Bridge of Triangles by John Muk Muk Burke Page B

Home and Chris became friends with a boy who was good at maths, he got a little better.
    The interior of the place where you could get cordial and biscuits for a penny smelled a bit like the flat when the Welfare lady had first taken them there; musty and unused and yet slightly of other people. The place echoed if you even thought and every sound bounced back from the small windows and the high roof. Black steel rods tied the upper portion of the room together and the bare board floor had wooden forms arranged so they focussed on a cloth-draped table at the front. A large book stood on the table along with a wooden bowl. There was a tall wooden cupboard labelled “Sunday School Press” over in one corner.
    The man’s eyes were set close together and his ginger hair grew sticking up and thick above a high earnest forehead sprinkled with freckles. The twenty or so kids had wonderfully raised the dust in the room and now they seemed determined to drive the floor into the earth as they confirmed that, yes, they were happy and glad by stamping their feet. They’d already clapped their hands, nodded their heads and as Barry had whispered to Chris in the back row, shown their joy by “waving your dick”. Barry was daring. Chris eyed him like some sort of city hero.
    Canon Wilson seemed not to notice any of the present tom-foolery, pinching and plait pulling. Instead he spoke of the utter wickedness of all people and how they were going to be cast into the everlasting pit. Yes, even little children unless they knocked at the door and heard the shepherd and became as little children and turned the other cheek as they passed through the eye of a needle.
    â€œWhat’s he talking about Barry?” Chris’s knowledge of the other had always been there—unformed but certain and sure. Barry’s seemingly simple bonding to the earth had first awakened the thought that people attempted to give shape to the unformed knowledge. Chris was beginning to see that these other people—these whites—were grasping to grasp some notion with which he had been born. The certainty that there was more than this sad sad world where people hated and killed one another, where little children were left hungry and lonely and reaching out to be loved, where everyone died and that was that. And now Canon Wilson seemed to say yes—there is more than this but it can never be now. Perhaps he was right. It never could be now—now that the old families were all but gone. The big faces wise and accepting—the big hands breaking the bread and sharing—the small hands clutching secure thick black curls as babes were carried strong and safe across the earth’s surface. Yes this was all gone. And the only hope was in a place called heaven.
    â€œBullshit,” whispered Barry, “got your penny? Ya gotta pay now.”
    Canon Wilson passed the wooden bowl to a child and led the crowd in a song about pennies dropping one by one. As Chris’s penny fell down amongst the others with a bright clink, a mixture of relief and anticipation swept over him. Had he bought a little time away from the bottomless pit? And had the time come at last for the drink and biscuits?
    Canon Wilson gave everyone a little card with a gold border. Chris’s had a picture of a sheep carrying a red and white flag. He looked at Barry sideways and knew he would have to find out what all this meant.

One sunny Saturday morning after a night of Sydney showers the boys set off as usual to the quarry over behind the wasteland. They were a cheerful enough band, punching each other and laughing in the light. As they swung back and forwards and finally sailed from the ramp rails they saw the gangling boy sitting in his overalls. He sat on the top step leading into his hut and his feet in their big boots lay at angles on the bottom step. He looked up at the shouting happy kids. Chris saw his face. His eyes had a distant haunted look