The Promise Seed

by Cass Moriarty

  The old man sucks air through his teeth and stretches out his legs. She said that, did she?

  Yep.

  But you said you’ve seen her a few times since?

  Yeah. Only in the last two months or so. I’ve been to visit her at the Contact Centre. She hasn’t been here, though. Don’t think she’s allowed. Anyway, she told me she didn’t want to see some other mother looking after me. Said it wasn’t right. I should be with her. That’s what she thinks, anyway.

  And what do you think?

  The boy concentrates on the remaining pieces, and settles on his queen. Check, he says.

  I guess I think I’m OK here for a while. It’s kinda nice having Bailey and Jemima hanging around, even if they are a bit annoying. And the baby’s cute. Mrs Standing’s a good cook. You’d never believe how much food she piles into me. And Mr Standing’s all right. He’s pretty strict but he’s at work ’til late so I don’t see him so much.

  A cockatoo flaps low across the sky and lands on the pergola roof.

  He takes us to Newmarket Pool every Saturday. That’s pretty fun.

  The old man moves out of check. But you miss your mum?

  Yeah, I guess. I mean, she’s my mum. ’Course I miss her. The boy glances up. I s’pose your mum’s dead.

  The old man pushes back the brim of his hat and scratches his forehead. I suppose you might be right.

  Don’t you know?

  I never heard about it. That’s all I know.

  But she’d have to be, wouldn’t she. I mean, you’re ancient so she’d have to be more ancient than ancient. She’d have to be almost a fossil.

  The man laughs. I guess you’re right. Let me see now. I think she was about in her mid-twenties when I was born, so if she was alive today, that would make her … what … about more’n one hundred or one hundred and five years old.

  The boy grins. Well, that’s hardly likely, is it?

  No, the old man says. Hardly likely. Although not impossible, I suppose.

  The boy stares.

  What?

  Nothing. I was just thinking. I almost said to you, how come you don’t know if your mother’s dead or not, but then I thought about my dad, my real dad, and how for the longest time I didn’t know if he was alive or dead. Didn’t even think about it, actually. He just wasn’t there. He’d never been around. And Mum never mentioned him. It was almost like he never existed. If you’d asked me a year ago whether my dad was alive or not, I’d have said the same as you – I don’t know. And that wouldn’t have seemed strange to me at all.

  The old man considers the weight of the boy’s words. Eventually he asks, And now?

  Now I know. Know he’s alive. The social worker found him. He lives in Cairns. He’s got a whole other family. A wife. And four kids.

  You don’t say. Four kids, hey. That means you’ve got four half brothers or sisters.

  The boy smiles. Yep. I know. Pretty cool, huh. Instant family.

  You going to meet any of them?

  I don’t know. I mean, I think so. The social worker said my dad took a while to take it all in, everything, you know. Me. The last time he saw me I was only a few weeks old. I think he’d forgotten about me. And then … there was all the other stuff that happened. I don’t think Dad wanted to know at first. The social worker said he was a bit shocked. But he must’ve come around, ’cause she said he’s told his family about me now, and he’s planning to come down and visit in a month or two. By himself.

  Hmm. Well, that would be … cool.

  The boy slaps his palms against the tabletop and rolls his eyes. You saying cool is like, so not cool. It’s like the uncoolest thing ever. He moves a piece. And check. Again.

  The moon has risen early and now hangs low in the darkening sky, a sharp scythe surrounded by a glowing halo.

  The old man studies the board for a long time, as the smell of cooking meat wafts down from the house. The night sounds are magnified in the dusk: the baby crying; the slam of a window; a dog, streets away, howling in misery.

  The old man sits back and places his hands on his knees. You know what, kiddo? I resign. You win.

  What? No way. You can’t give up yet. Keep trying.

  There are occasions, kiddo, when no matter how long or hard you look at a thing, it just doesn’t get any better. And despite your best intentions, and even using all the talents God’s given you, on occasion you just can’t win. Sometimes you have to know when to resign.

  He pushes his chair out. It scrapes along the floor like fingernails on a chalkboard. He straightens up and holds both hands to the small of his back, then shuffles across the concrete to stare out into the evening. A passing fruit bat throws a shadow across the pergola opening. The air smells of woodsmoke. The freeway traffic sounds a steady hum, punctuated now and again by a squeal of brakes and, once, ambulance sirens calling. The old man wonders who they are hurrying to tonight, what crisis they will discover, what pain, what despair, what loneliness. He rubs the rough pads of his fingertips on his temples, and shakes his left leg, which has fallen asleep from being too long in the one position. Pins and needles flood his nerves and shiver up his spine. He figures the boy is brooding on the game, maybe has the board swivelled around, trying to see a way the man could’ve continued. Or perhaps he is already packing up the pieces.

  The old man speaks into the night.

  I’ve still got that last game set up, you know. Our game. Haven’t touched a single piece. Can’t bring myself to dismantle it when I know what a thrashing I was going to give you.

  He expects a sassy response.

  But when he turns, the boy is huddled on his chair, hugging his knees to his chest, his hood obscuring his features. His small body shakes. When the old man steps closer, he feels the shuddering before he hears the sobs. When he reaches out to push the hoodie back from the boy’s face, the child looks up at him with an expression at once defiant and frightened and unutterably sad.

  Can you keep a secret? The boy’s voice is reedy thin.

  The old man pauses, his hand still hovering above the boy’s head. I reckon so.

  He drags his chair closer and sits, his knees touching the boy’s trainers, curled up on his seat. He waits.

  It was me.

  The man waits some more; for what, he can’t say.

  It was me, the boy repeats. Mum told the cops it was her and it wasn’t, it was me, and I just sat there and I didn’t say anything. He gives a hiccupping sob. It was so sharp. And he was so soft. I should’ve told you when you first came in the house, but there was so much blood and I was so scared and Mum was crying and that bastard was finally quiet and he’d stopped shouting at Mum and …

  His voice trails off into the night, sucked up by the breeze and spirited away.

  59

  Well, that sure gave a shape and colour to the elephant in the pergola. I stare at the poor little bugger, sitting there hunched over himself on that garden chair, shivering, cowering from the truth of the matter. As if it might get up and bite him. As if the words themselves, once uttered, might gather together and become a physical thing of malice.

  I consider the little chap. And I think about myself.

  My whole life stretches behind me, a continuous punishment. Each incident of regret leading only to more sorrow.

  In the boy’s eyes, I see the promise of youth, the promise of my own lost youth reflected back to me.

  I make a decision.

  His mother is gone, or as good as. And what has she done, what’s her legacy? Has she doomed him? Or saved him? His life will be hard enough. If anyone knows that, I sure as hell do.

  I don’t want the kid to have my life, even if he did kill that bloke.

  I imagine the seed sprouting a hopeful bloom, shooting upwards from the cracks of his short and troubled existence.

  I can see h
is future stretching before him and sense the crossroads at which he stands.

  I think back to that morning so long ago. The morning Emily died. I close my eyes, almost trance-like. I can see my six-year-old self in that cold, dank house. I was playing on the kitchen floor, near the warmth of the wood stove. Emily was crying. She’d been crying for ages. She’d gone from lusty, full-throated cries to tired, hiccupping sobs. Mum had started off walking around the rooms of the house, in and out, trying to calm her. She’d stood near the stove and she’d sat in the quiet of the back room. She’d even taken a turn around the garden, despite the cold, where Aunty Kath was bringing in washing, cloth nappies that nearly snapped when she folded them, and my T-shirts that still felt clammy and damp.

  I had built a ramp for my truck from the firewood, and I was zooming it up and down. I could hear Aunty Kath in the backyard, cursing the arthritis in her fingers, cursing the bats that had left streaks of sticky black poo on the sheets, cursing the height of the clothesline (too high) and the height of the laundry basket (too low). The shepherd’s pie she’d made earlier was still in the oven, and the delicious meaty smell filled the kitchen.

  I heard the embers popping in the stove, and a muted thud as a piece of wood surrendered to gravity. I pushed aside the hanging tea towel that obscured the smoky glass, in time to see a shower of sparks explode.

  Emily was quiet.

  I don’t know how long she’d been quiet, but I realised she was no longer crying or else I wouldn’t have heard the wood fall.

  The silence was deafening. It boomed through my head. I strained my ears to hear Aunty Kath, who was now humming a hymn, an activity in which she partook with a great deal more confidence and enthusiasm than her talent merited.

  I parked my truck next to the stove and went towards the sleep-out.

  My mother was sitting in the rocking chair, with Emily in her arms. She was rocking very gently, and crooning a lullaby, and stroking my sister’s fine, fair hair. When I approached, she stopped singing. Stopped rocking. She looked at me and she had not a shred of light in her eyes, not a shred. They were like drops of ink in her pale face.

  I edged closer.

  My sister didn’t cry. Didn’t fuss. Didn’t move at all. I went closer still and I could see her blue eyes, the translucent lids only half-closed, the veins crisscrossing her delicate skin like a roadmap.

  I reached out a finger and brushed it against her downy cheek. I still recall the feel of it, soft and pliable. I bent my head and let my lips graze her forehead. She smelt of Johnson’s Baby Powder, with a whiff of sour milk. I placed my pinkie into her tiny fingers, which were curled up like petals. Usually, even in her sleep, her hand would grip mine, a reflex action. I looked askance at my mother. She stared dully off to the side of the room. I lifted Emily’s arm then, and let it fall.

  I’m not sure what marked the moment I realised. There was no blossoming bruise, no telltale blotch.

  Mum didn’t try to stop me when I took Emily from her arms. They went slack and she started singing again. A tune I didn’t recognise.

  Emily was heavy. She was heavy and awkward and she flopped around in her rug. I put her head against my chest and held her close. The side of the cot was down so it was easy enough for me to reach. I laid her in her crib. I like to remember her appearing peaceful, but maybe that’s only the guilty memories of an old man. I adjusted her wrap and pulled the blanket over her head. It was pale pink, with bunny rabbits along the edges.

  Thinking back on it now, I wonder how on earth I thought to do that at six years of age. And of course, I often wonder about the outcome if I hadn’t done it – that simple act of drawing the blanket over my dead sister’s face. Of the incident. Of my whole damn life.

  But in any event, that’s what I did. Great Uncle Ron had passed away in his bed only months earlier; perhaps I’d seen someone do it then. And I seem to recall walking past the scene of an accident, too, sometime around then, a kid on a bike losing the contest with a car. I imagine I saw the kid lying on the road, all bent at funny angles, blood pooling around his head, one shoe thrown clear across the road. I can see Mr Templar, the old pharmacist from down the street, taking off his jacket and placing it over the dead kid’s face. Knowing he wouldn’t wake up. I can see that, still, clear as a bell. But maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe it’s a false memory, as they say now, conjured by my mind to make sense of my own actions that day. Pulling the blanket over Emily’s head. I guess it doesn’t matter either way now. ’Cause that’s what I did.

  I sensed my mother leave the room behind me, still whispering her song.

  And that’s when Aunty Kath came in.

  And all hell broke loose.

  And now, here I am, almost seventy years later, contemplating this boy beside me, with the shadow of my sister at my shoulder. He’s an echo, this sad child, an echo of my own childhood self. Unspeakably betrayed, both of us, by those we’ve loved.

  I sense a chance. A chance to save this boy, to save him from himself. And maybe a chance to redeem the boy I once was.

  I pull him towards me and lower my face to his tousled hair, matted by the wind. I grip his slight body to mine and I can feel the bones of his spine beneath my fingers, sense how insubstantial he is, as if he’s not quite there. One false move and he might float away from my grasp, the instrument of his own undoing. So I tighten my grip, and I hold him close, and I whisper to him.

  I tether him to his future life.

  Acknowledgements

  Heartfelt thanks to all the people who helped bring this story to life: to my friends and early readers for their enthusiasm; to the judges of the Queensland Literary Awards for seeing promise in the tale; to industry professionals Catherine Drayton and Farrin Jacobs for their generous encouragement; to the Queensland Writers Centre, in particular Meg Vann for her guidance and advice, to Katherine Howell for her early support, and to the Brisbane Writers Festival; and to all the team at UQP, especially Madonna Duffy, for giving me a chance. Particular thanks to the wonderful Judith Lukin-Amundsen for her sage mentoring and for asking all the right questions; to my fantastic UQP editor, Ian See, for his keen eye and his thoughtful restraint, and because he cared for this manuscript as much as I did; and finally to all those in the writing community who urged me on. And of course, to my husband and my children, who began telling everyone I was a writer long before I believed it myself.

  First published 2015 by University of Queensland Press

  PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia

  www.uqp.com.au

  uqp@uqp.uq.edu.au

  © Cass Moriarty 2015

  This book is copyright. Except for private study, research,

  criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act,

  no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

  or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior

  written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Cover design by Kirby Armstrong

  Author photograph by Lenny Muthiah Photography

  Typeset in 12/16pt Bembo Std by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  Lines from The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver are reproduced with permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data is available at http://catalogue.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 0 7022 5375 1 (pbk)

  ISBN 978 0 7022 5563 2 (ePDF)

  ISBN 978 0 7022 5564 9 (ePub)

  ISBN 978 0 7022 5565 6 (Kindle)

  University of Queensland Press uses papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
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