Cloudstreet (71 page)

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.