Tim Winton - Cloudstreet

Boils! he called in disgust, and tossed the florin. Tails it was. Well, it matched. He decided to be satisfied.

A few days of this and they’d be chookraffling him to the nuthouse.

Right then he heard a motor. He looked at his watch—1:15. He turned out the pressure lamp, reached for the revolver.

Headlamps forked up over the hill and swung down among the trees. Sam went to his knees by the window. Now he’d see which way his luck was runnin. It was hanging over him like a cold dark cloud tonight, and he knew it was momentous, but there was no way of reading it — salvation or his head on the block.

Well, whoever it is, they’re comin my way, he thought. A man’d pay coin of the realm for a peaceful leak right this moment.

He ducked as the headlights came swinging his way. With his back to the wall beneath the window, he could see every feature in the shack, the chair and table, cot, shelf, pots and buckets, all with long, tearing shadows from the light barging in through every crack in the tin walls.

Sam? The motor cut short. He heard the handbrake. Sam?

Sam fidgeted. The.38 felt like a laundry iron in his hand. He’d never shot a pistol before in his life. Should he break the glass first and then fire, or shoot straight through the window? He tried to think what they did at the matinee.

The door opened.

Sam? You there?

Friend or foe?

Tenant.

Shit, you scared me.

Get the lamp on.

When the lamp came up Sam looked white and shaky. As he stood there shiftfooted by the door he scratched his back, squirming.

You got the money, then.

What’s wrong with your back?

Friggin boils.

When did they come up?

Today.

Don’t scratch em.

I’m feelin lucky.

Let’s get you packed up.

Sam swatted the bird from his shoulder, but a claw caught in his singlet so that the cockatoo flapped in a fit of squawking and crapping, upside down, suspended from behind Sam’s neck. Lester reached out to unhook the bird which took a piece out of his hand the size of a snapper bait.

Dammit to buggery! he yelled.

The bird got free, flew straight into the window and crashed to the floor where it lay groaning like a floored boxer.

You orright? Sam said, laughing.

Yeah, but you aren’t. They’re not boils you got there. It’s ticks. Roo ticks.

Bugger me!

We’ll have to get em out. You smoke don’t you?

Yeah, what—

Roll a smoke thin and tight and give it to me.

I don’t—

Come on, you’re wastin time. When you’re finished take off your singlet.

What you gunna do, for Chrissake?

Burn em out.

Wonderful. Bloody marvellous.

You won’t feel a thing except those little fellers reversin out in a hurry.

Sam lay on the cot while Lester went over his back finding the little pointed butts of the parasites and applying the fag end.

I’ve got a plan, Sam said, wincing.

What plan?

For the money.

I thought we’d just drive you straight back to town an you pay em off.

No, I feel lucky.

Oh, you look lucky.

Lester rested the glowing end on the tail of a tick and watched it shunt out like a dog from a snake hole. You’re gunna look like a fly wire door when this is finished.

There’s a big two-up game tomorrow.

It’s already tomorrow. Where?

I’ll show you, said Sam.

It’s stupid.

You said you’d get me the money.

I got it. To pay off your debts and keep trouble away from Cloudstreet.

Well I’m gonna do that and make us some money.

Us?

Well, it’s your money. I reckon you deserve a dividend.

I need a horsewhippin, Lester thought. For this, for a lot of things. You’ll lose it, Sam, he said.

Don’t bloody talk like that, I know when I’m gunna win.

Well why don’t you win more often?

I’m a dill for excitement.

I could do with a little less excitement.

You’re gutless, Lamb.

You just remember one thing, mate. I haven’t given you the money yet.

I’ve got the.38.

A man who can’t drive a car could never use that thing.

Want to test that little theory? Listen, I’m gunna win. Me stump’s bloodynear glowin. I know it.

There was a sweat on Sam’s face, and his eyes were bright. Lester didn’t know whether to admire or pity him. It was too late to save the money now. In any case, he thought, aflush with shame, you can’t deny a man a chance when you’ve just had his wife on the kitchen table.

Carn. Get up and pack.

You’re in?

No, you’re in.

Where’s that … Sam then? said the bird trying to get up. Where’s that Sam?

Wakings

At dawn, and the first raw-throated stirrings of hidden birds, Cloudstreet floats soundlessly from the gloom to join the day. Down on the tracks a Fremantle freight creeps past under a limestone sky, and in her tent, towelling the water from her face and chest in a manner so delicate as to be secretive, and to someone who knew her, completely uncharacteristic, Oriel Lamb feels the vibrations in the duckboards. When she’s finished washing she applies a little talcum powder and dresses in her floral frock, stockings and hardsoled sandals which look more like work boots with ventilators cut into them. She notes again the ugliness of her feet all distorted with corns and bunions. She still remembers her own bare running feet on the dirt of the home paddock when the world was a place given by God for the pleasures of children, when all that was good was unbroken. Oriel empties her washwater onto the seed pots outside and comes back in to make her bed and tidy the shelves, clear the card table that is her desk. For ten minutes, with the help of the rimless spectacles she needs now, she reads the Reader’s Digest and makes pencil marks beside instructive passages. The early morning ‘quiet time’ as she calls it, has proven impossible to shake off. But it gives her time to meet the day, steel herself, put on the full armour as she used to say. She finishes up, tidies the table again and feels the mulberry tree hanging over the tent like a cloud. It’s still early, she’ll give them another half hour before reveille — it’s been a hard week since the wedding, what with Quick turning up and keeping them on the lookout like that, and the hole that Hat has left in the company. Another loss. Oh, if she thinks about everything that’s been taken from her over the years — Lord, it’s like the longest subtraction sum invented. She can’t help it, the feeling is on her and she’s furious. It’s a sickness, selfpity, it’ll eat you up, woman, you know it. It’ll eat the day and worm into your labour and weaken you. She puts her square, red fist on the table, watches it like it’s a paperweight. Up the back the pig snorts like a priest chanting. Fowls begin to scuffle. She hears water in the sewerage pipes beneath the garden path. Someone is up.

Elaine waits till the stove finishes smoking and makes sure it’s properly alight before waking Beryl Lee. Back in the kitchen they lay out the bacon and yesterday’s eggs. Elaine stands at the back door in the cold morning air and sees movement in the tent. The New Guinea beans Fish planted have overtaken the yard, the great hairy, veined creeper enclosing the chookyard and the pig’s den, the whole of the back fence and each side, right through the other vegetables, across the apple and orange and lemon trees, right to the door of the tent itself. Elaine can’t think how the thing has been tolerated this long. There’s even a tangle of it in the mulberry tree, and in the first sun, a-shine with dew, you can see a bean hanging above the tent the size of a man’s arm.