Hill of Grace (32 page)

As the high violins floated below the cracked ceiling and the clarinets passed into wardrobes and sock drawers, he imagined Lilli serving coffee to a couple of kidless townies seated on a table outside the Apex. He could see the faulty neon of the Fechner automat blinking pink and bright blue, and Lilli slamming the door in disgust as she went back in.

He opened his bag, put it on his bed and started packing: spare socks and pants, T-shirts and a jumper of his mother's creation. Phil walked in and said, ‘Christ, how long we going for?'

‘You've never been camping before?'

Phil grabbed Nathan's Bible from his bedside drawer and started flicking through the pages. ‘Never been. What's it involve? Lying on a rug and falling asleep. Pissing on a tree and crapping in a hole. Douglas Mawson had nothing on you.'

‘You should pack some dry clothes.'

‘Ha, if it looks like rain we can just chant some of this stuff. Maybe we should hold a rally?' Phil closed his eyes and smiled. ‘
Brothers and sisters
. . .' Looking at Nathan and saying, ‘The Salvos play in the middle of Rundle Street, every Sunday night, I gotta take you . . .' Choosing not to finish with, It'll be a big laugh. ‘This thing got any prayers for rain?' he continued, sitting down on his bed and looking through Ephesians and the Gospels.

‘It doesn't work like that.'

‘It should. A religion should be practical. American Indians could pray for anything: harvest, death of unwanted relatives . . .'

‘But did it work?'

‘Did it matter? Or the Egyptians, had hundreds of gods, kept people's interest. This lot it's just, hymn number twelve and pass the butter. Where's the bit about the end of the world?'

Nathan took the Bible and turned to Revelations. ‘Chapter twenty.' He handed it back and watched as Phil read through, half-grinning, half-annoyed.

‘How do they get from that to the end of the world?'

‘It doesn't end. Christ returns and the sinners are cast off.'

‘Cast off?'

‘Into Hell.'

‘Which is?'

‘Fire, showers of molten lava.'

‘But does it actually say that?'

‘Not in so many words.'

Phil smiled and placed the Bible on his bed. ‘Of course not.

I could write something like this.'

‘No you couldn't,' Nathan replied, shaking his head.

‘I could.'

‘Even if you did, how would you persuade half the planet?'

Phil stopped. It was a good point, bit it didn't make a wrong thing right.

‘I don't believe it'll happen like this,' Nathan added.

‘I'm relieved.'

‘But lots do.'

And Phil thought, How could so many human beings be so stupid? The atom was split, antibiotics perfected and space mapped, but half the planet still believed in the seven seals. ‘Humans worry me,' he concluded.

Nat King Cole persisted in gravy-soaked air, wafting in as some sort of consolation, explaining away the universe in Rose's peculiar way. The idea of religion depressed Phil, there was nothing good about plagues and angels, it just proved that humans failed to meet their potential. There was no way a lifetime of dispensing drugs could change that. It was his destiny to help keep them alive, so they could go on being stupid. ‘I could write that,' he repeated.

Nathan smiled. ‘I look forward to reading it.'

The sound of a car mis-firing in the driveway distracted them from God. Emerging from the front door, they found Bob inspecting the engine of a near new Whippet, borrowed from the works manager who'd bought it on the proceeds of a recent inheritance. ‘One of them spark plugs is kaput,' Bob began, looking worried. ‘He didn't mention any problems. Now it'll be up to me to fix it. Typical.'

A small mutt jumped about at Nathan's feet. ‘He comes with the car,' Bob explained. ‘Rides on the running board, y' oughta see it.'

After tea, Bob climbed up into the roof cavity and retrieved three old sleeping bags, hanging them on the rotary and getting the boys to bash the life out of them. Then he packed his .22 rifle, babbling on about the rabbit stew he used to survive on as a kid, while Phil explained the world of myxomatosis. They spent the rest of the evening around the radio. The mutt was let in and when Bob was in the kitchen toasting jubilee cake, it settled into his recliner. Returning with a tray of Bushells and bun he prodded the dog in the ribs but it refused to wake up. Eventually he left it and settled at Rose's feet, caught up in the consolation of orange peel, raisins and the ABC's
Evening of Light Classics
.

In the middle of a Mozart clarinet concerto, Bob turned to Nathan and said, ‘Hey, I forgot to tell you, I talked to the works manager . . . the top dog, the fella who loaned me the car.'

Rose looked up from a crossword and grinned. ‘Always asks your advice, eh, Bob?'

‘Sometimes. You'd be surprised who's in my ear.'

Phil put a bookmark in a volume of Robbie Burns. ‘You mean you're in
his
ear.'

‘Same difference. The thing is, I told him about our little problem and he said, Let me think about it. Well, today he comes back and says, How long till the boy's seventeen? I said, A few months. He says, At seventeen he can sign himself on. I said, I was aware, but can it wait that long? Well, he smiles at me and says, I was wondering, what if we put him down as a work experience student up till then?' Bob was grinning, ready to bust with his own cleverness. ‘It's perfect, you can continue with your study and your work but because you're not technically an employee . . .'

Nathan sat on the floor to get at Bob's level. ‘But if I'm not an employee I won't get paid.'

‘Who's gonna tell the pay office? By the time anyone's caught on you've signed your own papers.'

Nathan started toying with the crusts on his plate. ‘What can I say? Thanks . . .'

Phil sat forward, smiling. ‘Herr Wilhelm won't say anything if he doesn't know. Tell him they're waiting for his signature, draw it out, make it sound like you're depending on him. Then pow, sign on the bottom line and stuff you Mr – '

‘Phillip!' Rose stood up, collected the cups and plates on the tray and said, ‘See, Nathan, for all his many, numerous faults, my husband does get things done.'

Nathan breathed deeply and sighed. ‘And they'll do this for me?'

‘Of course. We're a very practical lot at the Railways, you should've learnt that by now. Always find a way.'

‘Thanks, Bob.' And went on to explain, as Phil cracked up, how it wasn't his way to hug another man.

The next morning Bob and the boys started early. Pryor, the mutt, lived up to his reputation and rode the running board all the way up Unley Road as they headed for the hills. When they stopped at the lights the dog jumped off, ran around the other cars barking, and hopped back on just before the lights turned green. Phil and Nathan fed him Arnott's biscuits as they drove. Sniffing the breeze, balancing and licking crumbs from his whiskers, Pryor was a miraculous sight, full of an endless energy drawn from spring sunshine, yapping enough to drown out car radios.

As they moved into the foot-hills, Bob changed down into third and whispered, ‘C'mon, Betsy,' as the engine struggled on three cylinders. Just before Mitcham the temperature gauge moved into the red and he pulled over. Popping the bonnet, he noticed that the radiator had started to steam. ‘Who'd pay three hundred pounds for this?' he asked, and the boys had to agree, there were better ways to waste your money. In the end he decided they couldn't risk taking it up into the hills. Luckily Torrens Park railway station was only a few blocks away, and after some discussion, they decided it'd be a waste to turn back now.

As they headed up to the hills in an eight-wheel sit-up, Bob grew concerned about the dog. ‘Anyone could stop and steal him.' He moved his rifle uncomfortably across his knee.

‘Who steals a dog?' Phil asked, as they passed through tunnels and up inclines.

Nathan surveyed sheer cliff faces which rose above them, dropping occasional chunks of granite and limestone into wire barriers. Caves had formed, each as impenetrable as the memory of Menge's, leading him into a haze of all-things-Tanunda– Lilli, wood sorrel and an over-full septic cart moving down Murray Street.

Early in the afternoon, just as Nathan was imagining the Millerites gathering around Arthur's ark to pray for lost souls, Phil, Bob and Nathan left their gear beside a creek of rocks and soup cans in National Park, setting off on a hike which Bob had promised to use to showcase his knowledge of native flora.

‘This one here, a river red gum.'

‘Dad, we know.'

‘And this one, the golden wattle.'

‘Dad.'

‘But where have you seen it before?'

‘The national coat of arms.'

‘Very good.'

Bob managed to find and name the same six plants he'd shown Phil on the same hike eight years earlier. ‘And here, xanthorrhoea, or black boy. Look at that seed pod, amazing.' Especially to a man who spent his days covered with grease and smelling of turps, insulating cold rooms in the cathedral of darkness that was Islington. ‘Casuarina, known by what other name, Phil?'

‘Sheoak.'

‘And over there, look, callitris?'

‘Native pine?'

‘Exactly.'

At three they returned to their campsite and started unpacking.

Bob took his rifle and set off in search of rabbit, insisting he could cook the myxomatosis out of anything.

When Phil was sure his father had gone, he unzipped Nathan's bag and retrieved a copy of the
Field Guide to the Agarics
he'd hidden earlier.

‘Agarics?' Nathan asked.

‘Fungi,' Phil smiled, taking his arm and leading him beside the creek.

Mostly they just found common field mushrooms, their speckled white caps and brown gills bringing flavour to a thousand kitchens of boiled and burnt meats. Although the guide didn't say as much, Phil had been told
Cortinarius australiensis
was the collectors' favourite, laced with a compound resembling lysergic acid and unmistakable thanks to its bulbous base and rust-brown spores. ‘We touched on Mycology in first year,' Phil said, as Nathan smiled. In the end they found a specimen which looked close to the one in the book, and since they'd ruled out the poisonous ones . . .

Eventually they found a dozen, took them back to camp and started a fire. Phil crushed them up in a foldaway saucepan and boiled them in water as Nathan kept watch. Hearing rifle shots in the distance, they guessed it was safe.

Phil went first, sniffing and then gulping the brew down in a single swallow. Nathan wasn't so sure, sipping some and spitting it out in disgust. Throwing away the evidence, they settled in around the fire to see what happened.

They closed their eyes and crossed their legs and Phil started reciting the Vajra Guru mantra from a card he kept in his wallet. Before long Nathan broke up laughing, rolling on the ground and intoning Hebrews 13 as a sort of counterpoint: ‘“Be not carried about with diverse and strange doctrines . . .”' Phil picked up a log and threw it at him, ‘Pipe down, God boy, I want to see what happens.' Apart from getting a cramp, the closest Phil came to an hallucination was the memory of Davy Clarke's
In Salzkammergut
.

Bob returned an hour later, minus a rabbit, but with a summons from a ranger for hunting in a National Park. They cooked toast and ate it plain. An hour after dark, as Bob was pointing out the major constellations, Phil complained of a stomach ache and started vomiting. A few minutes later it started to rain. Minus any shelter, they ran back to the station to find they'd missed the last train. ‘What we need now,' Phil said, his arms on his knees and his head between his legs, ‘is a good dose of Revelations.'

They all laughed, spending the night talking, analysing the Gospels and eventually falling asleep on the benches of Belair station as the rain eased.

The next morning when they got back to the Whippet they found Pryor lying dead on the front seat, his tongue sticking out of his mouth. Bob was convinced he'd left the window down and when he returned the car, later that morning, he told the works manager some bastard must've come and put it up.

Arthur had started off cautiously. On the first day he walked the length of Langmeil Road, turning back before the intersection with Seltzer Road, where the bitumen widened out into a carpark in front of a sprawling reserve of sugar gums the pioneers had forgotten to clear. On the second day he made it down Murray Street as far as Angas Street and on the third, to Burings Road, which was almost halfway to Nuriootpa. On the fourth day, nursing a sore shoulder and blistered feet, he made it as far as Nuriootpa High School, deciding the only thing limiting his progress was having to return home every night.

So that night he packed a can of baked beans and a bottle of water in his swag and strapped it to the base of his cross. The idea was to start off with an over-nighter, then two, three, four nights, a week, months, maybe years, traversing Chile or Greenland or the United States with his cross over his shoulder.

It was a Thursday afternoon. He'd stopped just an hour before to grease the wheel on the base of his cross, but it squeaked, like the pedal on Edna's old Singer. He adjusted the pillow on his shoulder and reholstered the cross, walking, tripping on fig roots and hidden drains.

Jimmy Hoffmann, a sixty-two-year-old cousin of Pastor Henry who rode his bike between valley towns collecting bottles in a gunny sack, stopped on the opposite verge and called out to Arthur over the traffic: ‘Hey, what's that for?'

Arthur turned to him and smiled. ‘I carry it for the love of Jesus.'

Hoffmann looked at him, trying to decide if he was genuine. ‘Where you going?'

Arthur shrugged. Hoffmann shook his head, re-mounted his bike and rode off towards the Coke bottle paradise of Tanunda.