Meatloaf in Manhattan (14 page)

‘There was a fox,' she whispers to no one in particular. ‘In the road.'

Standing in the doorway of the hall, Henry looks on in disbelief. He is transfixed, as if in a dream, waiting to awake. Next thing he knows Charlotte Button has sunk into his arms, sobbing, shivering. His thoughts are of the shoes in their boxes and of his sister in the attic and the memory of the sound of a chair being dragged along the floor.

A fox,' says Charlotte, ‘a fox.'

LEMON JUICE & SNAKEBITE

‘Father, I have planted the lemon trees, down by the creek, just like I said I would.'

You look at me dull-eyed, here in the RSL club in the dead of the afternoon, the flashing lights of the pokies framing you with a manic halo. I barely recognise you as my father. You are a shrunken man, wearing a beer-stained jacket that wouldn't make it onto the rails of the Op Shop on High Street. Where have you gone? That strong-bodied cowboy who conquered the bush, the droughts and the plagues?

‘Let's call it an orchard. Yes, an orchard of lemon trees. It starts at Stringybark Creek, stretches up to Cardinia Hill and down to the gully where you told me the dingoes took that old milker when you were a boy.'

You say nothing. You just sip at your beer. Some runs out of the side of your mouth, meanders down through the stubble of your chin and onto your jacket.

‘You just wait until they're ripe. I'll slice the first lemon and squeeze it into your tea. Just like you used to do.'

If our family smells of anything, then it's lemons. My first real stick-in-the-mind memory is of you lifting me up to the lemon tree you planted outside our farmhouse. ‘You can pick the first lemon,' you said, smiling and laughing. Even though everything changed and our world fell apart, I still remember the smell and juice of lemons. The way you used to slice them with your fishing knife. You always let me lick the blade when Ma wasn't looking. The sharp acidy taste, the edge of the blade. You'd wink at me and put your finger to your lips. Our own special, dangerous secret. Over the summer months Ma used to squeeze them in a press to make lemonade to slake the shearers' thirst as they returned from the sheds at sundown. Ma was pouring lemonade into the big glass jug, the one with orchids etched on it, when One-Eyed Robbo came rushing to the door with the news. I remember watching the jug filling up, drowning the flowers. Robbo was gasping. ‘There's been an accident, Missus, down by Stringybark Creek.'

And from that moment on, nothing would ever be quite right for any of us. Not you, not Ma, not me, not my kid brothers Caleb and Matty. Not that any of us knew that then.

From what they could tell, for you remember nothing, your horse must have trodden on a snake. Probably a large tiger snake, judging by the fang marks just above the horse's hoof. It would have reared up and stumbled and lost its footing before it came crashing down. Anyway, it broke its neck and left you bashed and crushed under its weight. That's how the boys found you: unconscious and trapped under the body of the stallion. The horse was dead and you were as good as. The doctors patched up your broken hip and leg and arm, but your skull was cracked and your mind squashed out of shape. I sat beside you on the made-up bed in the parlour as your bones healed. But you barely said a word and never smiled once. Ma made you soup and gave you glasses of lemonade that seemed to satisfy and calm you.

All that summer the flies buzzed around you like crazy. I fancied they were vultures and you were a carcass, and that it was my job to keep you alive until help came. From time to time my little brothers would pass by and ask if you were still sleeping. I'd smile and tell them yes, Da needs all the rest he can get, but soon he'll be fine and he'll wrestle you both with one hand tied behind his back. They'd smile and wander off to the paddock or chook-run to play with the bull ants, cane frogs, or whatever came nearby to amuse them.

The first real sign that things would go badly wrong was six week later when you were able to stand and we decided on a celebratory lunch. We'd cooked up some steaks and little Caleb had piled them all up on a plate in the middle of the table like we always did. ‘Where's mine?' you shouted. ‘You trying to poison me with these?' And then you threw the whole plate-load into the air and banged your fists on the table. ‘Which one of you? Which one?' veins throbbing on your forehead; mad eyes seeking out each of us: Ma, me, Caleb and Matty. ‘Which one?' You kept repeating the same meaningless, unanswerable question. Then you hobbled off to the barn, your bad leg dragging along, cutting a groove in the dust. Caleb cried out loud. I looked at Ma. Matty sucked his thumb. Ma held out of her arms and cuddled us all together.

But this was just the beginning.

A few days later I heard you screaming at Ma in the kitchen. I was three days off my fifteenth birthday, so I knew something of what the words meant. I was busy cleaning the kids' shoes on the back porch. First it was just noise, then I heard the words. ‘I know what you've been up to,' you said. ‘Taking lemonade to the shearing sheds. And what else do you give them? Tell me that.'

‘No, John, please, not this,' said Ma, on the verge of sobs.

‘You whore. How many? How many?'

‘No, John, no.'

And then there was a crash of plates and furniture and you stumbled through the door, all but taking the flyscreen off its hinges. When I turned round there was little Caleb and I could see he had wet his pants. He looked at me with a mix of fear and shock and sadness. I hugged him close. ‘What's happened to Da?' he asked, hoping I could help him.

That night Ma sat us all down and told us that Da was sick. The doctors said the bang to his head would be a long time healing and we must be patient. ‘Just wait and see,' she said, ‘by Christmas he'll be back to his usual self.' She smiled and gave us cake and lemonade. But I could tell she didn't believe her own words. Something in the way she rubbed the back of her neck with her hand; the look in her eyes as the smile left her face.

‘The nurseryman at Hepburn Springs said they're the best lemon trees money can buy. They have thin skins and fabulous flavour. I can't wait until they fruit. What do you think, Da?' Jacko the barman serves you your third pot. He nods to let me know he has his eye on you. Your new doctor, the one who moved up from Ballarat for a real country life, has told the barstaff at the RSL that three beers is your absolute maximum. Any more would mess with the tablets and set you off on another mad one.

Christmas came and went. Ma and me tried to keep the littlies happy, but we knew it would end in tears. You stopped working, had no interest in the farm or the stock. You took to drinking the cheap grog from the bottle shop in town and were even spotted with the winos in the long grass. It seemed your only other interest was the card games down at the Orrong Hotel. We even heard you were chasing one of the barmaids. For the first time ever you stayed away from the New Year's Day race meet at Woorenin Point, even though you'd been on the committee for the last seven years. Maybe it was something to do with the horses. But it didn't surprise me. A few months earlier you'd missed the town footy team's first Grand Final in twenty-five years. It was something you'd prayed and joked about forever. When you said grace at dinnertime you'd always thank God for the lovely food, Ma's great cooking and then end by saying: ‘and please God, let it rain for twenty days and let the Bombers make the Grand Final just once more in my lifetime.' And we'd all laugh and shout ‘Go Bombers!' But there was no more grace at dinner and no more jokes about footy. No, you'd eat nothing; just drink beer most days and nights.

When you came home you'd throw your dinner against the wall and call Ma terrible names and say awful things. One night, when the moon was so full I remember it seeming to take up the whole sky, the words turned to fists. My Da, the tenderest and most loving of husbands and fathers, beat my Ma to the ground, breaking her front tooth and blackening her eyes.

‘Now,' you shouted, for all the house to hear, for all the moon to witness, ‘the fruitpickers won't think you so comely.'

It was then that Ma gave up. She realised your old self was never coming back, that it was lost in the sand down by the creek. On a Wednesday morning, Ma woke us all up and told us to get into the car. I was tired, having heard noises down stairs during the night. Shouting and crashing and crying. I remember my brothers had come into my bed and we had all fallen asleep in a huddle. And then it was bright and sunny and there was our Ma, bending over us telling us to wake up. I noticed that Ma had a fresh bruise on her cheek and that her hand trembled as she squeezed my arm.

‘Come on you three,' she said. ‘Just do as I say. Get dressed and come downstairs, as quiet as can be. I've packed everything we need.'

I only looked back once as we drove up the dirt track to the tarmacked road. Something told me we wouldn't be coming back. Ma had piled the ute to the brim with clothes and the kids' toys, some pots and pans and a few blankets. As I looked over my shoulder towards the house, there you were, half stumbling out of the door, half waving at your departing family.

Ma never spoke of you again. It was as if the snake had bitten you instead of the horse and left you for dead on the bank of the creek. We stayed with Uncle Harry in Williamstown and then got some rooms above a grocery store in Footscray on the outskirts of Melbourne. I got a job in the shop downstairs and Ma went to work in a laundry. The boys went to school and we were all happy in our new city life. You never came looking for us as far as I knew.

One summer, two years after we left the farm, I took the bus up country to see you, but you'd gone walkabout with a couple of drinkers you'd met at the Kelly Hotel. One-Eyed Robbo told me you were on the skids. He was still working on the farm as a casual labourer, but not for you. He told me you'd sold the deeds for a song to the Gainey's from Ballarat. It was all so very sad. I never told Ma where I'd been, but I think she guessed. Then the next year, jobs came up at the new car factory down in Geelong, so we packed up and headed off. Those were great years down on the peninsula. In the summer we'd take trips to Ocean Grove and Barwon Heads. You'd have loved it. You should have seen the kids' faces, and mine and Ma's come to that, when we first saw the huge waves rolling in from the ocean. We'd spend our days riding the surf, and as we lay in bed in the dark of night we could still see and hear the rolling sea, lolling us into a foamy sleep.

One night we walked all the way along the beach to Point Lonsdale so Caleb could see the flashing star in the lighthouse. Those were times when nothing much was ever spoken about. The boys never talked about the farm and nor did we. Only when they saw other kids playing with their fathers on the beach could I see they sensed some loss, something missing in their lives. I'd take them to Queenscliff for the best strawberry ice cream in the world. I'd have a lemon ice, just for the taste and the remembrance.

Then, just as everything seemed to be settling and working out, Ma found a lump under her arm. It had been paining her for months, but she'd never said a word. By the time she got to the doctor there was nothing that could be done. She asked me not to contact you, that it was all too late in the day. At first I thought she meant the time she had left, but she really meant something about you and her. Over the next few weeks she wasted away right there in front of us. Me and the boys nursed her day and night. She took each of us in her arms and told us how much she loved us and how proud she was of our family. That last night, on her deathbed, she squeezed my hand, told me never to be bitter and to accept all that life throws up. That's when she spoke about you. She said you were a wonderful man, but she'd had to leave for the sake of us kids. Then she slipped away. I tried to contact you about the funeral, but no one knew where you were.

The night after we buried Ma, I had the dream. I was down by the creek, high up in the branches of a lemon tree. Through the foliage I could see you and Ma holding hands. You were both smiling and I could tell you wanted me to climb higher. And there on a branch just above my head was the biggest, juiciest lemon I had ever seen. As I reached out to pluck it I saw the snake slithering along the branch. I was mesmerised. I looked down to the ground and you had both gone. The snake bit into my hand, but there was no pain. I looked at the two tiny fang marks and saw the juice oozing from the wound. I licked it and the taste on my tongue was of fresh lemons and the feeling in my heart was of peace. When I looked down again you and Ma had come back and were kissing each other, loving and tender. Then I told my dreaming self to wake up, to hold on to the dream and store it away.

It's funny how things turn out. It was only a few days later that One-Eyed Robbo wrote to say you were back in town and staying at his place. So I came straight to see you. Just me, your only daughter. I suppose in those first couple of years I'd visit every few months and always on your birthday. You never asked about the boys. I wonder if you even remembered them. In any case, I think it's just as well for now.

Then, last year, Uncle Harry from Williamstown died and left us his house and a pot of money. Enough for Caleb to study marine biology at the Top End and for Matty to go to Europe with his muso girlfriend. You'd laugh to see them now. So tall, so strong. Caleb is so serious and studious and Matty's such a surf bum. There I was, twenty-eight years old and left on my own. One day, a Sunday it was (I could hear the church bells), I got to thinking about the dream of the snakebite and the lemon juice. Then the idea came to plant the trees. The very next day I called up old Mister Gainey and asked him outright about the land by the creek. He knew exactly who I was. I'm quite sure he knew our story and sounded a bit guilty about the way he'd come by the farm. He didn't take much persuading to sell me that little pocket of land. Anyway, as you know, nothing much was ever going to grow down there, what with it being mainly bush and dust and snakes.