by Peter Carey
He stepped back then, to one side, so she might enter.
She waved that she was leaving. He stood back farther.
She thought, Is this it then? Another throw of the dice.
In a moment she was rolling down a bumpy track, splashing and slipping sideways, into the deep wheel ruts. The miller waited, between two mounds of dead gray sawdust, the gateposts of his foreign world. Behind him was a stack of sappy bright yellow planks, a gorgeous slash of yellow.
He had a mouth like a sock puppet and a short stubby clay pipe. He cocked his head at her.
This is a sawmill?
Last time I looked.
It was the yellow that drew her from the car.
That’s blackbut, he said, seeing what she was looking at.
She was close enough to smell its rich sappy odor.
You doing fencing? That’s fencing.
I want to line a wall, she decided.
Oh no, love, not suitable. It’s for fencing, cheap old fencing. It’ll shrink like billy-oh.
She was thinking the walls would be golden in the lamplight.
If I nailed it flat, she said, it couldn’t shrink.
It’ll curl up like bacon.
Well, I could pin it flat.
You’re what they call alternative?
I guess so.
He cocked a flirty eyebrow. You could use a nail and bend it over, he said, so as it shrinks it might stay flat. You’d make a kind of L with it. You could do that. You’ll be up all night with those nails.
That’s OK.
He nodded. His mouth was small and the smile was thin. Hoy! he cried.
From the shadows of the big open-sided shed there emerged a middle-aged giant with a belly and naked legs.
Urge, said the sawmiller, get your beautiful body over here.
And then the two men roped the fence palings onto the Peugeot and she paid them twenty dollars and drove home with her purchase slapping and whipping on the roof. She thought of Camus’s asthma patient moving peas from one saucepan into another. Beckett, too. More fun to build a wall.
She did not untie the ropes correctly which was why the boy would later see the yellow bruise and blood-black graze which covered her ankle and the upper part of her foot. When the pain abated she loaded up about six splintery planks in her unprotected arms, carrying them directly into the big hut and dropping them untidily onto the clearest patch of floor. Can’t go on. Must go on.
Hello, Dial.
Rebecca and a small boy had made themselves at home among the cushions.
Hello, said Dial, her heart beating violently.
Doing a bit of renovation?
Yes.
Lining the inside at last?
Yes, said Dial, or words to that effect.
You know that timber’s going to shrink?
Yes I do.
You butt them up against each other you’ll have one-inch gaps.
Who the fuck did these people think they were, walking into your apartment, scratching their hairy legs and eating your papaya? Dial did not sit down. She could not. Her behavior would not help her. Well so be it, she thought. She had never lived anywhere there was no conflict.
Soon she noticed a bad smell which she blamed on the hair sticking out beneath Rebecca’s plump arms. The visitor’s breasts were big and sweaty, staining her gray T-shirt.
So, Rebecca, this is about the cat?
Rebecca nodded toward a flour sack which had been dropped by the door to the deck. You could say that, she said.
Dial thought, My God, the bitch has killed him.
Have a look, said the stinky woman, why don’t you?
Why should I?
It’s educational.
Dial approached the bag slowly, a sort of unreal buzzing in her head. Flies crawled around her wounded ankle.
The contents slithered onto the floor like what? Flowers. Grass tussocks. Some stinky mulch. Then she understood what she was looking at: small dead birds, some bright, some dull, some filled with ants and possibly-she saw the movement like a living stomach-maggots. The Godfather, she thought. The horse’s head in bed.
What the hell are you up to, Rebecca? I never did anything to you.
Oh, you’re wrong there, Dial.
Rebecca stood up and her staring blond boy-child stood right beside her, its colorless eyes filled with blank dull righteousness.
This is what you did to me, Rebecca said. You bring your cat into the valley. This is what you do. They’re sentient beings, she said, nudging a feathered corpse with her big toe.
They’re what?
In Buddhism, began Rebecca.
I know what sentient means.
Rebecca narrowed her eyes. Then you should know that your cat is destroying our environment and you’ve got a choice. You can get rid of this cat or we will get rid of you.
Rebecca, you know I talked to Phil Warriner.
This is not America, Dial. We don’t decide ethical issues with lawyers.
And with that, she departed, walking heavily on her heels, with her boy already left three steps behind and wailing.
Beneath the vermined bodies the yellow planks lay in shadow, crisscrossed like yarrow sticks on the dusty floor.
34
When it got too hot to work the boy washed and climbed up in the big old barber’s chair. Enthroned beneath the baking roof, he looked out across the waves of silver bush where the trees, like aliens, swished their dangerous tails.
Trevor would then bring him bread and olives and papaya or watermelon or cantaloupe. One time there was a huge blue bag of mangoes. The mangoes were “visitors,” a class of thing that also included the boy and the dull old horse presently flicking the flies away from his bottom with his nervy tail, a sad beast who spent his mornings being led around the pug mill while Trevor shoveled dirt, and the boy, whose job it was to lead the horse, whispered into his jerky ears and fed him carrots with his palm, his fingers nowhere near his wide blunt teeth. The horse was on a secret assignment from a paddock not so far beyond the rally car. In the heat of the dusty afternoon the boy removed the horse’s shellback ticks and splat their blood sacs between his fingernails. Sometimes the horse tried to bite him in return.
The boy was full of saintly concern for the sad biting horse but had mostly forgotten about the cat he had required so urgently. When he was with Dial he remembered Buck of course, but right now he was way more interested in another long-dead cat that had got Trevor into trouble when he was an orphan, freshly stolen from his English parents, so he said, and brought to Australia by the priests at the Dr. Barnardo’s Homes.
The boy knew he was not old enough to hear the stories Trevor wished to tell him, but that is why he came. Why he was invited probably. The stories were rich and sticky, like blood and sugar, like something that would later make him ill. There had been many cats on the orphan farm. That was in South Australia. The boy did not know where that was, only that it was cold and loveless and the London boys would suffer ringworm, scabies, beatings, in order to “get a love,” i.e., to smooth and pet a cat.
The farting scabby boys were just like him. He was told this often although it was not really true. They had climbed into an attic searching for one particular cat. They knew it was there as they had heard it meowing in the night. In the crawl space they scraped their knees, and they banged their heads on rafters, voices breaking, Puss-puss-puss; but what was so secret in the dark was a public event in the dormitory below where Brother Kiernan waited, sitting on an iron bed, already tapping his cane against his boot. The boys would get punished soon enough.
What was the crime? Trevor spat his olive pits out against the trailer. Bang! Bang! Bang! What was the fucking crime?
This dormitory where Brother Kiernan waited with his cane was not so far, Trevor said, from where the boys would have to line up two years later to view him in his coffin. This scene the grown-up man could still see vividly: the bruised purple undersides of the roses along the quartz-
white gravel path, the smell of the blood and bone fertilizer, the stink of death. Brother Kiernan’s face was wax, his hair all white. The boy Trevor felt the cruel pinch of the shoes he had been forced to wear for this occasion, shoes that had been confiscated when the orphans first landed on Australian soil.
They took every bloody thing, Trevor said.
Have some more bread, he said.
Any little thing we brought from home. Conkers-do you know what a conker is?-rubber bloody bands. They put our shoes and socks and sweaters into beer cartons and wrote our names on there. ERIC HOBBS they wrote and clipped me across the lug hole when I said the name was wrong. They did not give our shoes back until the occasion of Kiernan’s funeral and by then our feet were bigger and harder and we had got used to moving smartly across frost, hard-crushed gravel and all the spikes and pricks and bindy-eyes we never knew before. The shoes clamped us hard at Kiernan’s funeral but it felt so good to see the bastard dead. Do you know what I mean, he asked, his eyes too bright, too narrowed.
Do you know what I mean? he asked, stabbing the melon as if to do it harm.
The boy was afraid. He asked about the cat.
The orphans had climbed up into the ceiling and gotten caught and then they were given blue chits which meant they had to report to Kiernan’s office.
Trevor sliced more watermelon and handed the boy a fist of olives which he was way too tense to eat.
It was a very small room, Trevor said. We knew it well, firstly because we had helped build it. “Man’s work with a boy’s body” is what they called it. Just off the ship we were divided into gangs to clear brush, dig trenches, lay foundations, gather granite from the quarry, pour barrows full of concrete, burn ourselves with lime. Boys from ten to fourteen. We made the rooms we were beaten in, and worse.
And Brother Kiernan now made good use of our Christian labor, mate. As punishment for entering the attic, he had us strip and walk around him naked in a circle and he lashed at us with that bloody cane.
The boy was frightened. He moved to wash his plate.
Trevor stayed him with a hand against his arm. I’m telling you about the cat, he said. You’ll like the cat. It was because of the cat that he beat our legs and bottoms without mercy, a great huge Irishman with an arm as thick as our legs. We carried those bruises and welts and cuts for bloody weeks. They were nothing. It was the terror in our heads. Nothing could compare with that.
Did you find the cat?
I don’t know, said Trevor angrily. Don’t interrupt.
What sort of cat was it, the boy insisted.
I had blue eyes, said Trevor. That was my curse.
The cat?
Me. I had blue eyes.
You still have blue eyes, said the boy.
Who gives a fuck these days.
Did the cat have blue eyes?
Trevor sucked in his breath as if he would explode and then he let it out again. The priests liked my blue eyes, can you imagine that? Would you say I was a pretty man?
I should go soon.
No, I’m not a pretty man, and I was not a pretty boy, but the brothers took a liking to my eyes and they left me in such despair I tried to beat my eyes out with a rock so they would change their color. You understand why?
The boy shook his head. He knew he could not leave.
Never mind, said Trevor. You didn’t want to hear all this. I understand. I’m sorry. He stood and hurled the remaining watermelon out beyond the edge of the garden and the boy saw it split and fly apart, white flesh broken in the bush.
Whatever a priest did was the will of God, he said. I’m sorry.
That’s all right, the boy said.
But they prepared me, Trevor said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, surveying his achievement-the big water tanks, the mud bricks they had made that morning now baking in the sun-I can survive anything now, Trevor said, and you’re lucky you have met me. Do you know why? Because I can teach you stuff she doesn’t know.
The boy looked out across the waving trees. Everything was hard and dry, dead leaves, cracking sticks, no mercy. He thought, This does not apply to me. You can teach my dad too, he said. You can teach us both together.
Trevor was staring at him. The boy did not know why. The olives in his hand were mashed. He wished he had not touched them ever.
Sit down, said Trevor when the boy began to move. Listen to me.
As a result he did not get back down the hill until maybe five o’clock. There was still sunlight in the treetops so she might not be angry with him yet. He heard three hammer blows as he came past the Peugeot and soon afterward he found Dial standing on a rickety chair.
Hi, she said, sort of frozen in position.
She was not mad at him but at a plank of wood. She had managed to pin it to a wall stud.
She said, Is it straight?
He did not want to get involved with mechanical. He said, Did you get a book?
Christ, she said. Just tell me. Is it straight?
You said you’d buy a book for tonight.
Well I did not get a book. Is this straight?
The oven was cold and sour with ashes. He unpacked his backpack and lay a pumpkin and an eggplant on the countertop. In his pocket he had another two Australian dollars and now they were secret in his hand, wet and balled up like a squishy plum.
Dial had a big white scarf wound around her head, three nails sticking out of her teeth, a rusty hammer in her hand. Just tell me is the string hanging straight, so I can put the nail in.
Dial, please, can I do it later?
Just tell me-is it straight?
Suddenly, violently, he wished all this was over.
Che!
Yes, he said, it’s straight. This was true-it was straight if you lined it up with the countertop. But also-it was crooked if you lined it up against the window frame.
Do you love my daddy, he asked.
I told you. Hold it steady.
She hadn’t told him anything. He took the end of the board and his eyes were burning. She held a nail against the board, a little silver nail. She tapped it in successfully.
There, she said, that wasn’t hard.
But of course when she stood back, she must have seen she had a crooked hippie house. The plank could not look straight compared with anything at all. She didn’t speak but went to the oven where he could hear her cleaning out the grate. Out among the tall grass he found some little sticks for kindling and brought them back to her.
Sorry, bubba, she said.
It’s OK, he said. He thought he meant it at the time.
Dial lit a mosquito coil and carried it out onto the deck where it sent up comic-strip curls of foreign stink which slowly fell among her yellow hair. As the sun left the ridges to their gloomy dark she breathed it in like perfume.
So why did you ask about your daddy?
He shrugged. She still hadn’t answered what he asked.
Your face is dirty.
When is my daddy going to come and get me?
She held out her strong brown arms to him but now he was angry and he looked at the plank on the wall and if he had ever felt safe it must have been a long, long time ago. She took her arms back and folded them across her chest and sat with her back against the open doorway, pretending to look at the poor crooked plank.
There’s nothing I can do about your daddy, baby. You know that.
Is he in jail?
Not as far as I know.
That wasn’t him, he said angrily. You lied.
Sweetie, that’s not nice.
I have a right to know the truth.
You have what?
I have a right to know the truth.
Is that what you talk about with Trevor.
No. I have a right.
Listen to me, you spoiled little brat, she said. You go away all day long playing games with Trevor. What I have down here is Rebecca.
She’s taken care of.
Where did you learn to talk l
ike that-taken care of? She is not taken care of. You know what she brought here?
And so she dumped all her fears in front of him.
This is your cat, she said. We have it because you wanted him. Now you take care of him, you hear me?
Or what?
Or we’ll have to go again, that’s what, she said. Do you want to do that? Do you want to go looking for another place to live?
I want to go home, he cried.
He expected her to reach for him, to fold him to her breast, but instead she ripped her scarf from her head and threw it on the floor.
Oh great, she said, you want me to go to jail. Thank you, baby, thank you so much.
He looked at her and hated her. Her big nose. Her hairy eyebrows. Her stinky sweaty smell.
I can’t believe you, she said.
Shut up, he said suddenly. Shut up. His mind was in a rush of temper. As he walked toward the door the cat rose from its hiding place beneath Adam’s bench. The boy rushed at him, stamping his feet.
Bloody cat, he cried, and ran outside.
He walked down to the road by himself. There were crows. Later in the gloom he heard Dial calling for him but by then he had found his way beneath the hut where he huddled up between two propane tanks and watched the dark come down.
35
Trevor came padding softly down the hill with his new flashlight, three feet long, two and a half pounds. It had been free of cost to him, thanks to the roomy overalls he wore when shopping.
His feet were bare, hard, the heels and balls buffed like saddle leather or polished concrete. He did not turn the flashlight on-darkness is your friend. The moon had not yet risen when he got through the last bit of guttered track and arrived at the cane toad territory down by the creek. He could hear the frogs as well, and the water passing over the dam Rebecca’s kids had made. Through the flooded gums he could see the candles flickering in her hut. She would be lying on the bed he built for her-he had told the boy about that misunderstanding with Rebecca, but the boy did not have a clue.