Girl with a Monkey by Thea Astley Read Free Book Online Page B

out a couple of fellers who’d been shoved in that morning.”
    â€œWho were they?”
    â€œKelly was one. I can’t think of the other name. Kerry or something. It’ll come to me. Well, I didn’t know at the time, but later on when the whole family was arguing about the business, us being greatly concerned, you might say, I remember hearing them say these two chaps had been in a spot of bother out at Stewart’s Creek Railway Station with a mob of cattle that come in a few days before. Most of the time the people was arguing and shouting at each other, I could only see trouser legs, but by an’ by, towards nine o’clock,the whole crowd moved off up towards the lock-up. There was a plain-clothes cop dad knew kept hanging round the edge of the gathering near us and he must of shot off early to warn ’em up at the jail.”
    He picked a fresh grass stalk and peeled off the outer husk.
    The evening only came back to him in snatches of violence: the moonlessness, the great procession, nearly a thousand strong, moving like a king tide in the darkness, singing “The Red Flag” down the town streets; and the final convergence and preliminary hush outside the lock-up gates. Lucidly piece after piece of the montage sorted itself out.
    â€œWhen we got there,” he continued, “somehow or other we must of got pushed right to the front, because I can still remember seeing the coppers in the yard through a crack in the fence, with their big Lee-Enfield rifles, bayonets fixed, and a Webley service revolver in the other hand.”
    Strange how he recalled the guns; they were interesting to kids then, because with the war just over most of them collected bits of army gear. Anyway, one reason he remembered so well was the fact that another kid, a pal of his, who lived along the same street, picked up a small revolver half buried in the dust next morning, not far from the lock-up where they had gone to look for bullet holes in the mango-tree trunks. Theyhad played with it for a bit before their parents made them hand it in.
    â€œGo on,” prompted Elsie.
    â€œThere was boos and cheers, and then the crowd started calling out for this bloke Kelly. Carney was the other one, I jus’ remembered. And some mug copper who stuck his head over the gate to say Kelly wasn’t there got it bashed good and hard by a tall skinny bloke in overalls next to my dad. And then it started! There was shots from all directions and we tried to push to one side but it wasn’t no good. The crowd was so mad they started to tear down the fence, yards of it, fighting and shoving each other. And nothing but legs far as I could see and a dreadful splintering going on in the darkness. And shot after shot.”
    Even now, vividly he remembered the fear rising to a crazed panic that made him wet his pants, and his father dragging and shouting and then moaning with awful regularity.
    â€œI don’t remember much else,” he said. “It only lasted five minutes, I suppose, but I was only pint-size and I thought it was a nightmare. Dad told me later that after the coppers started firing low into the crowd, I screamed and wouldn’t stop; and then I don’t suppose he noticed after a minute because a bullet got him on the shin and splintered the bone so bad he never walked right again.”
    â€œIs this Townsville?” breathed Elsie. “This quiet, inoffensive little sugar town? What broke it up finally?”
    â€œOh, the crowd knew when they’d had enough. There must of been six or seven people hurt round us. Lying on the ground, some of them, and a couple limping away with their pals. Dad managed to drag himself off before they started taking any names, and one of his brothers who had his sulky down Stokes Street shoved him in an’ took him home. We called the doctor private. Didn’t want to say we’d been in that do in case there was trouble.”
    He did not