Arthur Upfield - Winds of Evil

“Have you been living hereabouts for long, Mr. Littlejohn?” Bony asked soothingly.

“When Ifust come to Carie it wasn’tyestiddy,” came the emphatic answer.

By now the evening was well advanced, and after the heat of the day the air was cool and languorous. The old man, who was dressed in the usual stockman’s regalia of elastic-sided boots, skin-tight moleskins and a “weskit” over a cotton shirt, spat with accuracy at the first of the yellow-and-black night ants, and then decided to proceed.

“When Ifust come to Carie, there was whips of cotton-bush and wild spinach and wild carrots and things growing all over the country. Now, the country is turning into a desert. You seenthemsandhills away over the Common to the east? Well, theywasn’t there forty years back. What the rabbits have done to Australiaain’tnothink to what the sand isgonna do.”

“I understand that Carie was much bigger in those far-off days,” led the crafty Bony, who was like a wiseriverman, sometimes allowing the current to take charge of the boat, sometimes steering it.

“It wasn’t what you’d think,” retorted Grandfer with a hint of asperity pardonable in one of his undoubted age.“ ’Course, the post office wasn’t up then. Ituster be at the store when the present man’s father ran it. Nor was the hall and the court house up in them days, but there was three pubs, more houses, more people and a hell of a lot more money. The hotel across the way was one-storied, and,” the old man chuckled, “one-eyed, too. It waskep ’ by a feller called Beaky Evans. When a man asked him, ‘How’s the galah’s perch today, Beaky?’ heuster get wild and chuck out all his customers and shut up the pub for a coupler hours or so.”

Bony gave an encouraging laugh.

“When was the hotel rebuilt?” he asked carelessly.

“Back in nineteen-o-eight. Watkins, who had the place, pulled it to bits and did the rebuilding, but he didn’t dono good. He sold out to Ma Nelson for four thousand pounds. He wasn’t meant to make money-like Ma Nelson.”

“She appears to be a born business woman, Mr. Littlejohn,” Bony said, knowing that the conversation would be repeated to the leader of Carie, but no longer disturbed by the probability.

“Ah, she’s all that, young feller,” agreed Grandfer. “She’s always had her head screwed on right, but even she didn’t dono good till after poor John Nelson shuffled off.”

“Drank hard, didn’t he?”

Grandfer’s clean-shaven chin sank to rest on the backs of his palsied hands, which, in turn, rested on the root handle of his stout mulga stick.

“John Nelson didn’t drink like you or me,” he said slowly, and Bony knew that he was no longer in the present. “He never hadnoswaller as I could see. Ifust knew him when he was working on Wirragatta, when he was a smart lad and a terrible fine horseman and a mighty good-looking chap. But the drink got him early, and it got him bad. He pulled up a bit when he was a-courting of Ma Nelson. She was cooking at the pub. Then he got the job of change-groom to Cobb and Co. in this here town and married her.

“Well, well! Ma was as pretty as pretty then, and poor John was as handsome as the devil himself. Any other man would have worked the flesh off his hands for a woman like that-but no, he went on the booze a week after they were married. He got locked up time and again, and old man Borradaleuster threaten and roar at him from the bench something terrible. And when John wascoolin ’ off in jail Mauster ride out for the change horses for the coach, and me and the othersuster hitch ’emin for her.”

“Plucky!”

“She was that, Joe Fisher. And so she is to this day. We knew something of what sheuster put up with, but not all of it. We could hear poor John on his way home-they lived at the far end of the town-and he would be roaring drunk. Sometimes someone would go out and stop him and persuade him to come in and camp the night. Itmusta been a happy day for Ma when he shuffled off.”

“That was in 1914, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was in 1914, in December-the year the war broke out.”

“What did he die of?”

“Delirium tremens, of course. He could die ofnothink else.”

“Was he ill long?”

“Well, yes, he was,” replied the old man. “He had a terrible strongconstitooshon, did poor John Nelson, and he took a lot of killing. You see, Ma Nelson come into some money-her aunt left her a tidy sum-and she bought the hotel in 1910. From then on John Nelson got going properly. Nothink could stop him. Between bouts of boozing he got bouts of praying, holding meetings in the bar parlour. There was no more keeping him off the praying than there was off the drink.

“Well, it got worse andworser, and the beginning of the end come when poor John walked round and round the pub all one afternoon and night, wearing a track so plain that it lasted eight months. That side fence joining the hotel to the postmaster’s house wasn’t up then, so John had a fair go.

“A coupler daysafter that he fell down in a kind of fit. The policeman-not Lee, but a man called Halliday-the yardman and Ma Nelson carried him up to bed and sent for old Doc Tigue. Then there was Ma and the yardman and the policeman all trying to hold poor John downso’s Tigue could quieten him withmorphia or something. Dogger Smith, he come on the scene and quietened John with a punch. Then old Tigue got to work, and John slept a bit. John always was a bitlooney, but that time he was a raging madman. And then he busted a blood vessel one evening, and that was his finish.”

“Horrible!” murmured Bony. “Were you with him when he died?”

“No. Old man Borradale was short of a horse-boy and I was on that job formore’n five years. You see, I was getting past real work even in those days, and the job was easy. The missus, rest her soul, and me had this very house behind us, so when me and the boss wasn’t out on the run I could get home at nights.”

Memory silenced Grandfer Littlejohn for several moments, and Bony wisely waited. Then:

“We’regonna have another wind-storm be the look of that sky tonight,” predicted the old man. “It bin a rare year for wind-storms, this has. Not as bad as seventy-one though.”

Bony recalled the conversation he had had with Dr. Mulray, when he had complained about the shortness of life, and now he glimpsed the comfort old age drew from the store of memory. Grandfer’s body was old, but his mind was young. How strange it is that while the mind remains healthy it seldom grows old and feeble like the body. Bony saw himself fifty years hence. God willing, what a store of memories he would possess then!

Softly he said, “I wonder! I wonder if John Nelson would have pulled up if his wife had had children.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Grandfer as though this was a question he had often debated. “You know, she did have one baby. It was early in 1910. I remember quite well when it was born, because it was in the middle of the worst sand-storm I ever seen. Fortunately for Ma Nelson, poor John went on the booze something terrible two days before the littleun come along and the policeman locked him up for Ma’s good. Old man Borradale-he was the sitting Justice, as his son is today-he gets the policeman to charge John with assault and battery and resisting arrest, and obscene language, so’s he can give fourteen days without the option. As it happened, John was just plain drunk-so drunk that he couldn’t resist and assault no one, and he couldn’t swear, because he couldn’t speak. Every one knew it and every one was glad he got the fourteen days.

“That giveMa Nelson a bit of peace and quiet. My wife, rest her soul, tended her, and when the baby was born the father was stone sober and quite safely out of the way. When he was told about the baby, he swore off the drink and implored the policeman to let him outso’s he could see his son and heir. But the policeman, he says, ‘No, Nelson. Youstays where you are till your fourteen days is up. When welets you out your wife will be strong enough to take care of herself and the baby.’