wasn’t Max, as he found them the next morning dead and blackened, but not completely unrecognisable. The police found a green bucket behind tussock grass, and assumed that this was used to put out the flames.
Their reasoning behind that was; it was a hot spring week and the air was gusty, and if a fire like this was not interrupted by splashes of water it would’ve lasted longer, causing even more damage.
Why nobody has come forward to say they were the ones to douse the flames is another mystery this little town is excitedly gossiping about. This town hasn’t seen a drama like this since several cattle were slaughtered on Sergei’s farm several months ago.
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Sergei is a hulking, Russian man who visits Gran to buy lung medicine. He gave up smoking cigars a few years back, and has since then had a lingering cough that only goes away when he either takes Gran’s herbs or starts smoking again. His wife became good friends with Mary, my gran. I often found them sitting on the back porch talking about the latest current events.
They were nice farmers too. They treated their animals well, singing to them and patting them on their heads. The cattle seemed to love them as they were the fattest, most productive stock around. I remember Sergei saying to Gran in his dramatic Russian way, that “All creatures deserved to be treated with kindness and respect, no matter their purpose.”
He has a way with animals, a magical flair if you will. Even my cat Brambles loves him. Whenever she hears their utility truck pull up she would dash for the front door to wrap herself around his legs. And in return Sergei brought some fresh salmon skin, to make her coat shine, and a Picnic bar for me. I have never seen this cat love someone so much. She just won’t leave him alone, dribbling and purring and landing on his knee. She wasn’t even this elated with Daniel Parker.
When Sergei found his beautiful animals slaughtered with their guts hanging out baking in the sun, he realised his heart was not made of steel. So they put the farm up for sale and made arrangements to move to the City to have pets only, much to the dismay of Brambles and my gran.
A month later, they found out who did this awful thing. A local young farmer and his mates were jealous of the Russian’s fine beasts and took it upon themselves to destroy a few of them. Sergei said he always suspected Jack Dawson as he wore a chip on his shoulder right from the start. He had threatened Sergei and his wife before in the local pub, called him all sorts of profanities including a Nazi as well as bombing their letter box and spray painting threatening messages on their house and shed.
Go Home Nazi was one message imprinted into my mind, sprawled in blood red paint across their walls with a dribbling swastika underneath. Gran and I dropped some herbal medicine off for them on this particular day and Sergei and his Australian wife were terribly distraught as you can imagine.
I was told not to look at the words, to shelter my eyes from the wickedness of it as if it were to contaminate my soul forever. But I could not help but see. When someone tells you to look away, a fire inside you seeks to look. This begging curiosity to see what is so awful and so obscene that frightens those around you and of course you have to look, even though you may never see life in the same way again.
Gran said that the writer of these is not well taught in geography and history. I knew the writer of these messages was not well tau
ght in anything and was just really angry, angry at everyone and everything and the hulking Russian was the chosen one to bear the brunt of his self-loathing.
During this time I became really sick and had terrible dreams about this awful crime. I even saw who did it. When I told Gran, she just sighed and said I spend far too much time in my head. You should’ve seen the look on her face when ol’ Moley from the post office whispered to her that Jack Dawson and his friends confessed to the crime after much pressure from the police. According to ol’ Moley, Dawson believed it was justified as Sergei is a Nazi war criminal.
So now we have another bloody, senseless crime to solve. I feel in the core of my bones that there will be things that are unearthed as the police move closer to arresting the murderer. I sense it may surprise us all.
After all, he was just out fishing trout apparently. That’s all; merely spending the night by the river, lounging around with a mysterious female.
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Early September 1998: Stranger
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I didn’t need him anymore. It was that simple. In fact he was getting on my nerves. He spoke often of his new girlfriend with a new kind of fondness I have not seen before in him. He did forget to mention this to Rachel, of course, she finding out about it after he was burnt to death. He wasn’t really that keen on Rachel anyway. She dragged him down, always nagging and telling him how he should wear his hair, and whining when he forgot to contact her.
Actually, he didn’t see Rachel as his girlfriend. He was far too curious about women to let himself be tied down with one, especially one that was too stupid to know the truth. Typical really. The female believes she’s in a relationship. The male keeps his options open, one eye on the road and one eye on the surrounding ladies. Of course she noticed the wandering eye, the sweet smiles, and the charming demeanour. He wouldn’t do that to me, she probably convinced herself. Idiot.
I wasn’t jealous; not at all. I just found him unbearable, turning into a soppy teenager with his first love. Her name mentioned in every conversation, his mind wandering when I spoke, forgetting to come around. He thought I didn’t notice the glazed eyes and the puppy dog expressions. Fool.
It was an impulsive decision. I didn’t put much thought into it at all. When he told me their secret meeting place by the river, where you catch the biggest Rainbows, I knew that’s where I’d get them. Nobody goes there. Not even the man who owns the land, Max Richardson. To him it’s a waste land, covered in weeds of rye grass, yarrow and fennel. Boy, he would’ve got an almighty surprise when he stumbled across them that morning.
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Early September 1998: Saracen
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Gran tries to hide things from me. She tries to make my world safe and healthy and serene. But I always find out. All you need to do is listen to some adult who thinks that children don’t understand what they’re saying. Or just play dumb, that’s a good one. Play dumb and you’ll hear all sorts of stuff.
I often hear old Moley from the post office talk about his prize roses and the aphid epidemic that has hit Fenton. When I asked my friend Seth about it, he just muttered something about him having to sacrifice three of his roses to the insects and they will leave the rest alone.
When Gran told me to get a stamp for my letter to mum today, I thought this a good opportunity to inform Moley on how to save his roses. His reaction was the usual fussing and puffing affair of; lip pursing, handkerchief flinging, to mop up the sweat on his forehead, spectacle adjusting to look even more like a mole, and storming off to mutter something under his breath to Ms Anderson. I guess he’s not interested in taking advice from a twelve year old.
Ms Anderson is the same age as Gran, but has never been married or had any children. I really like her as she always has this mischievous twinkle in her eye whenever I wander in, as if we have some sort of understanding of how to upset Moley, which isn’t that difficult.
Ms Anderson has a sense of worldliness about her. She has had an interesting life. She told me that she was once in love with a French government official who disappeared for weeks on end and then come back home with a bottle of red wine from whichever country he invaded. Together they’d in turn give the wine a rating out of ten on flavour and colour. She said he was always extremely well kept, wore the best suits with golden buttons that he shined daily and shoes that tapped a beat when he walked.
One day he left on some undisclosed mission and didn’t come back. She waited for months in their small flat in Paris only to receive a letter from him stating that he has been posted elsewhere and therefore their relationship needed to come to an end. So, being the adventurous person that she was, she moved to Spain. Where she acquired purely out of luck, a room amongst artists, which is where she met and started an affair with someone else.
Ms Anderson has many stories about her travels, all revolving around men. Why she is here in Fenton, I don’t know. Of all places in the entire world she could reside in, she chooses Fenton.
One day recently, when I popped in to buy stamps she leaned forward and whispered, ‘Do you want to know a secret?’
I nodded, hesitantly. She pulled up her sleeve to reveal a tattoo of a classy black cat on her forearm, its long tail stretched high almost touching her elbow crease.
‘My wily black cat,’ she laughed warmly. ‘Our little secret.’ She winks. ‘If they find out, I’m sure to get the sack. So I have to hide her.’
And to this day I have yet to tell anyone.
¥
Fenton is ordinary. It’s flat, but is surrounded by rolling hills. There are no forests or beaches, or beautifully architecturally designed buildings, just lines of square houses, a factory that makes chicken feed, and farmers driving dirty trucks filled with sheep or cattle.
I often wonder why anyone who is not a farmer would choose to live here. Moley from the post office seems out of place here too. His real name is Mr Langley, but he is a spitting image of the mole from Wind in the Willows.
He wears baggy tweed trousers held up by braces, spectacles perched on the tip of his nose that he squints down at you over, and not much hair on top. He is though, rather graceful for a man. He floats across the floor flamboyantly, holding his little finger out whenever he counts the money and speaks in a high cultured tone.
He knows that we watch him. He seems to love the weight of our eyes as the post office becomes his stage. The more people waiting in the queue, the more flamboyant and shrilly he becomes, sweeping past one person gracefully, curling his wrist and pointing to another and commenting on women’s clothing with a type of enthusiasm that I’ve only seen women have, all the time knowing that we watch him.
I often imagine him in the theatre, wearing white make-up and a big curly wig, bellowing out a song in Italian against an orchestra reciting Bach, with ballet dancers dressed as fairies skipping and twirling around.
Moley, more than anyone is the go-to if you want to know the latest gossip in Fenton. He tends to know more than anyone else around here, and is always willing to pass the information on to anyone who seems eager to hear.
When our neighbour Mrs Rennie was diagnosed with a melanoma, Moley found out about it that day, and had the decency to pass it on to half the town by sundown. As a result, Mrs Rennie received many visitors with plates of cheese scones, and pots filled with casseroles that week. I’m not sure if she was happy about it, but she was in the post office the next week updating him with her latest symptoms.
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Mrs Rennie lives with a woman. I have yet to figure out whether she is a sister, a cousin or something else. Her name is Potts. A strange name, but it suits her. If you were to imagine what a woman called Potts looks like, then you would guess right; short, frumpy with a tendency to wear oversized men’s jeans and checked shirts.
She works at the chicken feed factory so she probably comes home stinking. Now and again when the wind changes direction the vile chicken feed factory stench wafts past our house, making my sensitive sto
mach churn. Someone said to me once that chicken feed is made out of chickens. They would take the old rubbery chickens and the baby male chicks and throw them into a vat to cook them up alive. Then once dried, they feed it to the caged battery hens. I don’t know how true that is, I suspect someone is just telling fibs to shock me. And of course it worked
I asked Potts about it once and she just curled her top lip and said that she doesn’t work in that part of the factory.
Potts smokes a lot. Whenever I see her, she has a cigarette hanging out of her mouth like Bogart in Casablanca. Every scene he played, he had a cigarette in one hand and a scotch in the other. She, of course is not as glamorous or attractive as Bogart, but she is just as masculine.
Seth hates it when Potts sits outside smoking, as the smoke wafts over and disturbs the delicate eco-system that has been created in our backyard. Plants in the deadly knightshade family such as tomatoes, capsicum and potatoes especially hate cigarette smoke. They hate it so much; they will either delay fruiting or curl up and die.
Whenever Potts has one of her backyard smokes, Seth races around cursing and waving the smoke away. I overheard Mrs Rennie yelling at Potts a few times for smoking in the house, because it makes the curtains stink like a wino. So Potts tends to live half her life in the vile chicken feed factory, and the other half alone on Mrs Rennie’s back porch smoking and clearing phlegm.