The old man made his way out of the hut, muttering. The boy couldn’t catch the sense of his words.
Goddamn it … more useless than tits on a bull … only a young’un … for Christ’s sake …
He stopped abruptly.
Well, don’t just sit there. Put ol’ Blackbeard back in there with the others and get yourself on up to the house. Best thing for a wonky gut is some of that fizzy powder. Got some in the cupboard. Fixes me right up every time.
The boy gave him a blank look.
And don’t give me none of that can’t-talk-to-strangers nonsense. Been living cheek by jowl with you for long enough now not to go standing on ceremony. I’m not the big bad wolf and I don’t bite.
He headed back towards the house. The boy heard him muttering again.
Somebody around here got to do something … may as well be me.
The boy snuggled the chick to his face, then returned it to the enclosure, its small wings flapping hopefully as it dropped to the ground. He rose and followed the old man out of the henhouse.
The yard was compact and neat. A row of gnarled hibiscus, as old as the house itself, lined the perimeter on two sides. The leaf litter under the avocado tree was an anomaly in the tidy lawn – the boy wondered who mowed the grass. Several bushes grew up through white painted tyres. Off to one side, a rough woodshed held stacks of timber. A passionfruit vine climbed voraciously along the other side fence, and had made its way across one end of the sagging clothesline and onto the peeling verandah railings. The boy mounted the stairs in the shadow of the old man. He glanced back towards his own yard. His house looked forlorn and lonely.
The screen door banged shut behind him. The old man’s kitchen was as neat as his yard. A single sink with a cupboard either side, and on the draining board an upside-down mug. The old-fashioned upright gas stove was black with use, one knob missing. The gleaming fridge jangled in its newness. The boy had never before seen a fridge that wasn’t covered in photos and cuttings and vouchers held on with magnets. But the old man’s fridge was devoid of clutter, a vast white space in the crowded room.
Well, sit yourself down. Make yourself at home. Now where did I last put that stuff …
The boy pulled out a wobbly wooden chair and sat at the table. A salt shaker, a bottle of Worcestershire sauce and a chipped mug half-full of sugar stood on a plastic doily.
Ah! Here it is. Bit of Alka-Seltzer’ll fix you right up.
He retrieved a glass from a cupboard and shook it into the sink. A dead spider fell out. He filled the cup with tap water and spooned in several teaspoons of the white powder. It fizzed impressively as he stirred. He placed it in front of the boy.
Drink that quick, now, while it’s bubbling.
The boy gulped the liquid and coughed, wiping his streaming eyes.
It goes right up your nose, doesn’t it? Go on, get it into you, do you the world of good.
The boy held his nose and emptied the glass.
Thank you.
No worries. The old man pulled out the other chair and lowered himself into it. You don’t say much, do you?
Not much to say, I guess.
Hmm. Quite right. Too many people yakking away without anything worthwhile to say. I quite agree with you.
The boy met the old man’s steady gaze in silence.
So, do you fancy a game of chess?
I … I probably should be getting home. Mum’ll be wondering …
The old man opened his mouth as if trying to decide how to reply. The boy noticed specks of white spittle caught in the whiskers at the sides of his mouth. His face was mapped with criss-crossing lines. The loose skin hanging under his chin reminded the boy of a turkey’s wattle.
Well now, you said your mother was sleeping, right? So I reckon what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, and you could have one game of chess and keep an old man company for a spell. What do you reckon?
The boy pushed his chair back and stood up.
I gotta go. Thanks for the drink.
He paused at the screen door, his eyes fixed on a spot in the yard.
Anyway, I can’t play.
The old man waited a beat before replying. What’s that?
Chess … I don’t know how to play.
Oh … well, you see, that would be on account of that no-one’s thought to teach you. I suspect a boy like you would pick it up real quick. It’s not hard to learn, chess, but it takes a lot of practice to get good at it.
The boy turned.
You’d need to practise, and you’d need to be patient, with yourself I mean, while you’re learning. And you’d have to be prepared to be regularly and thoroughly thrashed, of course. I’m the former Footscray champion, you know.
He raised himself up and shuffled towards the boy, his hand outstretched.
Whaddaya say, we got a deal?
The boy smiled, a shy smile that shone from his eyes before it reached his mouth. He walked back into the room and took the old man’s hand. It was dry and smooth, and trembled slightly as he gripped the boy’s fingers.
17
We didn’t though. Didn’t get married, that is. Not in the end. Don’t get me wrong, I was ready and willing. I assumed that would be the natural progression, you know, after me getting Edith in the family way. So during one of those early man-to-man discussions with her father, when he suggested rather insistently that it would be the right thing to do, I acquiesced real quick. I had no idea what that would entail, of course. There was some talk of Old Joe fixing up the back room at their place for me and Edith to live in, at least until the baby came, although to be honest I couldn’t see Joe getting up the wherewithal to fix up a good deal of anything. But it didn’t much matter, because Edith took a stand. She said there was no way that she was going to marry anyone because she had to, not even me. She said she was a modern, independent woman and she’d have the baby herself, and she was sure I would ask her to marry me when I was good and ready, but she wouldn’t be forcing me into it. Oh, she could be quite forthright when she put her mind to it. Mrs E cried and raged and threatened and sulked, but nothing swayed my Edith. She was determined to do it her way. Mrs E tried to enlist the support of Old Joe, but he crumpled in the face of his daughter’s onslaught. Whenever the subject came up, he’d mutter something about having things to do and he’d be off, leaving Mrs E to fight her own battles. She even tried to appeal to me, gave me lots of speeches about accepting my responsibilities and such, but I put the truth out there – that I would’ve married Edith in a heartbeat, except she wouldn’t have me.
I’ve asked her ’til I’m blue in the face, Mrs E, I’d say, but she says it doesn’t matter how many times I ask her, she won’t be saying yes until she knows I’m asking her for her, and nothing to do with the baby coming.
Mrs E wrung her hands and said, But how will she know when that is, the silly girl?
I don’t know, Mrs E, I just don’t know. She says she’ll see it in my eyes and hear it in my voice.
But it didn’t seem to matter how I looked at her or how I phrased the question, she kept repeating it wasn’t time, and that she’d know when it was.
So that was how things stood. Edith stayed living at home, and I shifted into a closer boarding house so I could be nearby and drop over if I was needed. Mrs E took up knitting with a fury that was something to see, producing a pile of booties and blankets and matinee jackets enough to clothe an orphanage. She had expected Edith to quit work, of course, and sit home with her feet up, contribute to the knitting, but Edith knocked that idea on the head real quick.
I’m perfectly capable of continuing work, Mother. I’m not frail or ailing. I’m healthy as a horse.
And she was, too. Never a day of morning sickness, and an appetite to match a footy player. As her stomach grew, she had to get the confectionery department to order in a specially mad
e uniform, with a white shirt that she hung over the top. Mrs E said it was indecent, but I thought she looked right fine. And she still wore her jaunty pink scarf.
I started to be more cautious with my money. Not that I ever had a lot left over, but what I did have, now I’d save instead of spending it on the pictures or going out to eat. We spent more time with her parents, and they were mighty good to us, feeding me whenever I came over. I was extra diligent at work too, and put in for overtime whenever I could. I was trying to squirrel away as much extra cash as possible so that when the baby came, I would be ready.
Edith started getting bigger and bigger, and more and more tired. But she kept on working; she never complained. She was a real trooper.
In the beginning, I kept asking her to marry me. I’d ask her two or three times a day, and in all different ways. Got to be a joke between us. I’d put on funny voices, or stand on my head, or write it down. But the answer was always the same. No. After a while I was asking her only once or twice a week, but still no luck. In the end, she had a serious talk with me and asked me to please stop asking her, it was upsetting her to have to always say no. I said, Well then, why don’t you just say yes? But she was adamant. She said she didn’t want me asking anymore, until the day I felt from my heart that I wanted to ask her for real, without anything to do with any baby, and then she would know, and she would most probably say yes. I said, Heck, Edith Flower, why can’t you say yes now and forget all about the mucking around in the middle? But that only upset her more and she wouldn’t speak to me for the rest of the evening, so after that I stopped asking her. I wanted to sometimes, but I didn’t.
The baby was due to arrive in the weeks before Christmas, which pleased Mrs E no end. She kept telling all her friends that there was nothing quite like Christmas with a new baby in the house. Old Joe was pressed into service with the task of getting the house ready. She wanted a real tree, at least six foot high, and coloured bulbs strung up all around the eaves. By this time, mid-December, Mrs E’s knitting had filled the linen cupboard and was spilling out into the living room, so she’d started baking for Christmas, and when that got too much, she began stewing apples and pears and canning them up for the baby. Edith would laugh and laugh and say, Mother, he won’t be eating stewed fruits for quite some months yet, but Mrs E ignored her and kept right on cooking. I guess she figured you could never be too prepared for a baby.
Edith always called the baby him. She said she had a feeling that she was carrying a boy. Mrs E agreed, said she was carrying high and out, like she did for Edith’s brothers. I always suspected a girl, although how I thought I could know was a mystery.
But despite all that preparation and planning, when the time came, it took us all by surprise. I guess that’s the way of it – nothing can ever really prepare you for the experience of bringing a new life into the world.
It was a Friday and I was at work. I got called into the office by my supervisor to take a phone call, and I knew what it would be, ’cause I never got phone calls at work. It was Mrs E. She spoke in slow and measured tones. She said, You need to come home now, the baby’s coming, and then Edith herself got on the phone and said, Don’t be in any hurry, this baby’s not coming for hours yet. Finish your shift and just stop by on your way home, and then Mrs E grabbed the phone back and her voice was now high and squeaky – Don’t you listen to her, she’s not in her right mind, you get here as quick as you can – and she hung up before Edith had a chance to answer to that. I suspect Mrs E was a touch anxious herself, and sure enough when I got there, Old Joe was puttering about in the back shed being no help at all, so I suppose she wanted another body there to order around and get organised.
Edith, though, was calm as anything. She was walking around the house and stopping every now and then when the pain hit her, breathing real slow and deep like we had practised. Mrs E was checking her bag and getting me to haul it to the door and then haul it back so she could check it again, and in between pains Edith was telling her to sit down and to make herself and me a cup of tea. Eventually, when Edith decided the time was right (and not a moment earlier), I called a taxi and the two of us headed off to the Footscray Hospital, leaving her mother on the footpath, wringing her hands and looking uneasy. I’m not sure Old Joe even knew we’d gone.
18
The boy’s days took on a steady, comforting rhythm. Early in the morning, with the world still asleep around him, he would slip from his bed, dress silently amongst the dim, shadowy outlines of his room, and make his way to the henhouse. The fowls would cluck at his arrival. He would throw open the door and the birds would zigzag around him to make a break for the open yard, while he sat on the fence and watched, rubbing the cold from his stiff fingers and stomping the feeling into his feet. Some mornings the old man would appear on the verandah, holding a steaming mug. He would raise a hand in greeting, or simply nod. The boy knew they had reached an agreement of sorts, although he wasn’t sure exactly what.
Soon enough the light would creep across the dew-dampened grass and the boy would hustle the hens back through the opening and secure it tight.
Most mornings he would go to school, riding his blue bike into the cutting wind.
Occasionally he would wag, returning home only briefly before slinking back towards the henhouse. The old man never spoke to him during school hours, no matter if the boy stayed in his yard half the day. But he knew; the old man knew. And the boy knew he knew, and the old man knew that the boy knew he knew. The boy sensed the old man’s reluctance to acknowledge him when he should be at school. That would somehow constitute a failing, an absence of diligence on the old man’s part. But every so often, the boy would peek up at the house to see a glint of glass behind a window, or a silhouette disappearing through the doorway.
The afternoons were different. That was their time, the old man and the boy, together. After three, the boy would pedal uphill in a fury of legs and motion and skid through the fence and into the side garden, dropping his bike beside the passionfruit vine. Or slip across the yard striped with shadow and up the steps, two at a time. A perfunctory knock. A glass of ice-cold milk on the table. (A quiet complaint – Hot milk would be nice for a change – and the chuckled rebuke – Drink up, it’ll put hairs on your chest.) Next to the milk, a couple of arrowroot biscuits or a shortbread cream. Occasionally a slice of homemade chocolate cake. (Who would have thought the old man made cake?) Once or twice a store-bought chocolate bar.
Balancing the snack and his glass, the boy would pad into the living room, where the old man was waiting.
I thought you’d never arrive. Tell me, what interesting thing did you learn today?
The old man would wait, patient, for the boy to fill his empty belly. He would wait for two minutes or ten; he seemed to have all the time in the world.
One afternoon, in between mouthfuls of biscuit, the boy related his day.
We did an experiment about condensation.
Oh, yeah?
We picked leaves and put them in plastic bags and left them for a couple of hours. When we checked later, there was all this foggy mist on the bags.
Hmm. You don’t say.
That’s condensation.
It is indeed. Used to do the same experiment when I was a boy.
Plastic was invented then, was it?
I wasn’t born last century, kiddo.
Yeah well I bet you never grew grass heads.
Sure we did. We had grass growing all over the place.
No, a grass head.
Had a few friends who were grass heads, he muttered.
Huh?
Never mind. All right, tell me. What the blazes is a grass head?
You fill a stocking with dirt and grass seeds. You make it into a head shape and draw a face on. Then you stick it in a pot and water it. When the grass seeds sprout, it’s like hair.
Humph. Grass heads. Nope, ne
ver did grass heads. Only things filling stockings were women’s legs. And we only had to look around us to see the grass grow. Grass heads. Fool idea.
It was an unsettled afternoon, the air crisp and tinged with the smoke of a wood fire. The boy surveyed the room, his gaze falling on the three ducks fixed in formation on the wall, the film of dust coating the surfaces of the shelves and the side tables. The lace doily, grey with grime, peeping from under an old-fashioned porcelain figurine – a wide-eyed child sitting cross-legged in a wheelbarrow, her arms filled with flowers. The colours faded with age. The girl missing the tip of one foot.
The boy licked his fingers, one by one.
So. How come you don’t have kids. Or grandkids.
How do you know I don’t?
Just know. No pictures. No photos. No kids’ drawings stuck up anywhere.
Maybe I just don’t like photos.
And maybe you just don’t have kids. Actually. The boy’s gaze intent. Actually, you don’t have any photos, of anything. How come?
Told you. Don’t like photos.
But everybody has photos of something. Or someone. Jeez, even my mum has photos of me stuck up on the fridge. And last year’s school photo in a frame. And she has a whole album of photos of my grandma and grandpa before they died. And them with her and her brother when she was little. That’s one of her favourite things to do, look at those photos.
Yeah, well. Not me.
Don’t you have any pictures? Any at all?
Why’re you so curious about pictures all of a sudden?
Just am.
Yeah, well.
The old man stared into space for a moment. He pushed himself out of his chair and reached for his wallet on the sideboard. The wallet shook with the palsied tremor of his hands as he searched. He held out a yellowed rectangle of card to the boy. It was soft with age, the corners dog-eared, the photo a black-and-white blur, faded with time to the sepia hues of an ancient thing, a relic, worn with the viewings of so many years.
The Promise Seed Page 8