Stick to the Plan

I dunno if I should be telling you all this. Ma warned me if I go blabbing to folks like you, then others in these parts may say I've lost my marbles or some-such-thing. “Remember what happened to Billy Sanders,” she had said, then whispered, “God hates a sinner.” I promised to keep my mouth shut, and I did, but when I was awoken this morning from a fitful sleep by a flock of loud, squawking cockatoos perched outside my window, I knew I needed to reveal all. I’ll be quick. The doctor, the one with the crew cut and clipboard, will make his rounds soon and who knows what may happen then. So here it goes.

Two men dressed in white came to Billy Sanders' house in a white van, a red cross stencilled on each side and bars on the rear windows. Both men were small in stature, but their arms and legs were thick like rugby players. They spoke to Billy’s Pa, a small discussion commenced, and Billy was summoned. They grabbed hold of Billy, and said he was to come with them. This was late last summer, on the eve of harvest when we ate watermelon every day. Billy was a tough bugger and kicked and screamed, lashing out with clenched fists, but he was no match for the brutes and soon gave up the fight, falling to the ground like a sack of flour. Still, he had grit and refused to walk. They drag him through the dirt, one man on each arm, towards the waiting van. They sped off down the driveway with Billy's Pa raising a fist to the air, screaming, "Good riddance boy." I watched with horror. Billy and me, we'd been shooting our air-rifles at tin cans placed on the back fence when summer ended abruptly. I was a lay witness to the whole sorry affair. I chased after the van, choking on the dust left in its wake, screaming until my voice was hoarse; "Don't worry, Billy Sanders, I'll come and find you, I promise."

That Sunday, during the sermon, Father O'Rourke told us parishioners why the men had come for Billy Sanders. Said the boy was possessed, said his soul needed cleansing, said the Devil was inside him. No one stood up for Billy Sanders. His Ma and Pa, they did stand from the pews only to repent and ask for the congregation’s forgiveness. They said they'd washed their hands of their only son. Said he'd always been sick at heart. His Pa added, before sitting, that it was the best thing for Billy.

I was confused and frightened. Billy was the nicest kid I knew.

 Beneath the dusk of a summer's night, I sat on the porch with my Ma, watching a lone bird circle high above and told her the story of how they took Billy Sanders. Ma, with a worried frown, wrapped her arm around me, pulled me in tight, and made me promise never to tell anyone my secret. "Otherwise, you'll be keeping Billy Sanders company." All the while, I was thinking that Billy had done nothing wrong, and neither had I. God wanted me to share my secret since He made me this way, but I kept my trap shut. I didn't want to end up like Billy Sanders.

Dusk gave way to thunder that rolled across the land, and my Pa appeared, a cigarette in his hand, and he watched the heavens grow angry. He cursed and retreated inside.

Hail began to fall.

Billy Sanders knew my secret; I told him after Sunday School where the widower, Mrs Adams read from the bible and told us to always be truth-telling; “God had plans for all of you.” I knew God had a plan for me, so I told Billy Sanders. This was the summer he was taken.

The other Sunday school kids played catch in the field by the church. Under a sprawling oak tree, our Ma’s set tables for lunch with legs of mutton, damper and dripping, pitchers of ice-cold lemonade. As we left the church, Billy motioned for me to take his hand and I felt obliged to do so. He was my best friend. Our hands were like chalk and cheese, mine as dirty as a gravedigger; Billy's as clean and trimmed as Miss Brown’s nails. She was the proprietor of Brown’s Beauty Parlour down on Main Street where our Ma’s had their hair coiffed for church each week.

We crept towards the rear of the church, past a wasp nest no one had had the good sense to remove and sat on a rickety wooden step that creaked under our weight. The sun was at high noon.

“I got a secret,” Billy said to me.

I looked him in the eye. “Me too.”

“You go first then.”

“No, you.”

"Okay then, you want to see?"

Of course, I told him. Billy stood, undid his belt buckle, and dropped his pants. His thing fell right out. Except it didn't flop like mine would, Billy Sanders' thing stood tall like the flagpole in the schoolyard.

 "What ya doing Billy Sanders? You put that thing away will ya. Otherwise, you'll get a walloping from Father O'Rourke," I warned him, but Billy Sanders was never great at listening; just ask Mrs Adams.

“Touch it.” He said.

Ma had warned me never to touch that thing between our legs; it was the Devil's instrument. If we started playing with it, well, she reckoned, that was like sounding a horn inviting Satan over for supper. 

"Go on," he urged. It looked purple and swollen like he'd been stung by one of those wasps, and I fretted about God punishing me if I did indeed reach out and press my finger on the tip. So I didn't.

Besides, I was disappointed. “Is that ya secrete Billy Sanders? ‘Cause sometimes, in the morning when Ma is brewing coffee, my thing pops up too. But Ma, she says if that happens, I’m to drop to my knees and pray to Jesus.”

Billy was too preoccupied with his thing between to listen to me. Billy took hold of it in the palm of his hand and lowered his voice. "But can your’s do this?" He gripped it like a cricket bat and shook it like he shook a soda pop bottle, intent on spraying the contents all over me. Which his thing did, all over Billy's hand.

Billy stood up, gave his head a shake and winked at me, wiping the stuff onto his pants as he pulled them to his waist, squeezing his now shrivelled thing back inside his underwear. He looked as proud that day as I’d ever seen him as he grinned from ear to ear. “Father O’Rourke taught me. Do you want me to teach you?”

I shrugged my shoulders, and for a moment I considered walking away to play catch, but I spied the big old gum tree down the back of the paddock, the one Billy and I would climb some Sunday’s, daring each other to go higher and higher. I wanted to show Billy my secret. "You wanna see what I can do?"

“Go one then, show me,” he said. “But it better be good.” 

We walked to the tree.

"Wait down here," I told him. I removed the bow tie my Ma made me wear to Sunday school, not caring that it choked me nearly half-to-death and rolled up the sleeves to my best cotton shirt. I placed one foot in the lowest knot, reached for a branch and hauled myself up towards the canopy. I perched myself on a thick branch that looked sturdy enough to support my weight and edged my way out to the furthest spot.

 The branch sagged and swayed a little.

 I looked down. I felt a little queasy, but God had a plan for me. My Ma said to have Faith whenever I asked how we knew if God was real or not, so I did. 

"Can ya see me, Billy Sanders?

“Yes but hurry up will ya. I’m getting hungry.”

“Ya got to promise me ya won’t dob on me.”

“I promise.”

I spread my arms like a kookaburra does its wings and yelled “Look at me Billy Sanders I can fly!” as I stepped off the branch.

I heard Billy Sanders call out,”Nooooo!”

I heard a loud thud.

Then a crack.

My body hit the ground hard, but there was no pain. Not yet anyway.

I opened an eye to see Billy Sanders gapping at me, raising his hand to his mouth concealing a giggle. “You’re fair dinkum bonkers,” he laughed. “What did ya go and do that for? You can’t fly. No one can fly, not even Flash Gordon.”

Bewildered and now in pain, I raised my good arm towards Billy so he could help me up. "I just need to practise more."

Ma rubbed magnesium lotion into my arm, swollen to the size of a watermelon and just as red. So too were Ma's eyes, and I saw she'd been crying. I mumbled how sorry I was. She rocked me in her arms and told me everything would be okay. She ran a bath and washed my back, gently touching the bruises and cried again. "Son, you're going to get yourself hurt, or worse", she wept, her voice filled with anxiety. I could tell she wanted to scold me, but she saw I was already pained.

I know what you all think that I am crazy and should meet the same fate as Billy Sanders, but I promise you I am telling the truth.

I can fly.

I was born this way, God's truth, and one day you'll get to see. Maybe when I'm older, I'm not too sure how God's plan works. You can laugh all you like. I don't care, even if you sniggering that I must be all uppity if I think I can fly. But I can't help it. This is who I am. You must believe me, please. Truth be told, I don't have a good answer as to why me or how I know. It's not like I have wings to flap, but I know I can fly the same way you folks know you can't.

Birds don't ask if they can fly. They just know, even before they've left the nest. They know the same way I know. Just like the way a catfish knows it can breathe underwater or a cow knows to make milk each day.

When I was six, I lay awake in bed, listening to the insects singing to the moon outside my bedroom window, and I could see myself, as clearly as I can see you, flying. I could feel the airlift me up high, and I would soar above the barn where the cows are kept at night and owls’ nest. The feeling overwhelmed me. All I wanted to do was show the world I could fly.

Some nights I was angry at God. "Why me?" I would yell at him, "I don't want be different." But he never answered, cross perhaps, for I dared to question his judgment. Then there was Ma and Pa. What would they say when I told them that their boy isn't the boy they thought he was? Would they whip me, or would they send me away? This thought made me gloomy.

Flying is all I could think about. After chores, I would lay in the grass, watch the crows in the sky, study how they moved their wings, and let the air carry them. I would practice taking leaps off a stool in the kitchen, climb a fence post, and jump down into one of the stables, but nothing happened. I was either not high enough or I needed to grow wings.

When Ma went to market and Pa the fields, I would slip into their bedroom, strip myself butt naked in front of the mirror my Ma used to admire herself. I would see me, and I was incomplete. I was missing something, maybe I was missing wings. And I would become giddy with excitement imagining two big beautiful white wings like a cockatoo’s, protruding from my back.

"Ma," I said one afternoon when school was done, and we picked peas in the garden.

She turned towards me and cast a smile as warm as the sun on our backs. "Yes, dear?"

“I have something to tell you.”

She sobbed through dinner, and when Pa asked what was wrong, she lied. She told Pa she'd found a dead chicken in the coop. "If you could have seen it, Pa, the others had pecked it to death." I never heard my Ma tell a fib before, except about Santa, but all parents lie about him.

Pa thumped the table and told her to stop being bloody stupid.

Ma and I didn't mention my secret again until I tried to show Billy Sanders.

After the bath, I sat on the end of my bed and asked God for guidance. He told me to be strong, that He had a plan, and to stick to it. "But do I wait for wings, or can I fly now?" I asked, but He did not answer. Downstairs my Ma softly cried, and my Pa paced, his boot hitting the parlour’s wooden floor with a thud. I thought about hiding under the bed, but I was too weak and too sore. I sat and waited for judgement. "No boy of mine is going to be going around and telling folks be can fly. Have you got that woman? I told you you're too bloody too soft with him." The sound of his footsteps moved closer, and I heard the stairs shake under his angry stomp.

"Boy," he yelled tearing open my bedroom door, removing his belt from his pants. I heard my Ma yell out, "No Frank, no, he's just a boy," but it was too late. My father took to me, flaying my backside until I could cry no more.

The Sunday after Billy Sanders was taken, hailstones the size of oranges fell from the sky, flattening the wheat with a deafening roar. Windows shattered as my Ma, and I cowered under her bed, our hands clasped across our ears, hiding from the loud cry of God's anger.

There was no wheat to harvest that summer.

Nor was there any rain to follow.

Pa spent evenings on the back porch drinking whiskey straight from the bottle, fanning himself with his hat, searching the heavens for the promise of rain, but there was nothing.

We sowed more wheat but no sooner had a slender green stem appeared through the hard parched soil that a plague of locusts tore through the plains and devoured the year’s crop.

No one knew why? Folks gossiped. Father O'Rourke called a town meeting and said there must be sinners amongst us. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." My Ma grasped my arm as she fidgeted nervously. No one pointed the bone.

Billy Sanders came home later that year. Folks were no longer the same in these parts, the banks had taken their farms, and their spirits. Dust ate away at the brethren's souls like a dog gnaws a bone.

I visited Billy, and he looked like Billy, red-haired and freckled, but he too had his spirit taken, so it seemed. He stared blankly out from his bedroom windows into the abyss of dirt and dust that swallowed the land.

"So, do you think you can still fly," Billy asked me, but I told him to shut his trap. "Ma says it's dangerous to be different, especially in these parts."

Billy Sanders showed me a raised red scar on his forehead and said the doctors cut part of his brain out to cure him of his sickness. "But you weren't sick," I reminded him, and he winked.

"I believe you, Timmy. I believe you can fly." Billy Sanders's eyes filled with tears, and he gave me a hug, whispering into my ear, "we're friends till the end, okay?"

Billy gave me my wings.

That night, I lay awake, looking towards heaven, and promised God I would be truthful to Him. It was time, I said in my prayers, to stop being a coward and to soar high into the sky. I watched myself leap from my window, and fly across the fields, the air tickling my skin, and it gave me joy.

In the morning, I was so excited I struggled to sit still. My Ma asked why I was so happy. Was it because Billy Sanders was back? I lied and said yes, yes it was. Then Pa started hooting from the back porch, and we ran outside to see why. "Look Ma, look son, the rain is a coming.”

Through the house, I snuck out the front door and down the side towards the barn. I climbed to the highest pitch in the roof as the rain began to patter around my feet. I saw my Ma and Pa dancing in the dust, hollering with joy. Then my father dropped to his knees. He kissed the muddy ground and then looked up and met my stare. I waved at him and saw his face freeze.

 This was my last shot.

"Ma", I cried out, "Ma, look."

Ma saw me, and I watched as her face turn white before my eyes.

“Pa,” I cried, “Pa, see, this is me. This is your boy, your boy can fly.”

And on those final words, I stepped off the barn roof.