again.
I have passed Christ’s test. I have pieces of him inside my stomach. I am carrying Christ inside my body. Christ was the son of God who created and rules everything, everyone. I am the part-son of God.
R ANDWICK ROADS TURN INTO a paddock-circle with a rim of green grass and centre of gravel and sand. It’s not part of a farm though the Members grandstand has pretty fringes as grand homesteads of another time do. The grandstand wears iron lace and fronts onto vast lawns with flower-bed borders. The horses don’t draw ploughshares. They’ve no thick, hairy draught-horse ankles and jaws but velvet coats that ripple when they walk. Their heads hang eight feet tall in the air yet for being such giants these horses are lean and very delicate, ballet-stepping on the spot. They have a mysterious mark on them as all horses do. God’s mark, I decide. I’m sure of it. A woody scab on the inside of their front legs that never goes away. It’s called a chestnut. I have no idea why. I’ve heard it told that a great artist once took a hammer to his David because the sculpture was so perfect he thought a bang on the knee would bring it to life. I expect God did that with horses and that’s their chestnut.
In this part of Randwick there is no boiled cabbage smell. There is farm smell, a horse smell of the earth, the dung of a great beast. One of God’s smells. Others I consider God smells are cow-smell, sheep, cut grass, wood smoke. The not-God smells are rubber, especially burning rubber, petrol, perfume, hairspray and bleach. There’s no proof that one smell is godly and one isn’t, but what else am I to think when I, a fully baptised piece of God, should find it impossible not to stop and inhale horse-smell in the air. The oats and chaff, lucerne and bran composted in a horse’s insides, a fuming brown-green porridge on the ground. Purifying is the word. It probably has the power to purify concrete when smeared there by hooves and human shoes. Purify it and make it honorary grass.
Those ungodly smells make my eyes water and sting, my nose run. I accept that my prayers may get God’s ear but not necessarily a response. Aunty Dorothy calls this “testing one’s faith”. Heels calls it “playing hard to get”. Perhaps my sensitivity to smells is the way God communicates with me.
It’s Saturday. We’re getting ready for the races. I’m tall enough and old enough to wear Winks’ fawn and brown check jacket now that he’s put on a few pounds and can’t fit into it. I’ve reached a point where something must be said. I must tell Winks that his Brylcreem and aftershave are ungodly smells. I must tell Heels that the perfume she calls Duty Free and VO 5 are disgusting to me. I will no longer be able to kiss her or be hugged by her unless she stops spraying her hair stiff and squirting Duty Free over herself. I am a piece of God and fighting his war, therefore causing my eyes and nostrils to burn and swell is to cause pain to God.
“I’m not going to be told what to do by a twelve-year-old, thank you very much,” she says with a mocking puff of her cheeks. She laughs to Winks. “We’ve got a preacher on our hands. One who wants us to stink. Whoever heard of such nonsense. ‘Hairspray’. ‘Piece of God’.” She juts her jaw to me: “And don’t start with your ‘I don’t want to go to the races’ or look out. You’re coming and that’s that.”
Winks parts his hair to the skin, laughs into the wardrobe mirror and jokes “I’ll have Yorkshire pudding with that beef, please,” watching her reflection twist this way and that until her dress clears her hips. She pokes her tongue out for extra strength for the final tug. She asks me to zip her tight as a drum across her shoulder blades. A tree-shape of creased skin forms above the zipper. There’s a similar tree at the front above her breasts. Winks pats aftershave on his shiny chin and steps away from the mirror to let Heels start on her
I have passed Christ’s test. I have pieces of him inside my stomach. I am carrying Christ inside my body. Christ was the son of God who created and rules everything, everyone. I am the part-son of God.
R ANDWICK ROADS TURN INTO a paddock-circle with a rim of green grass and centre of gravel and sand. It’s not part of a farm though the Members grandstand has pretty fringes as grand homesteads of another time do. The grandstand wears iron lace and fronts onto vast lawns with flower-bed borders. The horses don’t draw ploughshares. They’ve no thick, hairy draught-horse ankles and jaws but velvet coats that ripple when they walk. Their heads hang eight feet tall in the air yet for being such giants these horses are lean and very delicate, ballet-stepping on the spot. They have a mysterious mark on them as all horses do. God’s mark, I decide. I’m sure of it. A woody scab on the inside of their front legs that never goes away. It’s called a chestnut. I have no idea why. I’ve heard it told that a great artist once took a hammer to his David because the sculpture was so perfect he thought a bang on the knee would bring it to life. I expect God did that with horses and that’s their chestnut.
In this part of Randwick there is no boiled cabbage smell. There is farm smell, a horse smell of the earth, the dung of a great beast. One of God’s smells. Others I consider God smells are cow-smell, sheep, cut grass, wood smoke. The not-God smells are rubber, especially burning rubber, petrol, perfume, hairspray and bleach. There’s no proof that one smell is godly and one isn’t, but what else am I to think when I, a fully baptised piece of God, should find it impossible not to stop and inhale horse-smell in the air. The oats and chaff, lucerne and bran composted in a horse’s insides, a fuming brown-green porridge on the ground. Purifying is the word. It probably has the power to purify concrete when smeared there by hooves and human shoes. Purify it and make it honorary grass.
Those ungodly smells make my eyes water and sting, my nose run. I accept that my prayers may get God’s ear but not necessarily a response. Aunty Dorothy calls this “testing one’s faith”. Heels calls it “playing hard to get”. Perhaps my sensitivity to smells is the way God communicates with me.
It’s Saturday. We’re getting ready for the races. I’m tall enough and old enough to wear Winks’ fawn and brown check jacket now that he’s put on a few pounds and can’t fit into it. I’ve reached a point where something must be said. I must tell Winks that his Brylcreem and aftershave are ungodly smells. I must tell Heels that the perfume she calls Duty Free and VO 5 are disgusting to me. I will no longer be able to kiss her or be hugged by her unless she stops spraying her hair stiff and squirting Duty Free over herself. I am a piece of God and fighting his war, therefore causing my eyes and nostrils to burn and swell is to cause pain to God.
“I’m not going to be told what to do by a twelve-year-old, thank you very much,” she says with a mocking puff of her cheeks. She laughs to Winks. “We’ve got a preacher on our hands. One who wants us to stink. Whoever heard of such nonsense. ‘Hairspray’. ‘Piece of God’.” She juts her jaw to me: “And don’t start with your ‘I don’t want to go to the races’ or look out. You’re coming and that’s that.”
Winks parts his hair to the skin, laughs into the wardrobe mirror and jokes “I’ll have Yorkshire pudding with that beef, please,” watching her reflection twist this way and that until her dress clears her hips. She pokes her tongue out for extra strength for the final tug. She asks me to zip her tight as a drum across her shoulder blades. A tree-shape of creased skin forms above the zipper. There’s a similar tree at the front above her breasts. Winks pats aftershave on his shiny chin and steps away from the mirror to let Heels start on her
Similar Books
