Yellowcake - Margo Lanagan [51]
‘I will,’ Sheegeh said, and walked on.
{ Living Curiosities
I went to Dulcie Pepper’s tent and slapped my hand onto her table, palm up.
‘I’m sorry, Nonny-girl. Looking at that, you’ll not grow another inch.’ She reached for her pipe. ‘Clawed your way through that queue, did you?’
‘Have you had anyone tonight?’
‘One strange young man. How about you Ooga-Boogas?’
‘A family or two, and a man—oh, probably the same man as you. Very clean clothes, and uncomfortable in them.’
‘Uncomfortable in his skin, that one. He gave me the shivers, he did.’
‘Spent a long time in with the pickle jars, then came out and stood well back from us, did not try to speak. Even Billy could not get so much as a good-evening out of him, though he did nod when greeted. Mostly just stared, though, from one to another of us and back again. Twice around, he went, as if he did not want to miss a thing.’
‘Hmm.’ Dulcie leaned back in her shawl-draped chair and put her humdrum boots up next to the crystal ball. She is not so much a crystal gazer; the ball is mostly for atmosphere. She does complicated things with her own set of cards that she will not say where they came from, and mainly and bestly she reads hands. Not just palms, but hands, for there is as much to be read from fingertips as from the palm’s creases, she says. ‘Where was I, then, last time?’
‘You had just told Mister Ashman as much as you could, about them ghosts.’
‘Oh yes, which was not very much, and all confused, as is always the case when you come to a moment of choice and possibilities. It’s as bad as not seeing anything sometimes; really, you could gain as much direction consulting a person of only common sense. But perhaps those are rarer than I’m thinking, rarer even than fortune-tellers. Anyway, John Frogget comes by.’
‘John Frogget? What was he doing there?’ I tried to disguise that his name had spilled a little of my tea.
‘Well, he must quarter somewhere too, no, for the winter? That was the year his pa died. He said he would not go to Queensland and duke it out with his brothers for the land. He waited closer to spring and then went up a month or two and rabbited for them. Made a tidy pot, too. All put away in the savings bank nicely—there’s not many lads would be so forethoughtful.’
I tried to nod like one of those commonsense people. I nearly always knew whereabouts John Frogget was, and if I didn’t know where, I imagined. Right now I could hear the pop-pop of someone in his shooting gallery, alongside the merry-go-round music. So he would be standing there in the bright-lit room, all legs and folded arms and level gaze, admiring if the man was a good shot, and careful not to show scorn or amusement if he was not. ‘So what did Frogget do, then, about your ghosts?’
‘Well, he tried to shoot them, of course—we asked him. At first he was too frightened. Such a steady boy, you would not credit how he shook. He could not believe it himself. So at first his shots went wide. But then he calmed himself, but blow me if it made any difference. Look, he says, I am aimed direct in the back of the man’s head or at his heart, but the shot goes straight through the air of him. He made us watch, and ping!, and zing!, and bdoing! It all bounced off the walls and the two of them just kept up their carry-on, the ghost-man cursing and the woman a-mewling same as ever. And then rowr-rowr-chunka-chunka the thing come down the alley like always, and poor Frogget—we had not warned him about that part!’ Laughter and smoke puffed out of her, and she coughed. ‘We had to just about scrape him off the bricks with a butter knife, he was pressed so flat! Oh!’
‘Poor lad,’ I said. ‘You and Mister Ashman at least were used to it.’
‘I know. We knew we would come to no harm. Ashman had stood on that exact spot many times and been run down by the ghost-horses and the ghost-cart, like I told you. It might have whitened his hair a little more, the sensations of it, but he were never crushed, by any means. Standing there in the racket with