Limestone Man (12 page)

The Pistol Star was discovered only a few years ago, she said. It might be the biggest star in the universe. At least in the Milky Way. And it's the biggest star until they find an even bigger star.

Maybe, she said, it's two hundred times larger than our sun. Which means it's on the very edge of existence.

Again, Parry had to ask her what she meant. And how she knew such things.

I go to the library and read
Astronomy Today
, laughed Lulu. It's no secret. So many things they're discovering now. Really.

And if the Pistol Star was any bigger, she said, it would … offend the natural laws. If it was bigger, then its gravity wouldn't …
work
. That means it would simply explode. Size counts. As far as stars are concerned.

And yes, Lulu said, I think about the Pistol Star before I go to sleep. Does that sound strange? Who cares? Just imagine its fiery surface. You know, it releases millions of times more energy than our sun.

Astronomy Today
? smiled Parry.

Don't mock. Pick it up, schoolteacher. And you know what I think? The girl grinned at Parry. She was missing a tooth. And he loved her for it.

What's great about people is I'll never see the Pistol Star. Never travel to the Pistol Star. Never go close to the Pistol Star. But I can …
imagine it.
I can imagine the Pistol Star like a cool blue eye in the universe. An acid lake. A lakebed of cobalt ash and toxic lavender. The Pistol Star just some old tarp with meths
-
coloured rainwater in a corner. And it's …
comforting
. When I'm in my bed, or even outside under a gum, my mind catches fire.

Parry thought about Lulu's bed in
Hey Bulldog
. Once she'd moved in properly she had made do with a corner chair covered with one of his coats. Sometimes she even slept in a tea chest in the shop, the records piled on the floor. The child had a genius for sleeping. All she needed was to curl up and she'd be snoring, wet breaths and low animal grunts.

Often there would be other people kipping in the shop. Writers and musicians usually, sleeping off a session. Probably he preferred the musos. Less self
-
absorbed. He remembered a white
-
haired poet wandering through at dawn, brandishing the shop's enamel quart
-
sized tea mug. In the other hand she clutched a knitted volume of haiku. Otherwise she was naked.

The whole building was primitive. There was no shower, so everyone bathed in the sink. The dunny was out back, in traditional style.

Remember what astronomers say, Lulu had continued. When the lights go out then the lights come on. I close my eyes and I can see what nobody else has seen. And never will imagine.

Like the blues of icebergs and the blue of wolf eyes. Are wolf eyes blue? They should be. Speedwell blue, the blue of those flowers that trail from the eyelets of an old man's boots. As he crosses the garden for the last time. That's your story, teacher! Remember telling me?

Parry hugged himself in the mist. Lulu might have been standing in front of him. The child was suddenly real again.

A blue variable, they call that type of star, he heard her say. The Pistol Star, in the Pistol Nebula. So big, some people think it might be the centre of all things. There are all sorts of websites they say, celebrating that star. But other people, other clever people, know it's only a raindrop in the monsoon.

So there I am, said Lulu, balancing on the edge of sleep. In another corner of the universe, a lonely corner too. And I'm comforted by the blue deserts of an impossible world.

See, I'm lying there, listening to the solar wind from the Pistol Star. And all the other stars in that part of the sky. The dark stars, the pulsars. And it's stranger than strange. But still comforting.

How do you know these …
words
? asked Parry.

Lulu picked out a postcard and held it up. It was an image of the River Murray at Goolwa, with one of the old
-
time paddle steamers.

That star created a real fuss, she laughed, when the telescope people first discovered it. Like, it was the biggest object in the universe. And located where it was, in the centre of our own galaxy, people started to wonder.

You know what, schoolteacher? she asked with her gap
-
toothed smile, examining another card. Then rejecting it.

One day they'll name a planet after me. Or surely a star. But as there are billions of stars, that might apply to all of us. There'll even be a Parry star one day. Certain to be. So, a star for everyone. It's my new campaign. It's what we deserve. You'll see.

NINE

I

Coughing? said Jack Parry. That's the sulphur. That's the sulphur penetrating your mask.

I don't wear a mask, said Richard Parry.

Hear that, Mam? said Jack Parry. Hear that? No masks. Typical.

No one wears a mask, Dad. The very idea seemed ridiculous to the boy.

No. They don't care who they murder. Want to know why? Because there's always somebody willing to take their place. To fill the dead man's shoes.

So Jack Parry had told his son everything he knew about sulphur. When Parry thought about it now, years later, it wasn't his father's words he heard. The words were his own. But it was Jack Parry's voice that pronounced them.

You'll come home, said Jack Parry, and straightaway you'll need a bath. Your mother will say supper's ready, yellow cheese roasted on the coal fire. But you'll lock the bathroom door and pull the bolt. In your teenage shame.

You'll put the hot tap on full and the cold tap on full. You do this because your skin smells of brimstone. Then you'll lie in your own yellow pondwater, a scummy ring around the enamel, rubbing yourself with a loaf of black pumice.

You'll lick your own armpits and suck your own crotch. If you can reach that far. You'll taste your own belly fluff. And you'll realise you stink. You stink like fartgas. Because this is poison I'm talking about. Sulphur is yellow. Sulphur is green
-
yellow poison. It's a roman candle, yellow as a sandhills moon. Sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide and all the other sulphurs are invisible gases. But for you they should be the yellowest, the greeny
-
yellowest gases you can imagine.

So listen to me. Listen to Jack Parry for once. Listen to your fat old father who likes his yellow piecrust a little bit too much and the yellow jelly in that piecrust a little bit more.

Now, I don't know everything but this I do know. Sulphur will paint a coat of yellow distemper over you. From the inside. Sulphur will anoint your liver and infiltrate your dirtbox. Sulphur will foam in your spleen and overwhelm your tubes. From today, sulphur's already yellowing your blood. Sulphur's yellowing the cells of your lungs.

Yes, that's sulphur. A green
-
yellow mist like a fenland vapour. The yellow heart of the rotten tree. That'll be your breath. That's why you're coughing. Coughing up the fool's gold. That's why you'll be coughing the rest of your life. Clearing your throat through a volcanic winter. Yes, that's sulphur. A fret off the marsh. A fume, a fug, a fog. A veil on the bog. Green flowerwater in a graveside vase. A London peasouper. Fried noodles with yellow beanskins. Chrysanthemums killed in the frost. It's roses require sulphur, my son, not children.

Yes, with time, sulphur will rot your hair. Shakespeare never said sulphur is jealousy's colour, but it might be. Like sulphur is the ambergris of envy. How d'you like that for poetry, kiddo? Sulphur will tie its chokechain tighter and the tighter it pulls the louder you will cough. Hacking like a silicotic miner. And surely it will strangle you.

So when you smell its addled eggs up your arse and between your toes and under your fingernails, get used to it. Because sulphur will be there forever. Then you will smell sulphur in your sweat and realise it's already too late. The pollen of dead flowers. In the yellow rain. The yellow rain falling on the asbestos roof of a ruined shithouse. Yes, that's sulphur. Smelling of money. Of banknotes that have been used over and over again. Which is what happens to money. Eventually it stinks.

Ever really sniffed at money? Properly breathed in the money perfume? There will be blood on the money and vomit on the money and shit on the money.

So, my son, read your books. Read all your books because your life might depend on those books. But if you still insist on working in that shed, then wear your mask.

II

Sometimes Parry was delegated to help out with digging and weeding. He didn't mind. The allotment comprised sandy soil, close to the dunes. It was light and well
-
drained limestone. Not arduous work.

What he enjoyed most was gathering produce. Especially the raspberry
-
picking duties. These were autumn raspberries and fruited in September.

The best
-
ever season Parry recalled was when kidney beans, French beans, and a troupe of sunflowers that had been sown beside the raspberries, appeared together.

That year, crops proved prodigious. There were courgettes, striped like jesters, and purple cobs with pantomime wigs. Every morning they found a glut of raspberries. Their gouts clung to the canes.

No eating, said his mother, noting the raspberry juice on Parry's school shirt. We're freezing these.

But as Jack Parry also had his mouth full, warnings could be ignored.

Greedy, Dora Parry shouted. Greedy men.

Parry remembered the morning light, burnished and metallic. But an iron colour had entered the bean leaves, although there remained plenty of petals.

The beans the Parrys favoured were called ‘Cherokee', after the ‘trail of tears'. Legend claimed these had saved the Cherokee nation from starvation.

The trail of tears furnished his father with predictable jokes.

I suppose it's down to the trail of tears this morning, he'd say. Any chance of a day off?

Or: back on the tearful trail tonight, I suppose. No wonder those Cherokees died out.

They didn't die out, Richard Parry would correct him. They went to Oklahoma.

Wish I could go to Oklahoma then, said Jack Parry. It's a great musical.

This was the garden at its best. But Parry enjoyed the winter too. Not that he had visited often in the cold. But he could recall one morning with his mother, a screed of frost over the limestone soil. And he had peered into a water barrel as his father always did. No bees, no green crickets. But gradually, in the depth of the plastic, he had discovered the embryo of ice that pulsed there. Like something mechanical. An engine's oily alternator. A battery awaiting recharge.

The school term was a month old but still the weather didn't break. Dora Parry was filling a colander with raspberries, while Jack Parry held a bus conductor's cashbag to collect the cherokees. It proved too small.

Take a shopping bag, for goodness sake, his wife had urged.

But as ever his father seemed less interested in picking than in counting the bees that clung to sunflower faces. Or rescuing bees from the water butts. Or pricking out sunflower seeds from their honeycombs.

This grove had already been called ‘Sunflower Street' by Jack Parry. The son marvelled at the size of the blooms. He recalled transplanting self
-
seeded sunflowers in May and not giving them a thought.

Those stems had promised little. Yet many of the heads were now monstrous. As cumbersome as nylon backpacks, Parry considered, pleased with the image. Other sunflowers had branched, so that twenty, even fifty faces jostled above a single stalk.

Parry liked the corner of the allotment best where the beans had climbed over the sunflowers and canes. Three crops, tangled together. Poor husbandry, he imagined. But the results were spectacular. He could stand in the same position and pick three different fruits.

Blame your father, who else? Dora Parry had complained. I wish he was a better salesman than a gardener. But he's hopeless at both.

Eccentric might be a fairer description, said Jack Parry, peering up at a sunflower face. Now, eccentric I could bear. In fact, eccentric might be considered a compliment. I wouldn't mind being known as eccentric. Jack Parry the celebrated eccentric. Implies depth, does eccentricity.

Implies a lot of things, said his wife.

Implies intelligence, does eccentricity.

A sunflower's more intelligent than some, said Dora Parry.

Freezer's full, said Parry. Next
-
door freezer's full too. And that's the only other freezer in the street.

Not cold enough, they say next door, muttered Dora. And who sold it to them do you think?

Can you make raspberry
-
ripple ice cream? Parry asked his mother to head her off.