Bridge of Triangles by John Muk Muk Burke Page A

people.
    When Jack was a boy he’d been led off to where the Good Shepherd lived. He early perceived that this invisible man was white. And the Good Shepherd’s Father had the face of Jack’s father and probably spent his time too sinking wells in heaven. No time for talk or sitting. No need for Grandma Leeton to sit in the cane chair and search the hair of her children. God was made of soap. Oh yes, the Good Shepherd taught her all about right and wrong. Her lot got three good plain meals a day and a bed with cold white sheets to sleep in. And learned their prayers.
    So Jack grew up secure in the values of those who were right. And then the jungle floor soaked up the bright frothing blood of other honest men. Was there enough soap in the universe now? Unquestioned obedience to duty. God, King and Country.
    And so when Chris signed the book, and the court official handed over the brown envelope with a bewildered expression, the most fragile link between man and boy was maintained. Every second Wednesday was a feast day in that small hut all those years and years ago. Bags with juicy peaches, a big bottle of drink, the extravagance of a whole pineapple and the largest block of chocolate were carried triumphantly by Chris into that low mean hut. And if Jack Leeton ever knew then it is certain he approved of the joy with which those kids attacked the stuff his labour had bought.
    It was Barry who told Chris about the cordial and the biscuits every Sunday morning. It only cost a penny he said. And so it was that the boy went to his first church service. And so it was too that the first awakening notion of the real cost of sustenance and nourishment was formed.
    Across the main road was another sprawl of huts. Overon that side there were no ramps connecting the huts. There was a barbershop with a red and white pole where it cost two shillings to get a hair cut. Here too was a doctor’s surgery and post office. One end of the block had wide double doors. These opened into a long room across the width of the hut. Above the doors a wooden cross was bolted to the wall. A faded sign announced that a meeting would be held every Sunday at “9.30AM GOD WILLING”. Chris wondered about that. He was beginning to wonder more and more about all things.
    His relationship with Barry had subtly changed since the talk about babies. It would be years before the ineffability and utter mystery of the physical world worked its way into his conscious mind: until he accommodated the inexorable truth that he was to walk the earth for a time and that the innocence which Barry’s words had cut into like a jagged bread knife was no real innocence. So much pain in accepting that there would never, could never be the return his child soul yearned for. It would be years and years before he dimly began to see that notions of forward and return were ultimately without meaning. That all is a constant now. Fragments of a memory of a memory, felt at first as a consuming pain, filtered through the voices of birds and lizards, the moving air and leaves and even the rocks themselves. Something of what he’d learned to call the past informed him. And in the centre of all this confusion was a tiny light which no matter how much it flickered and threatened to go out, danced back with fitful flames. It seemed to say that somewhere a meaning to the swirling events which were the sum total of his walk on the world was waiting to be found. He reached out for any rock which that light happened to flicker on and illuminate.
    So he tagged along with Barry because now there were empty days that yawned into what he’d learned to call the future. His memories of the past became ghostly andinsubstantial. It was a strange liaison because Barry showed a certain contempt for everything, especially school. Chris had grown to like school, most of all the reading and art. Maths was a mystery, but later, after Barry’s parents got their Commission