by Rohan Wilson
It looked like a thumb, Oran said.
You know what I would’ve done?
What?
Cut the blinkin thing off.
How?
With me knife.
You aint got a knife.
I got a knife.
William Toosey reached into the pocket of his trousers. They were deep pockets and he had to sway to reach the bottom as he fished about. After a moment he brought up a small brown object, which he held out. Oran tried to touch it but William snatched away his hand. He unfolded the blade and laid it on his palm, grinning, and let Oran see it. The blade was short and wide and stamped with a cutler’s mark at the thumbrest. It was set in a handle of stained and varnished pine burl.
Fetched it out of Johnson’s, he said as he admired it. Johnson never even saw me.
Oran wanted to touch the knife so much that he was hopping. He kept pawing at William’s arm. Give us a go, he said.
No.
I only want to hold it.
William lifted his hand a little and let Oran take an eyeful. Gleams like pale fire rippled in the steel. Oran clutched at his arm.
What a beauty, he said.
It aint sharp yet, but I’ll sharpen it.
William carefully folded away the knife. The action was still tight and always gave him a start when it snapped shut. He slipped it into his pants.
Don’t go back there with Stewart no more, he said. Don’t go when he calls you.
He give me half a crown.
Bugger that. Bugger goin back there with him.
Do you reckon?
Course I reckon.
They walked on.
They crossed the street then, throwing reedy shadows on the road, the two of them, past tenements of tired board before drawing up in front of Trent Stewart’s place. It was fenced with dark-coloured palings and the boys stood by, clutching the posts, gazing up at the house. A woman in a neighbouring yard watched them across the washing she was pegging up. She had a child tied in a sheet on her back, another clasping at her skirts, and another crawling in the uncut grass. Oran scratched his lousy hair. He was nervous and it made him scratch all the more.
What did I tell you? William said.
I’m hungry, said Oran.
What did I tell you?
Said don’t go back with him.
Well don’t.
Come on, I’m hungry.
I aint muckin about. Don’t go there with him. He is mad and it aint safe.
It was Oran who’d brought him first to Stewart’s, showed him in, and got him fed in the workroom. Without that soup they were long nights lying in the dark. He’d gone to find Oran after seeing his Aunt Minnie and Uncle Michael and their horde of children. His aunt had cried and cried for the news of her dead sister, struck with a terrible grief. He knew his father would soon come to find him, knew it like he knew the tide would rise, and when he told this to his aunt she grew outraged. He’s killed her, you know that, she said. Killed her through sheer neglect. William would not stand to hear his father slandered and told her so. Then get yourself out of here, she said, for I will slander that man with my last breath. At the time a few days living on the tramp around town seemed an easy deal. He had friends who knew no other life. Friends like Oran Brown and Lally Darby and the Henry brothers. Orphans. Kids without a soul in the world save one another. He knew street life from chumming with them so he left his aunt’s house without a fear. His father would soon bowl into town. But it had been weeks now. Weeks of hunger and hiding. Watching for police. He and Oran slept wherever it was dry, ate wherever there were scraps, and stole wherever there was opportunity.
Be sure and do what I said.
Oran nodded.
Run if he calls you.
He was still nodding. He had not washed in weeks and he smelled of turned milk. The smock he wore was falling off his shoulders from where it had torn on a nail. William hung off the fence assessing the pitiful sight of him.
There were things he wanted to tell Oran. Important things, he thought. Words his mother had said. The way she would tuck in his shirt, or comb his hair from a cup of water. He didn’t know how to explain these things but he wished he could. It seemed important that Oran should know too, that while their days were a deep and lasting hardship, beating sun and bitter night, bruised and bloodied feet, that it would not always be so. They might huddle in the dark and weep with hunger, one beside the other, whisper in fear like fugitives, but there were times and places in his heart that warded off the pain. Likewise did Oran need the old and the ever-remembered to comfort him.
He pulled the knife from his pocket. Here, he said.
Oran looked at the folded blade. He took it.
Keep it to hand.
He was cupping the knife. He just looked at it for a time, and in time tucked it into his smock.
All right, he said.
Where you can reach it.
I can reach it.
If he calls you, leave straight away. All right?
All right.
If he touches you, cut him.
Yes, Will. I’ll do it.
William lifted the gate latch and let the boy through and they climbed the steps together and knocked on the door. There was no answer so William made a fist and pounded harder.
It was Stewart himself who opened it. He squinted at the boys through his spectacles and when he saw it was William Toosey he seemed to puff up, blinking rapidly, and he stepped onto the landing and caught a grip of William’s shirt front.
You, he said as he hauled William to the gate. You can keep out of my house.
What?
Keep out.
He shoved the boy into the road. William stumbled and fell. He did not understand. He lay staring up at Stewart. Then he stood and moved towards the gate. Stewart yanked it shut and pointed at him across the pickets.
If you come here again I shall give you in charge of the first policeman I meet.
Oran was crouching on the verandah wearing a bewildered sort of a gaze.
What have I done? William said.
And tell your father the same.
A spark started inside of his chest. It flared until he felt hot all over. What? he said. Who?
Stewart was thundering up the steps. He put out his arms to shepherd Oran before him through the door. William clung to the fence and called, leaning over, his voice cracking in his throat.
Was my father here?
That was enough to make Stewart turn. He turned and posed on his verandah, arms cocked on his hips, jacket tails kicking where he pushed back the flaps.
Your father is a brute.
Was he here?
A brute and a madman.
Was he here?
I have a gun in the house. Tell him that.
I don’t know where he is, Mr Stewart. I aint seen him in years.
Stewart descended onto the first step and pointed his finger. I shall not hesitate to shoot. I will put him out of this world. Tell him that.
I don’t know where he is.
Stewart dropped his hand. A shameless, disgusting brute, he said. Poor fathers make poor sons, William. Steer away from that fellow.
He has come to help. He has, I know it.
Stewart moved off for the door. He stopped, one hand cupping the knob, his head bowed, and looked back at William with a lift of his eyes. He’s at the Star of the North, he said.
Thank you, Mr Stewart. I mean that. Thank you.
Stewart shook his head sadly. He twisted the handle and disappeared in the hallway darkness.
The sun in the unmarked sky blazed. William could hear his heart at work. He was sweating and his blood was working and he stepped away from the fence into the road where deep shadows crept outward from the homes like spills of ink. The Star of the North, he whispered as he trotted towards the end of the road where the river in its banks of mud, its weed and whip-thin willow, washed past. His father was here. His father was looking for him. He began
to run.
THE RAILWAY RATE
STANDING IN THE SQUARED SHADE OF houses. Dry, hungry, hot. Toosey’s heart had somewhere begun missing beats and he mopped himself and waited for it to settle. A desperate heat was descending over the city. It rippled above the black slate rooves like fumes. He would find his son and they would sit and eat, as they had in other, better times. They would eat and talk about Maria and he would try to put across why, when she was the only candle in a terrible dark, he had left her alone. But that time had not yet come Here and now he needed to find William. He turned to the small red-haired child by his side.
Look at you, he said to the boy. Sired out of a fox, by the colour of you.
The child stared up at him, for all the world meaning to look angry and seeming instead like the sun was too bright.
What’s your name?
Robert, said the redhead.
Bobby.
It’s Robert.
Right, Bobby. Where’s this boy of mine?
The boy pointed along the street.
You sure now?
Down there. I saw him.
They walked Brisbane Street to where the boy had pointed. The road ran through a gorge of stone merchant buildings, two sheer walls, tall and ordered, and some stores fronted with awnings, some with signs. Geometric shade lay on the dirt. The sun in the slots like mortar. Along the road he could see a number of horse carts and see a great rising dust. They walked on and as they neared he saw a number of folk milling, a hundred or more. Something was happening. He slowed his pace.
You saw him down there? he said.
The boy nodded.
When?
Today.
Toosey exhaled. He tipped back his hat. Even from here, he could see teams of city children wandering the skirts of the crowd. Bobby came to stand beside him.
How is he? Toosey said. I mean, is he well?
Bobby looked up. He shrugged
Thin as a crown piece, that child, he said. Ever since he come into the world. I hope he’s eating somethin. Boy needs to eat.
The crowd seemed tame enough but he squinted up his eyes and watched a while anyway.
What does he . . . I mean, what does he do mostly? Does he have friends?
I’m his friend, Bobby said.
Do you go fishin? What does he like doin?
Bobby just looked at him.
You fish, don’t you? Children always fish.
The child dropped his head. He fiddled with the thin rag of sleeve bunching at his wrist.
Fish, Toosey said. I should teach him how. Soon as I can.
Will you show me too?
You?
Bobby nodded.
Don’t you have a father for that?
He walked on and the child followed. The crowd had amassed in the road before Bell’s Mart. They milled before the door to the purchase room or lined the footpath under shelter in their hundreds. Toosey stood in the street and he was not sure what it meant, this gathering. Most folk looked to have come straight off the land or out of factory work, but a few were dressed as if for Sunday service in top hats and coats. A hawker with a wicker basket walked the crowd calling out rye bread, sausage, salted herring, while another chap was selling nobblers out of a keg of brandy hanging from his neck. On the bed of a cart an angry-looking bald man stood to speak and a round of cheers immediately rose from the crowd. He took his place and there was an uneasy air about him as he raised his hand for quiet. He carried a newspaper rolled for an impromptu gavel and the noise died off as he clapped it in his palm.
We will not pay the rate, he cried. We will not pay it. We will not feed the salaciousness, malice, brutality and moral abandon of this parliament. We will not pay the debts of the wealthy. We will not bow down, will not retreat.
The crowd cheered and hooted.
We will not pay, he cried. Why? Because we know. We know that whenever they send city bailiffs to claim our property and the parliament allows it, whenever a family loses their home and the parliament allows it, whenever private citizens are robbed to pay the debts of a few shareholders and the parliament allows it, we are reduced, cut away to almost nothing, cut by a brotherhood of butchers thinly disguised as a system of governing.
A great cheer followed.
We know that after all these crimes have been enacted, he cried, all these lies furthered, all these trespassers given leave to steal, all these men beaten and whipped for defending their families, all these patriots humiliated, at the end of all the sordid greed and the arrogance, a vast wound will have been opened and day after day our island will bleed out its heart-blood. All of it done in the name of the Launceston and Western Railway Company. All of it done to fund the disaster that that railway has become.
The crowd hooted.
But it was not the campaigner crying from the cart that had Toosey’s fullest attention. It was the children wandering the edge of the crowd that he watched most intently, pauper children, scrawny and barefoot, rugged in scraps of shirts or jackets, tendering little cups into which would be sometimes tossed a penny or a shop token. Toosey stuck his hands in his pockets. He didn’t like a busy town. With the noise and uncertainty. He liked a grass plain. A lonely road. He wiped his mouth. But there was little else for it. He could easier fish out his soul with a boathook than he could leave his boy behind.
You saw him here? he said.
Bobby was standing close beside his leg. The crowd seemed also to disturb him.
Kid, he said.
The boy looked up.
I said you saw him here? Today?
He nodded.
Right. That will do you then.
The boy dropped his head.
Get yourself home.
He rooted out from his pocket the sovereign and pushed the coin into the boy’s grotty palm. Take it, he said. Have yourself a feed somewheres. Get a new shirt.
The boy hardly moved. He would not look at Toosey. The scraps of his shirt gathered at his armpits. When will you take me fishin? the boy said.
Toosey hooked his thumb through a belt loop. Don’t worry about that, he said and he stood regarding the boy, the pitiful state of him. Listen, he said, take care and don’t lose the coin. That’s a lot of money.
But the boy wasn’t listening. He crouched in the centre of the street and began to scratch at the dirt with his new sovereign. The balls of his knees, so bulbous through the holes in his pants, looked the only sturdy part of him. Toosey smoothed his moustaches. He thought to walk away and might have at other times of his life but what he did instead was finger another coin from his coat and then he crouched, knuckles to the dust, knee bent, and placed it in the child’s hand.
Go home, he said. Someone will steal them off you.
There’s good fishin by the wharf, the boy said. I seen them catch eels there.
Toosey straightened up. He gazed down the road. Eels, he said. They’re not good for nothin anyways.
The child crossed his arms over his knees and buried his face in the crook of his elbow. Toosey adjusted his hat and looked about and when he looked back at the boy he couldn’t think of another word to say. He moved away beneath the awning cover of Brownhill’s butchery.
In time the child stood, coins in hand, of which he seemed unconcerned. He went away in a daze wiping his nose. A few yards along he caught his feet on a cart trough and fell. Toosey took a step towards him. The boy stood and walked on. Grit on the legs of his pants. His nose running. Toosey exhaled. He’d been holding his breath and thought himself suddenly daft. He straightened up and walked the other way.
The great unruly crowd had started funnelling through the purchase-room doors and he stepped to where he could see it all. Through the narrow doors they shoved. Some fell. There came ever more of them from along the streets until they numbered rising several hundred. Dust rose curling away on the brief riverwards wind. Men like long dull shadows inside it. But there were more here than purchasers. A small mob had begun to build that was o
ff to one side of Bell’s, a corps of armed men and fellows with clubs and blades, one with a breech loader and one with a coiled bullwhip, looking around themselves, assessing the play. They gathered at a cart not sharing a word but merely staring at the purchase room with intent.
Toosey was uneasy about all of this. It looked concerning. He reached into his jacket and felt for the knife. He watched the men in the carts. They sat quite still, staring. He saw one lift a rifle and lay it down and he saw one kick a box of cartridges and that was enough. Whatever it was, whatever was happening here, the larrikins and the idle boys had drawn to it. He stood by, grinding his jaw. It would be a proper rumpus in the absence of the police. It was a turn of events for which he could not have accounted.
Let them burn, wouldn’t you say?
Toosey looked around. A man had come to stand beside him. He could see where the man had a big dip of tobacco in his cheek and he thought he might have seen the man before, in prison, or on a forested back road. What? he said.
I said let them burn.
The whole arsehole place can burn for what I care, Toosey said.
The man rolled his chew to the other cheek. There’s a chest a drawers in there as belongs to me cousin, he said. I swear. I will burn the place fore I let a man bid on it.
Toosey frowned at him. What’s this auction for exactly?
My cousin, he said and he spat. My cousin is a proper weakling. About any man at all could push him clean out of the way. They come through his door, the sheriff and them others. Just come straight through it. First thing they laid eyes on was this chest.
What, they’re selling property taken by the sheriff?
Not while I’m here. I’ll burn the place before I let a man bid.
Jesus, Toosey said. I aint missed this town one bit.
The purchase room filled with all it could hold and the rest, those left outside, the elderly, the laggard, clustered up around the wide stencilled windows of Bell’s. Soon the street stood vacant but for the few carts, the few men perched in the beds, and here and there a wandering child. Toosey studied the faces of each. One a little girl in a loose summer dress. She held her cup to a loutish type leaning on an awning pole, her other hand above her eyes for the sun. The lout tossed her something. Then away she went to the next fellow she saw, displaying the blackened soles of her feet. Was that how his boy had survived these weeks? Begging?