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THE STARS OF THE MILKY WAY
Wilcannia, New South Wales – 1958
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Beth and I are balanced on perches inside the chook house, crouching
comfortably, with our elbows bent and flapping like wings. It is a summer
afternoon, hot and flat as the bottom of an iron, with nothing more interesting
to offer than teasing the hens. The dead weight of the sky presses the air out
of town in summer. You can see it in photographs, people looking as if it is
almost too much effort to breathe, a real battle against apathy, and some of
them losing. The suicide rate soars in the hot months. No one gives us kids
details of course: people simply disappear, amid whispers and knowing looks and
a fine red dust collecting on the surface of things.
Beyond our back fence the Darling River sidles, olive green and shallow in
this droughty year, revealing a great girth of scarred bank. Inside the house,
the wireless bleats. One step down into the living room, a concrete floor and
Mum there trying to ignore the heat thudding against the asbestos walls as she
damps down laundry, sprinkling cotton pillowcases with rainwater from her old
tomato sauce bottle with holes punched in the lid, rolling them into sausages
for ironing. She's been headachy and cranky all day because of the ruckus last
night.
Yesterday evening while she was out watering, Mrs Brickell our neighbour
materialised at the gap in the fence and said something in her stuck-up slurred
voice, which our mother swears is the fakest thing she's ever heard. Beth
and I gravitated towards the sound.
"It's rrrr-adiation that does it," Mrs Brickell said, with that endless
rolling r she has. Red lipstick was melting into her smoker's wrinkles. Her
dyed brown hair was hidden in a scarf, tied with a bow on top. "Causes
sterility in both sexes." Mum's fingers tightened around the hose and she shot
an anxious look to where we stood fiddling with Beth's old pedal car. "It's
affected my memory," continued Mrs Brickell. "When I was on the stage my lines
were word perfect. Whole scripts. I prided myself. But ever since these bomb
tests I can hardly recall what happened yesterday."
Our mother aimed a stream of water into the sandy trough surrounding the
base of a young peach tree and muttered something neutral. She has her own
theories about Mrs. Brickell's memory lapses and they have nothing to do with
radiation.
Later we were lying on our backs on the tiny square of front lawn,
scouring the dazzle of stars in the night sky – cautiously skirting the
familiar constellations of the Seven Sisters, The Saucepan and Southern Cross –
for a sight of Sputnik. The rough couch grass of our lawn, the rich green of
it, cool but prickly on
bare skin, is Mum's pride and joy, The crickets like it
too, judging by their noise. Cricket song and the sound of sprinklers, the
constant throbbing soundtrack to summer, was broken by occasional bursts of
music from the camp across the river.
Beth said, "How many stars are there in the Milky Way? She is always
hunting facts. "Roughly."
As she said it, shouts and crashes erupted next door.
"Countless," said Mum, her voice calm as she leaned towards the slamming
of Brickell's back door.
"But there must be a number," persisted Beth.
"Yes, but no one knows for sure," Mum told her, "so whatever we say can
never be exact."
"But-"
"Let me in, Moira!" pleaded Mr Brickell, and we heard his knuckles on the
back door. From inside came the sound of breaking glass.
"Lily, take your sister indoors and make a jug of raspberry cordial."
Mum's cane chair creaked.
"I don't want any cordial," said Beth.
Sometimes she can be incredibly
dense, either that or much more cunning than we give her credit for.
"Never mind!" Mum's voice snapped like a Christmas cracker as she jumped
up and jabbed a finger towards the house.
We dawdled towards the front door, which stands wide open on these
breathless nights, our ears straining towards Brickells'.
"If you don't let me in-" his voice had turned nasty.
Beth and I stared at each other wide-eyed, imagining the consequences for
Mrs Brickell. As it turned out, we were wrong. Their back door opened; there
was a thump, a shattering sound followed by a rising wail and the solid slam of
the door. Mr Brickell's face appeared, pressed to the gap in the fence as he
called weakly for our mother.
Her intake of breath as she drew near,
carried across the garden.
"Mrs Brennan, help me, help!"
Mr Brickell was working up the kind of bawling tone young calves use to call
their mothers.
"Just let me get my shoes on," cried Mum and she ran for the blanket on
the lawn where she had kicked them off after tea.
Beth and I edged nearer. In the light from their kitchen window we saw where a
dark patch oozed blood on
the blanched ovoid of Mr Brickell's balding head. It streamed on either side of
his face in messy black lines, crazy paving set in the yellow kitchen light.
"I'm just coming," Mum's voice was high, cheery and unfamiliar, but before
she got to him he
stumbled away, swallowed up by the darkness round the side of their house. "Oh
Lord, she must've hit him with a bottle," she said.
From inside the house came a series of crashes, all of different sizes:
china plates, or glasses, connecting with something solid.
"Listen girls," Mum drew us back towards the blanket on the lawn. "I want
you to lie still for five minutes while I run to the phone box on the corner."
Beth began to grizzle but my mother guided her firmly to the blanket, "You
can count the stars in the Milky Way," she said. "I expect you to be up to at
least a hundred by the time I get back. Lily will help."
"But you said the stars were countless," Beth said.
"Because no one has counted them yet," Mum said. "You can be the first."
She took Beth's stubby forefinger and pointed it at the sky, jabbing it as she
said each number, "One, two, three, four, five."
"Six, seven, eight, nine, ten" continued Beth, mesmerised now by the
wondrous light-rash of the Milky Way spread above our heads.
Mum gave my shoulder a nudge. "Go on, Lil."
"Ten, eleven, twelve," I counted, falling into Beth's rhythm.
Mum paused for a moment on the edge of the blanket, listening. From the
other side of the fence came the splintering sound of a door or a windowsill
cracking and Mum galloped away towards the front gate.
We had reached one-hundred-and-fifty-seven by the time Mr Brickell broke
through his own back door. Between counting stars we followed the progress of
their battle from room to room, the blows, grunts, shrieks, and curses, only
faintly muffled by the asbestos walls of the house.
"One-hundred-and-eighty," Beth said as a gunshot cracked the darkness.
The sound ricocheted off Brickell's tin roof and into space before bounding
back at
us. Beth paused. Her hand groped for mine on the blanket, but she kept her eyes
fastened steadily on the sky.
"One-hundred-and-eighty-one," she said after a bit,
"one-hundred-and-eighty-two."
***
Lunchtime, the police are still at the Brickell's house. Mr Brickell was driven
off in the back of the police wagon last night, but so far we haven't seen or
heard his wife. Beth and I watch silently from the lawn as the police carry out
something covered with a green blanket and then, with nothing happening, drift
away down the yard and perch in the stuffy gloom of the chook house. It is not
the mindless antics of the chickens that draws us but the lure of a wasp's nest
high up in a dark back corner. Beth and I dare each other to poke it with a
stick and have to run for our lives when the wasps turn nasty.
As our mother searches for the calamine lotion she wears a look of patient
exasperation.
And Beth announces, as she peers down at her stung shoulder, "There are
one-hundred-and-ninety-seven stars in the Milky Way. Lily and I counted."
Mum stoops over us. Her face is anxious as she scans Beth's freckled and
slightly sunburnt face and her fingers tighten around the bottle.
"It was hard to keep going," Beth says, "with all the noise. But we
counted every one. A hundred-and-ninety-seven stars," she said. "They're not
countless any more."
Mum straightens. She saturates a cotton ball with calamine lotion and dabs
it on Beth's shoulder where the wasp sting has left a puncture mark. An angry
red colour radiates outwards from the wound.
"One-hundred-and-ninety-seven!" she says.
"Yep!" Beth looks smug.
"Well thank the Lord for one less mystery to be solved," Mum says. And
when she's done with the calamine she gathers us, one under each arm. "Let's
wash your faces and we'll walk to Murphy's for an ice cream," she says, and
her palms slide over our shoulders until she's cupping a chin in each of her
hands.
"Goody!" Beth shrieks, "I want pink ice cream,"as Mum squats on the yellow
lino to rub a flannel over her grubby fingers.
We never go to Murphy's for proper ice cream, not unless we've got
birthday money, or it's near Christmas. Mum rises and picks up her old red
purse and as my mouth opens to ask her why we're having a treat she nudges me
towards the front room.
"Lily, run and find your sandals," she says.
At the thought of pink ice cream, my mouth begins to water and everything
else goes right out of my head. I rush to buckle on my sandals.
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