Cloudstreet

  Which gave her an idea.

  Beryl.

  Ted Shoots Through

  Ted Pickles shoots through. He takes nothing with him but a comb and all his hormones. His mother weeps and puts a bottle of muscat through an upstairs window. Girls in tight sweaters and heels come by and Dolly screams at them.

  Chub doesn’t notice.

  Rose doesn’t care.

  Sam doesn’t say.

  And Then Comes Autumn, and Behind it, Winter

  And then comes autumn, and behind it, winter when everything happens without anyone expecting it.

  Beryl Lee moves in. Oriel senses that Hat will be gone soon and she’ll be shorthanded, so she offers Beryl a job. There is no shouting, no refusal. Oriel moves her into Quick’s room, moves Fish downstairs with Lester. Beryl mutters Hail Marys at all hours and it sounds like termites. She tears down Quick’s horrid magazine pictures, but at night they come back through the walls and dance.

  Some nights Dolly wakes to the strangest hum in her ear. Rain comes with winter.

  A postcard comes from Quick. I’m alright, it says, Love Quick. The postmark is smudgy. The picture on the card is of Wave Rock, that grey curling wall like a petrified lava breaker. The Lambs stare at it and keep their thoughts to themselves.

  Lester adds up his age one evening and is surprised how old he is. I’m not young, he thinks. My whole life isn’t ahead of me. He buys a camera off a Balt at the growers’ market to make a record of things.

  Chub Pickles announces he wants to be a jockey. At sixteen he weighs fourteen stone already. He likes to eat pork fat before it’s cooked, and he often casts a hungry eye at the pig across the fence.

  The pig grumbles and shits irritably.

  Geoffrey Birch pops the question and Hat goes spare.

  The house sighs in the night but no one lets themselves listen. Except Fish.

  The Man Who Came Knocking

  Sam watched the flesh grow back onto his daughter. It was something to see, truly something. She looked like Ingrid Bergman with her woollen suit and that little cocked hat. It was the shadow coming good on him. When you were losing races like he was, with a kind of awesome genius for it, when you handled money all day, watched it go out by the bale smelling like schoolbooks and then had all weekend to distribute your own, magnanimously, to every bookie and crook on the track, you knew you had to be truly gifted with bad luck. Lately he’d surrendered to the notion that his would be an unlucky life, unlucky in epic proportions, and that any turn of good fortune would be a bolt from the blue. Expect bad luck, was his new creed, and now and then you’ll be surprised. It saved him from a lot of disappointment, and when he saw things like Rose these days, he went as silly as a two bob watch.

  Things were quiet and uneventful in a losing way that winter. And then some big, hairy bastard came knocking. Sam thought it was a bookie’s man come to collect a debt, one of those minor outstandings he had brooding here and there. He stood there inside the flyscreen door and watched the way the fella’s gut rolled like a floundering zeppelin across his belt. The man who came knocking had a blue singlet on and wiry black hair growing down from his back along his arms and hands. Sam wondered if maybe it was the union but he couldn’t recall the last union man he’d seen who looked like a worker. He felt the rush of wind. The screen door snapped back in his face and he sat abruptly to watch the blood pour into his lap.

  My daughter’s up the duff, Pickles, and your boy’s gettin married. Orright?

  Widge wum? Sam said, pinching off his nose.

  I’ve only got one.

  Boy, boy. Widge boy are we talkid about?

  Ted, Todd, whoever.

  You bedder get the righd wum.

  Sam felt himself rising by the lapels. The flywire was floating free of the door.

  Don’t play funny buggers with me, mate. Don’t try comin the raw prawn here an now, orright? I’m not askin you any questions an I’m not makin requests here, get my drift, you cop my wallop?

  That’s wod id was. I’ll lie down now.

  Next door Sam heard thumping. He’d have a word about it tomorrow. It was eight o’clock at night already and still that Lester was thumping about. Or maybe it was his own headache starting up.

  Sam crashed against the coat-rack and it toppled to the floor with him. Doors started opening and heads appeared. Even the thumping stopped.

  You’re comprehendin me import here, I take it?

  Well, he was from somebody’s union, talking like that. Sam saw the Lamb door open and bring forth Lester Lamb with his bloody meat cleaver.

  Shite! the man who’d come knocking said. Let’s go easy in this particular vicinity. Shite!

  Sam’s brain bubbled into life: He’s a mad bastard—be careful. Look at this, for Chrissake! Sam held up his stump and the man’s eyes grew in his face.

  You just tell me where you live, add I’ll be roud wid my boy. We’ll sord it out.

  But the man who’d come knocking had already backed through the hole in the screen door and was shuffling back across the verandah in his workboots. A wind was blowing. It seemed to sweep him away into the night.

  He a friend of yours, Sam? Lester asked.

  No, but you are, sport. Take a week’s free rent from me.

  Pardon?

  What would you’ve done with that hacker there? I mean if you were hard put.

  I’m choppin ham bones, Lester said. For soup. If I was hard put for what? It’s cheaper than a bone saw.

  Sam guffawed. Must be me with the brain damage.

  The door’ll need fixin, said Lester.

  Yep. I reckon so. Listen, can I borrer that cleaver sometime?

  Course. What you cuttin?

  Thinkin about what them Jews do. You know. Bar miss fart, whatever it is.

  Circumcision? Lester went yellow. You?

  No, not me, cobber. My eldest. And I tell ya, me hand’ll be none too steady. He’ll be sittin down to piss.

  Lester wiped the blade on his apron.

  Don’t have children, mate. Whatever you do.

  No, Lester said, turning to leave. What?

  The Big Country

  All day Lester’s been remembering a small thing from childhood. He can’t think why, but it sets his limbs tingling. In his head it plays through and through. It’s dark and his back is pelted with rain. He holds onto his father’s ears and grips his neck between his knees. Water swirls all about, invisible in the night. His father hums above the torrent and a light swings somewhere ahead. Out in the darkness a voice is crying.

  Lester goes back to breaking up bones for tomorrow’s lunch-time soup special. Fish comes in singing:

  I woke, the dungeon flamed wif light,

  My chains fell off, my heart was free-e-ee

  I ro-o-ose, went fo-ororth, and

  fo-o-ollowed Thee!

  He walks round the kitchen putting his hands on things and looking at nothing in particular. He sings on to the end and begins again. Lester watches the gone look in his son’s eyes and finds himself joining in.

  My chains fell off,

  My heart was free,

  I rose went forth and followed Thee!

  Fish lapsed into silence.

  Hello, boy.

  Can I cook?

  I’m busy makin the soup, Fish.

  I wanna.

  You ready for bed?

  Nup.

  You washed?

  Nup.

  You better get ready then.

  Lemme cook?

  I can’t stop. Listen, I’ll give you a recipe and you go from there.

  Fish looks blankly at him.

  Lester flusters up over the big soup pot: I’ll draw pictures. The pictures … here, come here, where’s that blasted pencil. What’s this?

  Egg.

  This?

  Bottle.

  Milk, alright. Jug of milk.

  Milk.

  This?

  Bag.

  That’s flour. Here, this
white stuff.

  Do the picture. Fish do the picture. Like yous.

  That’s right, like I do it every day.

  Lester gives him a bowl and a whisk and tries to leave him to it. Fish sings, tuneless and quiet, concentrating on the pictures. He fluffs flour about, gets butter all over his shirt, can’t keep his lips away from the milk jug. It’s me, thinks Lester: he’s being me. He’s watched me all this time.

  Fish gets a big greasy dollop into a heart tin and looks back at Lester who’s forgotten the soup.

  It’s a bonzer, says Fish, taking the business right down to Lester’s habitual finishing words.

  It surely is, boy. We’ll put it in the oven while you have a bath.

  Do stories?

  I used to be crippled with stories, Lester thinks, loaded and hopeless with em. Now I can’t work up a decent joke.

  Cmon, then, I’ll tell you stories while you’re in the bath.

  The farm ones, Lestah.

  Lester wipes his hands on his apron and pulls it off. He tidies down the bench, leads the boy down into the bathrom. He doesn’t remember the farm, he thinks sadly; a shame to have been robbed of it. He runs the water, throws busted packing cases into the fire box of the heater and undresses the boy. Fish smiles in his face. There’s bumfluff on his cheeks now. Lord, he’s nearly a man. There’s pulpy flesh growing on him; he’s fatting up and needs bigger trousers. At least he’s in long pants now. It’s less awful than it was.

  Fish giggles in the water, balls afloat. The water barely reaches his waist. Any deeper and he’ll try to get under it. He can’t be left alone. Lester kneels by the tub with a bar of Velvet and a backache.

  Stories!

  Orright. Well. Well. Lester sighs. The skin on the back of his arms is flaky with cancers. He can’t think of anything.

  Lest! Lestah!

  There was this boy—

  Lessst!

  Orright, there was this boy. And he lived on a farm. Actually, this is me, it was a grape farm—

  Lestaah! Fish juggled in the water. Lester soaped his pink chest and felt the tension in him, the impatience.

  Orright, there was this boy called Fish.

  Hah! Whacko!

  And he lived on a farm with only his brother—

  Quick! Whacko, Lest!

  Yeah, with Quick. Everyone else was gone on holidays. One night it started to rain, see, and it came down like all of Heaven was tryin to get in the roof. It rained and rained and rained until the creek bust it banks. Pretty soon there was water in the kitchen an water in the lounge an water under the beds. So Quick wakes Fish up and tells him they gotta go. They have to try and make it into town. Now Quick is bigger than Fish. He helps him into his clothes and holds his hand as they wade out into the water. There’s rain peltin down and it’s dark. Quick puts Fish up on his shoulders and he strides out into the water. It’s a swirling torrent—

  Yeah. And the water. Yairs. They go in the water. To the big country. Yeah.

  Lester loses his breath. Fish leans back with his head against the end of the tub looking dreamy and gone. No, thinks Lester, that’s not what happens.

  An people there for em, says Fish. There’s people there.

  Oh, God.

  Fish looks smiling upon him.

  VI

  Down Among Them, Killing

  IN the barely dimpled surface of country, the wheat is its own map, neat and dogmatic in its boundaries. You can see the sun in it, the prodigal rain, the magic tons of superphosphate. From ground level, the wheat is the whole world, but in the air, or beyond air and sky, the wheatbelt is just that, a strap of land surrounded by the rest of the world. Beneath the clouds of crows it’s hard to find a feature, unless you see a gravel pit now and then, like this one here, with its stubborn island of stonefed trees which cast puddles of shadows about them like shoals. Where the man is still sleeping. Now you make out his vehicle, an old hoodless ute, already rippling with heat, and his dog which snaps at flies and rests its head on its paws. There’s dog hair on the old army blankets, some dried blood, and a smattering of roo ticks. The bends in the air beside him mean there is still some heat in the smokeless remains of the fire. Across the treefork a Lee-Enfield is slung, its scarred butt looking like old pub furniture. Now in the shadow you can see an arm, and a rough chin, a boy’s chin really. If you were me, you’d want to climb in under that blanket and spoon up by him, to take what time you could to smell him and hear his breath.

  In the end it’s the flies that wake him. They cluster on the feed sacks in the back of the ute, sucking at the dark honey of thickened blood. The traffic sound of them gets him rolling on his side.

  Gday, Bill, he says to the dog.

  The dog stands and then sits back morosely. Bill is the saddest dog ever to find water, but he’s companionable in his glumness. The young man leans across to a blackened pot and hauls out a meat twined bone. He throws it to the dog who gazes from it to his master as if truly insulted.

  What, you sick of roo?

  The dog closes its eyes.

  Well, give it back then, I’m hungry.

  Bill gets up and retires beneath the shade of the ute. The young man throws back the blankets, gets up and fills a jam tin from the waterbag in the tree. He sets the tin on the fire and surrounds it with white tree limbs snapped across his knee. In his duffel bag he finds an old linty piece of damper and hunkers down by the fire, resisting the need to pee. His skin is raw with sunburn. He has the square, aged hands of his family, and his legs are so long that in a squat his knees have to be peeped over or looked between. With a pocket knife he scrapes dirt from beneath his fingernails. His unlaced boots rest beneath him like luggage.

  Who’s gunna do the dishes after brekky, dog? he says as he spins the knife on the back of a skillet. The blade turns, flashing sunlight, and finishes pointing at his boot. Well, the knife never lies, he says with a laugh. I shoulda flamin known that.

  This morning he’ll pull a few gilgies out of some farmer’s dam and boil them up for lunch, he’ll sight the gun in with the vice on the back of the ute, and he’ll have to start priming his own shells again. If he can find some shade in the afternoon he’ll drag out a penny dreadful western and read till he’s asleep. The dog will sit beside him in mournful attendance. Barely a thing will move all day in the wheat except the insects and the odd rambling snake.

  Quick loaded up the ute when the sun was low on the land. With the mutt beside him on the seat, he drove to the rocky pool and parked in beside the smooth monolith furthest from the water. He laid his ammo along the roof of the cab, stood the rifle against the window and sat back with a smoke to wait. He fiddled with the cable that connected the spotlight to the battery. The dog sat inside, looking at him through the rear window. Quick was learning not to think much at these times, only to listen. Already he could hear them out in the wheat. The sky became the colour of billy tea as the sun disappeared. The motor ticked with cooling. Quick was glad tonight was Friday—he needed a bath something terrible.

  When he heard them close he saw old Bill tense up and he got up and rested his elbows on the roof. He slipped a mag into the three-oh and worked a shell into the breech. He let them come on in to the sandy clearing, to the spot where the slopes fuzzed with grass close to the water. The pool was only the size of a double bed. With the faint sky behind them, the roos were easy to see. He counted six, a couple of big bucks among them. He held off, knowing that unless he’d been doing his job better than he thought, there’d be plenty more to come yet.

  The pool was shoulder-to-shoulder with them when he switched on the spot. They went rigid and opened their eyes to him. Quick worked from left to right without haste. Shoot, load, aim, shoot. The roos stood there, unwillingly, but unable to tear themselves away. Their necks curved richly, their ears stood twitching. Haunches ticked with muscle and nerve. The sound of the Lee-Enfield was honest and uncomplicated, always leaving enough space in the air for the sound of the bolt clicking in a new
shell, as the roos fell, snouts flicking up like backhanded drunks. When finally the survivors began to stagger away, Quick took fast shots, moving the spot with his elbow, until he was taking them down in their stride. And then his sighting eye gave out into a watery blur so that he had to rest. Around the pool the fallen animals lay like a new stone formation, the colour of granite. Some heaved with breath or blood. Even with the whine of sound shock in his ears, Quick could hear the scratching of paws in the sand. He loaded up again, left the light on, and went down among them, killing. He didn’t get too close, for fear of catching a hind leg in the nuts. He shot those still moving, only a few. Then he let them settle while he rolled a smoke, hunkered down by the water, his eyes closed against the spotlight. He took hard drags and spat now and then until his ears cleared. Well, there’s a quid or two, he thought.

  With a machete he took the tails and threw them into the tarp on the back of the ute. It took the better part of an hour to do this and to drag the carcases into a heap away from the water. Old Wentworth, the cocky, could do what he liked with them.

  He wondered for a while about going on to a dam and setting up there, because it was early yet, but he felt sluggish and lazy, and after all it was Friday night and he’d had a gutful.

  He finished up his smoke. Now he could hear them all out in the wheat again, trampling, eating, swishing through. Lord, they were eating up the country! People told him that further south, and right across to Sydney it was the rabbits they were knee deep in, and emus too. It was like the Egyptian flamin plagues. They’d started dynamiting them, laying baits. Some blokes, even one over by Bruce Rock, were making double money by selling the meat for petfood. But you needed to have partners for that, and Quick was glad to be alone. He got skins most places, but some cockies, like Wentworth, paid enough on private bounty, roo for roo, that it was only necessary to take tails. He took shire bounty on foxes most green months and did all kinds of skins some time or another, but this time of year he was just culling.