Cloudstreet

X. Long, Hot, Peaceful Days

SUMMER came again to Cloudstreet. Quick got his transfer to Traffic. During the long, hot, peaceful days, Rose took Wax Harry down to the river and lay in the creamy sand with him the way she’d promised herself she would. Harold Samson Lamb fisted sand and dead jellyfish into his mouth. He was dark haired and black eyed, outrageously uncircumcized and stubborn. He grew browner, healthier, gamer. When Quick came home from a shift he couldn’t wait to play with him so he took to waking him up at midnight, at six, whenever. Harry learnt to roll, to crawl. Jealous grandmothers sneaked him out to their own rooms to feast on him uninterrupted. The household spoiled him rotten.

The house was full of comings and goings. Repairs were planned, though nothing ever eventuated, and just the idea gave the place a fresh look. Out the front, the place looked like a dancehall parking lot. There was a Chev truck, the X-ray Rugby, an Oxford, an old Humber, a Harley and sidecar and Lon’s new FJ Holden that would never be paid for.

Dolly had a few bingo friends come round occasionally nowadays. She often dragged them up to the library to see her grandson where they left fag ash all over the rug and cooed with the most breathtaking sincerity. To Rose they were a worthless mob of old croakers — bar leaners and bus stop bores — but that they so clearly adored her mother was enough for her to put up with these incursions. Sometimes Quick sat out on the stoop with Dolly to feed the magpies their topside chunks. He’d come to the conclusion that she was a bit of a character. Whenever Dolly was around the baby Rose got nervous. She was frightened of Dolly dropping him, full as she was at least half of the time, and she imagined him blinded by her jutting cigarette embers, clawed clumsily by her yellowing nails. Rose drilled herself in the discipline of refraining from panic, and as if to reward her, Harry was safe always.

Lon and Pansy had a baby girl in the hospital. The corridor at Cloudstreet was full of their squalling and the baby slept through everything. They called her Merrileen-Gaye. Pansy was pregnant again before anyone was willing to believe it. She and Oriel did not speak, and very loud they were about it.

Some afternoons Rose helped out down in the shop. Someone was building a modern supermarket across the rails, but the Lambs’ place still won all trade, and no one believed it could be any different. Rose liked the smell of the shop, the crates of vegetables sloped back along one wall, the fatty cold meats, boiled sweets, the zinc odour of the bottle caps collecting in the bucket they’d send to the Blind School every Friday. She went down one afternoon looking for Harry and found herself serving in the afterschool lolly rush. A ha’ppenorth of umbugs, lady! Tuppence a pennysticks, missus! Please, please, a bag uv snakes! She fought with the lids of the great glass jars and felt the weight of kids pressing from the other side of the counter. Rose doled out generous serves and won hearts. Next day they asked for her. On the third day, left alone for an hour after the rush, she rearranged the jars in a more practical order and found them all firmly replaced next day. Elaine daydreamed all morning about her fiance who was stringing their engagement into its sixth year, and she found in Rose a willing ear, though she’d wait till Oriel was out of the shop before starting in on another story of real romance.

Lester came and went, as though distracted somehow. Rose sensed that he’d lost interest in the shop. He baked irregularly, made no icecream.

Within a week, Rose had feelings about the shop. If Harry was impossible and kept her from it, she regretted it. Oriel noticed.

They were wary of one another, Oriel and Rose. When Oriel came into the room she was all over it instantly, like a hot rash. She brought the place to attention just by entering it. Rose remembered the way she took command of a situation in a dozen crises — when Dolly was sick, when she herself was hurt, and she couldn’t think why the very strength of that woman’s actions felt so unforgivable. Her kindness was scalding, her protection acidic. Maybe it’s just me, thought Rose, maybe I can’t take it from her because my mother never gave it to me. What a proud bitch I am. But dammit, why does she always have to be right and the one who’s strong and the one who makes it straight, the one people come to? Why do I still dislike her, because she’s so totally trustworthy?

Geez, Rose, Elaine said offhandedly one afternoon in a quiet moment between the shelves, you remind me so much of Mum when she was young. I can see why Quick married you.

He didn’t, love, I married him, she said from some old reflex that took over in moments of terror.

Ha, ha! Just like Mum. You’re a ringer, Rose!

Rose choked.

Oriel wasted nothing and she despised waste in others. There was no point walking from the shop to the kitchen for one task if it could incorporate five more and save walking. Nothing was thrown away, nothing written off to chance. When Oriel sent you to the butcher’s she armed you with a diagram of the cut she wanted, the name, weight and a list of defects to watch for. There was one way of storing eggs, one way of sealing a preserve jar. There was a way of looking after your breasts, a better way of pinning a nappy and an inspired way to get the shit off them, and you couldn’t take solace in the possibility that she might be wrong because she never was. You’d hold out stubbornly with your own inferior methods until you got sick of yourself and gave in with relief. When she found you doing it the right way she’d lay a hot, square hand on you and congratulate you as though you’d just thought up that ingenious method yourself.

Yer a wonder, she’d say, Rose yer the real thing.

And Rose never knew whether to leap for joy or puke.

Fortune

Sam Pickles was starting to slow down at work, all the blokes at the Mint knew it. He looked weaker these days and that cough of his took up as much of his time as working did. The men who worked on the hosco knew he wasn’t worth his day’s pay any more but they wouldn’t see him laid off until the silly old bugger couldn’t walk in through the gates of a morning. They were used to seeing him round; they liked to hear tips from him of a Friday afternoon about the weekend’s punting. Stories had sprung up around him, that he’d lost his fingers in some covert commando exercise in the war. He’d been at the Mint so long the young bods figured there must be gold dust in his pores by now. All the stories of his legendary bad luck started to ring suspicious to the young crew.

Coming up for twenty years in the job, Sam still smuggled out duds, blanks and new releases, only nowadays they were for his grandson. No one checked him at the gate anymore, beyond the old question: Got any ingots in yer pockets, Sam? If he’d had any greed at all (some would have said any sense at all) he could have been making his pay ten times over.

Twenty years ago, Sam Pickles might have been invisible at the sorting table. Nowadays it was all: Gday, Sam, and What’s the dirt, Sam? How’s things today, Sam? They talked to him like he was management and they expected him to work about as little. The last few years he walked around all day with a smile on his face, and wondered why no one would believe he was that unlucky. He lost at the races every weekend, more or less without relief, and if he died tomorrow he wouldn’t have enough money to bury himself, but the blokes swore he was onto something somehow, and their admiration was infectious. When he got home of an evening, Rose and Harry’d be in the kitchen often as not, and he’d sneak the boy a peppermint, bring down his two-up pennies and toss them off the paddle for him to get a giggle. Rose would fuss over his cough, pour him a cup of tea, and he was hardpressed to feel unlucky.

He seemed to be growing smaller.

A thought occurred to him. In a year or so he could sell this house, cop the profits and retire to some little place by the sea, maybe even back up in. Geraldton, or Greenough — yes, Greenough where summers had been so good so long ago. He’d mention it to Dolly, he thought, but he never did. The two of them sat in the kitchen by the wood stove without real antagonism, in silence most evenings, with the sounds of the house around them. Harry might squeal upstairs at bedtime, kicking the wall in protest.

He’s givin er a run for er money tonight, Dolly would say.

Yairs. Cheeky little bugger.

Needs is bum kicked.

Yairs. He’s a one orright.

And that would be it. The kettle would growl. Water moaned in the pipes. The wireless came on.

Sam went to bed at nine with a Daily News and a glass of VO, thinking that he might just live to see his fortune. His hacking cough had become a comforting, familiar sound in the house, innocent as a boy’s bronchitis.

News

The Nedlands Monster comes to trial but he’s forced off the front page by the Kennedy assassination. Rose comes across the startling byline: by Toby Raven, exclusive and feels a smile on her face.

A letter comes from State Housing demanding that they move into their new house. She looks at it, gives it to Quick who sighs.

Soon, he says, when we’re settled.

No hurry, she says.

1963 turned toward 1964. Cloudstreet sweetened up like a ship under full sail. The only shadows were the shadows of nature, the products of strong, direct light, and as the stonefruit came out again there was laughter, shopjokes at noon in the corridors, and kidsilliness all evening. The lines were strung with nappies that flapped like pennants above the tiny scratching chicks who escaped their mothers to forage in the grass. The place stank of happiness, but the world went on its way. The Nedlands Monster got the Hangman’s promise. The city went wild with exaltation. There were hanging parties, theme nights, ugly jokes.

Whacko! said Quick, turning the pages of the paper. They gave him death. Thank God for that.

Good riddance, said Rose, giving Harry her breast.

Oriel and Lester looked horrified at one another. Lester put his finger to his lip, advising caution, but Oriel couldn’t help herself.

Killin is men’s business, she said, not God’s. If you think it’s somethin to celebrate leave God out of it.

Quick smiles in disbelief. What’ve you gone soft on the Monster all of a sudden?

He’s only a man, said Lester.

What about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?

Barbarism! snarls Oriel. That’s for primitive tribes.

Gawd, she’s gone all modern on us. What about the Bible, Mum, that’s your old inspiration isn’t it? I’ve seen you out there with it, burnin the midnight candle. I know what you’re doin out there where no one can see you.

Oriel flushed.

Oriel, come on outside, said Lester. The old girl had water on her cheeks. Rose gaped and even Wax Harry left off feeding to stare. Oriel held herself firm before them awhile, mustering up her message, but she seemed to collapse in the face right at the end, and went out running.

Gawd, said Quick. What was that all about?

Lester rubbed his hands together absently. Principles, Quick.

Quick winked at Rose whose face showed worry cracks all of a sudden. What’s that? I thought she only cared about work. Mum’s principles are work, work and work.

That’s right.

Well?

Lester took off his glasses a moment: You don’t understand what she works at, do you?

Obviously not, said Quick with a smirk.

Then Lester pulled a little book out of his shirt pocket the size of a harmonica. He found a page and read: Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Quick snorted nervously. It’s from another time. She doesn’t even believe it.

She tries, said Lester, putting the book away. That’s her work.

But she can’t believe it, said Quick. Not since Fish. She can’t.

But she tries, Quick, can’t you see?

Now old Lester’s lips began to quiver and he had to go outside to join Oriel.

Gawd, said Quick.

Fishing

Early Sunday morning, dressed for a fishing trip he never intended to make, Lester Lamb stands at the back of the cathedral and watches the micks go about their business. He can’t make head or tail of what they’re saying up front, and he doesn’t quite know how to feel about the gorgeous vaulted ceilings of the place and the way it smells like a bank, but when it comes time for them all to file up the front and take the wine and the wafer he feels a sort of homesickness come upon him. Even the sight of them kneeling to the men in uniform doesn’t poison it for him; it’s the pleasantest kind of melancholy, and he knows there’ll be other Sundays like this, secret, strange.

Afterwards he parks the Chev down by the river and plays his spitpacked old harmonica, wondering about himself.

ThePast

On Rose’s birthday, Quick slips into a florist’s shop in uniform to buy flowers for Rose and Dolly and Oriel. Lucy Wentworth stares at him from behind the counter, huge in her pinny, lips painted up, teeth smudgy with the stuff, and she treats him like any girl will treat a traffic cop in leathers. Maybe it’s the uniform, he thinks, uncertain whether or not he should be grateful. He buys roses for his mother who won’t approve of them and daffs for Dolly and Rose and watches Lucy wrap them in a trumpet of paper. She hands them over smiling. Quick gives her money, gets change and walks out. Riding home on the BSA, he feels the flowers pressed against his legs concealed beneath the wind tarp across his knees, and he can’t help but be relieved she didn’t recognize him. Maybe he owed her a favour because right now it felt like she’d done him one years back.

Waiting

In the tent at night, and sometimes on her knees on the duckboards, Oriel Lamb looks out at the house and wonders what it is that still holds her from it. It’s full of light and sweetness now in a way it’s never been before, but why can she still not go back? A whole life of waiting for answers that don’t come. Wait, Oriel, keep strong Mum, keep the steel, you’ll see. Oh, how I missed you all my life. You’ll see it’s best this way. Wait.

Floater

Quick likes it on Traffic. There’s still some lair in him from younger days; the bikes and the speed still do things for him. He has the whole city as his beat either side of the river and all the way to the coast, and for the first time in months he relaxes a little. He knocks off drunks and speed merchants, faulty vehicles and sideswipers, and he turns up to prangs ahead of the ambulance, siren first, notebook later. It’s cut and dried, rules and regs, safe as houses. Until the day he pulls in by the river for his cheese and pickle sandwiches late one afternoon and sees what two kids paddling an upturned car roof have already found. Facedown, a floater on the incoming tide.

Boots, leggings, leather and all, Quick slams into the water with the spray glugging up in his helmet. The river tastes sweet and rotten. A mullet bounces off his thigh and one of those kids is crying. When he gets to the facedown child, he hoists him over, ready to scream, ready to take this river apart, and he finds he’s an hour late to save a life. Cold as welfare, a body light enough to lift one armed. With him over his shoulder and the other kids in tow, Quick wades out scowling before a crowd. On the bank he feels for a pulse, for any hope at all, but this boy is long gone. His skin is already doughy, his clouded eyes look up at the canopy of rising midges, his lips purse in a terrible, naked kiss which moves Quick to cover the face with his own hands. The sight sets off too many thoughts. In time, a siren comes keening, men come at the run, and Quick Lamb is forced to take his hands away and see it for what it is. That’s Harry’s face. That’s his own boyhood face, that miserable washed out set of features there on the ambulance stretcher. That’s the sight of the world ending, someone’s son dead. Then it hits him. That’s my brother. This is my life over again. This will always be happening.

You won’t believe this, says the sergeant from the local station.

Probably not, says Quick, putting his wet boots back on, still jittery.

The kid’s been missin since this mornin. He’s the whats-isname’s kid. The Nedlands Monster.

Quick sat there. It took a while to set on him. Him! Murderer, father of seven. The Nedlands Monster, the face of evil. That was his son he’d been holding and trying not to weep over in front of a crowd. He’d seen himself, Harry, Fish in that dead boy’s face. Quick felt something break in him as he stared at his boots.

The poor bastard, he thought, the poor, poor bastard, sitting down there in Freo gaol waiting for the hangman, thinking there’s no news worse than he’s just heard, with this heading his way in only a few minutes time.

The mother’s comin, said the sergeant. You better go.

Aw, gawd, why didn’t you say before! Quick charged the door, clipped the jamb and met her on the path. He wanted to tell her something, stop and give her something to go on, but he knew he didn’t have it in him and the local sergeant would come down on him like a ton of bricks.

The murderer’s wife. A man’s wife. A man. With evil in him. And tears, and children and old twisted hopes. A man.

He blundered out to the BSA and nearly kicked it off its stand.

Quick rode to Cloudstreet feeling useless as a twelve year old, reckless across the Narrows Bridge, ready to drive into the river at any second. He caned the BSA up Mounts Bay Road, leaning into curves with only wind holding him free, past the Crawley baths where he’d swum as a kid where jellyfish piled up like church camp food and the rotting stink of blowfish blew past.

Put Yer Dukes Up, Woman!

That very morning, Lon Lamb has taken a sickie off work. A cold feeling drifts up through the house from the shop where Oriel is making up the day’s deliveries, sorting them box by box, silent and ominous with it. She glances out now and then to see the dewstreaked paintwork of Lon’s FJ Holden. Elaine bustles beside her mother, gnawing her lip. Baking smells sweep back from the kitchen as Lester slips around doing the lunchtime pasties and singing some old wartime song. Lon and Pansy’s baby Merrileen-Gaye whimpers longwindedly on the landing outside her parents’ door.

Aw, that kid, murmurs Elaine.

Not her fault, says Oriel, pushing a case of fruit and vegetables to one side.

Maybe I should go up and get her, says Elaine.

No. I’ll do it.

Mum.

There won’t be any problem.

Oriel takes the stairs one at a time. Rose has opened her door to see what’s happening. Oriel waves her back. Merrileen-Gaye has a full nappy round her ankles and she looks broadeyed and uncertain at her grandmother, who strides past and throws open the door. Pansy and Lon are naked and conjoined somehow like a seesaw. They are plank and boulder, breast and bollock naked, and not altogether prepared for this.

We’re doin deliveries this morning, Lon Lamb, same as every mornin, and if yer not goin to yer own work this mornin I’ll thank you to be packin the Chev in ten minutes. Good mornin, Pansy. You’re lookin advanced. Ten minutes.

Come ten minutes later, Lon Lamb is slinging crates up onto the flatbed and spitting out the foulest curses a Lamb could ever imagine. The sound of it, the sheer vicious unhappiness of it draws the household to its windows. Customers coming early stop to watch, as if they can sense the beginning of a shenanigan. By the time the truck is packed — higgledy piggledy, boxes all over — a small crowd has gathered. A shiver goes through it when Oriel Lamb steps out onto the verandah wiping her hands, squinting in the morning light. Old men take off their hats. Throats are cleared. Oriel ignores the lot of them.

We do things a certain way in this family, Lon. It’s called the proper way. When we say we’ll do something we stand by it. Pull it down and pack it properly.

It’s fine as it is, Lon murmured.

You’ll lose it the first corner you take.

I’m not takin it anywhere. I’m off work.

Pull it down.

Go to hell.

It’s the word itself that sets her off. In a moment she’s charged out there, torn the side off a pine crate and got him by the ear. The onlookers are too sobered to roar with surprise or delight. Now his wife is watching, and then his daughter.

Pull it down.

Go to hell, you rotten bitch.

Oriel bends him like a saw over her knee and gives him the pine across the arse; once, twice, and another full swing before Lon breaks away, a feisty wildeyed man of twenty-two with his plumber’s fists up now, prancing back before her, calling:

Cam, then put yer dukes up, woman! Put yer bloody dukes up!

And she does. She gives him a left — quick as a snake — coming up under his nose to shake the crowd from its silence and Lon Lamb from his moorings. He goes down swinging, with blood shooting, and does not get back up.

His feet are still planted, but his body has gone down between them completely untrellised.

Oriel wipes a pink smear from the back of her hand, and picks him up.

It’s still my blood, too, you know. She looks round at the grinning faces, the elbows shoving, the hands across mouths.

These folk will help you repack it. That seems like a fair thing for a bit of entertainment, don’t you think?

Ongh, says Lon.

We’e cheap, but we’ve never been free.

The little woman stands there and faces them down while Lon teeters beside her. She doesn’t go away. In the end the crowd feels shame and discomfort there in her yard, and the truck is packed in no time.

Turning

Quick clumped up the stairs and went into the library. Harry was asleep in his cot in the corner and Rose sat at the dresser with a candle. The mirror threw light all about as he closed the door, the candle guttering a moment. He sat on the big bed to pull off his leggings and boots. Rose wore one of his old sweaters and not much else besides. When she leant over the table he saw her cotton knickers white against her tan. She spun a butterknife on the dresser top.

See if it’ll give me a holiday, he said.

You need one?

I need one. I need a holiday, Rose.

You brood too much.

Yes.

What? Why’re you looking like that, Quick?

We all turn into the same thing, don’t we? Memories, shadows, worries, dreams. We all join up somewhere in the end.

What are you talking about?

The gaols are full of blokes we’d swear are different to us. Only difference is, they did things you and me just thought about.

That’s still a big difference, said Rose.

Maybe. A second’s difference.

What’s happened?

I pulled a drowned kid out of the river today. You wouldn’t believe this, but it just happened to be his kid.

Whose?

The Monster.

Geez.

I’ve pulled a kid out of the river before, Rose. When I was eleven years old. My own brother. I know how it feels. I know how that poor bastard feels. And I got thinkin about my childhood, my life. I did a lot of feelin sorry for myself, those years. I used to see the saddest things, think about the saddest, saddest things. And those things put dents in me, you know. I could’ve turned out angry and cold like him. I can see how that evil little bugger might’ve just … turned, like a pot of milk.

So you’ve given away the old good and evil? asked Rose, amazed at all this rare talk from Quick.

No. No. I’ll stay a cop. But it’s not us and them anymore. It’s us and us and us. It’s always us. That’s what they never tell you. Geez, Rose, I just want to do right. But there’s no monsters, only people like us. Funny, but it hurts.

Quick shook and coughed up a great tearless sob.

You can’t do the impossible, she said.

No, he murmured, unconvinced.

You do need a break. Let’s go somewhere.

Quick Lamb wept. He cried like something had fallen on him from afar.

Quick. Quick.

Rose put the knife down and came to him on the bed. She pulled the sweater up and over her head and let her breasts settle hot on his chest. She wrapped her legs around him and lifted her breast, silvery with workmarks, and put it to his mouth. Her nipple like a hot coal on his tongue.

You need me, Quick Lamb, she said. That’s why I have you. Just be happy. Be happy, Quick. It’s us. You said it yourself.

Coming

Autumn comes and the long, cool twilights before winter hang over the rooftops of the city full of the sounds of roosting birds and quiet leaving. Down in the yard at Cloud-street, down there in the halls and channels of time Fish and the pig exchange glances and dumbly feel the weather turning inward. The pig is battleworn, leathery beyond the threat of butchery and scarred like the trunk of an old tree. Fish handles him sweetly and without talk, just touches him on the moist plug of his snout and stands. What are you thinking, Fish? Do you feel that you’re going, that you’re close? Strange that you should be so hard to read these last stretching days. It should be rushing, like the whole planet is rushing down its narrow, fixed course. But I can’t read your face. I stare back at you in the puddles on the chilly ground, I’m waiting in your long monastic breath, I travel back to these moments to wonder at what you’re feeling and come away with nothing but the knowledge of how it will be in the end. You’re coming to me, Fish, and all you might have been, all you could have hoped for is turning for you like the great river, gathering debris and nutrient and colour from every twist and trough of your story without you even knowing. The house is clear, the people are coming to things day by day and it’s all that’s left. No shadows, no ugly, no hurtings, no falling down angry. Your turn is coming.

Get a Haircut

Sarge, said Quick coming into the dry warmth of the office looking like a wilted celery, Sarge I—

Take a week off, Lamb, you look like shit.

Sarge, I—

Go now before I look at the roster and change me mind. And get a haircut.

Where will we go? said Quick that night in bed. We could go crabbin at Mandurah, or go for whiting at Parrys. There’s fish up at—

No fishing, said Rose.

What?

No fishing. There will be no fishing.

But it’s a holiday, love.

This time it’ll be a holiday without fishing.

Quick lay there, suddenly without reference. Well, what would you like to do?

Rose turned into his chest and lay her hands flat on him. Let’s just fill the car up and drive.

And drive?

And drive.

That’s …

Not the Lamb way, I know. It’s not practical, it’s probably not even safe, but for once we can just go. We’ll make it up as we go along. We’ll just … go.

Sure you wouldn’t rather go fishin?

Rose turned her nails into his flesh and he shook the bed with trying not to scream.

Lester on His Knees

Lester pulled the Harley over in the fresh, antiseptic street and lifted his goggles. He looked at the scrubbed bricks, the dinky letterbox, the planted lawns of Rose and Quick’s new place. They’d been out here getting it ready. So, this was where they’d be. Lester looked up and down the silent street. He got off the bike, dropped his helmet in the sidecar, went down the side of the house and fell on his knees to pray. Somewhere, a long way away where there was still a native tree standing, a kookaburra laughed up a cyclone of derision which brought a flush to Lester Lamb’s cheeks but did not keep him from his prayer.

Voting Day

Sam Pickles came back dejected and alone from the polling booth knowing his vote hadn’t done the country a stick of good, and that those tightfisted boss lovers would be back for another term, sucking up to the Queen and passing the hat round to the workers again with smiles on their faces. When he turned into Cloudstreet the sun was on the rooftops and a man stood alone across the road from the big house. Sam shambled on up to him, lit a fag and held it out to the stranger.

Ta.

He was black as a bastard.

Got yer vote in?

The black man just smiled. He had a Ned Kelly beard and an old grey suit on with a pair of red leather shoes that must once have cost a fortune. The toes were cut out, and the man’s toenails were horny as a rooster’s.

Well, not that it’s much use. It’s a boss’s country straight up.

The black man sniffed, still smiling. Only the bosses don’t know theys the bosses, eh.

Sam blinked.

You live there, said the black man.

Yeah. I own it. Don’t tell anyone, but in the new year I’m gonna sell it. Some rich bastard’ll come along, bulldoze it and build a fuckin great block of flats on it. Salmon pink bricks, five storeys, ugly as sin. And I’ll do orright.

Sam looked away from the house and found the black man looking at him. Jesus, thought Sam, paint him white and he might be me old man. The black man’s stare put a foul sweat on him. He damnnear asked for his smoke back.

You shouldn’t break a place. Places are strong, important.

Bloody place is half fallin down orready. Can’t hurt to give it a helpin hand.

Too many places busted.

Sam wandered half across the street, his hands in his pockets, his stump tingling a little. He turned back to the black man. I mean, lookit that joint, willya?

You better be the strongest man.

Sam looked at him. He felt blank. All he noticed was the way the black man’s shadow came out on four sides of him like a footy player under lights at training.

How did you vote today, mate?

The black man dropped the smoke and toed it. He walked away shaking his head, his shadow reeling out all sides of him as he went.

Gift Horsed

On Sunday morning, early, Dolly threw a chunk of beef into the long, wild grass. The maggies came swooping; you could hear the whooping of their wings as they came from out of the sun, wheeling round to land at her feet. Dolly’s hands looked younger with the blood and juice of meat on them. They trembled, those hands, but the birds were used to it. Now and then one of the boldest would come and take meat off her palm and the force of the peck, the beak hitting her skin through the meat sent a thrill into her.

The last birds hopped through the bloody tangle of wild oats, checking the ground for remnants. Dolly’s back ached, squatting the way she did, but she stayed there to watch the impassive heads of the magpies, trying to see a sign of disappointment or of satisfaction, or gratitude, and smiling when they left abruptly at the sound of a footfall.

Jesus, you’ll be cookin rice puddin for em next, Sam said behind her.

So you got up, eh? Here I am, up before you.

Sam stood by her, weight on one leg, with his hands in his pockets. I’ve got a bloody hangover.

Well, that explains it. You’re still a two pot screamer.

I was thinkin.

Never think n drink at the same time. Makes you miserable. What about?

Oh, Gawd, everythin. What we’re gonna do about Chub, retirement. The house.

What about the house? Dolly’s haunches hurt now, but she stayed where she was, with the breeze rattling up her thighs.

Well, it’s the twenty years come summer. Joel said we could sell after twenty.

That was to protect us all from you.

Fair enough.

But what?

Sam scratches the inside of his calf with the heel of his shoe. I thought, well, twenty years is up. We could sell. They’re goin mad in this town, buyin the old and buildin the new. We could make ourselves a pile.

And you believe in luck!

What?

Did you earn this place?

No. You know that. Joel gave it to me. Us.

You think it’s good luck to sell what someone gave you as a present, a gift?

He sighed. Joel was the luckiest bastard on earth.

It didn’t keep him alive this last twenty years.

Yeah, but it kept us alive.

Dolly spat on the ground and laughed bitterly. What’s kept us alive is that friggin woman. A dead man and an ugly woman. Vanilla icecream, pasties and mullet.

It’s a bloody horrible old house, Doll. We could do what Rose is doin — build a new place, out in a new suburb. This is old.

Oh, it’s not so bloody horrible. Jesus, you hate the place!

Dolly sniffed. I don’t know about that. What was the horse’s name, the one Joel made all his money off?

Eurythmic. What a horse that was.

What is it they say about lookin a gift horse in the mouth?

My God, woman, you’re the evillest bitch.

Dolly laughed: You dunno the half of it.

We must be fuckin mad.

Below Deck

The night before Rose and Quick’s trip, Oriel put on a dinner in the big room where Lester slept. The bed was taken out and two tables were laid end to end, draped in a great white cloth that stank of mothballs and the Reader’s Digest. It was getting stupid, Oriel decided, the way Rose and Quick wandered from kitchen to kitchen, not knowing who they were supposed to eat with, and besides, if they ate with the Pickleses it was a sure bet that poor Rose’d do all the cooking, and on the night before her first holiday in years, it wasn’t right that the girl should cook. Anyway, it would save all kinds of embarrassment if a gesture was made, a compromise sealed, and they ate together. Oriel had a headache the moment she conceived the idea. But it had to be done. Someone had to take the initiative. Also, and she could barely admit it, the prospect of not having Harry and Rose and Quick in the house depressed her. After their holiday, now that their new house was finished, they’d be leaving Cloudstreet for good. It was weakness this silly dinner. It was hanging on to them, but Oriel considered she had the right to a bit of clinging.

When the big room was full of noise and laughter, Sam and Dolly came knocking. Red let them in. They looked overscrubbed and shaky. Fish was rolling soup bowls, Lester was giving the accordion a bit of a hiding, and Lon was telling a joke that no one could possibly approve of.

Come in, come in! said Oriel, brightly signalling them in and avoiding their eyes.

The stove roared, gusting hot air into the room beyond, where the riotous mob was milling.

Welcome below deck! called Lester as they went through.

Geez, it’s like the engine room, orright, said Sam to no one special.

Sit down, Mum and Dad, Rose said, trying not to bite her lip. Geez, you’re all got up.

Dolly trod on Harry who had crawled under the table, and there was pandemonium. Dolly nearly fainted with guilt and embarrassment.

It’s alright, said Rose. Relax, Mum.

Sam sat next to Fish who said: Who’s got your fingers?

Lester insisted on singing ‘The Wild Colonial Boy’. He sounded terrible, but everyone was grateful for the break, and while he was singing and squeezing, Oriel brought out the food with Elaine who passed hot plates that took the prints off a few fingertips. Out came roast lamb, cauliflower cheese, mint sauce, a tray of roast potatoes, parsnips, onions, pumpkins, cabbage, slabs of butter, hot white bread and Keen’s mustard. There was a chicken stuffed with leeks, cold ham, beetroot, and a jug of lemonade the size of an artillery shell.

Everyone passed and grabbed. Plates disappeared beneath it all.

For what we are about to receive, Lester said, stopping them all dead with his mild voice, we are truly thankful.

Amen, said Sam.

Christ Almighty, look at the food, Dolly murmured. She’s tryin to kill us.

They ate and passed and picked while Lester told them all stories that could only have been the weakest of lies, until there was steampud with jam, custard and cream. A pot of tea was hauled in, cups brought, chairs snicked back a little to allow legs to be crossed. Fish and Harry played under the table with Pansy’s girl Merrileen.

I hear you’re thinkin of sellin, Mr Pickles.

Quick put the teapot down: Mum!

Dolly rolled her eyes. Lester looked as though it was news to him.

I used to know this bloke, Lon began.

Shut up, boy, said Oriel.

Sam grinned, rubbed his nose with his hairy little stump of a hand. Call me Sam, whyn’t ya?

With the sort of smile that put Lester in mind of the old Anzac Club days, her confident, gracious, fulldentured smile, Oriel took Sam’s cup, held it out for Quick to pour tea into, handed it back and nodded.

Sam. It came to me that you were in the mood for leavin.

You were never a dawdler, Mrs Lamb.

Oriel.

Oriel. You’re still a quick one.

The old girl raised her eyebrows, as if to say: Well, that goes entirely without saying.

Dolly lit a cigarette which caused a tremor of concern round the table.

I spose youse people’d be worried about your position, Sam said.

Well, they are paid up on rent till about Harry’s twentieth birthday, you silly coot, muttered Dolly. We’d have to pay em to leave.

Well, Oriel said darkly, if we have to leave then there’s nothin to be done. It’s only a house.

I expect it’d be more wiser to buy your own by now, said Sam.

No. No, Oriel said, it does you good to be tenants. It reminds you of your own true position in the world.

Sam blinked.

A house should be a home, a privilege, not a possession. It’s foolish to get attached.

Yairs. Yairs, Sam said. There’s the practicals to be thought of.

Oriel put her elbows on the table and opened her stubby little workdark hands, leaning through them towards Sam Pickles whose understanding smile faltered somewhat.

But I have got used to it here, you know, she said. You might say I’ve come to love this awful old house. It was here for us when we had nothin. It never made it easy for us — and I tell youse, there’s times I’ve thought the place has been trying to itch us out — but I reckon we’ve made our mark on it now, like it’s not the house it was. We’re halfway to belongin here, and … I don’t know where I’d go anymore. Out there, she flung a hand in no direction at all, they’re bulldozin streets and old places, fillin in the river, like they don’t wanna leave any traces behind. I reckon Harry’ll never see the places we know. Can you imagine that? What am I gunna do — walk out into that? I’m sixty-three years old! This place has been good to me.

Everyone recrossed their legs, stirred their tea, felt a nudge from their neighbour, passed the fruitcake.

She’s right, said Dolly. Yer right. Yer right. She muttered, unable to look Oriel in the eye. The bloody place has got to us.

Good on yer, Doll, said Quick.

Dolly scowled back a delighted grin and looked about, as though for a miracle in the form of a loose glass of gin.

It’s twenty years soon, said Lester. He wheezed the accordion open. Twenty years.

Well, Sam said. That’s it, then.

That’s what?

We stay.

You weren’t really gunna sell, Sam? said Lester, squeezing off an allergenic chord.

No. Some Abo told me it wasn’t worth the money. Actually he said it was bad luck.

That was me! said Dolly, and I’m no Abo.

I dunno, I forget. It was election day. The bugger laughed when I asked him how he voted.

He didn’t vote, said Rose, matter of fact.

What?

Blacks haven’t got the vote, she said.

Sam put his cup on the saucer. Jesus, that’s a bit rough, isn’t it? They need a union.

Rose laughed.

Well, he was shitty for a reason, then. He basically said I was pissweak.

Remember which side of the corridor you’re on! Oriel bellowed. The language!

Well, he was right, said Dolly.

Now, now, said Lester.

More tea? asked Elaine.

Yairs. A toast.

What to?

To us, said Lester. And this old place.

Ere, ere.

God bless er, an all who sink in er.

Gawd, he’s gunna play the national anthem.

Lester! Give over.

Fish, get yer fingers out of it, let him play the song.

That’s a royalist song. Play an Australian song.

They’re all Irish.

The stove roared and hissed from in the kitchen, and heat swelled the house and pressed the families’ shadows into the wallpaper. Oriel Lamb punished her multifabric hanky, thinking that it was something at least, a gain before a loss.

All down the street you could hear them singing, those mad buggers from Cloudstreet, sounding like a footy match.

Inland

Quick was up at dawn, folding some tarps, throwing a shovel and axe into the boot of the X-ray Rugby, carrying out a box of groceries, the billy and frypan, some blankets and toys with Fish at his elbow.

Quick? Quick?

Yes, mate. Hop out the way a sec.

Me, too, Quick.

Look out. Here, hold the door open. What?

I wanna go.

No, Fish.

I wanna.

I’m sorry, mate.

Please is the magic word.

You can’t, mate. This is just for me and Rose and Harry.

And me!

Quick sidestepped him a little, but Fish pressed him against the cold, beaded fender of the car. He was big now, solid, going to fat, wetlipped and tonguesome, and Quick felt the power in the hands flattened against his chest. Oh, shit, he thought, I could do without this.

We’ll see, orright?

Fish looked sideways, considering. I wanna.

We’ll see. Just let me get packed.

Up in the old library, he woke Rose. She rolled his way in a spray of black hair, and he had a mind to slip straight in beside her without delay, but it didn’t seem the moment.

Hi.

Everything alright?

Yeah, I’m packed and all. There’s only breakfast to have. Bloody Fish wants to come, though. I’m tryin to figure out a way of tellin him. Thought maybe he’d listen to you.

Rose lay back with Harry stirring beside her. She let out a sour burst of morning breath and closed her eyes.

Get him packed, then.

What? This is our bloody holiday! We haven’t taken a holiday in—

And neither’s he, Quick. Get him packed before I change my mind.

I’ll wait till you do.

If he wants to come, let him come.

Rose, we’ve orready got Harry to think of. Fish is a big retarded bloke and he’ll cause us a lot of problems that we could do without on a holiday.

Rose grabbed him by the shirt. Listen to yourself. Big retarded bloke — it’s Fish for Godsake.

Mum’ll never let him go.

Oh, crap, You still afraid of your mother?

Why are you so keen?

Well, he’s asked you, hasn’t he? Probably begged you, I imagine. If I said no, we’d both drive out of here feeling like a pair of right bastards. They’d have to lock him in his room and you’d go dark on me for a week. I’d be sitting with Quick Lamb the Absent for a week. I want a good time. I’ve brought Anna Karenin and I want to lie back somewhere feeding Harry with you reading it to us. Fish’ll like that, too. He’s always game for a story.

Gawd.

Go and tell them.

Quick slid onto her, tucked his head into her neck.

The things a man does when he’s in love.

There’s worse yet, Quick Lamb, I’ve got other demands.

From the forested hills, across the scarp and down into the green rolling midlands beyond, the old X-ray Rugby sputters and clatters its way east on the kind of late spring morning that promises hayfever, boiling radiators, carsickness and landscape fever. When they hit the wheatlands and they’re all sung out from ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ to ‘Rock Around the Clock’, Rose slides across the seat to snuggle against Quick.

Well? Where to?

Quick shrugs. A fishin hole somewhere.

She cuffs him. Come on, let’s decide.

It’s an adventure, you don’t decide these things.

Well, there’s Harry and Fish to think of. We need a bit of a plan.

Now she says.

Quick watches the broad breadcoloured flatness spreading before him. He’s thinking of what Sam said last night, a blackfella warning him off. It’s like the stuff he learned as a kid. Wise men and angels. Fools and strangers. Principalities and powers. Works and wonders. He sees Fish watching him in the rearview mirror.

I always wanted to see Southern Cross.

Yeah? Rose sound dubious. Why?

Dunno. The name I guess. Because of the stars. I used to watch them out here when I was a shooter.

Is it far?

A few hours more.

Okay. Let’s make a stop soon, though. Give the boys a stretch. Southern Cross, eh. That sounds like our adventure.

Lookit the water! The water! Fish yells. Lookthewater! His head shoves up over the seat and his arms spread up on the upholstery behind them. He points forward out through the windscreen at the heatrippks pooling and writhing on the road in the distance. Ah! Hurry, Quick. The water.

They pass through bald, silent wheat towns: Cunderdin, Kellerberrin, Merredin, Bodallin, inland beyond rivers, beyond rain and pleasure, out to where they are homeless, where they have never belonged.

Southern Cross turns out to be just a wheat town. Squat. Plain. With a rarefied air of boredom, almost a tangible purity of boredom that blows in through the windows as they roll down the main street past diagonally parked utes and council bins. Harry and Fish are asleep on the back seat. Dust and pollen settle on the upholstery. Rose’s eyes water and Quick can’t help but smile.

Well. So much for that idea, Rose said through her hanky. On with the adventure.

You know, it’s just how I thought it’d be.

How small our dreams are.

The main street finishes and they’re back on the highway, still crawling.

Was that what you were expecting?

What did you want — Ayer’s Rock?

I’m sorry.

It’s just a wheat town. I used to live in one just like it. I went to a church there where they actually called me Brother Lamb, and at night I shot kangaroos. It was a nice life. Those kind of towns are like heaven, in a way.

Rose blew her nose. Why didn’t you stop, then?

I only wanted to stop if I saw someone I knew.

Who’re you gunna know out here, Quick? For Godsake.

I just took a chance. A Pickles sort of impulse.

And how did the knife turn, Lambsy?

Oh, I reckon it’s still turnin.

I don’t get you at all mate. I think I married a bloody lunatic.

Out on the plain Rose sees the great travelling shadows of clouds moving with them, overtaking them, marching east.

The Shifty Shadow, she says with a chuckle that isn’t quite genuine.

They head north away from the highway on dirt roads until they come to a place called Bullfinch, which looks beyond the means or will of any bird at all.

The names of these places, says Rose. Wyalkatchem. Doodlakine. Burracoppin.

From the back, Harry begins to whinge and cry.

Harry’s cryin.

Thanks Fish.

I need a poo.

Just wait a little bit, mate.

Quick.

Hang on, we’re just lookin for a place to camp.

And generally being aimless and dithery, says Rose. Are we lost?

Fish begins to moan which sets Harry off at a higher pitch.

Por, what’s that bloody—

I told you, Quick. But I told!

Oh, fuck a duck, he’s shat himself.

Maybe we should have gone fishing after all.

Quick pulls over by a roadside ditch. The paddocks lie away on every side, waist high in wheat. The marbled sky hangs over them.

Now what?

Now you hop out and clean him up.

But Rose—

Don’t look at me because I’m the woman.

I do Harry’s nappies — fair go.

What a big boy. Now you can do your brother’s.

Orright, orright. Come on, Fish. Stop blubberin. Hop out.

Late afternoon sun slants onto their backs in the roadside silence where only the tick of the cooling motor can be heard, the clink of a belt buckle. Quick kneels to take down Fish’s trousers. He sees the white rolls of fat, the ramshackle patchwork of his undies, and it’s not a body he recognizes.

Fish turns his head aside in shame as Quick slides the shorts off. Quick gags a moment before slinging them down into the ditch, glad his mother isn’t here to see the wanton waste. He pours water over his hanky and begins to wipe shit away.

Bend over, he murmurs, the way he’s murmured a thousand times to Harry.

The size of him, the stubbornness of shit in the black hair of him, the thought of how they’ve come to this threatens to break something in Quick’s throat.

Rose leans out of the window and goes to hurry them up, but closes her mouth. The sill of the car door is warm beneath her arm. Against the back fender Fish’s whole putty body is jerking; his buttocks shiver while Quick hugs his legs shaking with emotion as the wheat bends a moment to the breeze that has sprung out of the very earth itself.

Spaces

In the end they stopped looking for places because there were only spaces out here, and they found some mangy trees back off the road a way where they could make a fire, stretch some tarps from the car roof and fry sausages. The paddocks swallowed the pink pill of the sun. They went quickly grey and cool and then it was dark. The broad patch of uncleared mallee stood shadowy on one side, the luminous wall of wheat on the other. With its long quiet flames, the fire lit Rose and Harry and Fish and Quick while they ate. It warmed them when the sausages were finished, when the bread and butter were gone, the apple cores cast off. On blankets spread on the dry ground, the four of them lay wakeful and dreamy. Above them the black sky looked crisp with its stars and configurations. Dots as worlds, and milky smears as worlds of worlds.

That’s the Southern Cross there, said Rose. It looks better in the sky.

You feel like it’s hanging over you like the top of a cathedral, Quick said with Fish’s arms around him.

Water, said Fish. All the water.

Look, his face is shinin. The moon’s on your face, Fish.

There is no moon, said Rose.

Fish rolled onto his back beaming and the sight of him stirred them deeply. Harry began to snore. Rose wrapped him in an old army blanket and got out a little bottle of brandy. Before long, Fish slept too, shining in the shelter of the tarp with Quick and Rose watching over him, sharing the Chateau Tanunda in little squinteyed swigs.

Remember the night in the boat with this stuff?

Quick nodded.

What do you make of this house business? All the oldies staying on.

I think they’re right, he murmured. I reckon they belong to the place. Gawd, everyone knows that house. They know the shop, our families. It’s like they’ve built something else from just being there. Like — he laughed at himself — like a house within a house.

Yes.

I just couldn’t bear to think of em all leavin and those mongrel developers gettin their hands on it.

Tell you a secret, said Rose.

Orright.

You won’t believe this.

Try me.

I can’t bear to think of any of us leaving. We belong to it, Quick, and I want to stay.

What? What are you talkinabout? What about our place? After all this trouble. Our own place!

I don’t know about our place, Quick. I like the crowds and the noise. And, well, I guess I like the idea, it’s like getting another childhood, another go at things. Think of it: I’m in this old house with the boy next door and his baby, and I’m not miserable and starving or frightened. I’m right in the middle. It’s like a village, I don’t know. I have these feelings. I can never explain these feelings.

But you hate family stuff.

Rose laughed. But it’s two families. It’s a bloody tribe, a new tribe.

Don’t you want to be independent?

Quick, I don’t even know what it means anymore. If it means being alone, I don’t want it. If I’m gunna be independent do you think I need a husband? And a kid? And a mother and father, and inlaws and friends and neighbours? When I want to be independent I retire. I go skinny and puke. You’ve seen me like that. I just begin to disappear. But I want to live, I want to be with people, Quick. I want to battle it out. I don’t want our new house. I want the life I have. Don’t be disappointed.

Quick took a suck on the brandy. Disappointed? Love, I’m putrid with … with happiness. I’ve been wantin to tell you for months.

He rolled a big dry mallee root onto the fire and a carnival of sparks went up reeling. Kangaroos thumped through the wheat invisible. The earth smelt golden.

Why did they call you Quick? I never knew.

Come on, I told you plenty of times.

In the night Quick woke with the moon white on his face, and Fish was awake beside him, kissing him on the cheek.

What’s the matter, Fish? You cold?

The moon was all over his face, or it seemed to be until Quick saw that moony light was coming off Fish himself.

There was a long, steady rustling in the wheat, rhythmic as the sound of sleep. Quick thought of a herd of roos grazing, but it came closer and was too musical to ignore. He propped himself on an elbow and saw a line of figures moving between the trees. Fish sat up beside him and let out a gasp of delight. Quick shook Rose awake and saw the black widening of her eyes. They were children, naked children. Placid faced, mildly curious, silent but for their footfalls, rising from the ground like a mineral spring, following the faint defile of the land to a gravity beyond them, faces and arms, eyes and legs travelling in eddies, some familiar somehow in the multitude that grew to a vast winding expanse, passing them with a lapping sound of feet. Rose sniffed, awake, but none of them spoke anymore, not even Wax Harry who watched curious as the tide of naked children swirled around them, dizzying, heady, making a vortex, an indrawing whirl deeper than exhaustion, until the stars were low enough to touch their eyes heavy, and the great adventure of sleep took them back. The children parted the wheat like the wind itself and took all night to pass.

Soon

Can you see, Fish, see me close as a whisper in the tidespace your longing has made? Pouring through a tiny crack we are, running to the sea which will not fill with us for we came from it and return to it, and this moment they have seen us too, your gift to them, the man, the woman, the baby, a gift bought with pain and shortening. Soon you’ll be a man, Fish, though only for a moment, long enough to see, smell, touch, hear, taste the muted glory of wholeness and finish what was begun only a moment ago down there where the fire crackles by the bank and those skinny girls are singing, where the light is outswinging on the water and your brother laughing. The earth slips away, Fish, and soon, soon you’ll be yourself, and we’ll be us; you and me. Soon!

Stayin

Quick and Rose drove home wild as kids, roaring down the scarp into the city with a happy madness up their noses like lemonade bubbles. Harry and Fish roistered in the back with the fractured light upon their faces.

Quick pulled onto the front lawn at Cloudstreet as Elaine was opening the shop and the first dogs were gathering to beg out in front of the big old hemiplegic looking joint. The X-ray Rugby burst open with them all tumbling out wild as kindergarteners at lunchtime — Rose, Harry, Fish, Quick — taking Elaine so much by surprise that she dropped the shutter and damnnear brought down the wall with it. Windows opened, and the house grew heads. Roosters crowed up a panic, and dogs began to bark.

You’re not due home, said Elaine who tried not to shout.

We’re havin a picnic, said Quick. To celebrate.

What picnic? said Sam, hoisting his gladstone, fingering his work hat. Celebrate what?

Bush fever, said Lester, wiping flour from his arms.

What’s this foolishness? roared Oriel, emerging from the shop. It’s Wednesday morning, work to be done.

They’re celebratin, said Sam.

All of us, said Quick.

We’re staying, said Rose.

No, we’re stayin, said Lester.

You’re stayin? asked Oriel, lifting the shop shutter again. The heavy old tin flap quivered in her hands as she scrutinized Rose, the girl who took her son from within.

Long as it takes, said Rose.

To do what? As it takes to do what?

To get old and die. To count the angels on the head of a pin, I dunno. To get sick of it. A day, a week, a Test Match, a session of parliament, a decade, I don’t know.

Oriel’s fingers gave out and the shutter crashed to with a whang that sent a couple of weatherboards fluttering down from the top storey in sympathy.

Till the bloody walls come down, Oriel!

A dozen slack jaws wind up smiles as dust rises from the verandah.

Picnic, you reckon? says Lester.

Dolly goes inside for a hat.

Twenty years, said Quick.

What the hell, said Sam, throwing down his gladstone bag.

Don’t stand there, youse bludgers! yelled Oriel. Pack the Chev, lock the shop, grab a hamper. Let’s go to the river. Let’s do it right for once!

Moon, Sun, Stars

On the long grassy bank beneath the peppermint trees and the cavernous roots of the Moreton Bay figs, they lay blankets and white tablecloths which break up in the filtered sunlight and they sprawl in their workclothes and stockings, rollers in, buns half out. Out of the crates come hams, cold chickens, lettuce salad, hardboiled eggs and asparagus, potato salad and shredded carrot, chutney, bread, a jar of anchovies and a vat of pickled onions. Lemonade, Coke, ginger beer, squeezed juices and a hip flask of Chateau Tanunda. A collective groan goes up at the sight of the white linen napkins that Dolly hauls out.

A weddin present, she says. Could never think of a decent bloody reason to get them dirty.

The university clock chimes and a rowing team slides past with the sun in its eyes. A formation of pelicans rises bigbodied from the water, the sweet coppery water where jellyfish float and blowfish bloat and the slow wheeling schools of mullet divide and meet without decision.

And another crowd has gathered. I can see them in the shade of the trees, the river of faces from before, the dark and the light, the forgotten, the silent, the missing who watch Lester dance his silly longlegged jig while half choking on his roast chook. They hear his accordion burring like a deck of cards and see Sam feeling its wind in his face. Ah, to Sam it smells like fortune itself. The Lambs and the Pickleses begin to dance, Oriel and Dolly, Red and Elaine, and even Chub is up off his arse and dancing. Quick and Rose have Harry between them like a sail in the wind, now Lon is up with Pansy and the dance spreads, a mad, yokel twenty-year dance that sets the shadows moving in sight behind them where a black man leaves the trees like a bird and goes laughing into the sun with a great hot breeze that rolls the roof of the sky and tilts the leaves above them till the gathering is dizzy with laughter, full and gargling with it. And someone else is going, his sweaty hands are flexing. He hears nothing but the water. The sound of it has been in his ears all his life and he’s hungry for it.

Mind you, the world goes on regardless. In Fremantle Gaol they’re cutting a man from the scaffold and taking the bag from his head still afraid, still hating him enough to deny him his final wish — to be buried beside his drowned son. Oh, yes, the world goes its way, don’t worry.

But here, here by the river, the beautiful, the beautiful the river, the Lambs and the Pickleses are lighting up the morning like a dream. Students stop to watch. Council workers grin and nudge each other. It’s a sight to behold. It warms the living and stirs the dead. And speeds the leaving.

Because there, down along the jetty, fat and barefoot, runs Fish Lamb with a great slack grin on his face shining with chickengrease and liberty. His shirt tail is out and so is his tongue. The boards rattle and ring with nails and years and spikes and barnacle chatter and dried bait leaps behind him. Below, the water flexes and falls silver brown gold black. Birdshadows fall across him. His trousers rattle with knucklebones, pretty stones and pennies to make running music, going music, blood music in his temples and ears till right out at the end he finds the steps and the landing, the diving board in its sheath of guano. And the water.

The water.

And the mirror it makes.

Ah, the water, the water, the water.

Beneath the trees, in the midst of the dance, someone stirs, comes running, comes shouting alarm.

A bird turns out of the sun.

Fish leans out and the water is beautiful. All that country below, the soft winy country with its shifts of colour, its dark, marvellous call. Ah, yes.

The man stops running before he even reaches the jetty. Quick makes himself stop and already he’s crying.

Fish goes out sighing, slow, slow to the water that smacks him kisses when he hits. Down he slopes into the long spiral, drinking, drinking his way into the tumble past the dim panic of muscle and nerve into a queer and bursting fullness. And a hesitation, a pause for a few moments. I’m a man for that long, I feel my manhood, I recognize myself whole and human, know my story for just that long, long enough to see how we’ve come, how we’ve all battled in the same corridor that time makes for us, and I’m Fish Lamb for those seconds it takes to die, as long as it takes to drink the river, as long as it took to tell you all this, and then my walls are tipping and I burst into the moon, sun and stars of who I really am. Being Fish Lamb. Perfectly. Always. Everyplace. Me.