The Promise Seed

by Cass Moriarty

  She gave his ear one last tweak and stormed off. When he rubbed the tender spot, his fingers came away smudged with blood.

  And so he was attempting to concentrate on the figures dancing before him, trying to manipulate them into some sort of order.

  He was glad the old man was back at home. Each evening he was in the hospital, the boy had contemplated the empty house, thinking how lonely it seemed. He hadn’t known where the ambulance had taken him, or when – or even if – he would be back. He had fed the hens every morning and checked on them every afternoon. And then, on the fourth day, he had been mucking out the henhouse and putting in fresh straw when he saw the old man standing on his verandah, one hand raised to shade his eyes from the sun, mumbling something to him about a lotto ticket.

  The boy had released a long sigh. It hadn’t occurred to him until then that he had been holding his breath.

  A shadow passed across his book. He turned to see Snake with his mother in the kitchen. He had her back pushed against the sink, his hands on her behind. They were kissing, his mother with her hands inside Snake’s shirt.

  It was the first time he had looked closely at the head of the snake tattoo. It covered the whole back of the man’s neck – the serpent’s jaws open wide, forked tongue flickering, fangs poised and ready to attack. The boy could almost hear it hissing.

  His mother had one leg cocked up, her hands pulling at Snake’s shoulders. He must have had his tongue halfway down her throat. The boy spun away, glad of the weak warmth and fresh air outside.

  There was a noise as Snake landed heavily on the step behind him. The boy kept his eyes on his book. He heard a frustrated groan and imagined Snake adjusting his crotch.

  His mother came out with three glasses of lemonade and a bottle of gin on a tray. She handed a glass to the boy, and then splashed a generous amount of gin into the other two before giving one to Snake and taking a deep draught from her own. She sighed in contentment. The boy watched her, her limbs sprawled on the verandah, and felt the hot bile of disgust rising in his throat. He closed his book and tried to get up.

  Hey, where’re you going? Sit yourself back down.

  Snake caught the boy’s leg, pulling him back onto the dusty boards.

  Where are your bloody manners, hey? Your mother brings you a drink and you don’t even say thank you? Show some respect, you little shit.

  The boy remained silent. He stared at the book in his hands and willed the man to lose interest.

  Hey, I’m talking to you, boy. You hear me? I’m talking to you!

  The boy mumbled something.

  What? What did you say?

  The boy raised his head and forced himself to look into the man’s dark eyes. He spoke slowly, enunciating every syllable.

  I said, why don’t you go fuck yourself.

  The man moved so quickly, the boy didn’t realise what was happening until he was sprawled in the dirt at the bottom of the stairs, with Snake on top of him. He tried to twist his arms, but the man had pinned them to the ground with his knees. The boy’s legs kicked uselessly into the air. Snake brought his face closer, until the boy could feel the man’s breath on his own mouth.

  Now you listen to me, you little shit. And you listen good. I don’t take that shit from nobody, especially not a snot-nosed kid like you. I think maybe you need to be taught a lesson.

  He murmured into the boy’s ear. Your mother and me are good together. We like spending time together. You and me, we could be good together too. We could get to know each other better.

  The boy flinched as the man’s tongue flicked into his ear. Snake was almost panting. He shifted his weight and the boy felt the man’s hardness against his stomach.

  You be nice to me, the man whispered, and I’ll be nice to you. He raised his voice again and said, But you continue to be difficult and disrespectful and I’ll have to teach you a lesson. Won’t I? Huh?

  The man raised his hand above his head and brought it down, hard, onto the boy’s cheek. The boy felt his head reverberate with the shock. The hand came down again, this time connecting fiercely with his ear. The whole side of his head throbbed with pain, and the ringing in his ear was so loud he thought he could hear a bell. Snake jumped up and delivered a solid kick to the boy’s ribs. He stood over him, his hands on his hips.

  Had enough? He spat into the dirt. Little shit.

  The boy curled up, cradling his head in his hands, pulling his legs up towards his chest. Waiting for another blow. Hot tears stung behind his lids but he squeezed tight, refusing to allow them out. After a minute with no further outbursts, he rolled over and gingerly got to his knees, crawling on all fours away from the house and the man. He could hear him laughing. His mother was quiet. When he risked a backwards glance, her gaze swept over him. Pleading. She pulled at Snake’s sleeve, murmuring something about going inside.

  The black chick tiptoed out from under a tangled bush and pecked at the ground beside the boy. He unclenched his fist to reach for her. Too late, he realised his mistake.

  Snake wrenched free of his mother’s hold and strode across the yard. Before the boy could rise, the man reached down to grasp the chicken. The boy cowered, scrabbling backwards in the dirt, holding on to the bird firmly. The man had a hold of the chick’s head. The ghastly tug-of-war continued for a moment before the boy saw that Snake was not going to let go and Midnight was in danger of being pulled apart. With an anguished cry, he released his hold and the man staggered back, the chicken flailing in the air.

  The man’s eyes were blazing with fury. He held the chick by the neck and swung it in an arc above his head.

  You stupid little bastard. You think you can protect a fucking chicken? What are you doing out here with the fucking birds, anyway?

  His arm circled in a frenzy. The chick was a black blur. The man spun around viciously and then let go – like the discus throwers the boy had seen on TV. His chick flew through the air, fast, before colliding with a tree trunk. There was a sickening thud. It fell to the ground and lay still, a mound of feathers quivering in the breeze.

  23

  Poor little bugger didn’t stand a chance. I had no choice. One of its legs was snapped like a twig and there was blood oozing out its eyeballs like something was broken real bad inside. I tried to tell him. I tried to explain to the kid that it wasn’t any use – the chick would never walk again for a start, let alone what else was wrong with its busted insides. But that boy, he kept staring up at me with this hopeful expression in his eyes, like he truly thought I could magic it whole again. He didn’t look too good himself. Tears rolling down his dirty face, washing tracks into mud. I reckon a big bruise was coming up on the side of his head, there were smudges of blood on his face, and he was standing like he couldn’t hold himself in the one place for too long. But I knew I wouldn’t get any answers, he was too cut about Midnight, as he was calling her. Stupid name for a hen.

  I did what I could. I made a show of cradling her and pretending to check under her feathers. But there was only one thing to be done and I knew that as soon as I saw the little mite.

  She’s not gonna make it, I told him.

  She will, he said, she will, she’s not that bad.

  She’s bad, son.

  She’ll be OK. I’ll take care of her. I’ll carry her everywhere. I’ll make special mush for her to eat, I’ll feed her myself. She’ll get better, I know she will.

  I shook my head. She won’t get better, mate. There’s no coming back from injuries like these. She’s in a lot of pain. You don’t want her suffering, do you?

  The boy stomped away and grabbed the nearest thing to hand, which happened to be my rake, and he hefted that thing in the air and brought it down so hard I thought it might break in two.

  Bastard! Bastard! Bastard! he was screaming. He wasn’t directing the curses at me, I knew that much, but at that point I hadn’t ye
t put the pieces together. The bird, the boy’s face, his anger. It was all I could do to deal with his anguish without trying to work out the circumstances that had led to it.

  I thought I was doing the right thing. He was distracted, and it wasn’t something I wanted him to have to see. Chicks’ necks are easy to wring, especially when they’re in no condition to struggle. I thought he’d understand. But when he’d finished killing my rake, he reached up to take that warm bundle of feathers from me, and he realised I’d done it. He glared up at me with such outrage that I thought he was going to pick up the damn rake again and go for me.

  You killed her, he wailed.

  I didn’t know what to say. I thought he knew it had to be done. Maybe I should’ve let him do it himself, but surely that would’ve been even crueller.

  It near broke my heart, seeing him all bloodied and filthy, cradling that chick like it was his most precious possession. What do I know, maybe it was. What do I know about kids? Bugger all.

  He took off then. Stuffed the chicken into his jumper and hopped on his bike and rode away, snot trailing behind him in the wind. I picked up my rake, and a lone feather that shone like wet ink on the grass. I wasn’t real happy, him taking it out on me like that, acting like it was partway my fault, but I could understand his sadness. I know all about grieving.

  I had a gander next door, and I could see that mother of his sitting out on the porch with a drink in her hand, rolling the glass around on her cheek like it was hot out, even though the day was mild enough. She must have been there the whole time, watching. A man’s voice shouted something from the house and she got to her feet, wearily, and went inside. The screen door slammed like a slap.

  The wind picked up. I could feel it winding around the space on my ankles above my socks. I wiped the chicken blood off on my trousers. It left a brown smear.

  …

  Funny thing, but it was after all that with Sarah and Edith that I headed northwards, back up here. Can’t explain why, even now. Hadn’t been that many years before that I’d been running away from Queensland, away from that mad baker and his siren wife, and then there I was, running away from my own family back in the other direction. I guess it’s like a homing pigeon. Instinct kicks in and you follow your nose, and before you know it you’re back in your old stomping ground, familiar territory beneath your feet. By the time 1960 came around, I was renting a room by the river over at Norman Park, having got myself a job hauling fruit and veg off a ferry service that delivered produce to businesses up and down the river. It was exhausting work, and smelly, but it got me up early and out of the house and kept my mind occupied for most of the day until my body collapsed at sundown with a few beers and I was too tired to think much anyway. After a while, Edith and that little girl seemed a long way in the past.

  …

  My life rolled on, nothing to boast about but nothing to be ashamed of either. I kept my nose clean. I worked long days and put in for all the overtime they had going. Wasn’t long before I’d collected a reputation as a good worker. Occasionally the others would tease me about having no life to go home to, especially when I put my hand up for the shifts nobody else wanted, Christmas and whatever, but I guess my silence on the matter made my point, and eventually silenced them. After a couple of years of that backbreaking work, my body was stronger than ever and my skin was brown as a berry from the Queensland sun. I could do the work blindfolded if I had to. Once I found I didn’t have to concentrate so hard on the job, that I could let my mind wander without being at risk of falling into the water or dropping a bloody great crate on my foot, well then my brain began to ache for something more challenging to think about. All that work I’d done in the printing industry, the skills I’d learnt, started to play on my mind and I began to think about giving it another go. I’d never finished my apprenticeship, of course, and I was too old by then to consider going back to it, but I figured there’d always be places for people who worked hard. So that’s how I came to work for The Telegraph. The newspaper had not long relocated from the city out to offices in Campbell Street in Bowen Hills, and they were expanding and hiring new staff.

  The butterfly effect, they call it. You know, how one small incident can trigger a whole host of changes until it influences the final event? I guess if I’d never worked at The Tele, I’d never have met Pete, along with Sandra and the rest. And if I’d never met that gang, I wouldn’t have ever got interested in their type of music, and I wouldn’t have even noticed the ad. As it was, it jumped out at me and I was moving forward before I knew it.

  That was all a long time afterwards. Plenty happened in the meantime. But all those years after that butterfly flapped its wings, the breeze it created was growing into a wind of hurricane proportions, and almost twenty years later the effect would be complete.

  24

  It was quiet down by the creek, quiet enough to hear the shushing of the reeds, the bubbling of water over the stones, the occasional splash of a darting dragonfly. The late-afternoon sun was settling onto the horizon, leaching the sky of light. Pale grey clouds hung suspended like sheets on a giant washing line. The afternoon chill had sent the kids scurrying, their bikes racing, soccer balls under their arms. Only a few determined joggers circled the oval. An older woman in a red jacket called to a huge dog, a Great Dane maybe crossed with something long-haired, with the unfortunate result of bearing a resemblance to a large, ungainly sheep. The woman threw a tennis ball and the dog bounded after it, slobber glistening.

  The boy sat cross-legged by the creek bed, the cool air creeping across the surface of the water and spreading goosebumps up his arms. The black chick lay in his lap, its glassy eyes beginning to cloud over. He had started digging with a sharp pointed stick, and then used a flat rock to scoop out the soil underneath. Now he was using his bare hands, his fingers aching in the cold, damp earth that had also gathered under his fingernails. He smoothed out the cavity, picking out stray rocks and twigs. It smelt of mulch and rotting things, a rich aroma that filled the boy’s nostrils and settled, thick and sweet, in his lungs.

  The grave complete, the boy sat for a moment, listening to the sound of a kookaburra chortling, the stark laugh slicing through the silent afternoon. He shaded his eyes with one hand, searching. He found the bird on a low branch of a spotted gum, glaring at him accusingly. He dropped his arm and the bird took off, swooping across the empty sky. The boy lifted Midnight and cuddled her close to his cheek, her body cooling, her feathers already losing their sheen. He could feel that she had gone from him. With the tip of his index finger, he stroked her one more time, ran his finger over her beak, and petted the down on the top of her head. Then, with infinite care, he placed the small body into the hole, adjusting her until she looked comfortable. His hands shaking, he pushed the mounds of soil over the edge, watching as they thumped onto his chick, watching until the last clod covered one exposed beady eye. He quickly filled in the hole and patted down the surface until it was well packed. He got up and walked around the bank, collecting leaf litter and small branches, which he used to cover the spot. He searched again until he found two sticks of the right size that he broke in four and shaped into an M, and then stuck these firmly on top.

  By the time the boy returned home, the sky had darkened to purple, like the passionfruit that grew on the old man’s vine. A light shone from somewhere inside the house, and the boy could imagine him there, hunched over a tray of food, or perhaps watching the telly, a blanket on his stick-thin legs. He went towards his own house. The front-porch lamp, burnt out months ago, had been replaced; it illuminated the entrance with a false welcome. The boy stood listening, but could hear no sound from within. No car sat in the driveway. He wheeled his bike around to the back, propped it against the verandah post and made his way cautiously up the stairs.

  His mother was sitting at the kitchen table, a cigarette in her hand. The smoke spiralled lazily upwards, dissipating into the film of
ceiling dust. A half-empty bottle of vodka sat opened. The remains of a microwave meal had congealed in its plastic tray. A thin line of tiny black ants threaded across the table and into the food, then back again towards the table leg. Three bags of groceries sat, unpacked, on the floor. He could hear a game show on the TV in the other room.

  He stood uncertainly at the door. His mother held out her arms to him, and he moved into her embrace. Her eyes were red-rimmed. She put the cigarette into a dirty saucer and pulled back to look at him.

  It’s late. I was worried about you.

  It sounded to the boy like something she thought a mother should say.

  I buried her, he said. When there was no response, he elaborated. Midnight, my chicken.

  Oh darling, I’m so sorry about the chook. He shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t know you’d given it a name. You silly thing. Come here. Let me cuddle you.

  Her hands stroked his cheek. He flinched. She pulled him close again and spoke into his hair.

  You shouldn’t provoke him, sweetheart. He didn’t mean to do it. He feels terrible. He couldn’t stay here and face you, he felt so bad. He’s not a bad person. He just … he’s very protective of me and he doesn’t like it when you sass me. If you could show him more respect, listen to him, do what he asks … then there wouldn’t be any more of this trouble.

  She took his face in her hands and looked searchingly into his eyes.

  Don’t you want Mummy to be happy, baby?

  Yeah, mumbled the boy.

  Couldn’t you try harder, for me? I’d do anything for you, you know that. We all need to try harder to get along, OK?

  The boy sighed and allowed himself to melt deeper into her embrace. He wound his arms around her and relaxed into her chest. He could feel the tension draining from his limbs. His mother. All he had. All he knew. He didn’t want to upset her. He tried to imagine his life without her, but couldn’t. It had always been the two of them, together. She was rubbing his back and rocking him from side to side in a way that felt familiar and soothing. Some long-forgotten childhood comfort.