The Stars at Oktober Bend Read online

  I felt the poems in my pocket. I did not need to read them. I knew the words by heart. And in my heart I was sure that girl had written them. A girl like that did not need someone like me. I should have left her alone with that other boy, but instead I curled up in my hiding place. I was very tired of running away.

  18 ALICE

  speaking to the dead

  prayers or pacts or promises to

  the god of flying things

  blood and bleeding

  changed nothing

  changed everything

  changed me

  planted in me

  a seed of knowing that i

  even i could make

  things happen.

  so small, that seed, that i did not feel manny’s eyes upon me. did not expect him to come so soon. or at all.

  a fortnight of slow days dawdled by, yet no kingfisher’s feather fell from the heavenlies. march arrived and with it grew the feeling that blood and promises brought. the knowing. something in the universe had shifted. a universe so big and mysterious not even joey could explain it to me properly. the feeling was not new. i’d had it before. but never about kingfisher feathers or black boys. knowing filled me with fright but at the same time, made me feel safe. tiny and powerful i was. and light, light enough to fly. like my bones were hollow as a bird’s. as an angel’s.

  joey wouldn’t listen when i tried to explain knowing to him. he only believed in what could be proved. maybe that was why he stole things. put himself in danger of being caught to give me what i wanted. proof he loved me. or did he think that knowing was an odd belief, like unicorns, fairies and true love, that girls grew out of. other girls.

  while joey was at school i went to talk to teddy about things known but not seen. teddy’s place was fifteen minutes west of our house. halfway up the cutting near charlotte’s pass. above it, the coin-in-the-slot barbecue. in the river below it was the tarpit, where the water was black as pitch to hide its secrets. deep as hell. bottomless, they said. no place for bones to rest.

  a fancy metal fence surrounded teddy’s grave. reminded me of an old fashioned cot i’d seen in a photograph of baby gram. a stern stone angel stood at one end of teddy’s cot. stared at the scroll between her grey feet as if her blind eyes could read the words carved there.

  here lies

  edward (teddy) english

  chosen son of the reverend and mrs lillian english

  leaning on the everlasting arms

  18 Dec 1907 – 1 Nov 1914

  i wondered if lillian english held her boy that morning, that first day of everlasting loss?

  once

  i envied teddy

  safe in the everlasting arms

  while i tried

  to remember

  how to sleep

  how to speak

  how to write

  when to take my pills and

  what it was like

  before

  trying to forget

  other things.

  no one could hurt teddy now. but we nightingales kept old charlie’s gun under the house. were shadowed by bear and thoughts of our past.

  teddy seemed almost like kith and kin to me, like kindred. the tarpit and what happened there couldn’t keep me away. i stepped over the low fence and sat on the edge of his forever bed. i spoke aloud to him of pacts and promises, of boys and knowing. teddy had stuttered, they said, so i was sure his ghost would understand my slurred and stumbling speech. while i talked i scraped lichen from the angel’s feet, washed her face with the hem of my dress. crowned her hard grey hair with wildflowers and when there was nothing more to be said about knowing, reminded teddy about our secret.

  ‘do you remember, teddy?’ i said, ‘you must – remember when joey scraped the dirt out from under the angel’s feet? that’s where it’s hid, where no one else can find it. no one can take it away from me. never again. it’s the best thing i ever gave anyone, teddy. better than all the nightingale labels put together. better than the book of kells. it squeezes my heart to leave it in the ground. but we didn’t know what else to do.’

  before i left i kissed the angel’s feet and asked her to watch over us all, those on earth and those under the earth or wherever else they might be. when i stood up her cheeks were as pink as a pigeon’s feet and the paper daisies in her crown shone like gold. you might think my electrics went crazy. you can think what you like but i swear it’s true.

  19 ALICE

  the legend of teddy english

  from teddy’s grave, there was a clear view of the tarpit. down the cutting to the sheer rock walls. it was a lonely place.

  windless

  soundless

  no children’s voices

  no bird songs

  rope thick as

  a baby’s arm hung

  from a river

  red gum

  unmoved except

  on hot nights when

  boys came

  drank beer

  smoked

  cigarettes and launched themselves off

  the rope into

  the still black

  into the pit.

  no one used the concrete block barbecue at the top. travelling fruit-pickers sometimes stayed a night. rolled out their swags and left again in the morning. families never came.

  i was a water baby. swam before i walked, first in the warm dark sea of april. after in the sparkle and glimmer of oktober bend.

  because of my twelveness

  short-circuiting electricals and powerful

  imagination

  i sometimes believed or

  wanted to

  my mother was a mermaiden

  and i

  a child of mer then

  and now a mermaiden

  wondering if the smear

  on my sheets might have grown

  into some sparkling thing

  a soul with fins.

  but for all that, i was afraid to think of water with no end. even oceans and seas had floors and shores, could be measured.

  i was not disturbed by

  the legend of teddy english

  which might or might not be true because

  that is the nature of legends.

  or by the story

  that the rope sometimes swung

  by itself,

  to didgeridoo

  a dirge

  for a boy who died trying

  to do what no one else had,

  touch the bottom

  of the tarpit.

  teddy was

  that boy

  they made of him

  a hero

  to hide

  the shame of

  fathers and grandfathers

  teenaged when teddy fell

  like a leaf from the tree.

  old charlie’s dad was there when it happened. said teddy was bullied because he stammered. teased because his daddy’s skin was white as teddy’s was black. teddy did as they told him – to escape his misery one way or another. let the other kids fasten a potato sack filled with river stones to his back.

  ‘dad told us teddy was just a little fella,’ old charlie said, ‘too short to reach the rope, and the sack of rocks on his back was so heavy he couldn’t climb the tree. so the bastards towed the rope ashore and heaved teddy up on their shoulders so he could reach it. he twined his arms and legs around it and he clung there scared out of his wits while they pushed him. singing out to him, they was, eggin’ him on, dad said.

  ‘dive, dive, dive! like that they went. but the little feller was too scared to let go and they got sick of waitin’ and left him hangin’ there while they got stuck into the home-brew. swiggin’ it outta sauce bottles they was.

  ‘me old dad was there and he swore it was true. he was only seven or eight at the time but he seen it all with his own eyes. him and teddy was mates. dad ran all the way to town but by the time he convinced the coppers to come back with him it was too late. teddy never cried out
, dad said. from the top of the ridge they seen him drop into the water, quiet as a pin, and the water closed over him smooth as his mother’s silk nighty. dad never forgot. broke his heart it did. poor little begger. teddy weren’t no hero. the bastards just said he was so they wouldn’t feel so guilty about what they done to him.’

  papa charlie was a good storyteller. teddy’s was a hand-me-down tale. one not written with pen on paper. but i remembered it ever after. word for word it’s in my head. old charlie’s telling of it.

  teddy was never seen again, never found. there were no bones, no remains. nothing at all of him in the grave on the hillside. it was an empty memorial. only his spirit was there. i feel the cold on my arms and on the walls of my heart when i sit with him.

  20 ALICE

  down to the river

  joey hated me going anywhere near teddy’s grave. gram said the site was cursed. after i talked with teddy and the angel, bear and me walked to the fence that separated us nightingales from the rest of bridgewater. we waited there for joey.

  and when he came

  i didn’t tell him

  where i’d been or mention

  the quiet excitement

  the feeling

  building

  in me

  didn’t say anything

  to make joey mad anything

  about my wager with the god of feathered things.

  i nodded when he said,

  ‘feel like a swim?’

  ‘you and me goin’ down to the river, down to the river,’ i half hummed, half sang in my broken voice. ‘you and me goin’ down to the river to wash our sins away.’

  ‘don’t sing that bullshit,’ joey said, ‘you’ve got nothin’ to wash away.’

  he was serious too often. got mad too quick. maybe he was always that way. maybe not. he might have changed because of what happened. to me. and to all of us – because of me. sometimes i thought joey and gram were more messed up than me. our family history was a game of dominoes played with people instead of tiles.

  our daddy

  sunny jim

  toppled first,

  too much drink

  too many pills

  not enough sleep and

  a runaway road train.

  then april, our mother, went looking for something else to hold her up. left joey and me behind. we might have been okay, just the four of us: joey, gram, old charlie and me. but then i fell and old charlie grabbed the snake gun, waited under the bridge. emptied both barrels into the windscreen of the stolen ute. sent it somersaulting through the starstruck sky. he paid with everything that mattered. his family and freedom.

  and gram

  got eaten up

  from inside out

  by grief

  arthritis and

  nicotine.

  joey was the last man standing and he was only fourteen.

  i grabbed my brother’s hand and ran. tugged him away from his blues. twelveness is not all bad. at twelve you still play. under the bridge we went. under our names and under the crooked heart. i peeled off my dress, tossed it onto the bulrushes and threw myself into the river.

  21 MANNY

  The Boy Who Loved Dares

  Every week on Wednesday I went to football training early. And every week when the dancing girls came out of the hall and the footballers went in, I felt a girl watching me. She was small and neat with shining black hair. Other boys liked to look at her but I kept my eyes down. I wished that poetry girl would walk through the door. That is what I wished. But she did not come.

  Louisa James says summers are always long and hot in Bridgewater. But my first summer in that place was very hot. In the second half of March the temperatures broke all of the records. That is how hot it was. After football training one afternoon, the other boys said they were going to swim at a place they called the Tarpit. I had heard of that place before but I had not been there. I thought it was a very strange name to call a place where people went swimming. I did not really want to go with them. But because it was very hot, I said that I would.

  All of us footballers were jogging along the footpath in Kennedy Street when a person came from behind and started running beside me. I turned my head to look and saw that girl with shining black hair and she was looking back at me.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Are you going to the Tarpit?’

  ‘Yes, I am going,’ I answered her. Then I did not know what else to say. There were two boys running in front of me. One of them was our captain, Lucas Stewart. The other one was Hamish O’Leary. I stared straight ahead at Hamish O’Leary. There was black dagger tattooed between his shoulder-blades and three drops falling from its tip. I wondered why anyone would want a picture of such a thing between their shoulder-blades. A bird of paradise or an eagle would have been better. This is what i was thinking when Hamish swung around. He ran backwards and smiled at that girl who was running next to me.

  ‘Checking out my body art, eh babe?’ he said to her although I do not think she had been looking at his dagger.

  She did not answer his question but he just laughed and said, ‘One day I’ll get a tatt of your name, sweetheart. Just deciding the best place to put it. Close to me heart or lower down? Waddya reckon, babe?’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ she said carelessly.

  It was not a smart thing to say to a boy like O’Leary. I wondered if the girl knew that here was a boy who loved dares. He laughed and sprinted ahead. I looked at the girl and I saw that pieces of her hair were coming loose from her silver clips and her cheeks had become dark pink. She slowed down and I thought that she might leave us. But she did not and I stayed with her. I could not run away.

  ‘He’s scum, that O’Leary,’ she said.

  I did not answer. I wondered what she would think of me if she knew about the things that I had done.

  ‘I’m Tilda Cassidy,’ she said, ‘Lucas Stewart is my stepbrother.’

  ‘My name is Manny James.’

  ‘I know who you are,’ she said, ‘everyone does.’

  She was wrong. No one knew who I really was but I did not tell her that.

  ‘I sometimes see you after dancing,’ Tilda said. ‘You know, outside the hall. I was there that day the girl had a seizure.’

  We entered the subway under the railway tracks. It stank of piss and damp and other things that people do in dark places.

  ‘She does not come anymore,’ I said softly. I did not mean to say the words at all. I ran faster then. I hoped that girl called Tilda had not heard me. Just before we reached the other end of the subway, she reached out and grabbed my hand. Then she stopped running and held tight as though she was afraid that I would leave her. I did not want to stay in the subway and I did not want to hear what she might say. I looked at her hand and I saw that it was very small and mine was very large. I tried to meet her eyes and that is when I saw the writing on the wall behind her. It was not like the writing and pictures that I had seen on railway sheds and broken carriages. This writing was arranged in neat rows. It looked like writing I had seen before. I wanted to pull Tilda out of the way so that I could read it.

  ‘I know,’ said Tilda softly and for a short moment I did not understand what she meant. ‘It’s because my . . . the teacher thinks Alice disturbs the class. That’s kind of why I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘Alice?’

  ‘Alice Nightingale.’

  Tilda still held my hand, but I did not feel it there. My thoughts were all of that girl on the small green hill outside the scout hall. That girl I had seen by the river and on the roof. The one called Alice. Alice. It was the first time I had heard her name, the first time I had spoken it. Her words were on the wall, her name was in my ears and on my tongue. Alice. Alice Nightingale. In another time, another place, there were nightingales in my life. Small, plain, brown birds with voices you would give anything to hear. But when war came, the birds left. Bull and Louisa James had given me a new life. They gave me food and shelter, an education
and a chance to forget the past. There were some things that I did not want to forget. But now there was Alice and I wondered if I might once again hear a nightingale sing. This is what I was thinking while I was standing in the subway under the Bridgewater railway station and that girl called Tilda was holding my hand.

  ‘Manny,’ Tilda said, ‘I want you to find out where Joey and Alice live.’

  ‘Joey?’

  Tilda nodded.

  ‘Alice’s brother. The boy who took her to dancing, who was with her when—’

  ‘He is her brother?’

  ‘Yeah, what did you think?’

  I shrugged my shoulders. I could not begin to tell her all the things I had thought.

  ‘Someone’s coming,’ she said. ‘Let’s go, it might be Lucas or O’Leary.’

  Tilda let my hand go and we ran towards the exit. A man and a small boy on a green tandem bicycle rode in as we burst out into the light. There was a big orange pumpkin and a bunch of flowers in a basket on the handlebars of the bicycle and the air smelt clean and hot. That man was whistling like a bird.

  22 MANNY

  Tilda and the Tarpit

  The Tarpit was a deep pool in the river. That is all it was, a swimming hole below the picnic ground. When we arrived some of the boys were already swimming in the black water and others were swinging on a rope that was fastened to a tree beside it. Hamish O’Leary was not in the water. He had taken all his clothes off and stood with his back towards Tilda and me. I saw the dagger and the drops of blood.

  ‘You should go now,’ I said to Tilda. ‘This is not a good place for a girl to be.’

  Hamish looked over his shoulder at us. Perhaps he heard me speak. He said something to Lucas and the others and made a crude gesture. It was not something you would want your sister to see. But Lucas and his friends all laughed.

  ‘Go now,’ I said again to Tilda, afraid of what Hamish O’Leary might do next. He did not know how to behave in front of that small neat girl.

  ‘You haven’t told me if you’ll do what I asked,’ Tilda said.

  I did not need reminding.

  ‘Please, Manny, I’ve only lived here since Dad married Lucas’s mother, so I don’t know that many people here yet. Everyone seems to know my step-brother and he seems to know just about everyone else.