by Stephen Orr
‘No,’ Trevor replied. ‘I’ll cut the wires.’
‘No, it’s easy.’ He moved forward and started pulling the wires.
‘Harry!’ Trevor growled, but he was already halfway there. ‘Hold his head, Dad.’
Trevor stepped forward and put an arm around the steer’s head. The animal flailed and the barbs cut deeper into its flesh. Then, as if sensing what the boy was trying to do, it settled. Turned its brown eyes to him. Harry lifted a wire, pulled another out from under and motioned for his dad to let go. The steer’s mouth and nostrils dripped with milky saliva. It reversed, waited, then turned and ran away.
That night, Aiden was woken by his brother’s crying. ‘What is it?’ he called across the room, and the noise seemed to stop. He got out of bed and sat beside him. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ Harry managed, but Aiden could hear his voice cracking. He lifted the shop-new sheet and crawled in beside him. ‘Remember what she used to say?’ he whispered.
‘What?’
‘I’m sick of your sarcastic tone, young man!’
Harry laughed, and sniffed again. Then for a full minute there was nothing. Finally, he said, ‘Some nights, in the hospital, I just wished I wouldn’t wake up in the morning.’
Aiden took his time. ‘Well …’ But he couldn’t find words.
‘I miss her,’ Harry said, and he descended into tears again.
They could hear Murray’s tape deck, old music, high violins. And Yanga in the hallway, scratching fleas.
‘I didn’t even get to say goodbye,’ Harry said.
Silence. The iron roof cooling, contracting.
‘What were we talking about when it happened?’ the small voice asked. ‘School certificates? Or had she just asked you a question?’ He looked at his brother.
‘What’s it matter?’
They heard Murray’s stretcher moving as he lifted his arse and farted.
Then Harry was laughing. He thumped the wall. ‘Fart arse!’
‘Get to sleep!’
The balloon had somehow survived from the party. It sat beside Aiden’s feet on the floor of the new car. He studied its wrinkles and how it spread across the carpet like a small, overweight arse. He wore polished shoes (Fay), ironed pants and shirt (Harry) and a new watch Carelyn had bought him for Christmas. Placing his foot on the balloon, he gently pushed down.
‘What time’s it start?’ Trevor asked.
‘Six.’
‘It doesn’t matter if we miss it.’
‘I’m supposed to go.’
It was the boarders’ mass, held at 6 pm every Sunday before the new term. Starchy, oven-warmed religion, held in the red-light, cracked-wall chapel, packed full of mutton-chopped farmers and their big families—mums in summer frocks, little brothers and sisters done up in suits and sandals. Aiden was familiar with the drone of the electric organ, the crackling PA and the smell of old paper from the hymnals. Voices raised in praise, but straining and cracking; mumbled complaints; St Luke cut short for the evening meal.
He pressed down on the balloon; it split open, emptied and sat small and lifeless like a stillborn calf.
‘I’ll give it a term,’ he’d agreed, finally, with his father. Ten weeks. Don’t pay any more fees until I say.
Taking this as a good sign, Trevor had agreed.
I’ll bring you home every fortnight, he’d told his son, as a sort of peace pipe he’d placed in his hands along with cash, a carton of Coke, chocolates and lollies, the plasma screen from his own room and the box of new text and exercise books.
If I can’t handle it I’m gonna tell you, straight off, Aiden had explained.
Fine.
I’m not gonna be made to stay.
Okay … understood.
Aiden was staring at the balloon. ‘I really don’t feel comfortable.’
Trevor looked at him. ‘Why?’
‘I’m nearly eighteen and I’m still wearing this shit.’ He indicated, studying the monogram on his shirt, pulling at his knee-length shorts with their precise, Harry-made creases.
‘Your brother spent an hour doing that for you,’ Trevor said.
‘So?’
‘You look very smart.’
‘We shouldn’t have to wear all this, like we’re still ten years old.’
Trevor shrugged. ‘You’re still a student.’
‘They should treat us like adults.’ His eyes drifted across the familiar landscape. There was a stretch of road, a kilometre, maybe more, where all of the white distance markers had been removed from their holes.
‘Remember this?’ Trevor asked, indicating.
‘Yeah.’
It’d been a late summer afternoon. They were heading home from town. They slowed as they approached a lane of cars and trucks waiting behind a police car with its lights flashing. They got out and joined a small crowd. Further along there was an injured man, his wife and a few others gathered in a protective semi-circle. A police officer, and another man who might have been a doctor or nurse.
‘A heart attack,’ someone said. ‘The Flying Doctor’s gonna land on the road.’
Then one of the officers had come over and asked for a volunteer. ‘The pilot wants the markers removed,’ she explained. So there was Harry and Aiden, running beside the highway, loosening each of the markers and pulling them from the ground as the plane circled overhead. Then, when they’d gone far enough, the officer waved at them and they ran back. The plane lined up, descended, roaring towards the asphalt only metres above their heads, and landed on the too-thin ribbon of grey.
‘Remember how you wanted to be a pilot?’ Trevor asked.
‘I still might.’
‘Yeah?’ He gave him his you-know-what-I’m-thinking look.
‘A chopper pilot, for the farm,’ Aiden explained.
‘But you were interested in the Flying Doctors.’
Aiden shrugged, as if this might or might not be true.
‘So, if you want to be a pilot you gotta study maths.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘You do.’
Aiden could still see the pilot—a tall, wide-shouldered man who flew the plane with the same ease he rode his trail bike.
‘Doesn’t mean you can’t try,’ Trevor said.
‘What?’
‘You can’t just sit back and not work and then say, Oh no, that was way too hard.’
‘Why would I do that?’
Aiden could see his brother, soaked with sweat after he’d pulled his twenty or so markers from the ground. He could remember saying something like, Good effort, Shit-for-brains. ‘Have I ever … stood back?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Well?’
Trevor couldn’t understand why the markers hadn’t been replaced. It wasn’t his or his boys’ job, surely? ‘I can help you with most things,’ he said. ‘Year Twelve, as I remember, is a hard slog. Lots of late nights.’
‘I said I’d give it a go.’ And what he wanted to say: You should be grateful. With everything that’s happened, I could’ve just refused. ‘As if I wouldn’t try,’ he said.
Trevor looked at him.
‘So, you’re assuming I’m going back just to keep you happy?’
Perhaps, Trevor thought, but then said, ‘No.’
‘I don’t really want to dress up like a three-year-old, but I can see that …’
They passed the site of the accident again. Noticed a black marker, with a red cross painted onto it. ‘Fuckin’ amazing,’ Trevor said. ‘It doesn’t take them four years to do that.’
Aiden was caught up in his own thoughts. The uniform was too tight, and too itchy. He pulled his undies from his arse and said, ‘How far ahead was it?’
‘What?’
‘The roo.’
There was a long silence. ‘How should I know?’
‘You can’t remember?’
‘Twenty metres.’
‘And it was definitely a roo?’
‘Yes.’<
br />
Aiden took his time. ‘You shoulda just hit it.’
‘I know. I should’ve.’
‘You’ve hit plenty of others.’
Murray had been left to watch Harry. Instead, he retreated to a seat just outside the laundry. Sat down with his ukulele and started playing, trying to remember rhymes, bawdy and otherwise: a mother and her three chaste daughters, and something about one of them heeding the calls of a randy butcher.
Harry came out of his dad’s shed with his whip. He stood in front of the bottle tree and managed to smash half-a-dozen long necks. Then, without turning, he said to his pop: ‘Aiden reckons you won’t go into that outhouse.’
Murray stopped playing. ‘It’s not that I won’t—it’s that I don’t need to.’
‘He reckons it’s because of your granddad.’
Murray waited. ‘He does, does he?’
‘Yeah. Cos he hung himself in there.’
‘Hanged himself.’ He strummed his ukulele. ‘Your brother doesn’t know everything, young man.’
‘But he did, didn’t he?’ Harry asked.
‘Who? What?’
‘Your granddad? He hung himself?’
‘Hanged … yes.’
‘Why?’
‘How should I know? I didn’t get to ask him.’ He started to sing. ‘Mrs Hill had three plain-looking daughters …’
‘Your dad must have told you?’ Harry said, destroying another bottle. ‘I mean, it was his father?’
‘He never talked about it, and you don’t need to either.’
‘He never said?’
‘No.’
‘What are you scared of?’
‘Christ!’
Harry kept working his whip. He felt he’d lost form, and needed to improve.
‘… and they all wore plain-looking clothes.’
‘Do you think his ghost is in there?’ Harry asked.
‘No, I don’t think his ghost is in there.’
‘Then why—’
‘Listen! There are some things a child doesn’t need to know.’
Harry turned to him. ‘I just thought it was strange. How you won’t go in there. I go in Mum’s room. I’m even reading one of her books.’
‘You don’t understand why he killed himself.’
‘And you do?’
‘Yes … no. Christ, sometimes you can be so bloody annoying.’
Harry shrugged. ‘He must have been depressed.’
‘No.’
‘That’s why people hang themselves.’
‘There are other reasons.’
Harry stared at him, trying to work it out. ‘Did he accidentally kill someone?’
‘No.’
‘Did his wife leave him?’
‘No.’
‘Did his child die?’
Murray glared at him.
‘That happened a lot back then,’ Harry explained. ‘Diphtheria? Flu? Remember all those graves at the Moonta Cemetery? Thirty, forty kids every week. And they couldn’t dig the holes fast enough.’
‘No one had dip-fuckin’-theria,’ Murray growled.
‘It’s just that you’re not scared of anything,’ Harry said. ‘So I guessed there must be a good reason.’
‘I just don’t want to.’
Harry knew it was all a lie. It was only a room, filled with dust, and old furniture.
They were too late for mass so they waited in the car trying the five or six gristly radio stations, each sounding like a hair dryer. Then Aiden said, ‘Should we practice my parking?’
‘Here?’ Trevor asked.
‘I wanna book a test before I come home.’
Trevor found two bins and set them out near the kerb. Moved them apart, but Aiden complained, so he put them back. Aiden climbed into the driver’s side, belted up and attempted a reverse parallel park. He entered too sharply and ended up against the gutter. Trevor moved the front bin and he pulled out. ‘Forty-five degrees,’ he said.
‘I know.’
He tried again as Trevor watched, stopped him, moved the bins and refined his lecture. ‘Nice and tight, and when you’re in, straighten.’
And again. This time his foot slipped and he shot back. He knocked over the rubbish bin, mounted the kerb and clipped a car parked five metres behind. ‘Shit,’ he said, getting out.
‘What happened?’ Trevor asked.
‘I was barely touching the pedal … then it just …’
They examined the damage: a dented front fender, a few crumbling flakes of paint. And on their own car: a barely noticeable scratch. Trevor looked around. ‘No one’s here.’
‘Should we leave a note?’
‘How about you put the bins back and I …?’
‘Dad.’
‘It’s nothing … they probably won’t bother fixing it anyway.’
Trevor studied the carpark, and the front of the chapel, the raised voices venting across a struggling rose garden. As he moved the car, Aiden shifted the bins. Then they walked towards the chapel. ‘We could go in and ask for forgiveness,’ Trevor said.
Aiden shook his head. ‘You’re not much of a role model.’
Trevor shrugged. ‘Well, I’m the only one you’ve got.’
13
The weeks passed with only an occasional word from Aiden. Trevor took it as a good sign. There were a few phone calls about cash and mitosis but his tone was calm, considered, so Trevor knew he was on the job. Like, for instance, when they stood around discussing what to do with an animal with a broken leg, before Aiden returned to the ute and fetched the rifle.
Late afternoon, Friday. Trevor was in charge of cooking the roast. Fay had put the meat in the oven before retiring to her room, saying, ‘I can feel the start of another headache.’
Earlier, Chris had been in one of his moods. He’d returned to the compound, mouthing Puccini, a not-so-waif-like Mimi moving in rhythm with the breeze and the sheoaks that sang back to him. He’d used his hands, as though it was Tai Chi, and he’d used his lips to suffocate every word. Fay had come out and started shouting at him. ‘You’re determined to put me in an early grave, aren’t you?’ She’d taken him by the arm and dragged him back in as Harry, at his computer, watched and grinned.
With Fay in bed, it was down to Trevor again. He’d put on an apron and secured it around his globular belly; taken a knife and started slicing the cabbage; asked Harry to set the table, and Murray to slice the bread.
Yes, the roast would get cooked, but it would all be up to him. No one would volunteer their time or show any initiative. At one point he’d said, ‘How about I put my feet up and you lot do this?’ No one had replied. ‘If I waited, we’d all go hungry, wouldn’t we?’ But again, nothing.
Murray had managed four slices before stopping; Harry had set the placemats before sitting down to listen to his grandfather.
‘The stranger slept in the sleep-out,’ Murray said. ‘He told Mary and Bill that he’d served with John, and that John was a good soldier.’
‘Did he know what had happened to him?’ Harry asked.
‘Wait, yer jumpin’ the gun,’ Murray said. ‘The stranger told them John had been fine until this one particular battle. A big push from the Germans—heavy artillery, machine guns laying down a carpet of fire.’ He paused to remember, or at least imagine. ‘He told them John had just, how would you say, flipped. He told them he’d found a hole and curled up inside, crying and shaking.’
‘Harry,’ Trevor growled, and he returned to the kitchen, fetched the knives and forks from the drawer and started setting the table. ‘Haven’t we heard this a hundred times before?’ he asked his father.
‘The boy wants to know,’ Murray said. ‘It’s your family history.’ He looked back at his grandson.
‘When’s tea?’ Chris asked, from the couch.
Trevor slammed down his knife. ‘When you get off your arse and help.’ But this wasn’t enough to convince him to venture beyond the guns of Navarone.
Murray managed anoth
er slice of bread before laying down the knife. ‘So,’ he said to Harry, ‘the stranger told them John had become a sort of child, not talking, too scared to move about. You know what it was?’
‘No,’ Harry pretended, although he did.
‘Shell shock. His mind had just shut down.’
‘Dad.’
‘Sorry.’
Harry returned to the kitchen and Trevor handed him the peeler. ‘That lot,’ he said, indicating potatoes in the sink.
There was machine-gun fire and Chris sat up, fisting his hands.
‘So,’ Murray said, louder, ‘to cut a long story short, one morning they woke up and John had gone. Wasn’t at roll-call; they couldn’t find him around the camp. They looked in town, everywhere, nothing. So they said he was missing—deserted. And that started all the trouble for Bill and Mary.’
‘Dad,’ Trevor insisted, ‘if you’ve finished, can you butter it and cover it?’
‘Calm down.’
‘I’m very calm.’ He glared at his father. ‘If you want to eat some time tonight.’
Murray started buttering. ‘Then Mary and Bill got the letter, then the Argus published the Cowards’ List. They refused to believe he was a coward. When the stranger arrived they latched onto him, and what he was saying. They wanted to believe. They needed to believe.’
Trevor looked at the half a potato his son had peeled. ‘Can you work any faster?’
‘No.’
‘Give ’em here.’ He took the peeler and started attacking the potatoes.
‘I can do them,’ Harry said
‘I’ll do them.’
‘What did I do wrong?’
‘Nothing. You did nothing wrong.’
Murray didn’t care. His story was a chop, and there was still plenty of meat on it. As he continued buttering, he said, ‘Mary and Bill complained to the Argus but they wouldn’t apologise. Said, This is what the army told us. Bill said, Well, the army is wrong. And it went on like that.’
‘Butter’s too thick,’ Trevor warned his father.
‘It is not.’
‘You’ll go through half a tub.’
‘So, we’ll buy more.’ He stared back at him. Then he rewarmed his burley-blended voice. ‘No, these were not good days,’ he said to Harry. ‘Neighbours were talking, shopkeepers … even at church. So Mary and Bill started taking the stranger places with them. They’d get him to explain, to tell people what had really happened to John.’