Owen Marshall Selected Stories Read online

  The light began to change, but the evening was still hot, with no promise of rain. Homecoming magpies began their harsh calls in the trees around us, and a Land-Rover came through, travelling towards Culland’s, rolling out dust clouds that we could barely see, but that had their own flinty taste. Wayne had stopped crying, and dug with a twig in the sand and leaves. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. He gave a rather shy smile. ‘Do you think everyone gets the feeling some time or other that they’ve passed themselves going the other way?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was all we had to say about it, and it was enough. It doesn’t always help to tease things out, to dissect our experiences like school days’ frogs. As we stood up to go the magpies began a great racket, and some flew off in protest, the wingbeats whistling in the still air. ‘I’ve ruined these tweeds of mine,’ said Wayne. As well as the oil stain he’d torn them along the upper seams, where the sweat had made them grip as he ran.

  ‘Put them down to experience,’ I said as we went back to the car, and he smiled again at that. He hoped his wife would understand, he said.

  The Master of Big Jingles

  I know what it’s called now, it’s called fennel. Knowing the name doesn’t make it what it was, however. I see it rarely now. It peers occasionally from the neglected and passing sections, like the face of a small man over the shoulders of others in a crowd. Its fronds are the pale green of hollow glass, and it has a look of pinched resignation, as if it can foresee the evolutionary course before it.

  When Creamy Myers and I were young, it was in its prime. There were forests of it pressing in on the town, and it reared up confidently in waxy profusion. The rough strip below the bridge was its heartland, and there Creamy and I had our hut. We could reach it by tunnel tracks from the riverbank, and the fence. We built it in the summer that ended our Standard Four year, and in the summer after that we renewed it in our friendship. The year we finished primary school we restored it again. We cut out the tunnel tracks as usual, so narrow that the top foliage showed no tell-tale gap, and even Rainbow Johnston wouldn’t find them. We evicted the hedgehog and its loosely balled nest from the hut, and spread new sacks to mark our occupation. In a biscuit tin we kept the important things, wax-heads, shanghais, tobacco, fishing lines and the tin of cows’ teat ointment I found on the bridge.

  Fennel is the great home of snails: it is their paradise, nirvana and happy hunting ground. The matchless abundance of the snails was a fascination to us, and a symbol of the place itself. The snails were the scarabs of our own hieroglyphic society, and the snail hunt was the most satisfying of our rituals. From the length, breadth and depth of the river terrace we took them. From time to time one of us would return, and lift his shirt from his trousers, to tumble the catch into the biscuit tin. When we had a massed heap of them, perhaps a hundred and fifty or more, we would sit in the hut and anoint them. We used the cows’ teat vaseline, rubbing it on the shells to darken the pattern and make them shine. We would lie the snails in handfuls among the fennel, just off the sacks, and in the penumbral green light. As we watched the snails would begin their ceremonial dispersal: large and small, sly and bold, all with the patterns of their shells waxed and gleaming. Scores of snails, each with its own set angle of direction. The gradual, myriad intersection of the planes of their escape through the fennel was like an abacus of three dimensions.

  The friendship of Creamy and myself was the smallest and strongest of several circles. We often played with Arty and Lloyd, and there were other faces that we expected at other times. If we went swimming at the town baths, for instance, we joined up with the Rosenberg twins. They didn’t seem to do much else but swim. But sometimes when Creamy and I were sick of what the others were doing, or after school when we’d rather be alone, then we’d make our signal, just a movement of the head, that meant we’d meet later at the hut. The hut was something apart from the rest of the world. In its life were only Creamy and me. As long as we agreed, our word was law; and no conventions but our own were followed.

  I remember just when Creamy told me about going to Technical. We’d had a snail hunt, and were sitting by the river to wash. Creamy had his shirt off, and the snail tracks glistened on his chest. The linear droppings, inoffensively small, clung there too. ‘Dad told me I’m not going to Boys’ High after all,’ he said. ‘He’s sending me to Tech.’ Creamy’s voice was doubtful, as if he wasn’t sure whether it marked an important decision or not.

  ‘But I thought we were all going to High?’

  Creamy leant into the shingle of the river. He supported himself on his arms, and lifted first one hand, then the other to wash his chest. ‘Dad said if I’m going into the garage with him, I need the Tech courses. He doesn’t go much on languages and stuff.’ Creamy had a broad, almost oriental face, and his upper lip was unusually full. It sat slightly over the bottom lip, and gave his face an expression of thoughtful drollery.

  ‘I suppose after school we’ll be able to do things together just the same. Maybe it’s just like being in different classes at the same school.’ I had a premonition, though, that Creamy’s father had done something which would harm us.

  ‘I did try to get Dad to change his mind,’ said Creamy. He said it almost as if he wanted it recorded, lest some time in the future he might be blamed for not putting up more of a fight. Creamy flexed his arms, and recoiled out of the water with easy grace. He pulled the back of his trousers down, and showed the marks of a hiding. ‘I did try,’ said Creamy, and his upper lip quirked a little at the understatement.

  ‘I don’t see why it should make that much difference.’ I could say that because it was weeks away in any case. When you are thirteen, nothing that is weeks away can be taken seriously. Creamy and I controlled time in those days. We could spin out one summer’s day for an eternity of experience.

  ‘Maybe I’ll play against you in football,’ said Creamy speculatively.

  ‘I’ll cut you down if you do.’ We smiled, and Creamy skipped stones across the surface of the river with a flick of his wrist. The sun dried the water from us, and snapped the broom pods like an ambush on the other side of the river. Already I was surprised at my innocence in thinking that all my friends must go like myself to the High School.

  Time made no headway against us that summer, not while we were together. But then my family went on holiday to the Queen Charlotte Sounds, and I returned to find the world moved on. The new term was before us, and Creamy was indeed going to the Tech, and I to the High.

  I didn’t see Creamy after school during the first week, and on Saturday when we went after lizards on the slopes behind the reservoir, we didn’t wear uniform. But the next Tuesday we met at the hut, and the nature of our division was apparent. Although I should have expected it, Creamy’s Tech uniform was a blow. His grey trousers to my navy blue, his banded socks and cap, distinct in a separate allegiance. Creamy was never deceived by outward appearance. A smile spread out under his full upper lip, and creased his tanned face. ‘I see you’ve lost your knob, too,’ he said, and lightly touched the top of his cap.

  ‘The fourth formers tore them off. Initiation,’ I said.

  ‘Same with us.’ It was typical of Creamy that he should notice first about our uniforms a subtlety we had in common, whereas I couldn’t help seeing us from the outside. Even my friendship with Creamy hadn’t given me a totally personal view. Creamy didn’t mention the uniforms again. We left our caps with our shoes and socks in the hut, and waded in the river to catch crayfish. As long as we maintained the old life separate from the new, then both could exist. It was like those studies I did at High School, about the primitive societies existing for hundreds of years, and then collapsing when the white man came. Creamy and I couldn’t change much in the old way, because our ideas came from different sources that year. Sooner or later the white man would come; the white man comes one way or another to all the pagan societies of our youth.

  I never sat down to think it out but, if I had, it m
ust have seemed that as Creamy and I had held our friendship through the end of that summer, and the first term at our new schools, then there was no reason why we shouldn’t go on. That wasn’t the way of it, however. In the winter months I didn’t see much of Creamy. The days were short, and the rugby practices we went to almost always came on different nights. I made new friends too, like big Matthew and Ken Marsden. When I was with Creamy, I sometimes found myself assuming that he knew all about High, and then halfway through some story I’d realise that it must have been meaningless to him. Creamy never showed any impatience. Creamy had a natural and attractive courtesy. He would sit there smiling, his expanding lip faintly frog-like, and say, ‘He sounds a real hard case,’ or, ‘I wish I’d seen that.’ Unless I asked him, he never said much about Tech. The odd thing perhaps about sport, or the time he saw Rainbow Johnston smash the windows in the gym. Rainbow was the baron of all our childhood fiefdoms. He had a job at the pie cart in the evenings, and made more money by stealing milk coupons. Birds stopped singing when Rainbow came past. He knew how to twist an arm till the tears came, did Rainbow; and it was said he made little kids put their hands in his trousers.

  In the third term, when it became summer again, we began going back to the river. Not just Creamy and me anymore, though, for I’d grown accustomed to spending my time with Matthew and Ken. The first time I took them to the hut, Arty was with us too. Arty knew Creamy from primary school, but Matthew and Ken didn’t. I could see them measuring themselves against Creamy as the afternoon went on. Creamy didn’t seem to mind. Creamy liked a challenge in his own unassuming way. Creamy could stand measurement beside anyone I knew.

  The mentality of youth is able to unhook its jaws like a snake, and swallow whole antelopes of experience. Youth is a time for excess: for breaking through the ice to swim, for heaping up a mountain of anointed snails from the fennel, for sledging until your hands are bleeding from the ropes, and sunstroke smites you down. Youth is a time for crazes: hula-hoops and underwater goggles, bubble gum and three-D cardboard viewers.

  But that year it was knucklebones. The year when Creamy and my new High School friends met, it was knucklebones. Knucklebones had risen obscurely, like an Asian plague, and swept as an epidemic through our world — brief and spectacular. Creamy excelled at knucklebones, of course: Creamy was insolently good at knucklebones. Like chickens about a hen, the knucklebones grouped and disbanded, came and went around Creamy’s hand. Creamy had begun with plastic knucklebones. The soft drink colours of the pieces would rise and fall, collect and separate, at Creamy’s behest. He won an aluminium set in the Bible class competition. The aluminium ones were heavier and didn’t ricochet. Creamy was even better with the aluminium ones. Cutting cabbages, camels, swatting flies, clicks, little jingles, through the arch, goliath, horses in the stable; Creamy mastered them all.

  Creamy’s expression didn’t change when Ken challenged him to knucklebones. He seemed interested in my new friends. His fair hair hung over his forehead, and his complex face was squinting in the sun. Ken was good at knucklebones, as good as me, but he wouldn’t beat Creamy, I knew. Creamy was a golden boy, and it’s useless to envy those the gods have blessed. Ken and he went right through knucklebones twice without any faults. ‘What do you think is the hardest of all?’ said Creamy. Ken considered. He pushed the knucklebones about the ground with his finger as he thought.

  ‘I reckon big jingles,’ he said.

  ‘Ten big jingles on the go,’ said Creamy. ‘I challenge you to ten big jingles without a fault.’

  ‘You go first then,’ said Arty. ‘You go first and if you make a mistake then Ken wins.’

  ‘All right,’ said Creamy. The injustice of it didn’t seem to worry him. He started out as smoothly as ever, allowing no time for tension to gather. His rhythm didn’t vary, and his broad face was relaxed.

  ‘That’s good going,’ said Matthew when Creamy had finished, and Ken had failed to match him.

  ‘They’re small though, these aluminium ones.’ Arty seemed jealous of the praise. ‘Smaller than real or plastic knucklebones. It’s a big advantage to have them smaller in big jingles.’

  ‘Stiff,’ said Creamy.

  Later in the afternoon we found ourselves fooling about by the bridge. Along the underside of the bridge was a pipe which Creamy and I sometimes crossed to prove we could do it. ‘Creamy and I often climb across that,’ I told the others. They looked at it in silence.

  ‘Shall we do it now?’ said Matthew at last. He thought he was strong enough to try anything.

  There’s no dichotomy of body and spirit when you’re young. Adults see the body as an enemy, or a vehicle to be apprehensively maintained. There’s just you, when you’re young; flesh and spirit are indivisible. For Creamy and I then, for all of us in youth, any failure in body was a failure of the spirit too. Creamy went first. As always when he was concentrating, his lunar upper lip seemed more obvious, the humorous expression of his face more pronounced, as though he were awaiting the punch line of some unfolding joke. He leant out, and took hold of the pipe. He moved his grip about, as a gymnast does to let his hands know the nature of the task, then he swung under the pipe, and began hand over hand to work his way to the central bridge support. He used his legs as a pendulum, so that the weight of his body was transferred easily from one hand to the other as he moved. When he reached the centre support Creamy rested in the crook of its timbers, and looked down to the river.

  Then he carried on, hanging and swaying below the pipe, becoming smaller in silhouette against the far bank as he went.

  ‘Seems easy enough,’ said Arty.

  ‘You go next then,’ said Ken.

  Arty measured the drop between Creamy’s swaying figure and the river beneath. ‘I would,’ he said. ‘I would, but I’ve got this chest congestion. I see the doctor about it.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Matthew could only think about one thing at a time, and as he was busy watching Creamy he found himself next in line for the pipe. The rest of us, by slight manoeuvrings, had got behind him. ‘It’s me then,’ said Matthew. He took a grip and his body flopped down beneath the pipe, and stopped with a jerk. His upstretched arms were pulled well clear of his jersey and his hands were clamped on to the pipe. The crossing was an exercise in sheer strength for Matthew. He pulled himself along clumsily and his legs hung down like fenceposts below his thick body. I went next. I didn’t want Arty in front of me in case he froze, and I couldn’t get past. The few feet just before the central support were the worst, for if I looked down there I could see the concrete base of the timber supports on which I’d fall, instead of into the water. I used to count the number of swings I made just there; one, two, three, four, until I was able to put my feet on the wooden supports. The second half wasn’t so bad, because at the end, if you were tired, you could drop off on to the grassy bank which rose up towards the underside of the bridge.

  Arty and Ken didn’t go over at all. Arty pretended he’d seen a big trout in the hole beneath the bridge, and he and Ken went down and poked under the bank with a stick. When we came back over the bridge, we couldn’t see any big trout in the hole. ‘Want to go over the pipe again?’ said Creamy mildly.

  ‘That’s hard work, that.’ Matthew was always honest.

  ‘Good, though,’ said Creamy.

  As we scuffed about in the shingle at the end of the bridge, a horse and rider came past. The horse paused and, with flaunting tail, deposited vast rolls of waste. Matthew watched the horse with awe. ‘I bet horses are the biggest shitters around,’ he said.

  ‘No, in proportion guinea pigs are far greater shitters,’ said Creamy.

  ‘Guinea pigs?’

  ‘Yeah, in proportion they are.’

  ‘Rabbits are good shitters,’ said Arty.

  ‘I don’t see how anything could beat horses and elephants,’ said Ken. As an ally he weakened Matthew’s argument. The rest of us recognised the subtlety of Creamy’s reasoning.

 
‘Guineas are by far the best shitters in proportion.’ Creamy knew he was right. ‘Imagine a guinea pig as big as a horse. Now there would be a shitter.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Matthew in wonder, and capitulation.

  We had a swim, and threw fennel spears at each other during the rest of the afternoon. We forgot about the time, and Ken’s sister came looking for him. She left her bike by the road, and came down to the fence, calling out for Ken. ‘You’ve got to come home,’ she said. Her breasts caused furrows across the material of her blouse.

  ‘Have you been eating too much, or something,’ said Arty. We had a good laugh at that witticism. ‘Turning into a moo-vie star,’ continued Arty, pleased with his reception. He tucked his thumbs into his shirt, and paraded before her and us.

  ‘Oh, get lost,’ she said. She began to go back up the bank towards the road. ‘You’d better come, Ken. You know what’ll happen,’ she said.

  ‘Hubba hubba, ding ding, look at the tits on that thing,’ we sang.

  ‘Watch out for Rainbow Johnston,’ I called out.

  ‘Hey, Rainbow, here she is.’

  ‘Quick, Rainbow.’

  For the first time Ken’s sister seemed flustered. She looked back along the riverbank, and then hurried on to her bike. I don’t know why I called out about Rainbow. Perhaps, in looking at her smooth legs and breasts, I found some part of Rainbow in myself, some desire to reach out and pinch her, or twist her arm, or worse.

  Ken stayed a little longer, trying to show he wasn’t afraid of being late, but we soon all began straggling back down the road. Creamy and I walked the last part together. ‘I’m looking forward to the full summer,’ I said. Creamy agreed. He played with his knucklebones, and whistled as he walked, his upper lip funnelling out and creating a very clear, penetrating whistle. His shoes, worn by water and grass during the afternoon, were almost white at the toes. Creamy stopped whistling, and asked me if Ken and Matthew were the two I liked best at High School. I told him I quite liked them.