Jack pedalled to the gate. Simon was behind him, for once not trying to overtake. Jack stopped to look at the ‘For Sale’ sign on the next-door neighbour’s fence.
Simon swung their own gate open, waiting for Jack to pass through, before shutting it and pedalling alongside him.
‘Come on, Jack. I’ll ride with you.’
Simon matched Jack’s slow speed as they weaved their way through the up-and-down hills, the shadows shortening across the land to a wan thought.
When they got to the outskirts of town, Jack found himself staring at the houses gliding past, with their ubiquitous looped wire fences, all painted white. With their nearly identical letter boxes, sagging verandas, and neat gardens of flowers and fruit trees, they merged into a single shot, the postcard of the generic country town dwelling.
He found himself humming the Kinks’ ‘Dead End Street’. Soon he was imagining the inhabitants of the houses stepping out in their Sunday best to wave at him as he passed, then already standing at their letter boxes, and lastly stepping from their gates and joining together in a conga line, that followed as a train endlessly coupled, endlessly shunted alongside him. The baker, the fireman, the grocer, the butcher, Mr Sloane who owned the record store where he’d bought Grieg’s Morning Mood, all dancing, all chanting,
Dead end street, dead end street.
What had he been imagining on that morning he first saw Mel?
That’s right, that a Cessna dusting crops was become a World War II spitfire. He’d thrown himself in the siding, now a trench in his mind, and fired off a full magazine in the air, the stick in his hand transformed to a Sten gun.
How his imaginings had changed since then, losing their militaristic edge, to become more sophisticated, more intricately devised and sensitive.
He pedalled harder, Simon matching him, to catch up to the front of the conga line, being led by Dash, of course, a Pied Piper clapping hands in time to the music, Mel skipping beside him.
‘Dead end street,’ they whispered, ‘Dead end street.’
‘Head to the feet,’ he mumbled, noting Simon glancing at him. They turned up the road that led to their school.
It was clear to Jack there was another consequence of a wholesale surrender to wonder… The more it became obvious that there was a massive, seemingly unbridgeable gap between imagination and reality, the greater the temptation to flee, to form sides as it were, with one or the other. Reality, and become like Higgins or Miss Jackson. Straddle the two, and be like his father, lost to both. Accept dream altogether and…
The consequence of that last option opened up like a fissure in his mind to swallow him whole. He mentally retreated from its edge and shook himself as he and Simon came to a stop at the school gate.
So many gates.
‘See you at lunch?’ asked Simon.
Jack stared blankly. Simon had never asked that before.
‘Red Rover,’ explained Simon, lightly punching Jack in the shoulder. ‘You’re on my team.’
‘Chasey,’ said Jack.
‘Eh?’
Jack stared at him.
‘Okay, sure.’
‘Give everyone a chance to work in the vineyard,’ he said.
‘Vineyard?’ Simon looked at his brother guiltily. This was beyond him. He groped for a response. ‘Chasey, definitely.’
Jack smiled faintly. Simon walked through the gate, glancing back nervously a few times. Jack looked around. First, at the monkey bars, and heard his own voice from the past floating forward to catch up with him.
‘Come on, Noel, you’ve gotta cross.’
‘Nah,’ replied Noel, ‘I’m playing Red Rover.’
How Jack had ached for a friend who liked his sort of games.
His eyes wandered to the empty oval. It erupted with the disembodied voices of a dozen kids aching to be chosen.
‘Pick me.’
‘No, pick me.’
‘No, me.’
Those that worked longer in the garden…
Next, Troy’s voice, rising above the pleas, ‘Who do ya reckon, Simon?’
…receive the same reward.
Simon, at last replying, ‘Jack.’
Jack’s eyes next strolled to the steps leading into his classroom.
‘Jack!’ came Miss Jackson’s voice down from the past.
‘Yes, Miss Jackson?’ he’d returned.
‘Jack, I didn’t say you could get up. Sit down. Sit down at once! Jack!’
‘Jack?’
It was Simon calling him now, in the present. He must have returned. Jack shook himself of his memories, and looked at his brother standing on the other side of the gate. In his head, Jack could still faintly hear the conga line singing ‘Dead End Street’. He wanted to join it.
‘Jack… please.’
To Jack’s astonishment, Simon was near tears.
Simon pulled Jack to him in a hug as the tears boiled over. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.’
Like someone brought back from death, Jack raised numb arms to hug Simon in return. Sniffling, Simon pushed his brother away from him and looked him in the eyes.
‘From now on, you can rely on me,’ he said, mastering his emotion. ‘I’ll never let you down again.’ He then forced a laugh. ‘Hey, who knows? I might even be calling on my younger brother for help some day too.’
Simon was thinking about the battles that lay ahead for him, on account of his own differences.
‘Hey, mate?’
It was with all his reserves of strength and will, that Jack at last stepped through the gate.
Constable Rafter was leaning against the squad car while Lieutenant Speers’ fingers toyed edgily with the strap on his gun holster. Before them, Daniel was standing only in boxers, axe in hand, staring down with venom at the fridge. Jean was on her knees in her nightie, arms wrapped round the pole of the turned veranda post, issuing a pitiful wail.
From the house, the radio was blaring the breaking news: the Governor-General had sacked the Whitlam government. People were protesting in the streets and it looked like wide-scale rioting might ensue.
With a sudden fury, Daniel let fly at the fridge, bringing the axe down hard upon it.
Speers stepped forward, reaching for his gun, but Rafter was ready and yanked it away. He pulled the young cop close and shook his head. The rookie had a lot more to see of life to know sadness, rage and disappointment was normal. Daniel had always seemed to Rafter one of the sanest in town, but that just made it all the more his turn to crack.
Daniel swung the axe down upon the fridge, blow after blow, the tin denting, the paint flying away in peels, the blade sparking, while Jean cried repeatedly for him to stop. Soon her shouts were replaced by sobs.
At last the blade broke off, and then the handle split when he kept going. When that broke in two, he fell on his knees before the fridge and beat it with his hands. When his strength waned, he merely slapped it.
Jean, whose arm was raised towards him, stood and staggered forth from the veranda. Her hands found his shoulders, and then she half collapsed on him, wrapping her arms around his so he could no longer bruise and bloody them.
They found her instead, and the two embraced.
Rafter felt his throat tightening. He tapped Speers on the shoulder and indicated the car.
They drove away with Daniel and Jean sobbing together in the dust, and Whitlam ceding defeat over the radio, as he counselled the faithful to ‘Maintain your rage and enthusiasm…’
Miss Jackson was packing up her things. Higgins watched as she took the last item from her desk drawer, a silver hip flask and turned, noticing him for the first time.
Her features were drawn, pained, but her eyes were steely. Higgins leant against the wall, swallowed and then began what he should have said forty years earlier.
‘Marcia, I knew. I knew our teacher, Mr Cord, was abusing you. All of us kids knew. I said nothing. As penance, I’ve been so vigilant ever since. So vigilant I… I went after the wrong target. A good man. A far more gifted teacher than I… And helped destroy a family. For that I’m immeasurably sorry and, for failing you, I’m sorry to the very core of my being.’
He had found his eyes downcast but now looked up pleadingly.
‘Forgive me.’
Miss Jackson walked straight past him, shoving the whiskey flask in his hands.
As he heard her steps echo down the corridor, he worried he might quiver to the floor where he would be found by the students. Only the sound of the morning bell gave him strength enough to push himself away from the wall.
A hundred kids could be heard clattering into class.
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