Free A Kindness Cup by Thea Astley

cobwebs of nonsense. It is not the time. He waits.

D ORAHY THAT Sundaywas filled with Godtide. He had observed the vigilante grouping of the men as he rode through the township on his way to Jenner’s. It was a horrible boil-up of masculinity, he thought, as he passed them by, resisting invitation with a cool wave and shake of the head. He sensed bloody trouble, the smell of it, all the way out of town.
    Mr Jenner was hoeing vegetables in a patch at the rear of the house. The peace of it was almost comic. He was a tall man with a crop of receding red hair and a frightening calm. So slow appeared everything he touched one nearly missed the steady forwardness of it.
    Dorahy said abruptly, ‘They’re on their way. What can we do about it?’
    Jenner put his hoe down carefully and straightened up amid the silver beet.
    â€˜Who?’
    â€˜The men of God. The town elders. They’re out on a black hunt, as I predicted yesterday.’
    Jenner seemed to be staring into lost distances. ‘What do you want to do?’ he asked at last.
    Dorahy found his mouth full of angry saliva.
    â€˜Go after them. See that no harm is done.’
    Jenner sucked at this idea for a while. He could have bitten straight through to the centred seed but preferred rumination, if only for the look of the thing.
    â€˜Two of us only?’
    â€˜Your son, perhaps.’
    â€˜Three!Two men and a boy! They’d laugh in our faces.’
    â€˜Some protest must be made.’
    â€˜It will do nothing.’
    Dorahy frowned. ‘It puts our case. I had thought Boyd—but he was with them.’
    Jenner smiled. ‘But so feebly,’ he said. He picked up the hoe and began walking back to the house. Dorahy followed. Day was beginning to blaze. In such sunlight, which could eat its way through sinew and bone towards the soul, both men felt exposed.
    â€˜Still,’ Jenner went on as they neared the back steps, ‘I do see your point. I’ll come with you. The smallest protest force in history. My God! But we’ll achieve nothing, you know.’
    Tim Jenner was painting railings. The wife and daughters were seated sewing on the long veranda. The contrast of it made Dorahy laugh sourly at the thought of that ten-strong band of yahoos bristling with guns.
    He said, ‘It will express our point of view. Our conscience.’
    â€˜They’ll find us a joke,’ Jenner said.
    â€˜It will prick them.’
    â€˜So?’ Jenner said. ‘That isn’t enough you know. Not nearly enough.’
    Dorahy said, ‘I’m wanting more than that, if it’s possible.’
    â€˜What, then?’
    â€˜I want them to know the town is divided. That other opinions have force and must be taken into account.’
    â€˜What a hope!’ Jenner said.
    From the bottom of the veranda steps Dorahy smiled up at the three women on the veranda. Putting the case to them, he asked what they thought. He had never believed that to be female was to be incapable of judgment.
    YoungJenner put down his paint brush and said, ‘May I come?’
    â€˜I should hope you would,’ his father replied.
    â€˜Then that’s all there is to it,’ the boy said. He would lose his simplicity with time. His face shone. He believed Dorahy to be always infallible. ‘Are we taking guns?’
    â€˜No guns,’ his father said. ‘That’s the whole point.’
    They rode out together, the three of them, trotting steadily north to Mandarana, aware both of folly and the older wisdom of justice.
    The men were moving in a solid formation after the trees thinned out on the slopes west of the peak.
    They were aware of, though at the moment they could not see, the dark shapes moving ahead of them towards the rock-crops and the scrub on the eastern face. Lieutenant Freddie Buckmaster, slicker than paint in a too-tight jacket with wicked silver buttons, pulled up his big bay and called a halt. Manoeuvres,