Connections Read online

  You know, I remember him way back when he was barely more ‘n’ a boy, workin’ on the farm. He once had this heifer tied to a gate, see, an’ was doctorin’ a cut on her – real gentle-like. He was that kind of a bloke, see! And damned if she didn’t up an’ kick him! Well, you never saw a madder man. Ol’ Have-a-Chat, he roared up an’ slammed that heifer fair between the eyes with his fist. Bloody well staggered her too! Powerful man, he was! Then he cranked her over like as if he was some big ol’ rodeo bloke an’ he sat right down on her head an’ give her one hell of a lecture – about fair play an’ consideration an’ not upsettin’ the boss cocky. Just as if she’d understand, see? God, that’s funny innit? How some things come back to you? I can see him sittin’ there as clear as yesterday.

  Anyhow, after the lecture, he drug that heifer back onto her feet an’ finished doctorin’ the cut. An’ his mad was all gone, see? Just like that! Most surprised lookin’ heifer you’d ever want to see. Laugh? Well the tears was runnin’ down me leg, I laughed so hard! God but he was a funny man in them days!

  Eh? Yessir, your Honour. Sorry sir. No disrespect meant. That story just come back to me that way. But anyhow, I reckon you gotta know more about a man than the colour of his jocks if you’re tryin’ to understand him, see? I’m just tryin’ to give some perspective to the proceedin’s. Have-a-Chat never really woulda done no lastin’ harm, is the point I’m tryin’ to make. Not intentionally. He was an easy, fun-lovin’ take-er-as-she-comes sorta bloke.

  Eh? Oh, I know it ain’ his real name. Have-a-Chat’s just what folks called him. Talk the leg off an iron pot, he would. He was always talkin’. Yessir! He’d have a chat with just about anything that moved or didn’t – clouds, bandicoots, snakes, tractors – whatever. Talk to himself as often as not! No, mate. (I mean, your Honour. Sorry.) No, that don’t signify nothin’ to me. Everyone talks to themselves sometimes, I reckon. He jus’ naturally was glad to be alive and knowin’ and doin’. A man who loved livin’, was our Have-a-Chat.

  Course he did change some, when he got older. After bein’ conscripted, I guess it was. When he come back from that, he sometimes got this look in his eyes – a bit like that heifer’d had – particularly surprised an’ maybe a bit sorta glazed. Like somethin’ had knocked the wind out of him. I guess he really didn’t chat so much after that. Somethin’ else seemed to be fillin’ up his head.

  * * *

  Twilight. Jungle twilight. Shadows, green on black. Tongues of moonlight lick the long leaves. Village is quiet. So quiet. The man sits, invisibly, his mind chatting to itself, watching itself. Loneliness ambles about him like a faint smell. He thinks, all the creatures are listening for us, hiding from us, watching for us. He sits patiently, alone, in a bush in the jungle, waiting to kill some men. That’s war.

  * * *

  No, your Honour, there wasn’t nothin’ different about that day. It was like a heap of other days since he come back. I had these cane paddocks to burn off and Have-a-Chat was off-sidin’ for me, like always. We cleared the headlands in the afternoon an’ pushed a couple of extra rows. Just to be safe, see? She was pretty dry. I remember commentin’ that we didn’t want to be fightin’ fire all night.

  * * *

  Fire fight. Won’t take long. Some of you wait; some of you flush them from the village. Be a bit of a fire fight. Quick and hard and we’ll be home in no time. Back in time for breakfast. No worries. No pain.

  The man looks down the black hollow, where the bullet is. He dreams of home and the farm. You gonna fly right, bullet? Find a target and bowl it over? Like knocking tin cups off a fence rail, I reckon. Or picking the eyes out of Tom Taipan. Nothing to it. Be home for breakfast. Fire fight’s coming. Fire fight’s coming soon.

  * * *

  No, your Honour. If we’d done ‘er once, we’d done ‘er a hundred times. Just a regular burn, like always. The kids? They come out before dark to wait for the fire, like always. Once they see the headlands bein’ cleared, they know the paddock’s for burnin’, see? Yeah! They come with cricket bats, broom handles, sticks – anythin’ they can get! Course I never seen the kid with the rifle! No Sir! I’d’ve chatted him good an’ proper if I’d seen him. Shouldn’ have guns aroun’ crowds like that. An’ it’s worse after dark. Folks sometimes get a little confused in the dark, I’ve noticed – a little skittish. Sometimes see things that ain’t really there, you know? Boogey men an’ bunyips, they reckon.

  * * *

  The man crouches like a tiny animal, the smallest animal, his heart chittering so loudly he cannot hear. Stop breathing so I can hear. Some men are soon going to stop altogether – not to breathe again. Maybe they’ll hear beyond the silence. I can’t hear; I can’t see. Got to be alert – be ready. This is war. Stars over the village where the people cook their rice. I am in the jungle, with no stars over me. This is war.

  * * *

  Anyhow, your Honour, lookin’ back on it, it seemed to be somethin’ about them kids that started it. He was fine ‘til they showed up, but I recollect him getting’ all sorta fidgety. Tryin’ to send ‘em home. I didn’ take much notice at the time, what with the work an’ all. I told him to let them kids alone an’ get on with it or we’d be out ‘til after bloody breakfast. Well, he got this far away look for a couple minutes, see, but then he sets off aroun’ the headlands with the fire pot, to set her alight. Well, she roars up pretty quick, jus’ like you’d expect, an’ before long we’re hustlin’ out our separate ways to watch her come along. No worries about back burnin’ or nothin’. When that fire hit the road, she’d nowhere to go but out. Safe as bloody Coogan’s barn, see? Well, I got clear first an’ I seen the kids all lined up, as tense as bloody fence wire, waitin’ for the critters.

  * * *

  The man prickles into alertness. There is sound beyond that of his heart! There is light! The village burns. Beneath the dimming stars, the grass houses flare away. God! She’s going up like a bomb! People running! Kids and women! No soldiers to kill, you bullet in there! Just women, that’s all! Women! And kids!

  * * *

  Well, they’re just pests, see your Honour? Bandicoots, mostly, Few rats. Some snakes. Odd wallaby. They got no value. They tend to come out o’ them paddocks pretty quick smart when the fire’s goin’ through. Lost a good dog in one o’ them fires once. He run the wrong way an’ got caught. Come out the other side, alright, but his lungs was ruined and the rest of ‘im was just bare meat. Had to put him down, o’ course, poor moanin’ little bastard. I reckon he was grateful for the bullet.

  * * *

  Lower! Get lower, boyo! Let them get by, run by, shoot by. There’s no harm in women and kids. Get away, folks. It’s all a mistake. Come back tomorrow and we’ll be gone. Come back when the fire’s died down. We’re looking for the soldiers. We’re looking for the men. Not you lot. Run by.

  * * *

  Well, them animals come tearin’ out, see? First just a couple, here an’ there, an’ then lots more and the kids get into ‘em with the bats. It’s just sport, see? They kill whatever they can and whatever they can’t kill runs on by. No harm in it. It’s just sport. Anyhow, I reckon some o’ them critters are half burnt an’ wouldn’ mind bein’ put out o’ their misery! Well, maybe it does sound a bit off, your Honour, but it’s been goin’ on a long time an’ I ain’t noticed no shortages of rats an’ bandicoots. First place, they breed up pretty fast an’ second place, if there wasn’t any more, who’d care? They’re no use to us, see?

  * * *

  Hunched and loping like ground squirrels, they come, fleeing the fire. And from the jungle, guns begin to cough. The women die and the children writhe in the green verges. Bullets plough through flesh like bees through smoke and dive back into the air – still alive, still seeking – as keen as children at play. Because they have no value, these people. It’s just sport, see? It’s war. And we’ll be home for breakfast. No worries. No pain.

  * * *

  So anyhow, I look across, see, an’ there’s Ha
ve-a-Chat starin’ at these kids an’ his mouth is hangin’ open an’ his eyes are hangin’ open an’ he looks like someone’s just kicked him in the guts. The kids are havin’ a whale of a time, mind you, not even noticin’ him. Then damned if this thick kid with the .22 rifle don’t up an’ let loose, blastin’ away at the bandicoots!

  * * *

  The man moves, not swiftly and cleanly, like a bullet, but staggering, hands to his head, like something wounded. He cries out for a wound of his own because, beneath the stars, at the edge of the jungle, with fire bawling in his ears, death has become sport and life has become valueless and the real war has at last lodged in his mind.

  * * *

  Well, as I say, I can’t explain what happened after that, your Honour. I don’t reckon Have-a-Chat meant no harm. Somethin’ in him jus’ seemed to break. Like when that heifer kicked him, you know? It was like them animals was people‘re somethin’! Like they was important to him! He started screamin’ but the fire just ate up his sound.

  I only hope them parents can forgive him what he done. I hope they can remember some good in him. That he fought for his country, like, an’ he worked hard an’ he never let the bastards grind him down. That’s gotta be worth somethin’. He just somehow, for a couple of minutes, maybe, forgot the value o’ life, I reckon.

  Peach Whiskey

  At a certain point in life, a boy needs to discover something of his capacity for two things – liquor and love. When Mrs Calvey’s noodle-headed fifteen year old son, Ferkis, arrived at that certain point, the sole indicator was the disappearance of a jar of the preserved peaches that Mrs Calvey kept for her boarders. Ferkis had sneaked it away to a remote corner of the cellar, behind the furnace, and there he’d left it, with two holes punched in its lid. It was part of an experiment which had sprung, fully formed into his mind, on the vagaries of fermentation.

  Not more than three days later, having assured himself that a longer wait would be overkill, he’d filled himself up with the hot, syrupy juice, gobbled down the peaches and staggered off, convinced by the ferment in his belly that must be as drunk as any lord.

  “Christ!” he yammered in every boarder’s ear. “I’m feral Ferkis, up from the freakin’ depths!”

  Before long he was found lying on the floor in the hallway, feebly waving his arms and legs in the air while the gases fought for egress from his bloated stomach. With a mother’s acumen, Mrs Calvey had made the best of the opportunity to slap and kick him and curse his lamentable genes.

  “You’re a useless hunk of mush! No better than your father was!” Tears had streamed from her eyes while vast farts stuttered and sighed out of Ferkis. “Stinker boy!” she’d wailed. “Oy what a stinker boy! What’ll the boarders be thinkin’?”

  For Ferkis, it was lesson (albeit a murky one) that was to remain with him for fully a week and half. It may have lasted even longer had it not been for the fact that Mrs Calvey finally found a taker for the upstairs back bedroom: the one next to the tub room where everyone in the house queued to bathe.

  Her name was Mary and she was a veritable dirigible of flesh, gloriously plush and round and pink. Ferkis’ first inkling that she existed, let alone dwelled in his own house, was a fleeting glimpse as she slipped into the tub room. Emerging from his own door at the opposite end of the hall, he’d seen her, towel-wrapped and dream-fresh. She’d paused, seeming to sense his animal tension. And over her shoulder, she’d tossed him the merest glance. Barely a peep, it was: certainly much less than a wink. But it was enough. Ferkis had fallen backwards into his room and, judging by his flush of embarrassment and the instant onset of titillating terror, also into love.

  In the days that followed he watched Mary at table when all the boarders gathered for Mrs Calvey’s lavish feeds. Just the sound of her voice rattled him right down to his toeless socks. It created in him the same heart race that might be expected from hearing a squeaking board in a haunted house. Indeed, from his first accidental glimpse of her, Ferkis became, himself, little better than a haunted building, with Fat Mary the ghost who walked to and fro through the walls of his brain.

  He took to sitting opposite her in the evenings in the large television room. Sometimes he wore dark glasses so he could surreptitiously swivel his eyes and gaze unrestricted on the amplitude of her bosom. He never quite, however, could bring himself to speak to her. And she, in turn, neither spoke to nor acknowledged him.It was an impasse that gave Ferkis much grief.

  He took to crouching behind the door in his room, his eye pressed to the keyhole, hoping to arrange an ‘accidental’ encounter. If it was just him and her, surely words would come out of one of them. Time passed and no meeting eventuated. It occurred to him that Mary might be squatted, sumo-style, at her own keyhole, peering out hoping to catch him at the door to the bath. In case it was so, he began taking random trips to the tub room, clumping along the hall in his heavy boots. Still she didn’t come out.

  Ultimately the realization formed in Ferkis’ mind that more direct action was needed. But what? What could help him overcome his tongue-tied insecurity? Not surprisingly, his thoughts turned quite quickly to his newly invented peach whiskey.

  * * *

  From the basement larder, Ferkis filched several large jars of the most golden and succulent looking fruit. He punctured all their lids and left them over the furnace and, for two full weeks, both asleep and awake, his mind was absorbed by visions of eddying sugars. Sugars that he believed must be turning to a mighty alcohol that would surely dissolve the stony indifference of sweet Mary.

  Then, one day when the house was at its emptiest and his yearning at its fullest, he fetched the first jar up to his room. He sat, in a state of near hysterical nervousness, with the jar of juice hot between his thighs. For fully an hour he sipped and sighed and savoured, attempting to bring his pounding heart under control. And finally, with half the juice left, he tip-toed down the hall and tap-tapped at Mary’s door.

  When it swung open, his throat, as always in her presence, clamped firmly shut. East to west, she filled the doorway. Her curves tumbled out toward him – shoulders, breasts, belly, thighs. She was a hillocky landscape over which his heart raced like a rabbit in springtime. His entire head bobbed up and down, his lower lip flapping like a flag as he took in her contours. She placed a fist on her hip and waited.

  Eventually he was able to raise, first a lop-sided grin and, second, a grubby fist in which was clutched the jar of peach whiskey. The entire lid of the jar was covered in mould, except for a mouth-shaped spot around one of the punctures where Ferkis’ saliva, mixed with hot peach juice, had scoured the area back to a brassy glow. Mary looked at it doubtfully, compelling Ferkis finally to resort to words.

  “Have some, Mary! ‘S peach whiskey!”

  No response. So much for the plan. He changed feet, his grin wavered and he became positively voluble.

  “G’wan, Mary! ‘S nothin’ to be scared uv!”

  “What’s that on the lid?” she demanded levelly and Ferkis shuddered with delight. Mary was talking to him.

  “Uh . . . ‘s just dust! Jus’ wipes off!” He stretched the front of his t-shirt and collected the mould in a dense gob which snapped back against his belly. “See?”

  The pause was interminable. Ferkis was grasping for some face-saving technique of withdrawal, such as sprinting back to his room when, with the coyest hint of suspicion, she reached out her pudgy hand. She gripped the jar daintily, between thumb and forefinger, holding it up to her eyes. Behind the glass, the fat slabs of peach twirled slowly in the mire of golden juice. Ferkis’ dim little eye grew large as he peered at her through the glowing goo. He felt positively encouraged.

  “S a firecracker brew, Mary! I reckon I got the process nearly perfect now!”

  The jar was lowered and the suspicion in Mary’s eye jolted Ferkis a step backward.

  “You put anything else in here?” she demanded. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up like pins.


  “Huh?”

  “Anything else. You put anything else in here? Sex drugs or something?”

  “Ahh?” he aahed and wondered who he could quiz about the existence of such things.

  Imagine his relief as Mary, apparently too impatient to wait for a better answer, slipped suddenly away to the window to improve the light through the jar.

  “Don’t think you can fool me!” she warned as the fruity hearts turned slowly before her eyes. “All after the same thing, you men!”

  Had he heard her right? Was it ‘Men,’ she had said? ‘You men’? And was she talking to no one but him? In a twinkling, a penumbra of light surrounded the great circle of her being and Ferkis’ mind spun drunkenly, like a slab of peach in a golden syrup of love.

  She stepped to one side, allowing the window’s light to fall squarely on him.

  “All after the same thing,” she repeated softly. “Am I right, you Ferkis?”

  And there it was! She knew his name – had spoken his name! And Ferkis, his lips quivering into a horrible semblance of a grin, performed his most daring exploit ever. He stepped into the room. Mary’s large, raspberry-lipped mouth hinged open, just as it did in his dreams. He forced himself to close the door and then he stopped. He had no more words. Nor had he any idea what his next action should be.

  Mary, however, was a woman of some experience and she had no scruples against using it to illustrate a point. Almost imperceptibly, her free hand began to move against her thigh. Like a slow, mesmeric, pudgy little piston, it jigged an iota up and then jogged an iota down. His eyes locked on it instantly. And no sooner had that happened than her hand began, incredibly, to slide, to climb, to insinuate itself sensuously up over the vast amplitude of her belly. Somewhere early on, it caught a portion of her dress, dragging the hemline up, higher and higher on her pillowy white legs.

  Eventually, within not less than one eternity, the back of Mary’s hand contacted the great melon of her breast, raising it a tantalising inch. It seemed to roll and gambol against her knuckles. A moment, and she lowered it back to its amazing state of suspension. She stepped a step toward him, almost within range of his fruity breath, and sensuously licked her top lip – once around to the left, once around to the right.