The Stars at Oktober Bend Read online

  tune-whistler

  fisherman

  liar

  and thief.

  he did the shopping too and paid the bills. joey was not a dancer. but on wednesday afternoons he took me to ballet lessons. another activity someone thought would be good for a girl who might stay twelve until forever. joey rode his bicycle. my ballet shoes tied to the handlebars. me on the parcel rack behind him. bear was not allowed inside the scout hall unless she was muzzled. imagining bear with a cage on her face overloaded my electrics. muzzles were on the list with make, makes and made. reminded me of big hands and of not breathing. so on wednesdays bear stayed home under the house while joey took me dancing.

  i put on the ballet slippers that the teacher, mrs cassidy, had loaned me. criss-crossed the wide satin ribbons. fastened them with loose loopy bows that drooped around my ankles. could not wear them tight. mrs cassidy always looked like she wanted to fix them. she never did. i think she was afraid of me. afraid of the falling down that sometimes happened. when i was ready, i sat on a long wooden bench by the wall. watched a girl whose face was a perfect oval. joey watched her too. her name was tilda. i should have known by the way he watched her, the way she danced ever closer to him, like a moth to a light, that she might become a complication.

  tilda’s hair was shiny as a raven’s wing. she pulled it back, knotted it tight at the back of her head. wore three silver clips on each side and two at the back. her hair never moved. even when she leapt and spun not a strand escaped. it was truly magnificent ballerina hair. perfect hair, perfect face, perfect tilda. sometimes i imagined having hair like tilda’s and dancing on the toes of my pink slippers. but mostly i didn’t think about dancing at all. i let my thoughts meander. let myself feel sorry for tilda. none of her graceful movements sprang from joy, her smiles from gladness. even i knew that her kind of dancing was just a complicated kind of make-believe. planned in advance.

  while i watched

  perfect tilda,

  i swayed to the music

  ate furry peaches from a brown paper bag

  traced initials

  carved on the seat

  fingered ancient chewing

  gum underneath and

  wondered

  if the birds would come

  hoped they would be wrens

  not ravens.

  tilda’s dancing got better every week. things stayed much the same for me. i didn’t dance at all. not even a step. sometimes i ate cherries instead of peaches, or dangled them from my ears. imagined me, dancing the flamenco and writing birdsong on pure white pages. not at the same time. but on the day manny rescued my poem from the weeds something else happened. without warning.

  bear was sleeping

  in the shade

  under the house

  near the cadbury’s roses tin and

  joey was spellbound

  by the hot, sweet scent of tilda

  the grace of her arms

  the tilt of her head.

  he did not hear the young men’s voices

  did not feel the air move

  did not see the shadow of the raven’s wings

  or smell the fear

  bleeding out

  of me.

  15 ALICE

  french knots and falling down

  coach cassidy had brought the bridgewater bombers to the scout hall for pre-season football training. his wife, mrs cassidy, was going to help them with their stretching out, limbering up and flexibility.

  the bombers were on the grass and on the porch and on the hard hot gravel. waiting for the dancing to stop. for the music to end. their voices bombarded the windows. bounced off the walls. rattled me.

  the ribbons around my ankles grew tighter and tighter as i tugged, tried frantically to untie them. i wanted to shout,

  let’s go, joey!

  wanted to scream at mrs cassidy that dancing does not fix your electrics.

  but panic was huge and hot

  a hand across my mouth and nose,

  clouds of ravens

  beat their wings

  blocked the light

  stole my air and i

  slow-spiraled like

  a dying swan.

  a patch of grass. a bicycle shed. joey crouching. this is what i saw when i came back with arms and legs and eyes all heavy. stroke after slow stroke, joey wiped my forehead with something cool and damp. afternoon was thick with sunlight. quiet now. dancers disappeared. footballers limbering up. inside all but one. my eyes opened quick and wide to see that last one. that one standing like my brother’s shadow.

  carved from ebony

  polished with beeswax

  a saint from the book of kells

  a warrior

  a dream with

  embroidered-on hair

  neat tight french knots

  i wanted to

  touch them

  read them like braille

  run my fingers along

  the lumpy scar that joined

  shoulder to elbow.

  i wanted to

  know why it was there

  what had shaped this boy?

  the coach put his head around the door and yelled, ‘move it, jamesy!’

  then i knew i was back from wherever i’d been. the boy in front of me was real and true.

  joey held a wet handkerchief towards him.

  ‘she’ll be okay now, thanks,’ he said, but the boy didn’t seem to hear joey or the coach. ignored the handkerchief. stared at me. my hands crept to my skirt but joey had fixed everything. arranged my legs straight and together, tugged my skirt down over my thighs. like he always did when i was away. i made myself look into the other boy’s eyes.

  don’t be scared, beautiful boy. please don’t be scared. i was born normal and i’m still mostly normal. and anyway, it wasn’t my fault. they warn you about everything else – don’t take lollies from strangers, don’t get in cars with people you don’t know. but they never tell you why not. no one ever said don’t watch the stars at oktober bend, little alice nightingale. no one told me there were people who did things like that to children. now my electrics are wrecked and my words come out weird and doctors say i might stay twelve until forever. maybe that’s what my mother thinks. alice will still be twelve when she gets back. i can’t know for sure, but i think i’m pretty much as fifteen as anyone else. and joey says that someday someone will invent a way to fix my crazy wiring. till then i guess i’ll put my words on paper. but for a boy like you, i’d take my mediocre pills. if that’s what you want, i thought, if that’s what you want.

  the cicadas kept up their racket. the coach hollered again and the boy left. i did not know he was the boy i’d seen, small as a thumb in the middle of the night and in the early morning. the running boy.

  manny james following my paper trail. each poem bringing him one step closer to finding anon. finding me.

  a hand touched my face. i looked at my wet fingers and felt despair leaking quietly all over my cheeks. i took the blue handkerchief from joey. sopped my sadness on its red-and-white border and wondered where and who and why.

  where had the boy come from

  who was he and

  why had the coach called him jamesy when

  there was a red ‘e’

  stitched on the corner of his handkerchief?

  i pushed it into the toe of my dancing shoe. joey took my hand.

  ‘let’s go home,’ he said.

  he wheeled his bike. i dawdled beside him. still not quite right. but already thoughts of my falling-down faded in the bright memory of the boy.

  ‘don’t tell gram,’ i said when we were nearly at hattie fox’s post office. i didn’t want her going on about the pills i never took. joey nodded. we wouldn’t tell her about the boy either. gram was suspicious or superstitious. or both. especially of anyone who was good looking. once she told me a story about an angel called lucifer, which means light. lucifer did something he shouldn’t have. something so a
wful he was banished from heaven and transformed into a devil. prince of darkness was his devil name. he could masquerade as anything or anyone and ordinary people were fooled because he was so beautiful. i didn’t want to be like gram. scared, suspicious, superstitious.

  could the dark prince make himself look like a black boy with french knots on his head? i asked myself.

  by the time we passed the post office i decided i didn’t care.

  16 ALICE

  bargaining with the god of f lying things

  bear met us at the chainlink fence. inhaled the smell of stale fright from my skin and clothes. if she’d been allowed to sit on the steps at the scout hall, she would have known what was going to happen before it did. if mrs cassidy had let her lie at my feet, i might have held her till she drove the birds away. bear and me were more than kin or kindred. spoke a language of our own. i put my arms around her. let her lick my hands and face till my wires lay slack as cooked spaghetti. untangled, loose. then she led us down the steep embankment to the river track and home.

  gram was dozing in old charlie’s hammock, painted by the red-gold afternoon. shadows gathered in her gullies and folds. hair soft as dandelion fluff. arms folded like a kiss across her apron. once as tough as any man’s

  they swung an axe

  shovelled river loam

  patched up our falling-down house

  dragged old charlie away

  from trouble

  from the pub

  home

  arms gentled by love

  gathered us in

  told us when

  our daddy was dead and when

  our mother was gone

  tough and tender arms

  carried me home

  broken and bloody

  under the stars.

  ‘everlasting arms,’ i said softly, ‘leaning on the everlasting arms.’

  lines of a hymn. gram had one for every occasion. did she sing when she carried me home? i don’t remember much of that night. don’t want to.

  the best of it

  a sky-full of stars

  bright as new fish hooks

  old charlie and joey

  down on oktober bend

  baiting shrimp nets.

  the worst of it

  hands coming down

  over my face

  screams

  i couldn’t scream,

  breath

  i couldn’t take and,

  afterwards,

  the rock coming

  down and

  down and

  down.

  ‘hurry up. get your things,’ joey said.

  on our way through the orchard we jammed our pockets full of hot blue plums. seven o’clock, daylight saving time and still scorching. crickets sang, cicadas shrilled. bear led the way. shrubs crowded the banks, alive with wrens and finches and firetails. we stopped at a fallen tree that spanned the river. joey baited a hook, tied a teaspoon-shaped sinker to the line and cast it across the water’s tight grey skin. the reel spun, the float bobbed. joey planted the cork handle of his rod in the mud. swallows skimmed. caught gnats and mosquitoes. and i watched it all and willed the shy kingfisher to come.

  sometimes while joey fished, i read fly tying: the definitive guide to hand tying flies for trout or wrote things in my own book. imagined wings i could have made from all the feathers i’d ever found. saw myself standing on the roof with them fixed to my shoulders, words and wings. it makes no difference. in my mind i am stepping off. there is no falling. only flying. i rise. born again. made new.

  but this time, this airy evening, i was not seduced to fly. my body was anchored firm to earth by want to see the boy again. i chanted quiet charms and incantations. lips moving like a mad thing’s. stealthy as night falls, i stole a bright hook from joey’s tackle box. swift as a breath i pressed its barb to my wrist. closed my eyes and tugged. a bright bead of blood welled up. a ruby jewel. a sacrifice. a gift for the god of feathered things. i begged him bring the sacred kingfisher, bring down a shimmering feather. vowed i’d use it to create the finest lure ever made. a pretty thing to bring the broidery boy to me.

  and when he comes

  i will

  pass to him

  new poems

  on fine white pages,

  sonnets and songs

  rows of notes

  for words to waltz to

  and when he reads them he will

  know that i am

  more

  than twelve

  more

  than broken much

  more

  he will take

  my hand press my fingers

  gently into his

  scarred places and i

  will know their meaning.

  the spell was cast, the pact was made. blood was the scarlet seal on the witch’s wrist. then joey spied the question mark in my hand, snatched the hook. sucked the pretty beads from my skin. pulled me rough, held me tight against his chest.

  ‘no more blood, alice,’ he said. ‘no more!’ he dreamed of blood, he said. of my face after the rock split my skull open. ‘no more blood.’

  that night the crickets sang love songs in earth’s cool dark. and i wrote an introduction to the boy i had bargained for.

  for some

  twelve is a nice number

  but i

  am alice

  fifteen times

  over

  17 MANNY

  Finding that Girl who made Snow on the Roof

  I remember thinking, when I saw her lying there, that her hair was red as fire and her skin was pale as bone. I watched the boy straighten her skirt and make sure that her underclothing did not show. I saw how gently he stroked her arms and hair while her body jerked and twitched. His voice was calm and quiet when he spoke to her but he seemed angry with everyone else.

  ‘Piss off, you bloody morons!’ That is what he said. I was not exactly sure what these words meant, but it was clear he loved that girl.

  When she woke up, the girl did not speak. But when she looked at me, her eyes and her quietness reminded me of other faces. Those faces were sad faces. Their eyes were very full because they had seen many things, but their lips could not be opened to speak of what they had seen. These were faces that followed me from the other side of the world because I had done nothing to help them. When I looked at that girl I wondered what she had seen that made her eyes so full. And I wondered if her lips, also, could not be opened to speak of those things.

  Then I looked at the boy who loved her and I knew that girl was different from the people in my dreams. It was because of that boy she was different. That boy was not like me. He would not run away. That is what I was thinking while I watched them outside the scout hall.

  That morning when I was running, I saw a girl and a dog in the distance. This girl, lying on the small green hill, did not have a dog. But they both had long hair and so did the girl on the roof in the night. Was it the same person? Was this bright-haired girl the one who made it snow in summer? Did she write the poem on the pansy packet? Was she leaving the poems for me? These are the questions that I asked myself and with all my heart I hoped she was that girl. I wanted to ask her the meaning of her poems. I did not know then that she would tell me that a poem can mean whatever your heart wants it to.

  When the coach called to me, I became a shadow. It was a long time since I had shadowed anyone, but I had not forgotten how to. I walked close to the coach. Very close I walked, so that he could feel me like a cloak around his shoulders and he could see me from the corner of his eye. He knew that I was there. Then, when he walked back into the hall, I slipped away. There in the room surrounded by all those other boys, he would not have noticed that I was gone. That is how it is with a shadow. There it is, as close as a brother, as close as skin. So close that you forget to pay attention and then it disappears. That is what happens. That is what happened to Coach Cassidy. I was with him and then I was not.

  I ra
n in the direction the boy had gone when he led the girl away. Behind the railway station waiting room and across the shunting yards, that is where they went. Just like that morning when the girl and her dog disappeared. On the other side of the shunting yards was a tall wire fence. It was covered with creeping plants and fist-sized blue flowers and I could not find an opening. Voices came to me from somewhere on the other side. I listened carefully to hear which direction they were coming from and then I climbed the fence, dropped quietly to the ground on the other side and took off my shoes and socks. That is when I became a shadow again. A shadow has no substance. It makes no sound. Leaves do not rustle when a shadow passes by and the tall grass does not bend. A shadow leaves no footsteps. In Sierra Leone the soldiers said that small boys make good shadows.

  I looked and listened. It was easy to find them. The river and the birds helped me. The river carried their voices to me and when I looked down towards the place where the sound came from, tiny birds flew out from the tops of the bushes.

  That is what birds do when someone comes near. Even if a shadow falls across them, they fly. Small birds watch the ground for the shadows of birds of prey. The yellow dog was not looking for shadows. I kept downwind where she could not catch my scent.

  I crept through clumps of pampas grass. The feathery plumes were taller than I was. I could not see the river but I could smell it and I could feel damp, cool air rising up from the earth. Rivers everywhere have a way of doing that, a way of telling you where they are.

  I found a place at the edge of the pampas grass from where I could see the river. Where I could watch them, that boy and that girl from the scout hall. I was thinking about the small green hill and the girl’s hair and her sad eyes when I saw the boy take her in his arms. He did not put them gently around her, did not touch her kindly, carefully, the way he did at the scout hall. He moved suddenly as though he wanted to prevent her from doing something. I heard his voice rise but I could not hear what he said. Perhaps he was angry. The muscles in my legs grew tight with wanting to run. But the girl did not struggle. She leaned her head on the boy’s shoulder, put it there herself. It was a puzzling thing for me to see, a boy who did not know they were family, who did not know their secrets and sorrows. I knew what I saw and that is all.