Free Owen Marshall Selected Stories by Vincent O'Sullivan Page B

swept as an epidemic through our world — brief and spectacular. Creamy excelled at knucklebones, of course: Creamy was insolently good at knucklebones. Like chickens about a hen, the knucklebones grouped and disbanded, came and went around Creamy’s hand. Creamy had begun with plastic knucklebones. The soft drink colours of the pieces would rise and fall, collect and separate, at Creamy’s behest. He won an aluminium set in the Bible class competition. The aluminium ones were heavier and didn’t ricochet. Creamy was even better with the aluminium ones. Cutting cabbages, camels, swatting flies, clicks, little jingles, through the arch, goliath, horses in the stable; Creamy mastered them all.
    Creamy’s expression didn’t change when Ken challenged him to knucklebones. He seemed interested in my new friends. His fair hair hung over his forehead, and his complex face was squinting in the sun. Ken was good at knucklebones, as good as me, but he wouldn’t beat Creamy, I knew. Creamy was a golden boy, and it’s useless to envy those the gods have blessed. Ken and he went right through knucklebones twice without any faults. ‘What do you think is the hardest of all?’ said Creamy. Ken considered. He pushed the knucklebones about the ground with his finger as he thought.
    â€˜I reckon big jingles,’ he said.
    â€˜Ten big jingles on the go,’ said Creamy. ‘I challenge you to ten big jingles without a fault.’
    â€˜You go first then,’ said Arty. ‘You go first and if you make a mistake then Ken wins.’
    â€˜All right,’ said Creamy. The injustice of it didn’t seem to worry him. He started out as smoothly as ever, allowing no time for tension to gather. His rhythm didn’t vary, and his broad face was relaxed.
    â€˜That’s good going,’ said Matthew when Creamy had finished, and Ken had failed to match him.
    â€˜They’re small though, these aluminium ones.’ Arty seemed jealous of the praise. ‘Smaller than real or plastic knucklebones. It’s abig advantage to have them smaller in big jingles.’
    â€˜Stiff,’ said Creamy.
    Later in the afternoon we found ourselves fooling about by the bridge. Along the underside of the bridge was a pipe which Creamy and I sometimes crossed to prove we could do it. ‘Creamy and I often climb across that,’ I told the others. They looked at it in silence.
    â€˜Shall we do it now?’ said Matthew at last. He thought he was strong enough to try anything.
    There’s no dichotomy of body and spirit when you’re young. Adults see the body as an enemy, or a vehicle to be apprehensively maintained. There’s just you, when you’re young; flesh and spirit are indivisible. For Creamy and I then, for all of us in youth, any failure in body was a failure of the spirit too. Creamy went first. As always when he was concentrating, his lunar upper lip seemed more obvious, the humorous expression of his face more pronounced, as though he were awaiting the punch line of some unfolding joke. He leant out, and took hold of the pipe. He moved his grip about, as a gymnast does to let his hands know the nature of the task, then he swung under the pipe, and began hand over hand to work his way to the central bridge support. He used his legs as a pendulum, so that the weight of his body was transferred easily from one hand to the other as he moved. When he reached the centre support Creamy rested in the crook of its timbers, and looked down to the river.
    Then he carried on, hanging and swaying below the pipe, becoming smaller in silhouette against the far bank as he went.
    â€˜Seems easy enough,’ said Arty.
    â€˜You go next then,’ said Ken.
    Arty measured the drop between Creamy’s swaying figure and the river beneath. ‘I would,’ he said. ‘I would, but I’ve got this chest congestion. I see the doctor about