Cold Skin by Steven Herrick

Albert Holding
    I came out here for a smoke
    and to get away from the wife.
    She’s been on and on about the pub,
    the beer,
    my mates and me getting drunk,
    ever since the war.
    War!
    What does she know about it?
    To blokes like Frank it meant starvation
    and brutality beyond imagining.
    He once told us, over a few beers too many,
    that the lucky ones were those who died early.
    The others came home to a life in the mines,
    with nothing to look forward to but Friday arvo
    and a mate at the bar who understands.
    He’d wake up at night to thunder,
    thinking he’s under attack
    when it’s only rain on the roof.
    I spent too long in the desert driving trucks
    when I could have been beside Frank
    and had the honour of getting beaten to a pulp
    by some slit-eyed bastard with a skeleton grin.
    Some blokes reckon I was one step away
    from a white feather in the mail.
    Cheetham had his excuse,
    being deaf in one ear.
    But all I got was some pea-brain army doctor
    scrawling ‘not for the frontline’ on my report.
    When I pushed the white ant for an answer,
    and stood close enough
    for him to count my nose hairs,
    he had the hide to say,
    ‘It’s not only the body that has to be fit, Holding.’
    I almost slugged him, then and there,
    but they had military police
    stationed outside his door.
    He’d been punched a few times before
    by the look of him.
    Cheetham and me wandered around in a daze
    for a week
    until they stationed us in the Alice,
    a million bloody miles from Frank and our mates.
    When I got home
    I thought the wife would understand
    and wouldn’t nag me
    about going back down the mine,
    where the enemy is a thousand tons of dirt
    held up by timber studs and a few nails and bolts.
    After the war I was going to make up for lost time.
    But the time I spent away,
    it’s still lost.
    No matter what I do,
    it stays lost.
    I pull hard on my durry
    and watch the heavy clouds roll in.
    It’s going to rain for Colleen’s funeral.
    As it should.
    At least that’ll keep my wife quiet,
    for an hour or two.
    After the funeral.
    That’s when I’ll make my move.
    If Grainger can’t put two and two together
    then I’ll do it for him.
    No one in this town will think of me as gutless.
    Not this time.

Eddie
    The Catholic church is full to bursting
    with every pew taken
    and people crowded along the walls
    and at the back.
    They shut the mine for a shift
    and the shops are all closed.
    The school has a day off
    and we’re spending it here with Colleen,
    her coffin near the altar,
    with a photo on top.
    Her long blonde hair
    shines from behind the glass
    and I can hear Mrs O’Connor
    crying in the front pew.
    I’m wearing Dad’s army boots,
    polished with spit and rags,
    because my feet are too big for my good shoes
    and Dad said we weren’t buying new ones,
    not for a funeral.
    Sally and me are sitting close,
    listening to the priest
    talk about God calling his children home,
    welcoming them to his side,
    asking us to pray for those lost
    and those reunited.
    I close my eyes
    and imagine the river at Taylors Bend.
    A bunch of us from school
    went there one afternoon to swim.
    Colleen sat on the wild grass beside the bank
    and laughed as I dive-bombed from the tree
    and nearly flooded the beach.
    The priest asks us to stand
    and hold hands to give us strength.
    He prays that peace be with us
    and I’m pleased to feel Sally’s warmth
    and look into her sad eyes.
    We sit down again and I glance around.
    My family are in the pew opposite.
    Larry is looking at the altar.
    Mum is clenching her hands tight in her lap
    and Dad stares straight ahead,
    not a muscle moving.
    Mr Carter is sitting near the front.
    His paper said Colleen was a ray of sunshine
    that bathed our town in a glow,
    bright enough to stay with us for ever.
    When this is all over,
    I’ll thank him for honouring Colleen.
    The priest calls us to sing
    but all I hear is the sound of hard rain
    falling on my empty town.

Albert Holding
    Christ almighty!
    I