Mallawindy (4 page)

‘Only three weeks, sir. She used to run away and the nuns said she shut down and screamed like crazy if they touched her, or tried to lock her in. They said she'd have to go into a home for retarded children.'

‘Hogwash!' Malcolm pushed the thick grey thatch of hair back from his glasses, and again studied the girl. ‘What age is she?'

‘Nine on Christmas Eve, sir.'

‘And you call her Ann.'

‘Annie, usually, sir.'

‘Ann!' His voice was loud in the empty room, then louder. ‘Ann!' But the girl's only response was a pink tongue darting out to moisten her lips.

‘Dad used to test her. He says she's not deaf. That it's just . . . like shock caused it, but Mum thinks he's refusing to believe she's not ever going to be quite right.'

‘I had some little experience with the deaf in England, Burton; however . . . however, I refuse to believe I am capable of agreeing with your illustrious father on any given topic, so perhaps for the moment we will assume she does have a hearing loss. Is your father home at the moment?'

‘Yes, sir. He got back from Narrawee last Friday night.'

‘I'll give you a note, boy. I want her in this classroom when
school resumes next year.' He walked to his table, and began scribbling while the children waited.

The note safe in his pocket, Ben said, ‘I don't think wild horses will drag her to school if I'm not here, sir.'

‘She will come, and she will learn – even if, we must rely on the written word. How do you communicate with her?'

‘I just talk, sir. If she wants to, she reads my lips perfectly. And we've got the signs that Johnny taught us, and she can do the deaf alphabet. Johnny sent away to the priests in Sydney when she first came home from Narrawee. They sent him a book.'

‘Johnny, the paragon. Where is he, boy?'

‘Mum says he's probably gone to Sydney.'

‘You don't know?'

‘No, sir. He never wrote. I think he – .' Ben licked his lips, silenced.

The teacher turned away, afraid of his interest. He was once a teacher, born to teach. This was a child who needed his teaching.

‘Scram,' he said. ‘Off with you, or you'll miss out on the gourmandising. Good afternoon, Ann,' he added as an afterthought, and for an instant he felt certain the girl was going to respond. There was a reflex lifting of her chin, a flutter of lashes exposing questioning eyes as she turned to him. Then, the chin lowered, she followed her brother from the room.

‘Perhaps,' Malcolm murmured, his heart pounding, attempting to raise long-buried enthusiasm from its grave of fat. He walked to the window, watching the girl. She and the youth had stopped before the road. He saw the girl turn her head to the west, then she tugged at her brother's sleeve.

Only then did Malcolm hear the sound of a dying motor. He knew the car, knew the driver, as did the children. They ran across the road to disappear into the Shire Hall.

Malcolm remained at his window watching the battered Ford, driven by the children's father, come into view. ‘Obnoxious mongrel of a man,' he said.

jack burton

Jack Burton's handsome mouth was turned down in a snarl as he cursed fate and his father's car while coaxing it towards the only cool place in town. The motor died twelve metres short of the school. He stepped out to the road, kicked the door shut, and the corn on his smallest toe screamed. The car left where it had stopped, Jack limped down to the garage at the edge of town.

‘The bastard's died again. It's up near the school. Can you get it going?' he called to the shadowy figure beneath the bonnet of a truck.

‘I'm a mechanic, not God, Jack,' the shadow replied.

Jack limped away, surveying his world through eyes half closed against the sun. His was a harsh, abrasive little world. A Post Office cum Commonwealth Bank. A butcher. A grocer. A milk bar, and Bert Norris's business, cum newsagency, cum barber, cum hardware, and timber yard. But dead in the centre of town, right where it claimed to be, stood Mallawindy's sanctuary, the Central Hotel.

‘Canst thou minister to a mind diseased? Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow? Raze out the written troubles of the brain and with some sweet oblivious antidote, cleanse the stuffed bosom of mat perilous stuff, which weighs upon the heart?' he quoted as he swung the heavy door wide.

‘G'day, Jack.' Mick Bourke, hotel owner was already pulling a beer. ‘Not working today, Jack?'

‘Bloody motor is buggered,' Jack replied, tossing his coins down.

He worked, when he felt like it, as an insurance collector for the area, going door to door, collecting a dollar here, two dol
lars there. He dressed well, his shoes of the softest leather, his slacks tailored to fit; he had the dark good looks that caught the eye of women from fifteen to fifty, which helped in selling policies to housewives. A policy assured them he'd return each month. Occasionally he tested an interesting bed.

In July, he played tax consultant for the town. He got a kick out of fiddling tax claims too, but these occupations brought in a pittance for one raised to expect the good life. A trust fund set up by his maternal grandfather would pay its dues each June and December until his death, and his father's five hundred pounds a year translated into twenty dollars a week. Ellie fed him when he was around, and Narrawee fed him when he wasn't. He did all right.

The first beer barely touched the sides of his throat. He halted the slide of a second glass, carried it to his mouth as his gaze moved over the other drinkers. They were a mixed lot. Malcolm Fletcher wandered in and stood alone, tossing down a fast brandy, his bottle for later swung at his side in a string bag; he made no attempt to hide his addiction.

As the afternoon wore on, others wandered in, drank in groups. The noise in the bar increased. Jack eyed the rowdies, envying them their easy friendship, their frequent laughter. He stood alone, his brain, an untamed thing, depressing him, his mood growing darker with each glass of beer.

He thought of his mother, a rotting cabbage in a back bedroom, hearing all, seeing all, saying nothing. He remembered her eyes dribbling tears as he scooped porridge into her mouth. Neglected by his father and Sam, she spent four years dying in a room few
tolerated for longer than one breath of air could be held. Jack had been her favourite, and Sam, his father's boy. Bloody rotten-to-the-core bastard, Jack thought, tossing his beer down and passing his glass back for a refill. That's what loyalty got you. Nothing. Sibling loyalty. I should have dobbed the bastard in when I was sixteen. Saved myself a weight of pain.

His father was no better. Jack had flattened him the day his mother died, caught him with a lucky punch under the jaw, knocked the old bastard cold. Pure power, raw power. That was the day
Jack learned that fury possessed a beauty of its own. His muscles were tingling with new power when Saint Sam came running like the cavalry to his father's defence. Jack hit him too. Then he put the boots in, broke Sam's aristocratic nose.

Jack was eighteen. His father called in the local lawman to evict him, and Jack left the white stone mansion, after ransacking it for money. He found it too. He found plenty. He stayed drunk for the three days it took to get his mother in the ground, and when the earth was heaped high on her grave, and his father was home celebrating his release, Jack went to the cemetery and held his own service.

He stayed away for four years, living the life of a gypsy – a good life, until he met Ellie, married her, and took her and their first little bastard back to meet the family. John Lawrence. He'd named him for the old man, thought it might buy him back into the family. Big chance, but Saint Sam was impressed. He married young May Hargraves that same year, but they'd produced no heir, so Jack kept breeding, just to nark them.

He'd named Liza for his mother. Eliza Jane.

‘Shit on the world,' he said, tossing his last five to the beer slops.

The bar was full. His glass remained empty – as his packet of cigarettes was empty. ‘Give me a pack of Marlboro.'

‘Coming up, Jack,' Mick called.

The door swung wide and old Rella Eva entered. Jack smiled.
Her face always made him smile. It was a travesty of furrows she'd attempted to fill with a spatular dipped in paint. Her hair dyed a dull red, was worn long. Eyebrows plucked to extinction had been replaced by two fine black-pencilled lines. As she walked to the bar, Mick shook his head. ‘Public bar's no place for a lady, Rell. I'll serve you in the lounge.'

‘Watch out who you go calling a lady, Mick. Give me a beer and shut your cake hole,' she replied, then she turned to Jack. ‘You look like you lost a tenner and found sixpence, Jack.'

‘What's brought you to town, Rell?'

‘Dave's in hospital. I'm on my way up to Warran. You've been dodging me lately, lover.'

‘I've been home ... Narrawee.' Narrawee would always be home. ‘Have you got a fag on you, Rell?'

She handed him a near full packet, watched him remove one, light up, inhale. ‘I've missed you, lover,' she said, reclaiming her cigarettes with one hand while the other grabbed at the bulge in his groin.

‘Get your hand off me, you stupid bitch,' he hissed, but his old comrade in arms was rising to the occasion. Her hands could turn him into a pleading boy. Ugly old slut. Only her eyes mirrored the girl she might have been thirty years ago. They were a fox's eyes, bright, hot with want.

Ellie never wanted him. Never had. Sex was a sin, unless it was making babies. Cold, brood-mare bitch, Jack thought as his eyes moved over old Rell. He drank his beer in one long swallow, pocketed his packet of Marlboro, then walked to the door, looked out. ‘If you're heading up to see Dave, can you drop me off at the bridge, Rell? My car's buggered,' he said. ‘When you're ready.'

She was ready. Ready for anything.

All tracks led to the river. There was nowhere else for them to go in Mallawindy. Each summer new paths were forged through the dust, some to remain, given names, others to fade away beneath the winter grasses. There was Milly's Track, west of town, and
Wally's Bend Road to the north, but the track they took led east. It was well used. Dead Man's Lane, they called it. It led out to the sandhills, and to an Aboriginal burial ground five kilometres from town. Until Malcolm Fletcher's son had died after finding some bones there, it had been a popular hang-out for teenagers. Now the whites left the place alone. The local blacks had always claimed it was a taboo place – but it was private.

Rella tucked her car into a bay it knew well. She spread her well-travelled blanket on the ground, and sat on it. Jack wandered, kicking sand, sifting sand between his fingers. He found a bottle top, and he smiled. It was probably one of his. He liked this place, he often came here alone to drink, and think. Miles
of sand, where little grew, except rabbits and crows. On the next dune, three of the raucous black bastards were attacking a poor bugger blinded by myxo.

He watched it run in circles, trying to evade the unseen foe, then he walked to it, wrung its neck and tossed it to the birds. ‘It was a woman who developed myxomatosis,' he said, wandering back to the blanket. ‘Trust a bloody woman.'

Rella had the morals of a rabbit, but little interest in their diseases. She was on him. Time was awasting.

Dogs always knew the coolest places to sit. Mickey used to be Johnny's dog; he was Ann's dog now. He licked her face, trying to kiss her better, because he knew she was frightened. Dogs knew about all the bad things, but they could only lick and watch you with their worried eyes. They couldn't take the bad away. She patted his heavy coat, brushing the dust from it. Fine red dust. She liked dust and the hard earth. Nothing ever stained it. Not like the wood floor or the carpet got stained. Chicken blood, and rabbits' blood, and people's blood, just soaked into the earth or was swept away with the wind.

The fat man was making her go to school today. She didn't want to go. He came last night in his car and said he'd be back in the morning to drive her to school. She was frightened of him, and his car. Didn't like school, or cars. Didn't like ... anything.

This morning she'd tried to pull the dark over her mind, but it was only lace curtain dark, not strong enough to hold back the memories fighting to get through. They stung her head like the wasps, stabbing their stingers through and making pin-point holes for the memory to get out. Everything was going bad, and she couldn't stop it.

Her father walked by her to the kitchen. There was a letter in
there that Benjie had brought home from the post office yesterday. It stunk of Narrawee, of roses and cedar wood and beeswax polish and it had money in it. There was always money when those envelopes came. Cheque money from Narrawee, the money tree.

Her father made Ann touch the letter, read it. Made her sign the words. She didn't want to, like she didn't want to look at photographs.

The letters always started with ‘
Dear Jack and Ellie, I hope this letter finds you and your family as it leaves me.
' Then it talked about Sam. Ann hated Sam as much as she hated Narrawee.

Narrawee had demons. Ugly things, they came out of the ground and they stank of old earth and apples, and they laughed at her, tried to make her watch them. Light. Dark. Light. Dark. Like ... like lightning in a storm. Like something else, but she couldn't think what the something else was.

She wouldn't go to bed after her father made her touch the letter, because if she went to bed she might go to sleep, and if she did then the demons would get her, and if they got her they'd take her back there, and she'd know everything, and it was too bad to know.

Benjie worried about her when she was crazy. Last night, when everyone had gone to bed, he came from his room to sit with her and Mickey in the moonlight. He talked about school. Safe with him in the clean moonlight, she had made many words with her hands.

‘Big frightened. Inside head like ... like storm. Like fast little lightning ... never make same thing two time. Never stop long time. Like that thing ... round. Pretty glass, make pattern. Twist around all time for change pattern.'

‘Kaleidoscope.' He spelt the word on his fingers.

‘Yes. That thing. Bad kaleidoscope. Not pretty. Make bad
picture. Get bad, then more bad, then more bad. Push, push inside head. On off, on off. Make heart say thump thump, thump. Make me big fright.'

‘Do you remember the kaleidoscope we used to have, Annie? You used to look in it for hours,' he had said.

‘No.'

‘You must. If you remember what it looked like, you must remember it.'

‘Not remember nothing.'

‘What about the doll you won in the raffle that time? Remember the raffle? Number 48.'

‘No. No talk in before time.'

‘You have to try to remember what happened, then we might find Liza, and all of the bad stuff will go away.'

‘No remember nothing. No more think, Benjie. Big hurt in think. Just think now time. Think big moon. Think cloud. We run across big cloud. Run fast over sky. Chase moon over there ... over sunset to where Johnny live and no more demon live there.'

‘I'm never going to run away, Annie. I'm going to stay here and make Mum's farm as good as Aunty Bessy's, and build my new footbridge.'

‘Build bridge, then run. Find Johnny. No want fat man school. No want Narrawee. Just want here. Just want nothing.'

‘Everyone's got to go to school. If you don't go to Mr Fletcher's school, then Father Fogarty will get the city people to take you away again, and you don't want that to happen, do you? I have to go to school till I'm fifteen. I don't like it either. I don't like wasting time sitting on the bus. It's not going to be like the last time, Annie. You'll go in the morning and come home at night, sleep in your own bed.'

‘Big frightened. No like fat man. No like car. No like nothing.'

Today her hair was plaited, tied up with new ribbons. She had a
new dress too, but her eyes were fighting to close. She looked at her new dress, and knew she shouldn't be sitting in the dirt with the dog. She stood, walked to the verandah where she could watch the yard for the fat man's car to come for her.

‘I hate. I hate. I hate,' her hands signed the two words while she thumped her head against the wall, making the outside pain come so it might kill the words going around and around in her mind. She felt like Mickey trying to bite fleas on his tail.

She had a dress that was flowers. Her purse was fat and fawn

Full with paper money, like a lettuce picked at dawn.

Under the leaf there is new leaf, all so crisp and new.

That could buy anything in the whole world. Anything for you.

Narrawee. White house. Green lawns.

‘No. No think. I hate. I hate. I hate.'

The baby clinging to her nipple, Ellie stood, watching Annie. She couldn't understand the hand signs, had never learned more than a couple. If the truth were told, she was afraid of her own child, afraid of her moods, afraid of her wild animal scream. ‘I'm sure I don't know how that old drunk is going to do her any good, Jack,' she said. ‘I don't trust him.'

‘He can't do her any more bloody harm, can he?'

One handed, Ellie served Jack's scrambled eggs and sausages, she passed him two pieces of toast, then stood back. ‘She was such an independent little thing, Jack. How did it happen?'

‘You're the one who keeps wanting to educate her. So you're getting what you want, and you're still moaning. Pass the salt and stop your sniffling,' he said.

Ellie jumped to obey. She watched his plate clear, then as she poured his tea, the baby lost its grip and began to wail. The nipple squirted its offering into the open mouth. The baby choked, swallowed, then bellowed anew. ‘Father Fogarty doesn't think it's a good idea. He said we should think about that other school. They
know how to handle them. I don't know how to handle her. She's growing wild.'

‘There's nothing wrong with the shamming little bitch – and shut that baby up, or put it to bed. I've got a headache.'

Ellie changed the baby over to her other arm, offering the preferred breast. ‘She feels a bit feverish. Do you think she's going to be sickly like Benjie?'

‘You inept wet-nurse slut. How do I know? Take her to the doctor.'

‘Could you drive me to Daree, love?'

‘Get your interfering bloody sister to take you.'

Ellie relied too much on Bessy and Bill to drive her around. It wouldn't hurt Jack to take the day off. Wouldn't hurt him to drive Annie to school either, as Bessy said last week when Annie refused to go to school. Ellie chewed on her lip, fighting against speaking Bessy's thoughts out loud. The sound of a car saved her. ‘Here he is, Jack. You'll have to take her out. I can't get her to do anything.'

Ann was at the kitchen door, her hands signing to her father. ‘No want go fat man car. No want school.'

‘You'll go where I tell you to go and like it. Now, get your lunch box and get out of my sight,' he said, his hands moving to his belt buckle.

She stepped closer. ‘Please, I go nowhere. I stay house. No like fat man. No like fat man school.' She wasn't afraid of his belt. She walked towards it, signing, and he understood every word.

‘Talk to me and I won't make you go. Say it. Say I don't want to go. Say it.'

‘For the love of God, she can't say it, Jack.'

‘She can bloody well say it if she wants to,' he roared. ‘Get out of my sight. Get to buggery, you crazy little bitch.'

Each morning for a week, Malcolm drove down to the Burton property and drove away with Ann in the back seat. On the first
day, she sat in a corner of his classroom and went to sleep. Malcolm left her until lunchtime, then setting two sixth graders to guard her, he walked across the playing field to refill his Thermos. She was missing when he returned, and one of the guard girls had teeth marks on her arm.

At a quarter to nine the next morning he drove again to the fowl yard. Ann escaped the classroom at ten, via the open door. His back turned, he'd been writing on the blackboard.

On the third morning, she sat in her corner, and her scream continued for most of the morning. Determined to imprison her in his room, he had locked the door. Mrs Macy, the elderly mistress who taught the juniors, let her out, and thirty-five children watched with relief as Ann ran for home.

Nothing wrong with her co-ordination, or her sense of direction, Malcolm thought. He was back in the fowl yard on Thursday, as stubborn as the black-eyed child. They started the day with the blinds drawn, his old projector whirring. Ann remained in her seat, transfixed by the screen until the nature film ended.

‘Stay,' Malcolm signed. ‘More.' He wound the reel back and showed it again, then again.

‘More,' Ann signed, when he began packing the reel into its can.

‘Lunch,' he said. She picked up her bag and ran home to eat her lunch.

On Friday he gave her a seat adjacent to the open door, only fencing her in with books. Picture books, an atlas, animal books, fairytales, and anything else he could drag from the small school library. Ann sat all morning, leafing through the books. At lunchtime she took the meat from her sandwich and ate her bread and tomato sauce at the desk, and when she smudged a picture of a dog, she winced.

He wiped it away. ‘All gone,' he signed.

He missed lunch that day. Missed filling his Thermos. Mid afternoon, Ann walked alone to the toilets, and Malcolm made a
relieved trip himself. When he returned, she was back with her books. At three-thirty, he had to pack them away to get her out of the room.

‘Holiday. Two day. I will come for you Monday, Burton,' he spoke slowly, his hands making slow signs.

‘Book,' she signed, hands together, palms open.

‘On Monday. Two day home, then more book.' He made the careful sign for book.

‘No car,' she signed, miming the steering wheel. ‘I walk. No like car.'

‘Good.' Thumb up. ‘Good. You walk. Walk to school on Monday,' he said.

‘I walk, same like Benjie walk. I get more book.'

Ann walked to school through the heat and red dust of February and March, through gentle April, and cooler May. She walked through the clogging red mud of June, her feet shod in lace-up school shoes that she polished at night while Ellie polished Jack's.

She walked through the winds of August, and summer came again. On the day of the school break-up, she learned there was a prize for those who hadn't missed a day at school. She wanted a prize too. Mr Fletcher told her she couldn't have one, because she missed many days in the first weeks.

‘No miss one day other year,' she signed.

Then Christmas came with its holidays, and New Year came, and there was no school. She went anyway. Malcolm often found her wandering there, or waiting on the verandah.

‘Holiday,' he said. ‘We have a long holiday.'

‘No like holiday.'

He bought her a book, and told her it was her prize. She looked at the fly leaf. No words were written there. She handed it back.

‘For you. You go home. Read the book. Have a holiday.'

‘You keep for prize, next year. You put Ann Elizabeth name in book,' she signed.

He opened the schoolroom door, and he gave her four library books. ‘You bring them back when the holiday is finished.'

She grew tall and determined the year she was ten. In August 1971, tonsillitis and Ellie tried to steal her chance for a prize, but she wouldn't stay home. Her father gave her two of his Aspros and she walked off in the wind. That year her name was called at the Christmas party. Mrs Macy handed her the prize, her name written there in dark black ink.
Awarded to Ann Elizabeth Burton for perfect attendance. 1971.

It was a beautiful book. It was Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. She read every word, then turned back to the first page and read it again.

Measles killed her perfect record in November of 1972. She wasn't allowed to go to school. Measles was contagious.

Half the school was down with the disease, and it was a bad dose. One of the West girls ended up in hospital, and returned home partially blind. Benjie caught it and took it badly. He gave it to Bronwyn, who gave it to Annie, who gave it to Linda.