Sawdust (6 page)

Mum’s reaction to my telling her about Dad
– as she put it, ‘Your father would never do that!’ – told me there was something more to this secret. It beat through Mum’s chest, beneath her frail linen dress; and it told me, maybe, just maybe it was not as Dad said.

But I was caught between two hard lumps of gravel, getting love and extra special attention and being scowled at like I was dirty, which only drove the wedge further between me and Mum.

Dad could do bad things too, like threaten and beat the hell out of us kids, but when he was with me in that “secret way”, it never felt as cold as Mum.

It was warm while it lasted; it was welcome. Until he told me to go and get on with it, feed the chooks, then it became cold as Old King Frost.

The reality was you grew up fast in the world off the highway. The right side or the left, it didn’t really matter.

It was around this time, not long after I got Widget, that we were out one day on the Delaneys’ property, just near where we lived. Dad was doing the timber cutting while Mum was snigging the logs and we kids were playing with rocks somewhere in the dirt.

It was a weekend, early afternoon, and we had had our strong Vegemite-tasting Bonox soup, our slice of bread and billy tea, which was our standard lunch cooked over a small fire, when I heard an unfamiliar sound.

It was like a sharp rasping of metal, but with an echo, and I said to Jim, ‘What’s that? I can hear a funny noise. Can you hear it?’

I remember my heart beating really fast, like it instinctively sensed something wrong, like it sometimes raced when cars collided on the highway or when Dad called me to the bedroom. Only it was racing even harder now.

Jim looked at me, not hearing what I was hearing.

‘C’mon, let’s just go and have a look,’ I urged.

He looked at me, a white boyish fear in his eyes, ‘No, we can’t. You know we’re not allowed to do that. You know what Dad’ll do. Anyway, it won’t be anything.’

Yes, that was the truth, when Dad and Mum were working on the land we were not allowed anywhere near them. Especially Dad, we were not allowed to approach him until he was well and truly back in his shed. And knowing Dad, we didn’t even chance making contact with him before that.

You don’t ever want to piss Dan Gallagher off
.
The words rang in our ears like a constant siren. But in fairness, Mum and Dad were performing hard, heavy work and it was dangerous.

For our own safety, it was better we were nowhere near them – definitely nowhere near Dad’s timber-cutting or his hefty chainsaw that sent the sawdust flying off the logs like a circle of angry, humming bees. Even Mum, it was dangerous to be near, twisting her torso backwards and forwards on the tractor snigging the immense logs up to Dad.

Hearing that sound again, I pleaded: ‘C’mon, Jim, let’s just go have a look.’

My eyes were leaning down to little Sam who was doing useless wind circles with his arms while his large dirty-white nappy dangled like a duck between his knees.

Jim looked down at him too, and then at Marge just sitting there like a yellow anthill in the dirt, and knowing we had to look after the young ones, he said: ‘Do we go tell Dad first?’ His brows were flickering. It was like his mind had become stuck. That was the degree of fear.

‘No,’ I said bravely. ‘Mum’s just down at the creek. Let’s go and see for ourselves. We’ll be quick.’

In the end, Jim and I left Marge and Sam to fend for themselves, and we raced down to the vicinity of the creek where Mum was working. With stern, adult eyes, we had told the two little ones not to move from where they were or Dad would give them a good bloody belting with a switchy-stick. They just stood there, stared up at us, and understood.

As Jim and I ran closer to the creek, we could hear it more clearly, the noise I was hearing. It was like a rasping, a scratching. Eventually we were close enough to clearly hear: ‘Heeelp. Pleeeasse heeelp.’

In front of us we saw the tractor turned upside down and Mum’s plump body beneath the back of it, jammed between a huge log and the mudguard covering the wheel.

Seeing us, despite her obvious pain, she began to scream: ‘Stay back. Stay back, you two.’ I ran forward still, and she called coldly: ‘Debbie, do
not
come any closer. Don’t even come
one
step closer. Stay back!’

I remember thinking, why? Was this to do with everything else, the ice between us, the distrust? The things I should not tell anyone about? And then I saw it, the petrol spilling out onto the ground; she was protecting me. In the midst of her agony, she was shielding me and Jim from going up in a fireball with her.

‘Get your father. Go get your father.’ Her breath, like her body, sounded like it had been trapped beneath Ayers Rock.

‘Stay with Mum,’ Jim suddenly said, and a much faster runner than me, he immediately turned to go and get Dad, who was obviously back at the log stack by now, cutting the timber into rectangular slices, something known as flitching.

He was stopped by Mum’s voice, ‘No, Jim, no! Take her with you!’

So together we ran for all we were worth, but when we got to the spot where Dad was working, we suddenly halted. We looked at one another. We were both flicking our eyes with panic, our stomachs frozen. We were too scared to even call out to him.

In front of us we had premonitions of a heavy slap across the heads and then very possibly our backsides, and in our heads, even though he was still totally unaware of our presence, we imagined the deep grunt from his throat: ‘Piss off, you little bastards!’

Swallowing, Jim slowly bent down and grabbed a stone. I copied him, and then we grabbed a whole bunch of stones. From a distance, rather than call out, seeing Dad sawing away among the swirling, angry dust of bees, we started throwing the stones at him.

In front of his gangly body was a thick brown leather apron that made him look a bit like Ned Kelly or some bushranger, and we aimed the rocks at the apron, knowing they would make an echoey sound when they hit him. We also did it so that the stones would not hurt or enrage him. Whatever we did, we did not ever want to piss Dan Gallagher off.

Eventually he turned around and seeing us, called out: ‘Buuuggeeerrr oooff! Buuuggeeerrr oooff, you little buggers!’ He was waving an arm wildly in the air to tell us he meant it.

Concentrating, he went on with his sawing. Determined, we carried on with our stone throwing. Finally he stopped his sawing, tore off his leather apron, and with the sawdust settling and globules of fire spitting from his eyes, came up to us like he was going to give us a lathering.

‘Mum’s hurt! Mum’s hurt!’ we called out before he could even get near us.

‘What d’you mean?’ He glared down at us.

Breathing hard, we told him. ‘The tractor’s rolled away, onto her, and she’s stuck.’

I’ll never forget the way his face washed from brown to grey to white, seeing a fear I had never seen before flooding into it. And then he ran, his tall, lanky body raging through the khaki scrub like some sort of tall bird, an emu on stilts.

At the scene, he nervously assessed the situation with the sort of calmness I think only people who have lived on a property – or fought fires – could know, and all the time Mum kept shouting out, ‘Get the kids away! Get the kids away!’

In the end Dad ran back for a chainsaw and grabbed a sapling from somewhere or other to wedge Mum’s leg from under the huge tractor wheel. The wheel had pinned her to the ground at the ankle. He then rolled a large rock close to the tractor to use as leverage for the sapling.

Mum continued to scream at us kids to get away, but Dad kept yelling at us to do the opposite – to stay there, to sit on the very end of the sapling. He wanted some control to raise the tractor enough to give Mum the room to drag herself from under the very possibly ready-to-explode machine. I could see in Dad’s ashen face how worried he was, and she just lay there, groaning, while Jim and I enjoyed obeying Dad’s more exciting instructions.

She was sweating now, trying to heave her body, and as we sat on the end of the sapling where Dad told us to, we could hear in Mum’s alarmed voice the certainty that we were all going to end up in Kingdom Come with her.

Finally, when it seemed all was lost, and Mum might be right about Kingdom Come, Dad just managed to squeeze her out from under the wheel. He then sprinted back to where he was sawing to fetch our old truck so that he could get Mum to the Delaneys’ house and call an ambulance.

Mum, at this stage in her life, was almost as round as she was tall, and when Dad returned and parked the truck as near to her as possible, he found it was not as easy as he thought to lift her up onto the back tray. It was one of the many cycles in her life when she would mushroom from petite to a great heaving barrel – making her about five-foot all round.

In the end, Jim and I had to do what our little hands could to help lift Mum and heave her over onto the side-less tray. Once on there, apparently safely rooted to the tray, Dad drove off, leaving Mum bouncing and clutching onto whatever she could for safety. Jim and I, in the back with her, did what we could to hold onto her, keep her steady, and soothe her non-stop yelping and whooping. One thing was for sure, she was in pain.

Even then, Dad first drove to pick up the two younger children, who, true to their fear, had not moved an inch.

They climbed into the front with Dad, and off we drove again, bouncing and rattling along the dusty, gravelled track with Mum, still crying and tossing in pain. At the Delaneys, Dad called an ambulance and when it arrived he travelled with Mum to the hospital. We were told later, they treated her for a badly mangled and sprained ankle.

But while Dad was away, what happened inside the Delaney home was more important to me than anything outside it. It wasn’t long before we kids, well, definitely me, forgot about Mum at the hospital and instead concentrated on Mrs Delaney as she made us what I can only describe as heavenly Strawberry Nesquick and handed us gorgeous looking Milk Arrow biscuits. The biscuits had creamy-pink icing on them that she had made herself.

For us it was a real treat, something we never got in as grand a fashion at home, just that smell of thick strawberry milk and the creamy cherry-vanilla flavour of the biscuits. It was so warm in the Delaneys’ house, so cosy. They had two children who were adopted, a boy around Jim’s age and a girl about my age, and even I could see they were well loved.

Looking at how they lived and conducted their “family business”, I felt envy. I could not help it. I think all of us felt it. It was a house we wanted to live in, a house filled with closeness and peace, a house we never wanted to leave. The whole day’s tragedy was worth it for this moment of sweetness in the Delaney home, for the lingering warmth of it. I felt like a sugary cocoon, coated in strawberry, had covered my body.

But in the end we had to go back home. To our world of secrets and coldness and deceit. Of playing with stones in the dirt.

Something seemed to shift in Mum and Dad after the accident and in the months it took for Mum to heal.

It was around this time that we moved into our new property on Perenjora Dam Road, but not only that, it seemed for the first time in years there was some happiness in our house as Dad tossed up and tore at the soil of our new acreage so that he could plant things to make an income from.

Dan and Julie Gallagher were making something of their lives, of their new three-hundred acre stake in Australia. We were all very happy.

It was good of the Crannies to let Dad have the property at a base bargain price.
It was never too much for him to do anything for them, helping them out when they were having problems on their property and in their house, so I suppose it was only right and proper that they returned the favour to the good-humoured, helpful young man they looked upon as their son.

But the thing about the property is that that was all it was. Just the land to start with, then a short time later Dad put a small shed on it for us to live in. It still had to be built up and turned into something profitable and liveable – a place where we could grow our own vegetables, raise and kill our own cattle for meat, and cultivate the crops of “milo”, the drought-resistant grain Dad would sell as feed for cattle and sheep to make a little extra money.

There was no house – and after initially starting in one bare shed we graduated into a shed with wooden sides and a tin roof. Onto this, Dad slowly attached railway huts with fibro walls to make rooms for us kids as well as a spare room. Entering the house, we almost walked straight into Mum and Dad’s bedroom. Like in the other places, Mum and Dad had that white mosquito net over their double bed that, of a night, despite the ramshackle nature of the shed, made the two of them look like royalty.

Other kids must have thought we stank, because even though we did bathe each day, there was barely enough water to wash the dirt and grime away. There was no choice. Water was in short supply and we had to be especially frugal with what we had in those days until we were able to connect to the main pipeline.

Our shower was a small, corrugated enclosure that looked like a big drum. We yanked a cord above us to flush water from a small tank, soaped ourselves, and then pulled the cord again to rinse off.

With a bath, which eventually came later, we kids always bathed at the same time. The water was always dark and murky, and at times even Mum and Dad would get into the tub with us.

It may sound intimate and cosy and filled with exaltation, but I can never remember bath-times with Mum and Dad being a particularly happy time. It was more like sitting at the dinner table being told by Dad to eat our vegies – or else. There was something cold and earnest and disciplinarian about it. Also, the bathwater was warmed with pots of heated water from the combustion stove in the kitchen, and the bath was never really that hot or full enough to have a good wash – or play – in.

The house was never painted either and the walls and roof were never lined. As in most old Queensland houses on acreage, the wooden dining room table was part of the kitchen and stood not that far from the combustion stove. Our table was pushed up against a thick wooden beam that in its way seemed to hold the entire structure of the house together. Like Dad.

This was the property that we kids really grew up on, with one border of the property against the railway line, and our house still within a hop of the Bruce Highway.

It was at this time Dad started to gather all his old cars, trucks and junk metal bits, which resulted in our place looking more like a scrap yard than it did a happy man’s tidy “selection”.

A number of complaints – much to Dad’s annoyance and disillusionment – came from the city council to clean the mess up or at least to erect a wooden fence high enough to hide the awful mess from the road, the trains and the passing public.

Dad couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. To him everything he saved had a value and eventual use. It was only the rest of the world who considered it as “some messed up stage of never”.

As to the trains, we kids got really excited when we heard the older steam trains hooting away as they did their puffing and shunting. We could also still clearly hear the screeching of tyres and the occasional bang of car accidents on the highway.

Having a bigger property did not mean we had more money. And maybe happy was too strong a word in our situation. Because it wasn’t long after our move to Perenjora Dam Road, and the initial peace and happiness that came with it, that I really became conscious of Mum and Dad’s arguing. Maybe it was just the frequency of it, but after a while they seemed to fight all the time.

There was always this driving need to make ends meet, and no matter the situation it would spark Dad off.

‘How we gonna survive if that Davies bugger doesn’t pay his bloody bills?’ he would constantly rant at Mum as though it were her fault.

Despite the shortage of money, there always seemed to be enough to have alcohol around. Mum hardly ever drank that I can remember, the odd glass of this or that, or a mixed drink like gin and tonic, but Dad and his friends were always downing the glasses, especially rum.

Of a night, there was also always a big plastic container of cheap wine – or plonk – around the house, and Dad would regularly fill his glass from it. I don’t think the plonk helped keep the peace at home – although it has to be said, it was seldom that we saw Dad really drunk.

I remember one occasion when Dad’s Uncle Col was visiting and they both got quite drunk. Dad was going off in front of us kids that if he had a chance to go to the War he would have. Just like his dad. Just like his dad, he would have shown those “Jap mongrels” a thing or two.

He got so wound up that he got out one of his guns, attached a real bayonet to it, and started charging the “Jap mongrels” all over the lounge floor – until his long, dangly legs somehow managed to wrap around themselves and he fell over and landed on his own “mongrel” behind. Dad didn’t think it was half as funny as we kids did or even good old Uncle Col, who, that night, showed off all the gaps in his Chad Morgan mouth.

The arguments were bad and grew worse. Louder and louder. In my head they were like a cloudy mess that brooded above everything and from which every now and then dangerous lightening would strike into our bewildered chests.

Dad was a big man, and at times there were bits of froth and spit, like small flames coming from his mouth. His lips, normally thin, looked terribly narrow at these times, almost twisted. I don’t recall Dad ever punching Mum, but more and more, as the fights grew worse, he would take Mum by the shirt or nightie or whatever she was wearing and shake her until her jaws rattled and it looked like her teeth, which were already false at this stage, were going to fall out.

At other times he’d enclose his large, flaking hands around what was becoming her big, thick neck and threaten to throttle her. For us kids it was like our world was about to implode. Our hearts would thud and pound and we would look at one another with frightened eyes.

Sometimes, late at night, we would even wake up to their fighting. Or, as I grew a little older, I’d be pulled out of bed and be made to stand there as they fought. I can’t recall why I was woken like that or what their words were, but it was like those fights were often over me.

There was so much pent up rage that I wondered how the shouting would ever end – except by knockout, or death.

Often Dad would threaten to leave, and Mum would call to me on many of those occasions: ‘Debbie, Debbie, please, tell your dad not to go. I don’t want him to leave me. Get him to stay!’

She would be crying and whimpering and hardly able to breathe. She would rub at her nose in a fidgety, nervous way that always told us when she was distressed.

Why she was making recourse to me, I didn’t know. We didn’t even get on that well. If anything, I knew I was an irritant to her, like I got in her way. It was obvious, to me anyway, that she much preferred my younger sister Marge. So it was hard to see why it was always me she called on to stop Dad from leaving. I could only conclude, in my young head, it was because of what she knew, that she didn’t want anyone else to know about.

What I think she hated most about me was this inordinate attachment I had to Dad; and I think that’s why she thought it was through me she could raise the emotional charge for him to stay.

She was in effect using me. Or worse. It sometimes struck me, a little girl with her head buried in storm clouds, all these arguments were over
me
. I felt like a badly carved peg in the middle of a huge tent that could bring the entire structure down.

More often than not, as Mum stood there crying and shaking, the only thing I could feel was a dark choke in the middle of my neck; it represented the utter confusion in my head and a wish that Dad would in fact go.

At other times I just wanted to jump out of a window, but of course I never did. I probably had just sufficient sense to realise I would only break a leg or something worse, and end up bound to our quickly cracking house even more so.

During these wild nights of lightning strikes, furnace and confusion, I didn’t want to live at home. I wished I could be adopted, believed it would all make sense if these two people weren’t really my parents. But somehow the arguments, the fights, the shaking and screaming and eventual whimpering would just peter out. And then the next thing we saw was Mum and Dad hugging and being all lovey-dovey to one another.

Frightened still, we didn’t know what it was at first, but later on we would realise some of the funny noises we heard coming from the sleep-out after their arguments were in fact the soft grunts of them making love.

Making love! It was difficult to work out. It was utterly confounding. The swings from one end of the mood spectrum to the other. We were the car out of control on the famous B Grade horror roller coaster ride. I can only think there must have been a passion there, between Mum and Dad. It was just that it could go either way.

In reality we kids were tired. Tired all the time. So, so tired from doing all our chores, from looking after ourselves, and then at nights hearing their arguments into the early hours of the morning. We never knew if it was ever going to come to an end or if Dad would stick around.

We walked around exhausted at school, always ready to sleep. I suppose the truth was, I was “my father’s daughter” and at the end of those arguments he never left the house. That would be left to Mum. Years later, she would be constantly in and out. But that is a story yet to come.