That Eye, the Sky

  Sometimes I stand out in the forest after dark, thinking about me poor crippled Dad, and the way Mum is . . . I dunno . . . not the same, and how I find Henry Warburton out behind the sheds sometimes, saying through his teeth, ‘Help me, damn you. Do something.’ And him not saying much to me these days, and him wheeling the old man up and down like a bloke who’s waiting for someone to come and get him. When I’m standing out there, thinking of all those things, it all looks pretty bad, the whole show. Mum said it would this year. It’s puberty or some dumb thing. Everything is just so dumb. Sometimes, some nights, it’s just so stupid. And I just go out and look back at the house, and that little cloud of light that came on the house the day they brought Dad back, it stops me from bawling. It makes me stop everything. Something in it says to me, says to me soul in me belly and in me bum, Hang on, Morton Flack.

  Crazy, eh?

  Chapter Fifteen

  SUNDAY MORNING. IT’S cool. Summer is about over. Margaret makes ork, pork, goilk noises in her guts. Her milk comes out hard and thin and makes the bucket growl. I can see sparrows watching us from the window ledge. I wonder if cows like their tits pulled. Margaret always comes whingeing up to the back door for it. She eats Tegwyn’s undies on the clothesline like it’s just for something to do. Glad Henry Warburton didn’t bring us a goat.

  When I take the milk in, Mum says to me:

  ‘Why don’t we go to the Watkinses’ church this morning? It’s good to go to church, isn’t it?’

  ‘I dunno,’ I say, pouring off the milk into the big pot on the stove, ‘I s’pose.’

  ‘It says where two or three are gathered . . . where two or three . . . something something . . . oh, whatever. Henry, what do you think?’

  Henry Warburton shrugs and doesn’t look up from his newspaper. He gets them from Bankside now, tries to get me to read ’em. Not even the comic section is any good.

  ‘Henry?’

  Henry Warburton looks up. ‘If you’d like to.’

  ‘Is that to say you’re not coming?’

  ‘Well, obviously you can’t take Sam and his mother, and someone’s got to look after them.’

  Mum thinks for a bit.

  ‘Tegwyn will look after them, won’t you love?’

  ‘Always me,’ Tegwyn says. ‘Why the hell should I?’

  ‘I’ll stay,’ Henry Warburton says.

  ‘Maybe you’ll be able to teach my daughter some manners.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any hope of that,’ he says with a grin.

  The sun is out but it’s kind of cool. When we go inside the back part of the drapery shop that Mr and Mrs Watkins run, it’s like walking into a fridge. It’s a kind of storeroom where the rows of chairs are. Up front there’s a table with a lacy table cloth that looks like it’s got a big parcel under it. On the wall is a flag, the Australian flag. There’s a reading-stand-thing up there, too, and a picture of the baby Jesus. I count nine people. Everyone talks in whispers like they don’t wanna wake up baby Jesus. They all look like they’re going to a dance or something; all got their best clothes on, and there’s me and Mum in our thongs. We sit down at the back. Mr Watkins gives us a little blue book and a big thin book. They got songs in them. Hymns.

  ‘What’s hymens mean?’ I whisper in Mum’s ear.

  ‘Hims. It’s hims,’ she says. A lady is looking at me all red. ‘Just oldtime songs, Ort.’

  Hims. Makes me wanna giggle.

  ‘Welcome! Welcome! Welcome! Here we are, it’s the Lord’s Day and here we are in the Lord’s House, so let’s offer unto him our prayers.’ Everyone closes their eyes and holds their noses with their fingers like they got a headache. Everyone bends over like they dropped something on the floor. ‘We praise and thank Thee our Father that Thou has given unto us plenty . . .’ He goes on in this funny talk, like he comes from another planet and talks a little bit like us, but not enough to let us understand right. Thee and Thou. Dunno where they fit in, but the bloke up there in the blue suit and oily hair knows ’em pretty well.

  ‘The text for today, brethren and sisters, is taken from the book of Revelation, chapter sixteen. Ahem. Hurumph.

  ‘And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth. And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast and upon them which worshipped his image . . .’

  Geez. On and on. This gutsy story with drinking blood and scorching and earthquakes and no reason for it. Then Mr Watkins gets up with his blue suit and his hair oiled too, and he stands behind the table and starts talking about the Lord’s Supper which me and Mum know about. He tells a little story that I don’t get, and then he takes off the lacy tablecloth and there’s two trays. He passes one to two blokes in blue suits who pass it to each other across the row. When they get to our row they stop passing and go back to the front. Mum looks at me. There’s only us in our row.

  ‘Only crackers, anyway,’ she says. ‘Can’t be doing too well with the drapery.’ A lady with fruit in her hat looks around.

  Then the other tray, full of little glasses, comes up and down the rows. This time Mum leans across the row in front when the tray goes past and she picks out two little glasses. When she sits down again, she gives me one. I drink it. The fruit lady gives us a dangerous look. Her apples go redder.

  ‘It’s only grapejuice!’ I say. I look up. Everyone in the room is looking at us. The men passing the tray are red in the face.

  ‘And I thought we were poor,’ Mum says with a giggle.

  Then they bring round another plate that people put little envelopes on.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask Mum. ‘Letters? Don’t they say their prayers to God?’

  ‘Sshh!’ the lady in front says. Her moustache goes all stiff at me. Her fruit jiggles.

  This time the plate comes to us. Mum smiles and passes it to the man in the blue suit and oily hair who is still red in the face.

  All the ladies have got hats on. Some with flowers in them. Some like cowboy hats. Some like crash helmets. Some like little pink zits on the top of their head.

  Then Mrs Watkins warms up her accordion and everyone sings:

  The Son of God goes forth to war,

  A kingly crown to gain,

  His blood-red banner streams afar:

  Who follows in his train?

  Who best can drink his cup of woe

  Triumphant over pain . . .

  Mrs Watkins has an orange dress on, and her arms are all orange too. They squeeze and push and the accordion sounds a bit like our 1958 FC Holden Special.

  After the singing, the first man with a blue suit and oily hair gets up and shouts at us. It’s like algebra and arithmetic and geography and story-time all wrapped into one. There’s 666 and dragons and beasts and seven heads and four angels and 144,000 and Babylon and Russia and China and a thousand years and seven seals and Sodom and Gog and Magog and Mr Arafat and Com-munism and Blasphemia and Lambs and more blood drinking.

  ‘Read the signs! Read-the-signs! The Antichrist himself comes. We have no doubt of it. The prophecies are fulfilled daily. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of fornication with her . . . the fornication of Babylon. John’s own words from Patmos. We-have-no-time! The-need-is-great! Pressing. Urgent. How will we stand in the tribulation? How? How? How will we stand in that time of woe and turmoil and crushing of spirits? How?’

  The man shouts at us like he’s angry, especially at us up the back. But I don’t know what he means. He asks us questions and before we can answer he asks another one.

  Real sudden, Mum stands up and jerks me up and pulls me along the row of empty chairs and just at the door on the way out she turns around and says:

  ‘You don’t have to shout. We’re not animals, you know. And not even God’s animals should be shouted at like they’re made of mud!’

  And then we’re
outside and we get in the car and Mum rests her head on the steering wheel and sighs. The horn goes on. The men in blue suits and oily hair come to the door and point their red faces at us.

  When we get home Margaret has got into the vegetable patch and is trying out the tomatoes and treading on everything else. Dad is stuck out in the driveway on his own in the wheelchair, and Henry Warburton and Tegwyn are in the kitchen fighting.

  ‘Don’t try your religious crap on me, boy. Don’t come the crapper with me. You just leave me alone, you big gawky galoot!’

  Henry is standing by the stove, dodging all the lemons she’s chucking at him, smiling away, shrugging his shoulders. Mum just goes real angry through the flying lemons to her room. I go out to Dad.

  ‘Hi,’ I say, taking off the brake and wheeling him down the drive. His hair is growing back and there’s a good beard on him that makes him look old and real wise. I put my hand on the back of his head and feel how warm it is from the sun. The wheels crackle in the dirt. At the end of the driveway near the road, I turn him around and then I walk around and sit on the dirt in front of him. I look at his face. It’s a good face, not real handsome, but straight – a telling-the-real-truth face. He looks kind of old and wise sitting there with his PJ’s on. I reckon that’s what God looks like. Dad’s eyes look like they see everywhere today, all over the world.

  I look up at the faded sky with its warty-looking moon. It goes on forever up there.

  ‘Do it, God,’ I say. ‘Make him get up and walk.’

  I sit back on the warm brown dirt and wait. And Dad sits there waiting, too. Birds land in the trees close by. They watch us. A little wind comes across, makes the leaves go silly. I keep waiting. The bush just sits there. The whole world goes on. Margaret moos like mad up behind the house ’cause no one’s bothered to milk her. And nothing here changes. Then, after a long time Mum starts calling us in for tea.

  When I get up it’s nearly dark and Dad’s shivering and I feel scared as hell.

  Chapter Sixteen

  TWO WEEKS. THREE weeks. Every day after school I take Dad out to the end of the driveway with a blanket on his legs ’cause it’s getting cool, and every day I pray. Every day I wheel him back in for tea.

  Homework. Here I am sitting in my room trying to write an essay on the Prime Minister, and it starts raining. Rain! It just comes out of nowhere, belting down on the tin roof. I get up and go into the hallway. Across the hall Henry Warburton is talking to Dad. I put my ear against the door, have to listen real hard because of the rain noise.

  ‘. . . they used to anoint the sick person with oil, and lay hands on him and pray. I’ve never known you as your real self, Sam. I’m afraid. I’m a weak man, Sam.’

  I go outside to the verandah and see the ground boiling in the dark. The light on the house makes milk ribbons in it.

  And then it’s April, real sudden. April Fool’s Day I get told the principal Mr Whipper wants to see me in his office. I go to his office and say who I am. He looks at me kind of strange.

  ‘Is this a poor joke?’ he says.

  ‘No, sir,’ I say, nearly crapping myself.

  ‘What did I want to see you for?’

  ‘I thought you’d know, sir.’

  ‘You are insolent, Mr Flack.’

  ‘You mean you didn’t want to see me?’

  He doesn’t wanna see me. I get six of the best to show how much he doesn’t wanna see me. April Fool. Beaudy.

  Henry Warburton works on the old Chev in the evenings. He works real late, banging, shouting, trying to get it to go. One of us goes to the back door every now and then to listen for the sound of the engine. It would really be something to hear that Chev after all these years of waiting. Like raising the dead, it’d be. But there’s nothing.

  Flowers have come out with the rain. Tiny yellow and pink ones all over and specially thick in the forest. On Saturday I follow Tegwyn into the forest and keep a long, long way back. She sings to herself and it’s like the trees drink it up. I keep low and follow the pink of her jeans. She picks flowers and puts them in a bag. She looks so happy, picking flowers; never seen my sister Tegwyn so happy, and singing some dumb song that doesn’t mean anything much. Makes me happy to follow her round.

  I follow her back to the house. Henry is building a bigger fence for the vegetables. Some twenty-eights fly over, green as grass, looking for places to nest. Mum is washing. I let Tegwyn go inside with her little bag of flowers. Then I go in to see what she’s up to. She looks like she’s up to something. I walk real careful down the hallway. Look into Grammar’s room. Grammar is asleep on her own. No one in my room. Tegwyn isn’t in hers. Real careful I put my ear to the wall outside Dad and Mum’s room.

  ‘How’s that, then, old boy?’ she’s saying. The door is half open. I look through the crack next to the GET THEM OUT OF VIETNAM sticker, and there is Dad with all pink and yellow flowers in his hair. He looks like a king or a prince or something. I can’t help meself; I burst in and say:

  ‘Oh, Tegwyn, it’s beautiful.’

  She goes all stiff with pink and yellow flowers in her hands, and already her face is changing.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I say.

  ‘It’s a heap of crap,’ she says, and pulls the flowers out, ripping at Dad’s hair, chucks them into the box, opens the window and dumps ’em all out.

  Later, Henry Warburton brings in some flowers for Mum and she goes all silly.

  ‘This thing with Bobo Sax, Sam. Ngth. It was like nothing else you’ve ever been through in your life. She was like a bitch in heat. She was filthy. She stank. She never came out of that hut and I used to go to her. I’d hate myself. I hated her, but I’d go into that hut and sometimes I wouldn’t come out for days. She was slippery, lithe, she had you like a vise. I tell you, that woman, that creature fed on my weakness. I drank and smoked myself into it. I forgot myself and my place, sometimes, and I was happy. But I’d wake up in that filthy, foul darkness sometimes, ngth, and want to tear myself to pieces.

  ‘They said she was a witch, the local people. Maybe they were right, I don’t know. That’s why they burnt the place . . . after she was dead. Why do I need you for a priest, Sam? Why do I need a priest at all?’

  He leaves Dad in the bath a long time these days. It’s getting colder. He’s gonna make him worse.

  Sometimes instead of my homework I go through the back of that big black Bible of Henry Warburton’s where it lists the words. I keep going back to OIL. I read all the stories about it, how they put it on people’s heads who were kings, and how it was like gold and people argued over it. And here’s this bit that Jesus’ brother wrote down. Henry Warburton showed Mum a long time back.

  Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

  Oil’s what you do chips in. Oil’s what those blokes at the drapery had in their hair.

  The first night it’s cold enough, I light a fire in the loungeroom. Makes me feel good. I was born in this room with one ripper fire going. Mum irons clothes. She’s real angry still about that church. She says she’s tired of taking crap from people. We look at the busted telly every now and then. There’s a funny story about that telly. It’s been bust for two years. When Grammar was okay, when she used to help Mum with the cleaning and the cooking and the two of ’em used to laugh together, she had this thing about the telly. She hated it. Used to shout at Mike Walsh and Bert Newton. ‘You don’t fool me!’ she used to say to them. ‘It’s all fake. Fakers!’ It used to make us all laugh because it’s true. On TV they all pretend. But soon Grammar started to get sick and inside herself. One day she came in when Mike Walsh
was on and she got Mum’s secateurs and started cutting up the back of the telly. The electricity chucked her into the fireplace. ‘Do that to an old woman, will you? Shameless!’

  ‘Henry’s in there with Tegwyn again,’ I say. ‘What’s he doing?’

  Mum looks up from the steam. ‘Trying to save her soul, I think. She’s a hard nut, our Tegwyn.’

  ‘She hates him.’

  She nods.

  ‘Do you like Henry?’

  She flinches. Doesn’t look up from her ironing. ‘Oh, yeah.’ Looks like she’s got to thinking all of a sudden, like I knocked something out of place.

  You can hear them shouting from here. At it all the time. In a while, Henry Warburton comes out and sits down by the fire. He covers his face. Looks like he’s gonna cry, but no, he takes his hands away and he’s taken one eye out and he’s got it between his fingers, showing it to me.

  ‘Henry, put it away, for goodness sake,’ Mum says.

  ‘See, Ort,’ he says. ‘This is like the eye of God.’ He moves it all over the place. ‘Sees everything.’

  ‘I know what it sees.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Bugger all.’

  ‘Morton!’ Mum says.

  ‘That’s glass. Doesn’t see anything. God sees everything, and he’s got two real eyes. I think you’re full of crap. You don’t even believe what you’re talking about.’

  The room is deadly quiet. Mum looks at me and then her face changes and she looks at Henry real cool. The fire crackles. Tegwyn is yelling from her room.