Bridge of Clay: Parts Five–Six

In the next few days, on and off, there’d be a kind of holding-on; a final nod to the last vestiges of youngness and dumbness.

So there they were, way up in the far-flung future:
A cantankerous bird.
An acrobatic goldfish.
Two bloodied boys.

One part I remember clearly is how they used to cut our hair; a barber would have cost too much. It was set up in the kitchen—an assembly line, and two chairs—and we’d sit, first Rory and me, then Henry and Clay. Then, when it came to Tommy’s turn, Michael would cut Tommy’s, to give Penny a small reprieve, and then she’d resume and cut his.

As older siblings do, we marauded all that was his.

“All right!” she’d call from next to him, through the barrage of battered music.

He was desecrating that marriage proposal, which was fading by then, and fast, but would never fade completely.

“I don’t know—naïve, and just, stupid—to think you can make a difference.”

But their island of calm in the maelstrom.

He was already on hands and knees, collating the fallen sheets.

To that end (and this one), it was proper, really, that Henry was publicly infamous back then, when it came to sport and leisure—sent off for pushing the ref. Then ostracized by his teammates, for the greatest of footballing sins; at halftime the manager asked them:
“Hey, where’s the oranges?”

Boys, men and women, they all glared.
It was great suburban chagrin.

Earlier, not long after the enigma of Henry’s head, and the talk of well-baked chests, there was scratching at the back door, and knocking at the front.

For a good week or so, we sat, me on the right, Penny on the left, and I’d look at the language of music; the quavers, the rhythm of crotchets.

Messy dark hair and gangly, eyes gleaming—and they were definitely a sort of color back then, they were blue and pale like his.

“Am I right, or am I right?”
And Penelope understood.
She admonished herself, and quickly.

After a minute or so, his wife appeared too, in a pale green dress, and ginger-blond hair that flowed but was cut with control: the formidable Catherine Novac.

Even as I looked down at the video’s name, The Last Great Famous Pugilists, I could feel my father smiling.

It became what commentators of every sport everywhere—probably even marbles—would call a battle of attrition, as we traded knuckles and hands.

The only problem came in the last furlong when she veered too close to the second-place getter, Pump Up the Jam—seriously, what a name—and the win was taken off her.

To finish, it was our father, and he stood and didn’t shirk it; he positioned her head, nice and straight, and when he was done he slowly rubbed her; he massaged the boyish haircut, and Penny leaned forward, she enjoyed it.

As halfway in, he came back; he was suddenly, expansively talkative, which for Clay was eight extra words.

Regardless, it was the hottest day of summer so far, like a harbinger of things to come.

It was sort of like the piano, really, but the instrument’s homely cousin. You could dress it up all you wanted; it was still just a piece of hardwood, with daisies thrown on top.

Our lounge room was more like a hospital ward, but one like you’d see in a movie. There were boys all torrid, diagonal. We were molded to whatever we lay on.

Early on, our father was called to the schools, and he was the perfect post-war charlatan: well-dressed, clean-shaven. In control. We’re coping, he’d said, and principals nodded, teachers were fooled; they could never quite see the abyss in him.

At the river, by the radio, out of handfuls, then dozens of races, her first win would remain elusive.

It was a sprinter called Blood on the Brain, owned by a wealthy undertaker. Apparently, all the horses he owned were named for fatal conditions: Embolism, Heart Attack, Aneurysm.

Sometimes Michael brought tea out, and they sat on the stones and watched, surrounded by wooden monoliths.

Every seasoned jockey was already booked; they’d have to go with the apprentice.

He liked her garrulous hair (you’d think it was hair that talked, he said), and she was skinny and country-real.

She was candid but very friendly; it amazed me that she spoke with humor.

On the weekend that Cootamundra ran in the racing capital down south, Ennis McAndrew made a decision, a shrewd one:
Carey wouldn’t ride at all.

The rider was a consummate professional, Jack Bird, and when the race was run, close to three o’clock, he didn’t let the horse out early, and the lead wasn’t quite enough; he was pocketed on the turn.

He watched her distance of mile-long hair, the forearms above the table, and her face cupped tight in her palms; she was caught between wistful and miserable, but all she said was “Damn.”

In the running, we ran at October, when Clay enrolled in athletics—not remotely excited, nor reticent.

She meant the Racing Quarter Tribune, and she was pinpoint, she was astute; the first time we looked in that paper—our local suburban news—there was a collie for sale, and a kelpie, and a pair of cockatiels.

He communicated.
Like a supreme-yet- derelict being.
Already he had that what-the-hell-you-lookin’-at look on his long, lopsided face—till he’d watched a moment longer, and seemed to say, Oh, okay then.

We’d look at what remained in that classifieds section, which culminated, always, in the mule.

If you went to sit on the couch, he was purring on top of the remote. Even once, I went to the toilet, and he watched from up on the cistern.

She was poised for another strike, right between the ribs; and there was once when this happened before, in waters still to come, when things had turned out badly.