Siddon Rock (10 page)

Siggy Butow slammed shut the book. He sat for a moment, perturbed at the idea put forward – that he, Siegfried Butow, man of God, was swallowing pieces of ancient beasts and, indeed, of ancient stars, and that this was his connection with infinity. It was a concept utterly at odds with his belief in the Bible as law.

Siggy turned to the large King James Bible that lay on a table near his armchair, opening it to Genesis. There, in chapter three, verse nineteen, he read the words he had so often said as a comfort to mourners at a graveside. Indeed, said so often that they had become rote and without meaning to him. As he read he realised he had forgotten that they were, in the first instance, words from God to Adam and Eve, a chastisement to the man and woman for giving way to temptation –
till thou return to the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
In the quiet of the night the idea seemed simple and clear. Everything came from dust; everything returned to dust. But it was as punishment for being human– there had been no dinosaurs, no dust from the stars. The Word was God.

At three minutes to three Siggy turned off the light by his armchair and walked to the window, expecting to see calm moonlight on the rooftops of Siddon Rock. He rather liked that he was probably the only person in the town to see how the tall wheat silo threw a long shadow when the setting moon was full: a darkened finger that covered
Wickton Street. This night, however, when he raised the blind the moonlight was a strange brownish colour and the surface of the earth rose and fell in a gentle rhythm. He pushed up the window to see better and realised that it was dust puffing from the ground, and with each rise the fall was less, as if the dust was gathering strength to take over the town. Siggy watched in mesmerised horror as the dust cloud grew until it filled the street outside the manse, thickening so that the setting moon was hidden and he could not see the church next door. His tired mind saw tiny dinosaurs riding the dust motes as they floated towards him, and he slammed shut and locked the window.

This country
, he thought.
This appalling place.
He pulled the blind and went to bed, to spend a restless hour or two in a half-doze that was populated with exploding stars and thundering herds of unimaginable beasts.

By daybreak the dust had gone, although people knew there had been a dust-storm by the grittiness in the air. At the Two Mile, Brigid Connor commented to Granna,
It usually blows a bloody gale. And there's no dust in the house. It's usually covered, isn't it. A real mess. So why not this time?
Granna didn't bother to answer.

In town, those who had a cat or a dog wondered where they were, but weren't too concerned; and over the day they came home, enticed by the memory of easy food. The cockatoos stayed away for several days before they returned to the pepper tree roost.

 

ELIZA MAY WINTON
found herself well occupied with management of the farm at the Two Mile, as the business of Geo. Aberline Stock and Station Agent took up more and more of George's time. That she had given birth to four children in four years made her most grateful for the presence of Granna, who seemed to know exactly what was needed at any particular moment, be it during a birthing, on the farm, or with the children. Eliza's gratitude strengthened after the demise of George, which happened like this.

George, on his return from the desert, had gone from strength to strength. The sale of the houses, and renting out of the drays that carried them from the interior, gave him the finance to start a stock and station agency. He managed this alone, as he was loathe to waste money on an employee, more often than not leaving Eliza May to deal with matters at the Two Mile, with the assistance of a farmhand and Granna.

Sometimes at night, when his thoughts settled ready for sleep, a calm came over him that was similar, he thought,
to the quiet place where the bush thinned and melted into desert. He remembered the chill and tang of the salt ponds he had seen on his return journey, and tried to fathom how they had come about, as they most decidedly were not there on his outward ride. Most of all he recalled the vision that had spurred him to make a decision to change his life. This invariably led to the story of his father Henry Aberline and his vision of a butterfly that was never proved to exist.
At least he tried
, George would think.
You've got to give him that.

Only occasionally did he think that Lazarus Beatty would one day come for payment. Over the years this became less and less frequent, until the memory of the purchase was only a line in the ledger of the business, and George considered that the debt no longer existed.

At midday, on the day Lazarus Beatty walked out of the shimmering heat haze that hung over the inland and into George's office, there weren't many people around. The newly built Farmers' Co-op had only two shop assistants, and closed for lunch, and the postmaster was eating his sandwich in the telegraph booth, showering crumbs and flecks of cold lamb over the morse code key. So the eyewitness stories were from the drinkers in the pub. Now stories are like people; they change shape as they get older. Some get thinner with less detail, others pad out like the most comfortable grandmother. It's only someone who saw what happened who could see the bones of it under the padding, and Granna wasn't saying anything to anyone.

One story that was perpetuated through the Hinks family, and so sworn to by Martha Hinks as the true story, has it that Lazarus Beatty – although they didn't know his name of course – was dressed in black from head to toe, with a broad-brimmed hat pulled low over his face, so that his features were not distinguishable.
And my grandfather told me that he rode into town on a huge black horse
, Martha would say.
He said it was a manifestation of Beelzebub himself.

Another story was that he had a revolver in his belt, but this was often questioned, as no-one knew exactly what a revolver looked like. Doctor Allen insisted that this gun had not been invented at the time. This always provoked discussion, as the only guns used in the district were the .22 rifle for nuisance birds or a .303 for wild dogs and kangaroos.

Yet another version said that the stranger did not ride into town at all but appeared in a puff of smoke right on the stroke of noon.
All the shops were closed for lunch
, the story goes,
and it was so hot that the dogs had gone to ground under the houses. Even the pepper trees at the railway side of the road were drooping. This stranger walks right up to the Stock and Station Agency door. How did he know where it was, eh? George Aberline always ate his lunch out the back but never bothered to lock the door. Everyone in the bar saw the man go in, but no-one saw him come out.

When there was a challenge to this version –
All right then, who saw him go in?
– names of drifters and drinkers long gone were told.

If Granna was asked what had happened she always replied,
I don't know, and that's the truth of it.

What actually took place in the office of Geo. Aberline Stock and Station Agent will never be known, for the following day George did not make an appearance in the town. Instead, he rode from the Two Mile as if to go as usual to his place of business next to the Farmers' Co-op, but at the crossroads went straight on to the salt lake rather than turning left to the town. Later that morning George's horse ambled up Wickton Street with George's lunch box tied neatly to the empty saddle.

The lake is always a natural starting point if someone goes missing, and it took no time at all for George's body to be untangled from the fallen ghost gum tree that held him just below the waterline. It puzzled some how this had happened, as this was at the perpetual pool which was the town swimming hole, and the one shallow place in the lake. The concentration of salt in the water was particularly strong there, making it difficult to sink and a good place for children to play. And where did that ghost gum come from? No-one recalled seeing a dead tree at the edge of the lake. But, as some still say,
If someone wants to drown, they will.

On the window-ledge of Macha's room at the Two Mile stands a piece of amber that has a small black insect embedded in it. Macha found this when she was a child, at the back of an old cupboard in one of the sheds. Granna told her that Great-Grandmother Eliza May, who had been
a Winton, brought it from the salt lake the day they found her husband drowned in the perpetual pool.
What did she do then?
the young Macha asked.

She ran the farm until the day she died
, Granna said,
then your grandfather, Thomas, took it over. He comes to see you now and then. Well, he's the son of Eliza May Winton and George Henry Aberline. Just as you're the daughter of Brigid Connor and Charles Aberline.

But how do I know that?
Macha said.

You'd best be asking your mother about that. It's not my story to tell.

I ask her things,
young Macha said,
but she says she's so busy she can't talk now. And when she does it's not like the mums of other kids. She doesn't tell me to be home or to do things, she just talks about those stories her mum told her. I don't understand at all. How can I be Irish when I live here? I should be called Siddon Rock-ish. Or Siddon-ish!

And why am I called Connor and not Aberline if Mister Aberline is my father? Maybe Mum's just making this up. Maybe I just grew, like Topsy, and didn't have a father!
She waved the book she had been reading. Granna took it.
Uncle Tom's Cabin
, she said.
Isn't this a bit old for you? But don't you be getting ideas, Miss Curiosity! Charlie Aberline is your father, and there's no getting away from that.

But …
Macha was not appeased.

It's still not for me to say, love. It's your mother's story, and for her to tell or not tell, as she wishes.

Alf Barber, Sybil's father and butcher to the town, had not been heard of since 1933 when he left with the boxing troupe that toured the country agricultural shows. Always eager and handy with his fists, Alf took up the challenge thrown out so cockily by the Aboriginal champion, and although the fight was declared a draw the boss offered him a place in the troupe. The fight was still talked about in the bar at the Railway and Traveller's Hotel, especially when the old-timers who travelled with the show each year were in town.
Do ya remember what a little bruiser Alf Barber was
, they'd say,
how he just kept at young Tommy Bristowe until the ref had to pull him off? And then he still kept punching, like he didn't know how to stop. And that kid, he was good too. Best gloves in the business. And strong! Just starting to run to fat, though. That's the problem. They start out all tough and wiry, then get slack and run to fat. Then they're gone.

I remember having to stitch up young Bristowe after that fight
, Doctor Allen said once.
Fifteen stitches in the face is no joke. Not sport, either.

Seen worse than that
, the old-timers would say.
That's nothing, on the circuit.

He weren't so tough
, Bert Truro always came back with – Bluey Redall reckoned it was like a tune played once a year –
he weren't so tough, just a little bloke with a little bloke's chip on the shoulder. Always out to prove themselves, little blokes. And Alf Barber took it out on anyone he could. Don't you remember, Bluey?

Nah
, Bluey'd say.
Way before I got back from London.
Don't remember it at all. Don't know where Alf is now, either. Before anyone asks.

When Alf Barber took off he threw the keys of the shop to Sybil.
Beats cutting up lumps of meat for a living
, he told her as he rolled some rough clothes and a blanket into a swag.
Do what you like with the shop
.

As the trucks of sideshow alley left town Sybil opened the front and back doors of the butcher's shop to let fresh air flow through, and lit a fire under the old copper in the yard behind the shop. For three days she bucketed water from the shop tap to the copper, then scrubbed with hot water and lye soap which stripped layers of skin from her hands as it dissolved years of grime and accumulated meat fat from the shop walls and chopping blocks. She pulled out the broken fly screens from the display window, and from the Farmers' Co-op bought netting and timber which she made into new screens by copying the construction of the old ones. She turned away offers of help.
I'll do it myself
, she said.
Then I don't owe no-one.

She's just a girl
, the town said,
How can she know anything about butchering?
forgetting that Sybil had been in the shop with her father since she was knee-high to a grasshopper.
How can a woman kill beasts? How can she be strong enough to carry the carcasses? How can she find the money to do all this?
No-one saw her slip into the manager's residence at the rear of the State and Farmers' Bank one night, but she was well noticed in the bank the next day when she arrived for her appointment with the manager to arrange a loan for the business.