Cloudstreet (42 page)

His back hurt again, the way it had all day since he went walking down through the heath country back from the river. He had lumps there, like the beginnings of boils, the kind of boils he could remember having as a kid. Oh, those afternoons over the old man’s knee biting into an apple while the old bloke tore clean rags and squeezed through them with his thumbs, pinching the skin of his backside to ̵decarbuncle him’ quick as could be managed. Be brave, the old man’d say, and you’ll be laughing it orf in a sec. A cove only has to be brave for a few minutes of his life. Ooh, I’ll bung this on me toast tonight! And he’d laugh across the final lancing scream that Sam, nose deep in apple, came out with.

Boils! he called in disgust, and tossed the florin. Tails it was. Well, it matched. He decided to be satisfied.

A few days of this and they’d be chookraffling him to the nuthouse.

Right then he heard a motor. He looked at his watch—1:15. He turned out the pressure lamp, reached for the revolver.

Headlamps forked up over the hill and swung down among the trees. Sam went to his knees by the window. Now he’d see which way his luck was runnin. It was hanging over him like a cold dark cloud tonight, and he knew it was momentous, but there was no way of reading it—salvation or his head on the block.

Well, whoever it is, they’re comin my way, he thought. A man’d pay coin of the realm for a peaceful leak right this moment.

He ducked as the headlights came swinging his way. With his back to the wall beneath the window, he could see every feature in the shack, the chair and table, cot, shelf, pots and buckets, all with long, tearing shadows from the light barging in through every crack in the tin walls.

Sam? The motor cut short. He heard the handbrake. Sam?

Sam fidgeted. The .38 felt like a laundry iron in his hand. He’d never shot a pistol before in his life. Should he break the glass first and then fire, or shoot straight through the window? He tried to think what they did at the matinee.

The door opened.

Sam? You there?

Friend or foe?

Tenant.

Shit, you scared me.

Get the lamp on.

When the lamp came up Sam looked white and shaky. As he stood there shiftfooted by the door he scratched his back, squirming.

You got the money, then.

What’s wrong with your back?

Friggin boils.

When did they come up?

Today.

Don’t scratch em.

I’m feelin lucky.

Let’s get you packed up.

Sam swatted the bird from his shoulder, but a claw caught in his singlet so that the cockatoo flapped in a fit of squawking and crapping, upside down, suspended from behind Sam’s neck. Lester reached out to unhook the bird which took a piece out of his hand the size of a snapper bait.

Dammit to buggery! he yelled.

The bird got free, flew straight into the window and crashed to the floor where it lay groaning like a floored boxer.

You orright? Sam said, laughing.

Yeah, but you aren’t. They’re not boils you got there. It’s ticks. Roo ticks.

Bugger me!

We’ll have to get em out. You smoke don’t you?

Yeah, what—

Roll a smoke thin and tight and give it to me.

I don’t—

Come on, you’re wastin time. When you’re finished take off your singlet.

What you gunna do, for Chrissake?

Burn em out.

Wonderful. Bloody marvellous.

You won’t feel a thing except those little fellers reversin out in a hurry.

Sam lay on the cot while Lester went over his back finding the little pointed butts of the parasites and applying the fag end.

I’ve got a plan, Sam said, wincing.

What plan?

For the money.

I thought we’d just drive you straight back to town an you pay em off.

No, I feel lucky.

Oh, you
look
lucky.

Lester rested the glowing end on the tail of a tick and watched it shunt out like a dog from a snake hole. You’re gunna look like a fly wire door when this is finished.

There’s a big two-up game tomorrow.

It’s already tomorrow. Where?

I’ll show you, said Sam.

It’s stupid.

You said you’d get me the money.

I got it. To pay off your debts and keep trouble away from Cloudstreet.

Well I’m gonna do that
and
make us some money.

Us?

Well, it’s your money. I reckon you deserve a dividend.

I need a horsewhippin, Lester thought. For this, for a lot of things. You’ll lose it, Sam, he said.

Don’t bloody talk like that, I know when I’m gunna win.

Well why don’t you win more often?

I’m a dill for excitement.

I could do with a little less excitement.

You’re gutless, Lamb.

You just remember one thing, mate. I haven’t given you the money yet.

I’ve got the .38.

A man who can’t drive a car could never use that thing.

Want to test that little theory? Listen, I’m gunna win. Me stump’s bloodynear glowin. I know it.

There was a sweat on Sam’s face, and his eyes were bright. Lester didn’t know whether to admire or pity him. It was too late to save the money now. In any case, he thought, aflush with shame, you can’t deny a man a chance when you’ve just had his wife on the kitchen table.

Carn. Get up and pack.

You’re in?

No, you’re in.

Where’s that … Sam then? said the bird trying to get up. Where’s that Sam?

Wakings

At dawn, and the first raw-throated stirrings of hidden birds, Cloudstreet floats soundlessly from the gloom to join the day. Down on the tracks a Fremantle freight creeps past under a limestone sky, and in her tent, towelling the water from her face and chest in a manner so delicate as to be secretive, and to someone who knew her, completely uncharacteristic, Oriel Lamb feels the vibrations in the duckboards. When she’s finished washing she applies a little talcum powder and dresses in her floral frock, stockings and hardsoled sandals which look more like work boots with ventilators cut into them. She notes again the ugliness of her feet all distorted with corns and bunions. She still remembers her own bare running feet on the dirt of the home paddock when the world was a place given by God for the pleasures of children, when all that was good was unbroken. Oriel empties her washwater onto the seed pots outside and comes back in to make her bed and tidy the shelves, clear the card table that is her desk. For ten minutes, with the help of the rimless spectacles she needs now, she reads the
Reader’s Digest
and makes pencil marks beside instructive passages. The early morning ‘quiet time’ as she calls it, has proven impossible to shake off. But it gives her time to meet the day, steel herself, put on the full armour as she used to say. She finishes up, tidies the table again and feels the mulberry tree hanging over the tent like a cloud. It’s still early, she’ll give them another half hour before reveille—it’s been a hard week since the wedding, what with Quick turning up and keeping them on the lookout like that, and the hole that Hat has left in the company. Another loss. Oh, if she thinks about everything that’s been taken from her over the years—Lord, it’s like the longest subtraction sum invented. She can’t help it, the feeling is on her and she’s furious. It’s a sickness, selfpity, it’ll eat you up, woman, you know it. It’ll eat the day and worm into your labour and weaken you. She puts her square, red fist on the table, watches it like it’s a paperweight. Up the back the pig snorts like a priest chanting. Fowls begin to scuffle. She hears water in the sewerage pipes beneath the garden path. Someone is up.

Elaine waits till the stove finishes smoking and makes sure it’s properly alight before waking Beryl Lee. Back in the kitchen they lay out the bacon and yesterday’s eggs. Elaine stands at the back door in the cold morning air and sees movement in the tent. The New Guinea beans Fish planted have overtaken the yard, the great hairy, veined creeper enclosing the chookyard and the pig’s den, the whole of the back fence and each side, right through the other vegetables, across the apple and orange and lemon trees, right to the door of the tent itself. Elaine can’t think how the thing has been tolerated this long. There’s even a tangle of it in the mulberry tree, and in the first sun, a-shine with dew, you can see a bean hanging above the tent the size of a man’s arm.

Your father’s not in, Laine, Beryl murmurs behind.

Hmn?

The truck’s gone. His bed hasn’t been slept in.

Elaine turns and is distracted from wondering how Beryl has the nerve to go into the old man’s room, by the mystery of his absence.

Probably gone to the markets early, I spose.

He hasn’t been here.

He used to be in the army, Mrs Lee. He knows how to make his bed. Elaine isn’t used to being firm with Beryl. Sometimes she has the feeling she’ll end up like that poor woman, alone, too old, pathetic and dependent, it’s the only thing that keeps her from lashing her now and then, the image of herself in Beryl’s rednosed maudlin face.

Well, says Beryl, I hope he comes good on the apples today. People are asking.

Here comes Mum, put some wood on the stove. I’ll wake the boys.

Quick wakes from a plain wide sleep without dreams to remember, and finds Fish in bed beside him. It brings back more mindpictures than any dream—they could both be boys instead of the men they are. Fish has his head against Quick’s chest and his arm thrown over his belly. Quick smells his brother’s hair, feels the weight of him against his ribs. It feels like forgiveness, this waking, and Quick is determined not to be embarrassed. He looks around the room and sees how shabby it is. Wallpaper has gone the colour of floor fluff. The bedspread is patched, and he feels the pillowslip against his chest, an assembly of old pyjama tops. The furniture could have come from any combination of shutdown pubs from Beverley to Bakers Junction, the kind of firewood gimcrack he’s seen as a shooter and rouseabout and truckie.

Quick?

Hmm?

Lester goed.

What?

He didden come.

Did you get lonely?

He didden.

He probably had somethin to do.

Everyone goes.

Quick chewed his lip. There was more action around the old house than there used to be. It took all your energy just to keep track.

Down the corridor Lon sleeps openmouthed. Pimples break out on his chin and others are plotting. A bomber jacket, new and wrinkled, lies across his chair. Out on the landing, Red gets on with her situps. She has a shine on her, the firmness of green fruit, and wind comes out of her like truck brakes.

On the other side of the corridor, Chub Pickles sleeps like he was custombuilt for it, Rose Pickles writes in her diary with her tongue wickedly in the corner of her mouth and listens to him snoring through the wall. She checks her nails between sentences. She has beautiful hands and they still surprise her.

And then the silly drongo told me my ear tasted like treacle, and that HAS to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Still, he’s nice enough for his kind. It’s hard to believe I come from this nuthouse every morning and go out there into the world without everyone guessing straight off. It’s like two lives. Ha, ha. Like a book!

Rose hears the Lamb truck pull in and goes to the window. Down below she sees her mother’s arms protruding from her ground floor bedroom. There’s Mr Lamb with Stan the cocky, but no Sam. Curious.

Dolly can’t catch Lester’s eye as he stumps up onto the verandah with a crate of lettuce. She waits, braving the chill in her thin nightie, but he comes and goes as though she’s not there. He looks tired and needs a shave. The windscreen of the truck is running with the goo of a hundred exploded bees.

You look like you just lost a quid and found a shillin, she says in the end.

Lester stops, a box of Jonathons swaying in his arms. I’ll let you know when I find the shillin.

Are you in the poo, too?

Let me put it this way, Mrs Pickles. By midnight we’re probably all gunna be in the poo.

People like you aren’t used to it.

Being in trouble, you mean?

Yeah.