Then I notice in the far corner of the shop, up near where Mrs Firth sits, a great pyramid of red cans. ARDMONA TOMATOES. The stack goes right to the ceiling.
‘Wow,’ I say.
‘She’s got the decorative touch, my wife,’ Mr Firth says without moving his lips.
‘Cor,’ I say.
‘Four hundred and twelve cans,’ Mrs Firth says.
Right up to the ceiling. You couldn’t put another can up. All red and shiny. The best thing I ever saw in this shop.
The door tinkles. I look around. A couple of yobbos come in. Black T-shirts, black beetle-crushers, hair all cut short. The kind of yobbos that drive loud cars with fat wheels. They kind of wade up the aisle with their boots going oink-oink on the floorboards. They see Tegwyn.
‘Ooor,’ one says. He grins and elbows his mate.
‘Oooright,’ the other says. They both laugh kind of dirty. My guts goes all tight and all that ginger beer fizzes in me and it kind of hurts.
‘Can I help you two gentlemen?’ Mrs Firth calls.
‘Not as much, no,’ one says. He’s got a tooth missing. The hole is somewhere a mouse would go to live in. They both kind of wade over to near Tegwyn.
‘Piss off, bumface,’ Tegwyn hisses.
‘Miss Flack,’ Mrs Firth calls from the cash register, ‘there won’t be any language like that in our shop.’ She gets out from behind the cash register and stands behind me, right near the pyramid of tins, like she doesn’t trust me near it.
My guts hurts. I wish I could get out. The pinny machine clatters away outside. The two yobbos just kind of hang around near Tegwyn like two fat blowflies until the one with the mouse-hole touches her shoulder with his finger and suddenly I let go a terrible fart and Mrs Firth makes a crook sound. Oh, that ginger beer! Weaver and flaming Lock! And there goes Mrs Firth swaying back with fingers pegging her nose. Tegwyn hisses like a cut snake. I look for somewhere to go.
‘Get away!’ Tegwyn yells.
‘Listen here, love,’ Mousehole says.
Oh, geez! The cans! Here they come and I’m running for the door. Tegwyn is running and laughing and the two yobbos just stand there and look like dags. The sound is like a volcano. Mrs Firth screeches. Running, running. We get to the door as the whole flaming lot comes down and one can comes out through the door with us and lands on the pinny machine and sets it ringing and the dog howling like mad and Malcolm Muswell is yelling: ‘Free game! Free game!’
So. The walk back. We hardly got to Bankside and here we are going home. Still, it made Tegwyn laugh. She’s walking just in front and it’s hotter than it was on the way in.
‘Wanna swim?’ she asks all of a sudden. Even the sound of it is cool.
‘Geez, yeah,’ I say.
There is a deep swimming hole in the creek on the other side of the road from our place, just down from the bridge, and we head for it, sweating like pigs all the way. Every year there’s the same deep spot in the creek where the bank shoulders out under a big redgum, where it’s shady and thick with leaves under your feet, with an old rope hanging down that used to be for swinging from before it snapped and broke someone’s neck. Now it hangs out of reach and looks kind of sad and funny.
After about a million years, we get to the bridge and go off down away from the house. The bush here is raggedy and only thick near the creek. There is even some green grass under that big redgum with the rope tassel. I take my shirt off and dive in and go right down to the bottom where it’s all mucky and dark, and then I shoot up and come out yelling it’s so good. It’s cool but not cold. The water doesn’t move much. You can see the redgum reflected in it, and even that silly little bit of rope. I breaststroke around in circles.
Tegwyn takes off all her clothes and gets in slow, bit-by-bit. Toe . . . ankle . . . shin . . . knee . . . thigh . . . waist . . . and then she ducks under and a moment later I’m under too without expecting it. I kick her off and come up coughing.
‘Just pullin’ ya leg.’
‘Yer justa kid,’ I say, angry. ‘No more grownup than anyone else.’
‘Ah, don’t get snooty.’ She spouts water and floats on her back.
After a while we go over to the bank and lie with our heads in the grass and the rest of us out in the water. Midges and dragonflies come and go. A crow calls from somewhere. Mostly it’s real quiet.
‘That was a good trick back there, boy,’ she says. ‘Saved by a fart.’
I can’t say a word. I feel so important. I could go to sleep right here.
A bit later I ask: ‘Are you happy?’ But she doesn’t say anything. Probably asleep.
When we get home, Mum has jobs for us. Jobs! On a Saturday! Tegwyn has to help hang out the washing. My job is different.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
‘Go out and have a look at the chookhouse. Then you’ll know what your job is,’ Mum says, steam in her face.
I go out to the chookhouse and there is that lousy rooster with his neck sticking out of the wire. His neck is out, but there’s no head on it. The only thing holding him up is his feathers in the wire. Oh, geez. Foxes. Or one fox, anyway. Must have just lay there waiting for that big dumb rooster to put his head out and . . . whack, no head.
Out by the fence I dig a hole with Dad’s shovel. The rooster is stiff and hard and smelly and stuck to the wire so that I have to kind of rip him off. Errol walks behind me as I take the rooster over to the hole. I wonder if Errol knows what I’m doing; he doesn’t look all that bothered. Errol sleeps out on the dunny roof. I wonder if that’s why foxes never get him. My brainy chook!
I know Mum’ll ask me anyway, so I shovel out all the chook poop from under the roost and put it into bags for the vegie garden. Poop makes things grow – don’t ask me why. It’s one of those facts. All the hens go berserk as I shovel stuff out. The little chicks jump and squeak and look stupid. Chooks just eat and lay eggs and hatch babies and that’s all. I wonder if they ever talk to each other.
I’m just tying off the bags in the shed when Fat comes over.
‘G’day,’ he says.
‘Hi.’
‘Playing with yer poop again?’
I shrug. ‘Watcher been doin’?’
‘Nothin’.’
Funny, you know, I feel a bit awky with Fat just now. Can’t tell if he’s looking me in the face because my eyes are on the ground, but I bet he isn’t. The ground is all dried and cracked like Grammar’s cheeks.
‘Wanna muck around?’
‘Okay,’ I say.
I run up and tell Mum and she comes out onto the verandah with her arms all red and just looks at Fat, not real friendly.
‘Be careful of snakes,’ she says, looking right at me and then a long time at Fat. ‘And mind how you walk.’
Fat and me walk slow through the forest, munching leaves and sticks and bones and dead grass under our feet. The air in you is hot as a baked dinner – you have to kind of chew it before it’ll go down.
‘You ever been to the beach?’ Fat says.
‘The ocean beach?’ I scrape skin off my peeling nose. ‘Nup.’
‘A lot of people in the city go to the beach on a day like today. And all last week. Every day I can remember, they’d be down at the beach. Wish I had a surfboard.’
‘You ever been to the beach?’ I ask.
‘Coupla times. If you get up in the morning and drive down there and through the city – and boy that’s hot – you get there just in time to get wet and get home by dark.’
‘You’d have to live in the city to go all the time.’
‘I used to when I was a kid. I wouldn’t mind living there again. I mean I wouldn’t mind all that much. In the morning you wake up when it’s real hot. You get up and go down to the beach. The sand is white and hot enough to make blisters on yer feet. It’s really wide, a long way. Geez, the water is blue. Blue. And you have waves all around and lifesavers to look after you. Afterwards, you go up with your oldies to the beer garden and you get a lemo
n squash and sit in the shade and wait for the Fremantle Doctor.’
And now I know he’s starting to bull me.
‘What do you want a doctor for? Blisters?’
‘What?’
‘The doctor. You’re bulling me ’bout a doctor.’
‘The Fremantle Doctor, you dill. It’s a wind that comes in the afternoon off the sea. Cool, it is. People open all their windows. You can see it coming; makes a dark line on the water. You can see it coming in from Rottnest Island.’ He looks at me like I’m real stupid.
‘I know about Rottnest Island,’ I say, ‘there’s quokkas on it and Vlamingh discovered it.’
We come down to the creek, sweat all down us, and Fat is shaking something in his hand. Sounds like a baby’s rattle. Matches. A box of Redheads.
‘It’s bushfire weather,’ I say, kind of half-hearted.
‘There’s water close,’ Fat says. He lights one up. I can smell it. Reminds me of lots of things I can’t remember. He chucks it at me. I hit it into the creek.
‘Don’t be a donkey,’ I say, a bit scared.
Fat lights another one.
‘Don’t be a stupid mongrel!’ I yell as he flicks it at me. But it’s dead before it reaches my hand. Fat looks all mean. His face is all bunched up.
‘Don’t, Fat. Don’t! You’ll make a bushfire!’
‘Ya chicken, are ya?’
‘No.’
‘Reckon you are.’
What’s he saying this for? What the hell’s going on here? Fat has this ugly look. He looks like an angry porker going to the yards. I shouldn’t have called him a mongrel or a donkey, I know it. But everything I say makes him worse.
‘I reckon you should shut yer trap,’ I say. It’s like me mouth is angry and the rest of me doesn’t know what the hell is going on. Another match comes my way. I stamp on it.
‘You Flacks,’ he says with a hard laugh. ‘You think ya hot shit. Butter wouldn’t be yellow in ya mouth.’
‘What’s wrong with us?’ My throat is real small, too small for words.
‘Ya sister’s a slut. Ya old man’s a vegetable, and ya mum’s a pisstank.’
And that’s it. I’m going forward like some bit of a train that’s busted loose and I’m rolling forward at him and he throws a match that I knock down hot at the ground and then I hit him and the matches go all over. His bum hits the ground. He kicks at me and one thong comes off. I kick him in the leg and then in the side and he’s up like a ball, like a turtle, like a caterpillar, like a snail, crying, crying.
‘Yer a fat slug!’ I yell at him. ‘I hate yer big flubbery guts and yer pig face and yer crybaby old man who thinks he’s so funny and yer scrawny plucked-chook-piece-of-poop old lady. I hate yez!’
With a whoof! behind me, something else happens. I turn around. Flames. I turn back and there’s Fat Cherry up and off into the forest heading home.
‘Come back here, you . . . !’ But there’s no time.
The fire is as big as a forty-four gallon drum and running up the bank. I take my shirt off and wet it in the creek and run up behind the fire and hit it. The flames hurt my face and my arm and I hit them all, swinging around half-crazy and not knowing properly what the hell’s going on. It crackles and spits. I’m hitting and hitting. I go for it like I’m attacking it, like I hate it to death. It goes on and on. Swing, hit, and then nothing, only black ground and smoke.
For a while, I dance around in the big, black patch, burning my feet, and then I fall in a shallow bit of the creek on my knees and just lie there.
A long time goes past before I move. I’m sore and hurt all over, like half of me has died. Bits of smoke still lift off the bank above. I roll over and look up at the sky between the trees, big branches like eyelashes across it.
The skin of the creek is black. Little things skip across it. I float downstream. I push off snags and rocks. I dogpaddle and breaststroke down. You don’t need an ocean beach or a Fremantle Doctor to know how to swim. Sometimes I pull myself along the bottom, it’s so shallow.
I know when I pass the sawmill – there’s our car roof still there on the bank. Down I go. I don’t want to get out till I feel better. It’s cool. The air is the only hot thing in me now. Even my brain has cooled down. Kookaburras gargle up in the jarrah. Stroke, stroke.
At the same log as before, I rest and peer across at the man under the bridge. There he is, still, on the bank in the shade with the bridge piles on either side of him. My hands hurt when I hold onto the log. I get back in under the water, crouched, and peer round the log. I look careful at him. How does he live? What does he eat? What’s he doing so close to our place? Did he hear us this morning when we were swimming at the hole on the other side? I forgot about him.
Funny. I can see . . . his . . . I have to look real hard. I’m not far away. It’s his thing, his old fella. It’s real big and fat, up out of his pants like a periscope. And he’s just sitting there in the cool looking at it. Looking at it!
Cor.
Reckon I better tell Mum about him. Real quiet, I swim back a bit, then get out and walk back barefoot.
We’re all eating tea real quiet when there’s a thump at the front door and shouting. Mum looks at me scared. No one’s ever come to the front door before, except the Mr Wingham that came to tell us about Dad. Tegwyn sighs. It’s steak for tea and I was halfway enjoying it.
‘Tegwyn, will you go?’ Mum says as Tegwyn gets up.
It’s sad at tea with just the three of us. With two at the table it makes you feel real crummy.
‘What’s the meaning of it, eh? What’s the meaning? Explain to me. Where’s your mother?’
There’s yelling coming from the front door. Mr Cherry, clear as day. He bursts into the kitchen, his singlet all wet and the black hairs on his shoulders all plastered down.
‘Good evening, Bill,’ Mum says. Sick-looking.
‘Mrs Flack.’
‘Well, what’s all this?’
Tegwyn is behind Mr Cherry pulling dogfaces.
‘I want your son disciplined,’ he says.
‘You smell of beer, Bill Cherry.’
‘You’re a one to talk.’
‘You are in my house, Bill Cherry. I don’t want to throw you out. You’ll speak decently to me under my own roof, thank you.’
‘And what’s gonna stop me? Bully boy here?’ he says, pointing to me. I stop chewing, gob full of steak.
‘What’s gonna stop you is me.’
‘You’re only a woman!’ he laughs.
‘It’s a shame we can’t say you’re a man, Bill Cherry.’
He looks hit. ‘What?’
‘Any real man would’ve made arrangements for an employee of his who was maimed running personal errands. For a favour. Any real man would’ve owned up to it and took responsibility. A decent man would’ve offered compensation.’
‘Bugger you, woman, I’ve driven you to hospital near on twenty times in my own time, on my own juice. Leaving me wife to run the place on her own. Bloody place is going to ruin —’
‘Because my Sam’s not there to keep it alive. Get down to the point of your rudeness, Mr Cherry.’
More banging on the front door. I go out to see. Mrs Cherry comes in like a runaway tractor.
‘Oh, Mrs Cherry,’ Mum says, back to the fridge, ‘come in and join us. Your husband —’
‘Come home, Bill Cherry.’
Tegwyn snorts. Mrs Cherry looks ready to kill. Tegwyn nicks off.
‘Your children could do with some discipline, Mrs Flack. The whole lot of you could do with some gratitude, I reckon.’ But she looks half-hearted about it.
‘Your snivelling little son —’ Mr Cherry starts.
‘Now listen here,’ Mum goes.
‘No, you listen!’
‘Bill Cherry.’
‘Let go, Leila.’
‘Get out.’
‘Mrs Flack there’s —’
‘You’ll get no bloody help from us when they pull —’
/> ‘Bill Cherry!’
‘Out!’
‘— him off the machines!’
Mum grabs a handful of mashed spud off the table and I get the hell out.
The forest moves quiet tonight. Jarrahs move a long way up and out of sight. Now and then I hear little animal noises. All these trees are dying, and all these little animals will have nowhere to live. One day the whole world will die and we’ll die too. My back hurts and my bum stings and the backs of my legs too. I’ve got no clothes on out here in the forest. Prickles and burrs and twigs stick in me all over. I rub them in, squirm and shake around. It hurts a lot. I’m hurting myself. I want to hurt myself. I want to.
Over there I see the house lights. I dunno if they are still fighting in there. I hate all of this. None of this is fair. Somewhere I can hear a bell, a deep clonging bell, like the big bells in churches on the movies. Bong. Bong. Rings in my ears. Sometimes so loud it hurts.
I look up and see bits of the sky through the trees. None of this is fair. Not one thing.
I get sleepy. I grind on the prickles and burrs and sharp pieces of wood so it hurts me awake. It hurts.
Oh. No. Right before me eyes it comes up on its own. It’s not fair. It’s the last straw. It makes yer sick. There it is, me old fella with its nine black hairs, sticking up just like that old man’s under the bridge. And here I am looking at it. Makes you sick.
There. I’m bawling. There. I can’t stop bawling.
For a long time I cry until I feel sleepy and that bell comes back. I hear a car, close. The lights cut up high in the trees all around. The engine runs for a long time real close and I look over at the house to see it leaving the drive. Red tail lights leaving. Oh. I hope it isn’t the cops. I hope there hasn’t been a murder in there.
I get up.
There is something over the house. Like a cloud. Like a cloud. It glows, just sitting over the roof. Hell! It’s bright as the moon. I start running towards the house, hit the wire fence like a truck and go flat to the ground and get up again all wonky and go like hell.
Mum is out on the back verandah, screaming her lips off. And I’m running. Feel my old fella flapping all over. Here I am in the nick, raw as a prawn, me shorts back in the bush, here I am running across the backyard.