The Captain

Fifty, sixty or seventy cars streaming below while the old footbridge was crossed. Four lanes in either direction, 80kms per hour at perhaps 25 metres in length. The foundations for the new footbridge had been prepared on one side, which would no doubt be a snazzier structure than the old that linked with the Federation Trail stretching all the way to Werribee, 25kms out. Various memories of the old bridge during schooldays. Poor young George Golic, a couple of years below in the junior forms, had been rescued once on the school side when he was set upon by a bigger boy. In fact it may have been all playfulness there at the entryway, but nevertheless whimpy little George was spared  anything further that day and the perpetrator made to blanch. You didn’t mess with compatriots when the school football captain was passing, Fella! A spiky-haired Pole or Ukrainian, getting too big for his boots. George’s father was a Serb, an older man who had married a young German woman once the labour camps had been liberated. For the German women after the war there had been a shortage of men. In Australia after that wave of post-war immigration the reverse was found, which resulted in chaps thereabout circling blonde Mrs Golic, mismatched as she was. In that same year near where George had been rescued the football captain had once been ambushed by a group of lads from an opposing team, an inferior outfit which had been well beaten some weeks previously. At the head of this party lying in wait was the tough nut Joe Sacco, who had already left school and had a job at one of the meatworks, where boning knives and the like were employed. There were three or four of these Seddon lads, with Joe at their head, awaiting their chance. Returning from lunch at home and coming upon the party, wisest course was to get your ass well outta there pronto—speedily down along Fogarty Avenue all the way to the creek and around back home on Melbourne Road the long way. A stumpy Maltese with short little legs stood little chance racing a thoroughbred; fisticuffs might have been another matter. With the cars hurtling beneath there was often a jet risen in the big Northern sky, winging up from the airport. After the best part of a decade sequestered in the concrete canyons of Singapore, the wide stretches above unfurled like a colourful tapestry that pulled on your eyeballs. Following the low winter skies further expanse was offered in the early autumn, an encouraging, calming field of limitless scope. Up on the sides of the village shepherding, up at the higher summer pastures, all the ancestors across the generations had often entered the great skies above and travelled between the clouds with their herds. One old prorok, prophet from Village Uble was famously said to have anticipated the advent of the aeroplane, claiming at some point early in the previous century that a day would arrive when donkeys, if not pigs, would fly. Back at the house two possums had been caught in the hire cage and taken down to the gum-lined rail-line at the bottom of the street. Despite this, the quiet mocking screech behind the plaster at the foot of the stairs continued mornings going down for breakfast. What kind of animal was that? How did it get in and out of the roof? The thinking now was that perhaps a shrill may have been involved, and not an old poss. A couple of evenings ago checking the seal on a presumed access point up on the ridge of the roof, a dark shadow had suddenly flitted below from the direction of the neighbour behind. Wha! Whoooo!… All uncanny quick-time. Wings had beat under the alcove of the house, glossy and darkly black. At that speed the sudden uplift that would have been needed in order to avoid crashing into the closed gate around the corner of the Studio would have been quite something to behold. Hard down on the joystick and eyes shut tight, Birdie! What was most striking was that the bird had passed hard-by the lounge-room windows in front, between them and the thick posts holding up the room above. At least it had passed like that by the near post, hard left at the corner in order to avoid the entry porch. An eye of an needle threaded and around the corner the up-surge at such speed defied imagining.