Cloudstreet (16 page)

The night before.

It’s dusk when Sam Pickles sees his tenant and neighbour come down from the back step into the yard. He’s been standing here a few minutes smoking and easing up. His clothes and his skin smell of metals and kerosene. These days after work his mouth tastes of copper. Out the back here by the splintery fence near the mulberry tree that towers on the Lamb side, it’s pleasant and cool and except for the muffled shouts of children in the house and the faraway carping of a dog, it’s quiet. Sam sees the other man stand still a moment with his hands in his pockets to look up at the pumpkin-coloured sky, then to spit and regard the ground at his feet with what looks like a great sobriety. He’s tall and thin; he’s beginning to stoop a little already, even though Sam guesses him to be about his own age. Maybe older, he thinks, maybe he’s forty—yes, come to think of it he’d be at least that. He looks like that cowboy cove, Randolph Scott. Since the night they arrived Sam has hardly spoken to his neighbours. They’re always working too damn hard to talk, and they’re not the sort of people to waste much time having fun.

Sam leans his elbows on the fence.

Gday, he calls.

Lester Lamb looks up from the ground, straight into the crown of the mulberry tree and then along the fence. His face changes when he recognizes who it is.

Oh. Gday there. Thought I was going daft. Sounded like you were in the tree.

Too tired to get up there.

Lester is coming down to stand beside him on the other side of the fence.

A man aches all over, Sam goes on.

Ah. Know how you feel.

Cepting I get all the ache down one side, you know, cause of this. He holds up his pruned hand. Lamb squints at it and murmurs a sympathetic sort of noise. See, Sam continues, I favour the other arm all the time. Makes it ache like buggery. Used to using both arms.

Lamb gives the stump a careful look.

They say you feel the pain, even when there’s nothing there. Told me that in the army.

Yeah. No lie. More an itch you get now and then, if you catch my drift, and a man goes to scratch it and there’s nothin to scratch. Sam sees his neighbour moving his mouth as if making up his mind whether or not to ask something, so he answers it anyway; a winch, says Sam. On a boat. Just bloody stupidity. And bad luck. You believe in luck, Mr Lamb?

Can’t say. Dunno. Didn’t used of. Anyway, call me Lest.

Orright, Lest. Call me Sam. Or landlord’ll do, if yer stuck for words.

They laugh and there’s a silence between them a while. So you do a lot of physical, then? Lester Lamb says, more confident now. Work, I mean.

Yeah. Well, not like before. This’s only from last summer. I’ve been on wharves and boats all me life. Funny, you know, I was a butcher’s apprentice four years and never even nicked meself. Now’m at the Mint. He laughs. Makin quids for everybody else.

Sam sees the look of respect come onto Lester’s face.

I’m a sort of utility man there, if you know what I mean. Lester clearly doesn’t and Sam feels chuffed. His neighbour seems to be reappraising him all of a sudden. You were in the army?

Last war, Lester says. I was a young bloke then.

Ah, I’ve got the asthma.

Right.

And the war wound.

Exactly.

You don’t believe in luck, you say.

Can’t say I’ve been persuaded by it.

Everythin’s easier to believe in when it comes a man’s way.

That’s true enough, I reckon, Lester says.

Sam pauses. He thinks about this. He feels like there’s gold in his veins but he’s not sure whether to tell.

I’m on a run, he says in the end.

How d’you mean?

Like I’m winnin. Luck. It’s like a light shinin on you. You can feel it.

Lester Lamb doesn’t look sceptical—not at all. He’s a farmboy, you can see it on him—honest as filth. The sun is gone and there’s only the faintest light in the sky, but Sam can still see the other man’s features. Cooking smells seep down to them, the sound of screaming kids, a passing train down the embankment.

I’ll show you, Sam says, with his heart fat in his neck. If you like.

Before dawn Rose heard the old man wheezing as he passed her door; she was suddenly awake. She lay still and listened. Her father’s boots on the stairs. Some whispering. She heard the front door sigh back on its hinges down there and she went to the window. Below, in the front yard, two silhouettes moved toward the Lambs’ truck, one short, the other tall. She knew who they were. Now they were pushing and shoving at the truck to get it rolling a little and it crept along flat old Cloud Street to the corner until it found the incline of Railway Parade and got up a good roll and was gone. Rose waited a few moments, heard the motor hawk into life and went back to bed. Whatever the old boy was up to was bound to be stupid, but she wouldn’t tell. Oh no. She’d been dead asleep the same as everyone else.

The smell of horses reminded Lester Lamb of a dozen things at once, almost all of them good. The worst thing he could associate horses with, apart from seeing rats eating up into their arses in Turkey, was having a stallion bite the back of his neck once when he was mending a fence. He turned on it and gave it a good whack between the eyes with the claw hammer and the damned thing fell on him and crushed the blasted fence for his trouble.

The track was quiet and dew-heavy in the early dawn, muffled in by the empty stands and sheds. Small lights showed in and around the stables. Horses neighed and spluttered. Timbers creaked from their weight. Men laughed quietly in little blear-eyed clumps and lit cigarettes. Sam Pickles led him down the soft dust of alleys between stables. Behind one shed a soldier and a woman were kissing. Lester saw a great swathe of flesh as the soldier slipped a hand up the woman’s leg. Sam whistled and the couple laughed, but Lester went prickly with embarrassment.

Sam stopped at a small tin hut and knocked. A little blue-chinned man opened up.

Gday, Sam. Pushin yer luck another furlong, eh?

Gis a coupla brownfellas, Macka, and somethin for the flask, orright?

Early start. Macka went in for a moment and came out with two big bottles of beer and a smaller bottle that could’ve been anything. Sam slipped him some money and they headed back down the alley. You could hear the gentle thrumming of hoofs on dirt. Out on the track a couple of trainers had horses just rolling along with a relaxed gait. Like men tuning cars, they had their heads cocked sideways or pressed into the great dark cowlings of flank, listening as they rode.

Never been here before, Lest?

No. Can’t say I have. The only time Lester had been at a racecourse before was back between the wars when there was a revival meeting out in the open one night. Families had driven and walked in from miles around to hear the gospel story and the man up front had shouted like an angel and glowed in the face as though he might go to flames any moment. They’d gone up the front, him and Oriel and the kids too, and the man had laid hands on them and Lester had felt the power. But that was a long time gone.

I’ve never really done any bettin before, neither.

Oh, you won’t be bettin today, old son, you’ll be investin in success, you’ll be baskin in the glory. You religious?

Lester looked out at the brown rising of the sun. No. Not really.

Shame. They have this sayin about getting tenfold of what you give. That’s what we’re gunna slip into today. This day, cobber. You and me.

Lester looked at the little husky fellow beside him. He’d never seen him so animated. Before, around the house, he’d just been this beaten down ghost of a bloke who looked like a loser from day one, with his bighipped wife brooding over him. He was a different man here, and Lester felt wound up in some kind of new excitement as he sucked on the beer bottle and felt the stuff go cold and brassy all the way down. Yeah, it was like having a light shining on you; it suddenly felt like everything was possible and none of it mattered a damn.

By noon they were drunk, which meant Sam was lucid with luck and laughter and Lester just couldn’t tell where his feet were anymore. They’d toured the stables. Sam had done some whispering and a lot of careful listening, and they’d spent an hour outside one door solemnly observing the equine snafflings of a horse called Blackbutt. He was a big haunchy stallion with eyes like cue balls, and he frightened the hell out of Lester.

This is our boy, Sam said. At the end of the day everything goes in his name.

Come on home, old Blackbutt! Lester said.

I only believe in one thing, Les, Sam solemnly uttered. Hairy Hand of God, otherwise known as Lady Luck. Our Lady, if she’s shinin that lamp on ya, she’ll give you what you
want
. There’s two other things people say are worth believin in—the Labor Party and God, but they’re a bit on the iffy side for my money. The ALP and the Big Fella, well they always got what I call a tendency to try an give ya what they think ya need. And what a bloke needs most is to get what he wants most. Ya with me?

Reckon so, Lester murmured, though he wasn’t sure. It sounded like baiting the Lord to him. Maybe he didn’t go along with it anymore, but he sure as shillings couldn’t get out of believing in it. You think we’ve drunk too much?

Ya still standin?

I think so, Lester laughed. Those big boats down there’re me shoes, unless I—m wrong, and I—m higher—n them, so—

Then he was on the ground and in horseshit. The clouds were cantering by and Sam Pickles was gargling with laughter, peering down at him.

You trip me?

Nope. Ya did it all on yer own. Never ask a flyin man whether he’s flyin or not.

Will I chuck up now?

If ya feel it’s important, Les, yes I spose you’ll get round to it.

Never drunk liquor before, really.

Yer feelin chunderish?

No. Well. Praps.

Think you’d like to get up out of the horse patties, Lest?

Yes, I think so.

Lester listened to him laugh a while as he planned by what means he’d get standing again. He didn’t feel a million quid, and he couldn’t comprehend how people made a life out of this sort of thing. He could feel the roll of tenners in his coat pocket, family money it was, and he was ashamed. He felt like a thief.

But in the afternoon, and all afternoon, Lester Lamb felt like a winner. It seemed the worst he could do was back a horse that’d only come in with a place and a close call, but after midday, with food in his belly and Sam Pickles beside him, wildeyed as an anchorite, bleeding tips from every well dressed passerby, Lester couldn’t lose. His pockets were bloated with money and he felt a kind of delirium coming on towards the last race of the day when Blackbutt burst from the barrier with the rest of them and was, for a moment, swallowed up in the flailing and dirt-spraying melee of the start. At the opening of this last race, Lester’s pockets were empty. It was all or nothing. It was the real test. He was sober now and it took all his will to hand over those solid little rolls to Sam who counted them out to the bookie. Men kicked in the dust and he heard women laughing and the bookie looked at them with one eyebrow cocked, only smiling after he’d given them their tickets.

Won’t be seein youse blokes again, today.

Reckon you will, mate, said Sam.

That’s a tired horse.

That’s a winner.

You know the odds.

I’m a punter, mate, Sam said with a smile. And I’ll be back with these, he held up the tickets, and I’ll see you smilin on the other side of yer face.

So when the heads and forelegs and riders’ arms exploded onto the track in a great solid mass of desperation, Lester Lamb had his lungs full and his fists closed. The mob surged and spread by the first turn. Grass sods and whip hands thickened the air.

For a while Lester couldn’t see who was where; he couldn’t even understand the gabble of the race caller over the PA. Out on the long stretch on the far side of the track, the mob was lengthening. Beside him, Sam Pickles was smiling beneath the binoculars. Lester noticed a lone seagull lazing in some curly updraft over the track. He knew he should have been home with his family. As the lead horses came into the turn, he began to yell like a lunatic. The horses’ eyes were like stones, their legs beat the ground. He heard their tortured grunts, the bellows rush of air in and out of them. Their manes sprayed and slapped. The knees of jockeys rode high into their necks and Lester heard the little shouts of riders goading one another. Three horses shouldered their way into the open and reached out with their great long shining bodies, their heads down ploughing wind, straining forward until the sound and heave of them infected the people at the post with a crazy, dancing abandon. Lester laughed and screamed and felt the crowd beating at his sides, and as the horses passed with a sound like a back alley beating, he heard the reedy cackle of Sam Pickles and little else. As the stragglers stumped past the post, the crowd was already sighing and it felt to Lester Lamb like the last finishing moments with a woman where heat suddenly turned to sweat and power became fatigue. It was like sex, alright, and he was thrilled and ashamed and he couldn’t have stopped laughing for all the love in heaven.

Blackbutt! the man with the PA yelled. It’s Blackbutt, by crikey!

Quick stands in the dusk and stacks pine crates on the verandah. He’s forgotten all about Wogga McBride’s funeral by now and what he’s wondering about now is where his old man is. It wasn’t eight o’clock this morning when his mother came roiling and spoiling upstairs to get him out of bed with the persuasive front edge of her boot. She had him yelping and hollering and on the banisters, laughing with fright and relief before he was even awake.

It’s not your fault you’ll grow into a man, Quick Lamb, she was saying all the way down, but it’s not mine either! Pull an oar or get off the boat!

Fish seemed delirious with joy at breakfast. The moment he saw Quick slide cowering into the kitchen, Fish set an empty bowl going on the table so it roared and rattled, rose and fell, like it was laughing at him.

And so here he is, pulling oar, even now it’s nearly dark and the old man still hasn’t turned up. Somewhere upstairs Fish is singing and the girls are talking low amongst themselves. Back in the kitchen, the old girl is thrashing a few shirts, drowning them in Velvet suds, wringing their necks and beating their headless bodies on the table, singing Throw out the Lifeline’ in the sweetest voice. The whole place is like a bomb ready to go off.