“Well you thought wrong . . . Missus ‘Why Ask Me?’ And I’ll thank you, in case you get the urge again, not to make any more choices for me! I’m thirteen! I’ll blow whatever I like out of proportion! And you’re not my mother! ”
Long story short, we got side-tracked and plopped into the pit of our own on-going quarrel; me wanting to be treated more like an adult and her adamant that I needed to ‘enjoy my innocence’
“Innocence isn’t enjoyable, Bridie! It’s humiliating!”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic! If old letters and old quarrels are all you have to worry about in life, Ruth, you should be counting your blessings!!”
And of course, her telling me that it wasn’t important only convinced me that it was extremely important!
“Put it back in the box,” she demanded, “and forget it! Like I have!”
I didn’t bother pointing out that forgetting it like she had apparently meant having it thoroughly lodged in your dream-memory. I stomped off but half-way down the hall I thought of a last word and went back. She was still sitting at the table but had her hands folded in prayer. (She’s the Reverend’s daughter, through and through.)
“Dear Lord,” I heard her say. “I’m still here! Still in the same place.”
She scrunched her eyes and ground the heels of her hands into them. That wrung at my heart a bit, I must say, and I decided to keep my last word to myself. Or, more properly, I guess I just re-directed it, adding my own little conclusion to her prayer: “Still without expectations.” Just in case the Big Guy was open to sarcasm.
I headed back to her room, intending to do as she’d asked, but somehow I found myself detouring into my own. There were, after all, other people I could talk to. Kevin Truck, for example. I knew I’d see him later at the festival and I knew that, if I mentioned the quarrel and he knew anything about it, he’d share. This ‘terrible deed’ that had split my parents and that the town had had to atone for was not going to stay a secret! Not if I had anything to do with it!
* * *
Harvest Festival Weekend! Kev’ says you have to beat your conscience with a stick if you’re going to do Harvest Festival properly. Flog it into submission. It’s the only way, he says, a person can celebrate the area’s blessings while staying quiet about all the things they’ve personally gotten away with. So that makes it less surprising that everything came to a head that weekend. Right from Bridie’s dream re-discovery of the Reverend’s letter, to who showed up in the travelling carnival, to the town’s reactions to Queenie! Consciences were already sore and bloodied.
Sugar Town’s Harvest Festival Weekend starts off shortly after dawn, in the park behind the hospital, with the marshalling of the parade; just about the most deadly serious ‘fun’ thing you could imagine. The years that the parade comes off well are positive years for Sugar Tonians. The years it doesn’t quite, are like the dog has peed in the soup.
The thing is, of course, that you can push east as hard as you like, and some things’ll still find a way of going west. The 2008 parade, for example, looked exactly like every other parade since Ned Methusala’s nine hundredth birthday. It had a stack of cattle trucks; each with at least one crapping big Brahman on board, because everybody loves a cow. It had tractors covered in fresh cut sugar cane, because cane is our bread and butter. It had a fleet of semi-trailers, loaded down with four-metre long papier-maché wrenches and giant thrones made of paper daisies that the oldies in the nursing home folded by using their dentures or whatever. Because everyone loves colourful, fun things and also old people. It had bands and Brownies and Boy Scouts, Lions and Rotarians and kung fu fighters, volunteer firemen and guys with baggy britches and red balloon noses.
It had everything it was supposed to have, including, most importantly for my family, the most beautiful girls in North Queensland. It’s a celebration of fertility, right? What would be the point without beautiful girls? Which is why Bridie, who filled that bill so well, every year since she was sixteen, had dug out her little home-made signs, dolled herself up and put herself forward for Harvest Festival Queen. Not that she ever expected to win! It was just that even her public shilling for money for the Reverend’s ministry was part of what was expected in our annual parade. She had to be there. And even when we were fighting, Asael and I had to be there with her.
* * *
“Wake up, Rosebud. It’s after eight.”
“After eight?” Asael said, popping out of sleep and fumbling for his glasses. “Holy cow, why’d’ye let me sleep, Ruthie? Is she gone already?”
“Don’t get your colon in a twist, Hanky Boy! It’s your turn for the shower so get your bony butt moving!”
And then, because he’s a nervous little character and I like to help him exercise his demons, I added, “Better make it a cold one, As’! Driving through those crowded streets is gonna take some alertness!”
“I don’t feel so good, Ruthie! Maybe you should do the driving!”
Wetting himself with anxiety. The fact was that he was slated to be the one new element in the parade; for the first time playing a central part in Bridie’s display.
“No fear, Buster. You got the training, not me! Anyhow, you gonna die, what better way to do it than on a big old Harley, eh? There’re bikies who’d die for a chance to die like that!”
Character building, I call it. Anyhow, Bridie came into the room before I could take it any further and put a thumb against his chin.
“Don’t listen to her, she’s in a mood. Show me your tongue.”
He lolled it out, scanning her face all the while, checking her while she checked him. “You’ll be fine. A good breakfast is all you need.”
She pushed him away but he reached for her arm and held on. “When you were up early, before, in the shower, Bridie – were you sick?”
“No, As’, I wasn’t sick. I told you. I just had a dream that needed to be washed away.”
“Me too. I had one too. I dreamed of mum!”
“Did you? Well that was nice, I suppose. Was it nice?”
‘Nice’ isn’t a word Asa’ would ordinarily settle for but, about then I decided to bring the tension in the place down a notch. I gave him a ‘don’t push it’ glance and, knowing what was good for him, he didn’t. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess.”
“Well then. Good.”
She was looking around the room like maybe she’d counted us and realised someone was missing – the Reverend, for example. Maybe he’d any moment pop out of the closet. She’s told me that sometimes, ages ago when there was just her and me and Asa’ and the Reverend in the house – and Bessie looking after us – sometimes she’d creep into this room in the morning, to wake him.
She liked to remember it as a sweet thing, but I bet she was scared crapless every time – in case he’d gone missing in the night, like Rita and Grandma Grace. Which, of course, is a version of what he did in the end. ‘Reconcile yourself to it,’ he’d said to Rita in the letter. It had taken a little longer to say it to the rest of us but that’s what we’d had to do, nonetheless; to Bridie’s endless bafflement.
“Well,” she said again to Asa’, as though saying it a second time somehow summed up the situation. “That is nice, then.”
I could see she was still upset from our quarrel plus probably anxious about the day’s coming events so I pushed Asa’ off toward his room and nudged the door shut. I wanted her un-distracted and focussed for a minute; not to apologise, but to explain that, even though I didn’t cry with her any more, this ‘memory box’ stuff did actually have some importance for me. Not in the ‘How-sad! I-wish-it-could-be-like-it-was!’ sense, but in the ‘curious about history’ sense. Kind of on a par with learning how Rasputin seduced the empress.
Her special dress was hanging on the closet door and she set about pinching off invisible bits of fluff. How many Festivals had that dress seen by then? Six? Seven? It was the prettiest thing she owned and she kept it just for parade day.
I fid
dled at making her bed, giving her a chance to settle before starting my little talk, and she had the nightie half over her head when the door squeaked back open. Asael’s eye appeared around the corner, she dropped the nightie back over her bum and we both turned on him, fists propped on our hips.
“You’re supposed to knock, Asael!” I snapped. “You know that! You’re too old to be . . . !”
“I wasn’t peeping! I just wanted to be sure . . . that Bri’s all right. That’s all! You’d tell me, wouldn’t you? If you were sick? I’m old enough to know, you know! Than be left in the dark!”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, not you too!” Bridie snapped. “Listen! Both of you! Once and for all! I’m not hiding anything! I’m not keeping anything from you! Either of you! You have to stop . . . expecting things from me! Stop . . . suffocating me! I can’t be your . . . !” I thought she was going to say ‘mother’, but she didn’t. “I can’t be your everything! Okay?”
“Why’re you mad? I told you I wasn’t peeping! Are you an’ Ruthie fighting?”
As I said, a clingy, obsessed little dude. I felt for him though; really. I mean, except for his obsessions and his phobias and his illness – and a pair of mismatched sisters – all he had was the knowledge that, if family history was anything to go by, he’d turn around one day and find himself utterly alone in the world. Same fear Bridie grew up with; and look how she turned out!
She sighed, with a kind of weary finality. Then she relented. He was still such a boy – narrow and bony, and for his age, short. The top of his head was at Bridie’s mouth level. She held him at arm’s length, straightened his glasses on his face and pushed hair from his forehead.
“No, no. I’m not mad. In fact, just the opposite! I know you do it because you care. But you don’t have to fret, As’. Honestly! I’m fine! Ruthie’s fine! We’re all fine! Nobody’s fighting. Why would we be, after all? We’re family!”
“We heard you in the night, me ‘n’ Ruthie. You got the memory box out after your shower. That’s why we came in. We weren’t s’posed to look there anymore, I thought! Because of the cryin’ ‘n’ all!”
“Yes, well. There wasn’t any crying. Did you hear any crying? You did? Well, maybe there was just a little then. I just . . . sometimes I get a little sad, you know?” She glanced at me and I gave her my best ‘time to get over it’ look. “But you’re right, Asael. You’re absolutely right. There’s been too much crying in this house!”
She drew him to her and he tucked his head under her chin. She beckoned me to join them, which I did because you have to make an effort, don’t you?
“Let’s make a pact, shall we?” she said trying to sound upbeat. “All three of us! Let’s promise each other – no more crying over the past.” I knew that was meant mainly for me and I nearly pulled away out of the group hug. But she held onto me and so did Asael. “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick,” she continued. “That’s what Proverbs says. And you know what else, let’s promise? To tell only the truth between us! What do you say?” I guessed that that was probably also meant for me; like an apology for not showing me that letter and a promise, on her part, to do better.
“Only the truth?” I challenged, just to show I knew how easy a target it was to miss. “Nothing else?”
“Only the truth! Always! Now, As’! Have you taken your medication?”
He rolled his eyes and nodded.
“Good then.” She spun us both about and faced us out the door. “Go and get dressed, the pair of you. We’ve got a festival to attend!”
Funny, isn’t it, how a simple little animal like ‘truth’ can be so elusive. And yet create such complacency. Nonetheless, working on the belief that false optimism must be better than none at all, I did as she asked, and we all toddled off into the first day of a week that was going to turn that little animal into a monster that would rival even those in Bridie’s dreams.
* * *
Experience had taught us that, unless you were into chaos and confusion, the marshalling area was no place to be before at least ten. Later was better. That day, it was after eleven when we arrived, leaving us just enough time to stroll through the park, enjoying the real optimism that underpins so much of country life.
* * *
Hiya McFarlanes! Day’s half gone awready, did yez know?
‘Nother showin’ fer the Reverend, eh Bridie! Yer made o’ gold, you are!
An’ still the mos’ beautiful girl this side o’ Lord Howe! ‘F you aren’t Queen this year, I’m writin’ a complaint to the Guv’nor!
Hey Ruthie, you up for the excitement? Them Showies got a ride this year . . . make Tarzan wet hisself, they say!
Talk about wettin’ yerself, you lot see the comet?
Wun’t a comet, y’ignorant farmer! Was a meteor!
Well, excu-u-se me, Professor Astro! An’ my dearth o’ educational sophistication! Whatever it bloody was, it was bloody hair raisin’! Wonder where it landed!
Not too close, hopefully. Could be radio-active, eh young Asael? Could be burnin’ our bung-holes out as we speak! Whaddya reckon?
* * *
If you’d asked me then, I wouldn’t have been able to remember a day when I’d felt wary or nervous or even particularly alone in Sugar Town. People seemed to accept us MacFarlanes; to trust us and even to like us! Strange, parentless little threesome that we were, we had roots there. And Sugar Tonians, as country people do, had a special feel for roots.
So, despite my embarrassment at Bridie’s annual self-flagellation in the parade, it was very warm and nice, walking through the crowd that morning; even with the new knowledge that, once, a quarrel had divided them from my parents! A division behind which Rita had died and the Reverend had planned his flight. I smiled at every greeting, even as, without my inviting them, a froth of questions bubbled in my mind.
For instance, if, as Johnathon Cranna seemed to have promised, ‘atonement’ had been made, what form had it taken? And were Rita’s death and the Rev’s leaving then completely unrelated events? Or, had Rita and the Reverend maybe gotten the wrong end of a stick and there was no ‘terrible deed’? And had the townsfolk, then, so generously forgiven the false accusations that, eventually, out of guilt, Rita did herself in and the Reverend slunk away in shame? (Too weird for reality?) Or – were all these people hypocritical and two-faced, nursing memories of the quarrel and biding their time, to put Bridie and me and Asael off our guards?
Okay, the last one was a bit over-the-top paranoid. But unlike Bridie, I’ve always prided myself on being open to all possibilities. In her mind there was no more room for the concept of a division between our parents and the town than there was for the possibility of a division between the two of them! Just as there was no possibility that some of us in Sugar Town might not share her deathless admiration for the Reverend’s absenting ‘mission’. And she had the gall to call me innocent!
On that note, though, as we chatted our way through the crowd, another possibility occurred to me – another one that, even on her least self-effacing day would never have occurred to Bridie. And that was that these people were surely no longer a part of the Reverend’s congregation! They were part of hers! She could work nine days a week, if she wanted, trying to keep him in their minds, but it was her they were committed to loving and supporting! Not him.
* * *
The support I was giving that morning at the marshalling area (and giving very willingly, because I didn’t want to get dragooned into taking his place) was making certain Asael didn’t bolt for home. So when he started dragging me toward the line of the trees, I conscientiously put the brakes on.
“The Gourd! It’s The Grand Gourd, Ruthie! C’mon!”
What to say about Sugar Town’s Grand Gourd! It’s a pumpkin, of course, but it’s a pumpkin in the same way that a palace is a house. The annual selection, the ‘Chosen One’ – and in some years, none are good enough to be chosen – has to be a gob-smacker! Gi-normous! Chopped in half with its
guts removed, a true Grand Gourd becomes two kid-sized bathtubs. Knock on one with your fist and the vibration goes straight back up your arm and sets your ribs to thrumming – almost like the pumpkin has knocked on you rather than the other way around.
Kevin says Grand Gourds have to have drawn their nourishment from the dung-heap of the Gods – an image that he appreciates more than I do. But if he’s right, back in 2008 the Gods’ were doing their business in a remote corner of Snowy Sutton’s back cane paddock, because that year an awesome vine climbed out of the earth there, all on its own. When Snowy’s boys stumbled across it, they found it curled around a single pumpkin that stood waist high to an eight-year old and weighed two hundred and sixty kilos! They rescued it, washed it, polished it and dared the leading citizens to reject it.
“C’mon Bri’, quick! They’re taking the cover off!”
And who could resist that? 2008’s official Grandest Gourd – on the tray of Snow’s new Ute, about to be unveiled to the public!
“No, As’! You know I don’t like all that business! All that excitement over a vegetable . . . just isn’t right!”
“C’mon, please? We’re gonna see it in the parade anyhow! Let’s see it unveiled! Please! See? Ruthie’s coming! Please?”
She might have had her way if I hadn’t let the crowd catch us up – if she hadn’t been determined to erase the morning’s quarrel. In short order, we were right up against the Ute, scant metres from the veiled monster itself.
Above us, Snowy stood, arms crossed, looking as smug as a man who has the world’s last bunyip dozing under his tarp. He gazed benevolently out over our heads, waiting, demanding our stillness. Then (unaccustomed as he was) he coughed out a blather of rubbish about honour and privilege and the amazing perspicacity of his boys who, to my mind, were about at the outer limit of their powers in recognising a pumpkin, they having barely the brains of a gecko between them.
Nonetheless, he splashed about in his delusions for a bit before dribbling to a stop and getting a nice round of ‘get-on-with-it applause’. Then, milking it to the last drop, he edged off the tarp, revealing at last the massive lump of a vegetable. The silence was like that sound you hear when you’re under water in a big pool that has no one else in it! I swear, Bridie could have taken her dress off, turned it inside out and put it back on again without anyone noticing. That’s how impressive that Grand Gourd was!