LITMIR.BIZ

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couple and never had the lovey-dovey sort of arrangement I saw on family TV shows. Mum and Dad didn’t exchange compliments or show open affection to each other. It was more businesslike than that. The arrangement became even less amicable after the beach trip. This lack of warmth transformed into hostility during Dad’s illness. While it had never been acceptable to show affection with children in the room, it was now fine to go at it hammer and tongs in front of us.

      As the weeks dragged on, Dad got progressively more miserable and touchy. Even Carmel avoided the lounge where he’d taken up residence. My father spent his days not drinking and glowering at daytime television, which was dominated by cooking shows, farming programmes and reruns of old films. Even Dick Dingle produced boring daytime programmes. It was one of these, a Dingle documentary on the scouts of Tasmania, that finally stirred my father into action. He called John into the dinette and took out his chequebook. John waved the cheque at me to make sure I’d seen the sort of power relationship he had with our father before leaving on his bicycle.

      That evening, a van arrived with a load of timber and chicken wire. Dad sat on the back step to avoid passing on his disease and called instructions to the man driving the van. The next-door neighbour started his lawnmower just as Dad began speaking. The bedroom I currently shared with Carmel was located at the back of the house and provided a view of the van and the back step. We watched from the window.

      ‘Just leave it under the plum tree, mate.’ Dad had to shout over the noise of the mower.

      ‘What’s that, mate?’

      ‘Under the plum tree, mate. Plum.’ Dad drew a plum in the air with two fingers but it may as well have been a heart or an upside-down bum.

      ‘Another bum treat? What the hell are you on about, mate?’

      The man in the van had no way of knowing Dad was ill. Bum treat sounded poofy. To the driver, Dad was implying something unAustralian.

      ‘Under the fucking plum tree, you idiot.’

      The mower stopped and Dad’s words hung over the neighbourhood. I imagined families frozen in front of their barbecues, sausages going silent on the grill. The F word had power. A thrill went through me. It was the first time I’d heard it from my father. I had to make the most of it.

      ‘You want to watch your mouth, mate. I’m not paid to be abused by some queer bastard who’s too lazy to get off his back step.’

      Dad stood up and walked over to the van with long, deliberate strides. By the crimson of his neck I could tell that he was sizzling with anger. He poked his head in the van window and shoved it up close to the driver.

      ‘I’m not queer, mate. I’ve got hepatitis A. You can catch it from saliva spray. A microscopic speck is enough. Makes you as crook as a dog.’

      The driver rolled up his window as soon as Dad had pulled his head away. He waited until my father had retreated to the step before hastily unloading the timber and wire. As he drove off, his wheels spun in the grass and left two long brown furrows under the plum tree.

      Dad called the chicken coop a boys’ project and expected me to pitch in and help with its construction. He said it would teach us about building things, responsibility, life and death. I reminded Mum about my hepatitis and my father was warned not to let me lift a nail let alone a hammer. It took Dad and John three days to build. John was then sent on a mission to the local poultry farm, returning with ten chicks in an aerated shoebox on his bike carrier. The chicks were past the fluffy stage and had the beginnings of combs and feathers. Dad put them in the coop with some porridge. They pecked madly at the meal, spraying grey missiles in all directions. I ventured out to watch them feed. They were busy, funny things that took my mind off the miserable state of affairs inside the house.

      We got the all-clear to rejoin the human race just as school started. The chickens began laying eggs a month later. A few months after that, Dad began introducing new chicks and culling the older girls. He bought himself a large metal chopper and placed a sawn-off tree trunk in the backyard.

      I was supposed to take part in the slaughter but Dad ordered me to the back step when I refused to catch a chicken. I told myself that it wasn’t a big thing; chickens got killed every day. Carmel said they regularly got killed crossing the road. Dad put on a barbecue apron and sharpened the chopper. He wiped down the wooden stump and pulled the hose out to the backyard. John took his place next to him with a stupid grin.

      Dad had prepared us for the slaughter by solemnly declaring that killing animals for food was natural to mankind. ‘We’re omnivores. That’s why we have molars and canine teeth. In nature, it’s survival of the fittest. It’s either them or us.’

      I watched him run his finger along the chopper’s edge and began to sweat. ‘Them or us’ was a stupid idea. The chickens had no intention of pecking us to death.

      My stomach tightened as Dad reached into the coop and grabbed a bird by the legs, carrying it to the stump upside down with its wings flapping. He asked John to hold the legs while he stretched out the neck. Bringing the chopper down fast, he sent the head flying off the stump at high speed. The chicken’s legs slipped out of John’s grasp as it gave its last jerks of life. Blood sprayed in an arc from the chicken’s neck, showering John and Dad with a line of bright red dots.

      My stomach heaved. I ran to the bathroom and splashed cold water over my face until the carsick feeling eased. When my legs felt solid again I went to the kitchen to see Mum. She was boiling water to remove the chicken’s feathers.

      ‘Mum, I can’t eat that chicken. It was murder.’

      ‘I’m making a roast-chicken dinner, your favourite.’

      ‘I can’t eat it for religious reasons.’

      ‘OK, honey. Carmel can have the drumsticks and wings and John can have the juicy white meat from the breast. I’ll just have those two little flesh oysters from the hollows of its back. They’re probably Elizabeth Taylor’s favourite bits. Your father can have the skin and the pickings on the carcass. There, that’s settled then.’

      They were welcome to it. I’d had a religious transformation. It was wrong to eat a murdered chicken. The only chickens I would eat from now on were those from a supermarket. Happy, bloodless things that came in sealed plastic wrappers.

      

      Religion was a non-negotiable subject in our house. We were Sunday Catholics. We didn’t bother practising much of what the priest preached but we went to Our Lady of Miracles every Sunday like the other good Catholics of Ulverston. On the subject of church, Mum and Dad were in agreement. It didn’t matter how crappy things were in real life: once a week we had to pretend to be a normal family.

      ‘Dad, I can’t go to church today. I’ve had a religious transformation. I had a visitation. Like an archangel, only bigger and shinier.’

      Dad was putting on his tie in front of the hall mirror. He looked at my reflection and tightened his lips. I pushed on.

      ‘I was sucked up into the clouds where I met a man sitting on a large Brazil nut.’

      My father raised his eyebrows in the mirror.

      ‘He looked like Mr Patel from the fruit and vegetable shop but he had long hair.’

      Dad frowned and tucked the tail of his tie into his shirt.

      ‘I’m being called by a higher voice, he said. I should follow the voice, wherever it leads me, even if I have to walk through the valley of death and all that.’

      Dad turned from the mirror and gave me one of his looks. ‘I heard a higher voice on the radio this morning. It was Joan Sutherland. Put on your Sunday jumper and get in the car. I’m in no mood for one of your stories.’

      Church services at Our Lady of Miracles were a complete waste of time. The priest should have looked good in his glittery frock but managed to completely ruin the effect with a tragic haircut and old-fashioned horn-rimmed glasses. Father McMahon wasn’t just a frump. He had absolutely no talent for working a crowd.

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