Owen Marshall Selected Stories (18 page)

E
very second month Brian went with his father on the Big Kick. They drove up the valley, and the minister took services at the little church of Hepburn and at the Sutherlands' house. One midday service at Hepburn going up, one in the afternoon at Sutherlands', then the evening drive home. In the autumn the long sun would squint down the valley and the shadows blossom from hedges and trees, and slant from the woodwork of buildings in angles no longer true.

One sermon did the trick on the Big Kick, with only the level of formality altered to suit the circumstances. The minister was relaxed despite the hours of driving, and treated it as a gallant expedition for his son's sake. ‘Off on the Big Kick again, eh,' he said. ‘The Big Kick.' The scent of the hot motor, taste of finest, stealthy dust, sight of the valley floor paddocks all odd shapes to fit the river flats and, higher in the gullies sloping back, the bush made a stand. Few farmhouses, fewer cars to be met, and dust ahead a clear warning anyway.

Brian had his hand in the airflow, and used it to feel the lift on his palm. He assessed the road. Each dip, each trit-trotting bridge, places he would set his ambushes. Hurons or Assyrians swarmed out to test his courage, while his father practised parts of the sermon or recited Burns and then murmured in wonderment at such genius. Brian made the air take some of the weight of his hand, and he kept his head from the window when a small swamp of rushes and flax was passed in case there were snipers hiding there.

‘Will the one-armed man from the war be there?' he said.

‘Mr Lascelles. Don't draw attention to it.'

‘It happened in the war.'

‘His tank was hit, I believe. The arm was amputated only after a long struggle to save it: not until he was back in New Zealand. I visited him in hospital I remember.'

‘You can still feel your fingers when you've got no arm,' Brian said. ‘They itch and that. If someone stood on where they would be then you'd feel the pain.'

‘No,' said his father, but the boy kept thinking it. He saw a cloud a long way off like a loaf of bread, and the top spread more rapidly than the bottom, and both were transformed into an octopus.

Hepburn was a district rather than a settlement. The cemetery was the largest piece of civic real estate, and the greatest gathering of population that could be mustered in one place. Mrs Patchett had nearly finished cleaning the church. She was upset because a bird had got in and made a mess, and then died by the pulpit. She said there were holes under the eaves. Even such a small church maintained its fragrance of old coats and old prayers, of repeated varnish and supplication, and insects as tenants with a life-cycle of their own. The air was heavy with patterns of the past: shapes almost visible, sounds brimming audible. An accumulated human presence: not threatening, instead embarrassed to be found still there, and having no place else to go. There were seven pews down one side, and six on the other. Down the aisle stretched two parallel brass carpet crimps, but no carpet in between. One stained window, all the rest were plain, a blood poppy amidst green and blue, dedicated to the Lascelles brothers killed within three days of each other in the Great War.

Brian took the bird out on the dust shovel. It left just a stain on the boards behind the pulpit. He threw the bird above the long grass: it broke apart in the air, and the boy closed his eyes lest some part of it fly back into his face. He brought his father's Bible, soft and heavy, from the car, and the travelling communion tray with the rows of
small glasses set like glass corks in the holes, and the bottle full of the shed blood of Christ.

‘Don't wander off then,' said his father. ‘Don't get dirty, or wander off. Remember we'll be going with one of the families for lunch.' The boy was watching a walnut tree which overshadowed the back of the church, and ranks of pines behind. He found a place where, Indian-like, he was hidden, but could look out. He crossed his legs and watched the families begin to arrive. The Hepburn church no longer had a piano, and the man with the piano accordion came early to practise the hymns required. ‘Rock of Ages', and ‘Turn Back O Man'. He was shy, very muscular, and prefaced everything he played or said with a conciliatory cough. Fourteen other people came as the piano accordion played. Fourteen adults and six children. Brian watched the children linger in the sunlight, before trailing in behind their parents. The one-armed Mr Lascelles came. Even to Brian, Mr Lascelles didn't look old. He wasn't all that many years back from the war, and he laughed and turned to other people by the cars as if he were no different. Brian got up and walked about in the pine needles as if he had only one arm. He looked back at the trees he passed, and smiled as Mr Lascelles had done. Without realising it he walked with a limp, for he found it difficult to match a gait to having one arm.

The accordionist coughed and began to play, the families sang, and the boy stood still at the edge of the trees to see the valley and the bush on the hills. Rock of Ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. He felt a tremor almost of wonder, but not wonder. A sense of significance and presence comes to the young, and is neither questioned by them nor given any name. All the people of that place seemed shut in there singing, and he alone outside in the valley. He could see all together the silvered snail tracks across the concrete path, the road in pale snatches, the insect cases of pine needles drawn immensely strong, the bird's wing in the long grass, the glowing Lascelles poppy in the sunlit window. Rock of Ages cleft for me. Brian tipped his head back to see the light through the pines, and
the blood ran, or the sky moved, and the great, sweet pines seemed to be falling, and he sat down dizzy, and with his shoulders hunched for a moment against the impact of the trees. The church was an ark with all on board; it dipped and rolled in the swell of the accordion, and he alone was outside amidst the dry grass and shadows, a sooty fantail, gravestones glimpsed through the falling pines of his own life.

He saw cones. The old cones, puffed and half rotted in the needles were ignored. He wanted those heavy with sap and seed, brown yet tinged with green, and shaped as owls. When dislodged they were well shaped to the hand to be hurled as owl grenades against impossible odds across the road, or sent bouncing among the grave stones to wake somebody there. He gathered new stocks by climbing with a stick and striking them from the branches. At first he climbed carefully to keep the gum from his clothes, but it stuck to him anyway, gathered dirt and wouldn't rub away, and lay like birthmarks on his legs and held his fingers.

His father was preaching, for the church was quiet. Brian heaped up a mass of pine needles beneath the trees, working on his knees and bulldozing the needles with both hands out in front. He built a heap as high as himself, and jumped up and down on it. When he lost interest he left the trees and walked into the graveyard to search for skinks. Quietly he bent the grass from the tombstones, like parting a fleece, and after each movement he waited, poised in case of a lizard. He found none. He imagined that they were destroyed by things that came down from the bush at night. He picked at the resin stains on his hands. Deborah Lascelles, 1874–1932, Called Home. Brian forgot about the skinks. ‘Called Home,' he said to himself. He thought about it as he went down the tree-lined margin of the small cemetery and on to the road. He was disappointed that there were no new cars, but one at least was a V8. He shaded his eyes by pressing his hands to the door glass, in an effort to see what the speedo went up to. He reasoned that anyway as it had twice as many
cylinders as their car, it must do twice the speed.

Old now is Earth, and none may count her days. The final hymn. Brian went back into the trees and stood as king on his pine needle heap. He arced his urine in the broken sunlight as an act of territory and checked the two balls in his pouch with brief curiosity. He jousted against the pines one more time, and brought down a perfect brown-green owl. He ran his hand over the tight ripples of his cone. He hefted it from hand to hand as he went back to the church.

His father stood at the doorway to shake hands and talk with the adults as they left. Those still inside showed no impatience. They talked among themselves, or listened with goodwill to what was said by and to the minister. There were few secrets, and no urgency to leave the only service for two months. Mrs Patchett showed Mr Jenkins the holes beneath the eaves, and he stuffed them with paper as an interim measure, and promised to return and do more another day. Things borrowed were transferred from car to car. Wheelan Lascelles stood unabashed, and on his one arm the white sleeve was brilliant against the tan. ‘That poem you used,' he said to the minister. ‘What poem was that?'

‘One of my own, in fact.' Brian shared his father's pleasure. They smiled together. The boy edged closer to his father so as to emphasise his affiliation.

‘Is that so? I thought it a fine poem, a poem of our own country. I'd like some day to have a copy of it.'

From the sheets folded in his Bible the minister took the handwritten poem, and gave it. It was found a matter of interest to those remaining: the minister giving his poem to Wheelan Lascelles. Others wished they had thought to mention it, and strove to recall it.

‘We're going to the Jenkins' for lunch,' Brian's father told him when everyone had left the church. The Jenkins lived twelve miles up the valley. The minister preferred having lunch with a family living past the church, for then in the afternoon the trip to Sutherland's was made that much shorter. He let the Jenkins drive on ahead because
of the dust, and followed on. ‘Mr and Mrs Jenkins eat well,' he said to his son with satisfaction.

On a terrace above the river were the house and sheds of the Jenkins' farm, and a long dirt track like a wagon trail leading in, and a gate to shut behind. ‘What have you got on yourself?' said the minister, as he checked appearances before entering the house.

‘Gum.' Brian rubbed at it dutifully, but knew it wouldn't come off.

‘And what's in your pocket?'

‘Just a pine cone,' he said. His father flipped a hand as a sign, and Brian took the owl and rolled it away. It lay still warm from his body on the stones and earth of the yard.

‘You realise old Mrs Patchett died, of course, and wasn't there today,' said Mrs Jenkins when they sat down. Brian thought some day he might return and find his pine cone grown far above the Jenkins' home. ‘Her mind went well before the end. She accused them of starving her, and used to hide food in her room. The smell was something awful at times.' Mr Jenkins smiled at Brian and skilfully worked the carving knife.

‘She wasn't at the services the last time or two,' the minister said. ‘I did visit her. As you say, her mind seemed clouded, the old lady.' Mr Jenkins carved the hot mutton with strength and delicacy.

‘She was a constant trial to them,' Mrs Jenkins said. Mr Jenkins balanced on the balls of his feet, and gave his task full concentration. Like a violinist he swept the blade, and the meat folded away.

‘I saw Mr Lascelles who's only got one arm,' said Brian.

‘Yes, Wheelan Lascelles,' said Mr Jenkins without pausing.

‘Old Mrs Patchett was a Lascelles,' said his wife, ‘They only left her a short time, but she must have tried to walk back up to where the first house on the property used to be. She went through the bull paddock, and it charged, you see. She wouldn't have known a thing of it, though.' With his smile Mr Jenkins held the gravy boat in front of Brian and, when the boy smiled back, Mr Jenkins tipped gravy
over his meat and potatoes, and the gravy flowed and steamed.

‘The second family in the valley were Patchetts,' said Mrs Jenkins, ‘and then Lascelles. Strangely enough, Wheelan's father lost an arm. There must be long odds against that, I'd say. It happened in a pit sawing accident before Wheelan was born.'

Brian stopped eating to consider the wonder of it: two generations of one-armed Lascelles.

On the long sill of the Jenkins' kitchen window were tomatoes to ripen, and a fan of letters behind a broken clock. And he could see a large totara tree alone on the terrace above the river.

‘And which was the first European family?' said the minister as he ate.

‘McVies. McVies and then Patchetts were the first, and now all the McVies have gone one way or another. McVies were bushmen, of course, not farmers, and once the mills stopped they moved on.'

‘I haven't seen a McVie in the valley for thirty years,' said Mr Jenkins, as if the McVies were a threatened species, fading back before civilisation.

‘If your father has only one arm then you're more likely to have one arm yourself,' volunteered Brian.

‘Play outside for a while,' his father said. ‘Until Mr and Mrs Jenkins and I have finished our tea.'

‘There's a boar's head at the back of the shed,' said Mr Jenkins. ‘We're giving the beggars something of a hurry up recently.'

‘There you are then,' said the minister.

The boar's head was a disappointment, lop-sided on an outrigger of the shed. It resembled a badly sewn mask of rushes and canvas. False seams had appeared as if warped from inner decay. Only the tusks were adamant in malice; curved, stained yellow and black in the growth rings. Brian reached up and tried to pull out a tusk, but although the head creaked like a cane basket, the tusk held, and only a scattering of detritus came down. The vision of the bull that murdered old Mrs Patchett was stronger than the defeated head of a
pig. The boy sat in the sun and imagined the old lady escaping back to her past, and the great bull coming to greet her.

‘What happened to the bull?' he asked his father as the minister topped up the radiator.

‘What's that?'

‘What happened to the bull that killed Mrs Patchett?'

‘I don't know. Why is it you're always fascinated with such things? I don't suppose the bull could be blamed for acting according to its nature.'