Tim Winton - Cloudstreet

Oh, you won’t be bettin today, old son, you’ll be investin in success, you’ll be baskin in the glory. You religious?

Lester looked out at the brown rising of the sun. No. Not really.

Shame. They have this sayin about getting tenfold of what you give. That’s what we’re gunna slip into today. This day, cobber. You and me.

Lester looked at the little husky fellow beside him. He’d never seen him so animated. Before, around the house, he’d just been this beaten down ghost of a bloke who looked like a loser from day one, with his bighipped wife brooding over him. He was a different man here, and Lester felt wound up in some kind of new excitement as he sucked on the beer bottle and felt the stuff go cold and brassy all the way down. Yeah, it was like having a light shining on you; it suddenly felt like everything was possible and none of it mattered a damn.

By noon they were drunk, which meant Sam was lucid with luck and laughter and Lester just couldn’t tell where his feet were anymore. They’d toured the stables. Sam had done some whispering and a lot of careful listening, and they’d spent an hour outside one door solemnly observing the equine snafflings of a horse called Blackbutt. He was a big haunchy stallion with eyes like cue balls, and he frightened the hell out of Lester.

This is our boy, Sam said. At the end of the day everything goes in his name.

Come on home, old Blackbutt! Lester said.

I only believe in one thing, Les, Sam solemnly uttered. Hairy Hand of God, otherwise known as Lady Luck. Our Lady, if she’s shinin that lamp on ya, she’ll give you what you want . There’s two other things people say are worth believin in — the Labor Party and God, but they’re a bit on the iffy side for my money. The ALP and the Big Fella, well they always got what I call a tendency to try an give ya what they think ya need. And what a bloke needs most is to get what he wants most. Ya with me?

Reckon so, Lester murmured, though he wasn’t sure. It sounded like baiting the Lord to him. Maybe he didn’t go along with it anymore, but he sure as shillings couldn’t get out of believing in it. You think we’ve drunk too much?

Ya still standin?

I think so, Lester laughed. Those big boats down there’re me shoes, unless I — m wrong, and I — m higher — n them, so—

Then he was on the ground and in horseshit. The clouds were cantering by and Sam Pickles was gargling with laughter, peering down at him.

You trip me?

Nope. Ya did it all on yer own. Never ask a flyin man whether he’s flyin or not.

Will I chuck up now?

If ya feel it’s important, Les, yes I spose you’ll get round to it.

Never drunk liquor before, really.

Yer feelin chunderish?

No. Well. Praps.

Think you’d like to get up out of the horse patties, Lest?

Yes, I think so.

Lester listened to him laugh a while as he planned by what means he’d get standing again. He didn’t feel a million quid, and he couldn’t comprehend how people made a life out of this sort of thing. He could feel the roll of tenners in his coat pocket, family money it was, and he was ashamed. He felt like a thief.

But in the afternoon, and all afternoon, Lester Lamb felt like a winner. It seemed the worst he could do was back a horse that’d only come in with a place and a close call, but after midday, with food in his belly and Sam Pickles beside him, wildeyed as an anchorite, bleeding tips from every well dressed passerby, Lester couldn’t lose. His pockets were bloated with money and he felt a kind of delirium coming on towards the last race of the day when Blackbutt burst from the barrier with the rest of them and was, for a moment, swallowed up in the flailing and dirt-spraying melee of the start. At the opening of this last race, Lester’s pockets were empty. It was all or nothing. It was the real test. He was sober now and it took all his will to hand over those solid little rolls to Sam who counted them out to the bookie. Men kicked in the dust and he heard women laughing and the bookie looked at them with one eyebrow cocked, only smiling after he’d given them their tickets.

Won’t be seein youse blokes again, today.

Reckon you will, mate, said Sam.

That’s a tired horse.

That’s a winner.

You know the odds.

I’m a punter, mate, Sam said with a smile. And I’ll be back with these, he held up the tickets, and I’ll see you smilin on the other side of yer face.

So when the heads and forelegs and riders’ arms exploded onto the track in a great solid mass of desperation, Lester Lamb had his lungs full and his fists closed. The mob surged and spread by the first turn. Grass sods and whip hands thickened the air.

For a while Lester couldn’t see who was where; he couldn’t even understand the gabble of the race caller over the PA. Out on the long stretch on the far side of the track, the mob was lengthening. Beside him, Sam Pickles was smiling beneath the binoculars. Lester noticed a lone seagull lazing in some curly updraft over the track. He knew he should have been home with his family. As the lead horses came into the turn, he began to yell like a lunatic. The horses’ eyes were like stones, their legs beat the ground. He heard their tortured grunts, the bellows rush of air in and out of them. Their manes sprayed and slapped. The knees of jockeys rode high into their necks and Lester heard the little shouts of riders goading one another. Three horses shouldered their way into the open and reached out with their great long shining bodies, their heads down ploughing wind, straining forward until the sound and heave of them infected the people at the post with a crazy, dancing abandon. Lester laughed and screamed and felt the crowd beating at his sides, and as the horses passed with a sound like a back alley beating, he heard the reedy cackle of Sam Pickles and little else. As the stragglers stumped past the post, the crowd was already sighing and it felt to Lester Lamb like the last finishing moments with a woman where heat suddenly turned to sweat and power became fatigue. It was like sex, alright, and he was thrilled and ashamed and he couldn’t have stopped laughing for all the love in heaven.

Blackbutt! the man with the PA yelled. It’s Blackbutt, by crikey!

Quick stands in the dusk and stacks pine crates on the verandah. He’s forgotten all about Wogga McBride’s funeral by now and what he’s wondering about now is where his old man is. It wasn’t eight o’clock this morning when his mother came roiling and spoiling upstairs to get him out of bed with the persuasive front edge of her boot. She had him yelping and hollering and on the banisters, laughing with fright and relief before he was even awake.

It’s not your fault you’ll grow into a man, Quick Lamb, she was saying all the way down, but it’s not mine either! Pull an oar or get off the boat!

Fish seemed delirious with joy at breakfast. The moment he saw Quick slide cowering into the kitchen, Fish set an empty bowl going on the table so it roared and rattled, rose and fell, like it was laughing at him.

And so here he is, pulling oar, even now it’s nearly dark and the old man still hasn’t turned up. Somewhere upstairs Fish is singing and the girls are talking low amongst themselves. Back in the kitchen, the old girl is thrashing a few shirts, drowning them in Velvet suds, wringing their necks and beating their headless bodies on the table, singing Throw out the Lifeline’ in the sweetest voice. The whole place is like a bomb ready to go off.

Rose pushed through the grey and khaki trouser legs of all those sour, stinking boozers in the public bar who shouted through their noses and made wings of their elbows and holes of their mouths, and she found the door and shoved against it.