Owen Marshall Selected Stories Read Free Page B

That night, lying in the pup tent among the lupins, Supper Waltz told us that each time he’d come up from beneath the water the world seemed a different colour. Crimson the last time; after the longest spell under when his lilo capsized, everything was crimson he said. Graeme and I said nothing. The revelation rather embarrassed us and, besides, Graeme’s mouth was too sore for him to speak.
    Another time a group of us went into the reserve to do some geography fieldwork with Scotty, and at the edge of one of the gullies was a cast sheep. It lay on its side at the verge of some blackberrybushes, and the flat circle of its rotation was stained with urine and droppings. The sheep’s black rubber lip twitched, and its eyes bulged with mild perplexity at its own fate. Some of the class tried to stand it up, but each time it just swayed there a moment before falling stiffly on the same side, flattened like the underneath of a scone. Scotty told everybody to leave it alone, but even as we worked our way through the blackberry into the gully, we could hear the sheep’s hoarse, strained breathing. Wilderborne said he was going to come back after school and give it the works.
    Once out of the sight and sound of it most of us could forget the sheep, but it persisted in Supper Waltz’s mind. He was very quiet, and when the others were looking at some shell fossils in the limestone, I saw him crying. That would have surprised old Raymond and Mr Weir; anyone who thought Supper Waltz was so tough. He had a lot of emotion in him, did Supper Waltz. He could stand up to old Raymond and the head without a change of expression, but train whistles and morepork calls in the dark would haunt him for hours.
    When I think of what happened to his father, and about Supper Waltz going away, I think of the evening I heard Mr Wilson talking about his voices. That was months before, but I always imagine him going mad right after I saw him in the kitchen. Recollection is apt to sandwich such things up, and there’s a type of logic in it, I suppose. I’d climbed into Supper Waltz’s window, and was sitting on his bed reading until he finished his tea. Then I heard Mr Wilson talking, and I went along the passage and stood there, looking in on the angle to the lighted kitchen. I very rarely saw Mr Wilson, and with me in the dark and him in the light I got a good chance. He was younger and softer looking than his wife. He had a pale, smooth face like a schoolteacher’s or a parson’s. He had youthful, fair curls, and yet his fingers were stained with nicotine, and his stomach folded softly over his belt.
    â€˜I heard the voice again today,’ he said earnestly.
    â€˜Did you?’ said Mrs Wilson. Her tone was the mild encouragementof a mother to her child, and she continued to iron rapidly from the cane basket on the table.
    â€˜Prepare for leadership, it said. Keep yourself ready for the test.’ Mr Wilson ran his hand through his bright, metallic curls, and as they sprang back I half expected them to jangle. He seemed to be addressing a larger audience than Supper Waltz and Mrs Wilson. Like Supper Waltz he was small, and he had the strut of a small man as he walked about the kitchen. ‘I will turn a righteous sword in the guts of this poor world before I’m finished,’ he said. Despite the falseness of the words he said it with conviction. ‘It was the voice to the left of me. That’s always the strongest voice, the one to the left of me, and it doesn’t hurt, not that one. I’ve got a feeling my leadership is near, Melanie.’ That had the strangest sound of all — Melanie, Mrs Wilson as Melanie — and although no one could see me I smiled sheepishly.
    Mrs Wilson and Supper Waltz didn’t find it remarkable however. ‘Good,’ said Mrs Wilson. She ran over a shirt-collar quickly, her thumb anticipating the iron along its length with practised ease. Supper