Foreigner

by varp

Posted to Stories on 2002-10-30 21:31:00

Parent message is 312700
The setting is suburban Melbourne in the mid fifties and a chook is slang for chicken.


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FOREIGNER

It was a clean bright blue dome of sky as the sun rose resentfully over the Fosters fence. Last nights fire still cracked and hissed as Morrie Foster ambled out of the greasy possums nest he called bed. He lurched over to the tap like a stiff legged drunk, yawning and scratching. It had been a night like any other – loud, spiteful and pitifully tedious. The twin girls Violet and Lily had been at each others throats all day and their mother Nell – five foot, fat as mud and a face like a slapped arse had picked up on their braying refrain and carried it on into the night.

Morrie had learned to live with this. He’d basically just given up. He had a dim memory of wanting to be a prize fighter once, but after he got the stuffing knocked out of him by a one armed grocer, his ambitions didn’t so much narrow as evaporate.

After the war he drifted in and out of labouring jobs, met Nell one dark night, had a windfall at the track and with his winnings bought a quarter acre block in Jacana that backed on to a creek. The railway was a spit away and the regular deafening clack of the new electric trains was the only thing capable of drowning out the constant nagging, bitching and petty squabbling of this rough cast tribe.

He’d started to build a house while they lived in a shed, but with his drinking and gambling it never got finished or was ever likely to. His days were spent wandering around the new estates with an old wheelbarrow, scrounging things to cobble together to make the house, but everyone knew it just gave him a reason to be. The yard was full of bits and pieces – timber scantling, pallets of mismatched bricks, busted windows and doors, sheets of tin and in the middle of it all – a shed. Their home.

It was a Sunday, Morrie knew this because the trains were fewer. He stood by the tap drinking from his tin mug, and simultaneously pissing. Nell staggered out from the shed in a half crouching trot and threw some wood on the fire.

‘Christ Morrie, me backs fucked’

‘Not my bloody fault’

‘Yes it is ‘ she spits – ‘ya pushed me , I fell an it’s your fucken fault awlright…I’m not doin nuthin now yer can make yer own fucken dinner I’m on fucken strike’

‘Dinner! haven’t had brekky yet’

‘Well ya can get it yer fucken self yer useless prick ‘

‘Now Nell don’t need to get all ….TOM! PUT DOWN YER SISTER RIGHT NOW!’

Tom the halfwit son with the speech impediment has picked up Violet and is giving her a bear hug. Violet, true to name was colouring up badly, bug eyed and gasping. Lily had come up from behind and was flailing away at them with a branch.

‘Bloody hell..’ Morrie says as he lopes over and starts backhanding the pair of them as Lily keeps raining her branch of eucalyptus down on their backs.

‘Leave off you lot!’ cries Nell as she lumbers over with a switch of fencing wire.

‘Iffen youse don’t all stop now I’ll skin yers, gawd help me if I fucken don’t’ The wire was whistling through the air as she swung it round and the 7.47 from Glenroy roared past – KERTHACK KERTHACK KERTHACK

Into the middle of this all-in-brawl wandered a chicken. Big, plump and white it sauntered and scratched pecking up little bits of creepy nothing disturbed by the scuttling feet of the Fosters.

‘STREWTH….. whats this? ‘ cried Morrie.

They all stopped and stared in silence.

‘Whaaaa….where’d this come from then?’

‘Muff be fwom der….’ said Tom straining to get his jutting jaw around the vowels.

‘Hah…there you go.. there’s our dinner awlright… go on Morrie deal with it ‘ says Nell dropping her switch and nodding towards the axe.

“ohhh no we can’t eat it..it’s not ours’ say the twins in unison.

‘Pigs arse, it’s here now so it’s ours’ says Morrie.

‘But someone else must own it’

‘Look listen to me will youse, it’s done a bunk from whoever owned it before, so now it’s ours and you can just shuddup about it…’

The girls frowned and weren’t happy about this – the way seven year olds can get when there’s some benefit to be gained by taking the moral high ground. It just feels good to be smug. Morrie rolled his eyes, squatted on his haunches and looked at them both.

‘Girls, girls… look, it’s like this.. see.. this chook has probably been up to no good. Been pecking holes in the other chooks eggs an ruining every thing for everybody. The other chooks got together and said right, this has got to stop and we’re all going to get her tomorrow and give her a hiding. This bad chicken here overhears wots goin on an does a runner before they have a chance to get stuck in to her. She’s become a fugitive she has.’

The twins look at each other, arch their brows and shrug.

‘But where’s it from’ they say. Tom is still agonising over his speech impediment, straining hard, his neck craned forward –

‘Muff be fwom der…’

He’s cut short by a sharp ‘THWACK!’ heads turn to see Nell holding up the now headless, flapping chicken by its feet, blood splattering her filthy apron.

‘If yer want a fucken job done….’ she mutters as she plucks.

The day is hot and long, the corrugated iron shed is stifling so the Fosters find what shade they can amongst the debris of the yard and quietely whinge and swot flies. Come sunset the fire is kicked into life and the camp oven is rinsed in the creek, filled with onions, carrots and potatoes then the chicken. The lid put on and then buried in the hot ashes. Slowly the rich aroma fills the air.

‘Proper Sunday roast eh Nell’ says Morrie

‘It’s awright…yeah..s’awright enuff…’ Says Nell as she doles out five tin bowls of food.

‘Time to put on the nose bag youse lot’ she says as the wind picks up and creates a vortex of feathers and dust around them.

‘still I wonder where the chook came from’ say the twins. Tom stands up and points trying to speak as the seven thirty five from the city roars past.

‘Muff be fwom the…’ his voice trails off as the train rattles past.

‘The what….’ screams Morrie.

‘Muff be fwom der Phillipses farm ovah the phucken cweek’ stammers Tom, his tongue swollen and greasy with fat.

‘Can’t be’ says Nell. ‘The phillips have got red chooks and this was white. Musta been a foreigner I reckon. All the chooks round here are brown..’

‘Foreigner or not, black or white or fucken brindle it’s tucker pure and simple’ says Morrie contemplating his beer gut. ‘In fact, you could say it’s a foreign fowl that fed a family of five Fosters as they sat round a fire in a feather storm’ He smiled and looked around.

‘That was foetry dad’ said Tom.