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Jeffrey and the owl.
They were sitting in the pipes when Dale came running up. They could hear his feet thumping outside before his face appeared in the circle of daylight at the end.
“There’s somethin’ in the pine plantation!”
The pipes had been, or were supposed to be, road culverts. Smooth in places and rough in other places the way concrete could be, mostly pale grey but with flecks of quartz and bluestone glittering like stars in an uneven-textured galaxy. The smaller pipe shoved slightly into the bigger one and left long ago by an inspired parent with a tractor or a front-end loader. Cramped for the older kids, perfect for the little ones. The two boys sat sideways inside with knees bent and backs against the concave wall. The pipes were always dry and a good five degrees cooler than the rest of the playground. You could either climb in or on top. The pipes were grouse.
The boy looked back at Dale from inside like a bunny looking out of its hole. He turned to his best friend Darren, eyes wide for comic effect, and mouthed “What the fuck?”
Darren snorted. It passed for a laugh. The boy nudged him with his elbow in the side and he snorted again.
“Did youse guys hear me? There’s somethin’ in the pines!”
Dale stomped exasperated impatience and his face disappeared from the circle. The sound of his thumping feet became fainter and went completely.
Darren looked at the other boy. “Let’s go, yah heard what he said.”
The boy checked his watch. Digital. Space shuttle game watch. Christmas new. Red buttons. Black plastic strap. White lettering. Little picture of the space shuttle. He could see the ell cee dee screen, but it was too dim to make out anything on it. “Yep, I spose we better. It’s twelve fifty-five anyway. Nearly bell.”
“Bull, you always reckon it’s nearly bell. Every play it’s nearly bell the whole time.”
Bigplay finished at one.
“C’mon, let’s get goin,’” Darren said and poked the boy in the calf with the toe of his sneaker.
“Yeah, righto, righto, hold yah horses...”
They scuffled along the larger half of the pipe, scooting on their backsides and crawling on all fours, until they popped out the end. They both squinted and blinked in the lunchtime glare.
Darren took off running, flashing the tan soles of his sneakers. The boy pulled down his singlet and fixed his belt. Darren had his fast shoes on. They had a picture of a puma on the sides so you knew they were fast.
The boy had worn his gumboots to school. So bloody stupid. It wasn’t even wet. The dew was gone by littleplay. They slapped the back of his calves and flopped around his falling-down socks. Trying to run in them was like running in a bad dream.
Darren raced away, not looking back.
Tim waved from up in the fort and called down “What’s goin’ on?”
“Somethin’ in the pines,” the boy yelled.
“Huh?”
“Somethin’ in the pines.”
The boy reached inside his boots and pulled at his socks. Tim looked down from the second level. The fort was two platforms, a smaller lower level and a larger top one which was open but surrounded by a short wall. The whole thing green treated pine timber, made over one long weekend working bee. The boy wondered at the time how bees were involved? Darren was allergic to bees, so he said.
“Hang on and I’ll come with yah,” Tim said.
The boy waited for Tim to climb over the side. He balanced on the jutting end piece the bees had left so the kids could pretend it was a pirate’s plank. He leapt off and landed knees bent with a farty, meaty-thighed squonk. Sprang up, ran over, whacked the boy playfully on the arm. “Let’s go! What’s keepin’ yah?”
Tim started running again. Tim wasn’t fat, that was mean and untrue, he was stocky. Stocky Tim wasn’t hard to catch though, either now or at chasey or at school sports.
The boy ran alongside, feeling better about his gumboots.
The sports field hadn’t seen the slasher since the start of the year. Shabby grass and weeds taking over. The dandelions the kids rubbed on each other’s chins to determine a love or not of butter were in full yellow bloom. Soldier boys (the bigger kids had shown them how to wrap the stem around itself and pull to flick the flower bullets at each other) nodded in the breeze. The capeweed they strung together into daisy-chains were a bright beacon for busy buzzy bees. Maybe the same bees that helped build the fort.
Waving too-tall kikuyu.
Onionweed with tiny purple blossoms.
One day in prep Darren had dared him to eat onionweed and they had sat there crunching and sucking on the juicy bulbs under a blue sky. They were sour. You had to pull the dirty layer off first, like an onion, to get to the good stuff. Grade two now and prep seemed like a long time ago. Were those skies bluer or just newer? He didn’t know.
The brown and green wall of pines came closer with every step, tall and a bit menacing. Not like Old Leo’s hedge, but still spooky enough.
The plantation was the school’s. The headmaster, Mister Harris, lived in the house next door behind a rotten white-painted picket fence like a row of teeth in a cowskull. Whenever a big kid got in trouble, he’d (always a he’d) be sent to collect pinecones with a hessian sack. Mister Harris had endless fuel for the school incinerator and his open fire.
The skinny, springy branches whipped at the boy as he pushed through.
He could see, in a sort of clearing a few rows of trees in, a small crowd of kids gathered. Some big, some little. A rough circle around a particular tree, and all of them were looking up. He recognised Scott and Warren, Andrew and the two grade-six girls Sharon and Kathy. Suzy from his grade. Scott and his always-together-with mate Warren. Nicky and pretty Julie and a couple more bigroom girls he didn’t know. Darren was standing with Dale on the far side of the tree.
Tim came up behind him and peered over his shoulder. “What is it, what’s goin’ on?”
Kathy almost spat at him. “It’s an Owl, derr!”
The boy looked up. There wasn’t anything but tree. Green needles and brown bark.
“Whereabouts?”
Kathy looked at him like he was the dumbest piece of shit ever.
He moved closer to the tree. A pinecone whistled by his ear, landed on the tan carpet of dry needles by his feet.
Thunk.
“Watchout!”
Mutters round the circle. He could see Darren and Dale backing away on the other side of the tree. The big kids just stood there, but Suzy looked nervous. Shiny eyes.
Grade six Jeffrey. Stinky farmer kid, the fair dinkum real deal. Straight from the cowshed to the school. Lobbing pinecones underarm up almost to the top of the pine. After hanging for a second, they would bonk off a couple of branches before crashing down on the other side.
“Get it Jeff,” Andrew said.
“Yeah, get it Jeff,” it was agreed.
There was a flurry of motion above. With a great flap a glorious dark shape lumbered up to a higher branch. The boy saw the bird for the first time. He’d only seen one in a book, but he knew what it was. A tawny frogmouth, grey and black and brown and speckled, camouflaged beautifully against the trunk but not so much against the dark green needles. Something from a fairy story, wizard feathery eyebrows over huge wise golden tiger-eyes. A big wide beak, hooked at the end. It was a beautiful creature that didn’t belong at school.
Clinging to the branches upside down, it couldn’t fold its wings properly. They were outstretched and resting against the twigs and bunches of pine needles.
“It’s not an owl, it’s a frogmouth.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Frogmouths are related to kookaburras.” He said.
Cathy looked at him like he was an idiot. “Bull. It’s an owl. Anyway, who cares yah Spock?” she spat.
Another pinecone. Up the tree and straight onto the ground.
Thunk.
“Why don’ya learn how to throw?” Kathy spat at Jeffrey. Maybe she spat at everyone.
“Or why don’ya leave it alone?” He said.
What?
He couldn’t believe he said it. All the kids looked at him like they couldn’t believe he said it. He wished he had a better face to look back at them with. Bloody stupid face.
Clonk, clonk clonk. Thunk.
Jeffrey stopped and loped over to him. He was tall but had a bung hip. Fell off a tractor. He was frowning. “Wuttsup with you? We just want a look.”
Suzy stared even more shiny-eyed. He noticed Tim move a little further away.
“You liddle kids collect thuh cones I awready chucked,” Jeffrey said. He stood somehow looming but crooked, bung hip sticking out. He put his filthy hands in his trouser pockets, still frowning.
The smaller kids spread out round the frogmouth tree like a pack of dogs fetching after tennis balls. Darren was first, followed by Dale, then Tim, then Suzy. Scuttling, scampering , scurrying for the pinecones.
“Well?” Jeffrey said. “Yoo ‘eard me!”
The boy looked at Jeffrey’s stained trousers. He couldn’t do the eye thing yet. It would be easier with his Batman cape, but that was at home. Batman was cool. Cooler than him.
Jeffrey moved a step closer. “Do I have to make yah?”
He held his fist up. It didn’t look like a fist, it looked like a coiled bunch of spitfires. The boy took a breath and looked Jeffrey in the face.
Clong, clong, clong clong.
The sound of the bell-ring wandered over the foursquare court, past the fort, the pipes, over the sports field and into the pines. The end of bigplay. It wafted across the schoolyard like a bad smell. Only this time it was good. Perfume. He’d been pretty close about it being twelve fifty-five in the pipes. Until the start of that year, the kids had just yelled “Bell, pass it on,” which was kind of fun and contagious, but now they had the real thing. Donated by the Lions Club for the school centenary celebration.
The little kids dropped their collected pinecones. There was mumbling and groaning amongst the rest. Jeffery put his fist down. He looked up into the tree.
The kids ambled like little zombies to the edge of the plantation.
The boy drifted after them.
“Hey kid.”
He stopped. Didn’t turn.
“Bettah watch yahself.”
Kathy giggled. Didn’t spit, just walked to the brighter day.
*
The kids, big and little, walked in ragged groups across the grass. Across the cape weed, the dandelions and sour onionweed. They separated at the foursquare court to the big and small classrooms.
Jeffrey was the last to leave the pines.
Tim was beside the boy, then Dale, then Darren. Suzy walked ahead on her own.
“Are you nuts?” Darren asked him. He didn’t know.
“Must be.”
“Jeffrey’s gunna kill you,” Tim said. “You’re dead meat.”
“Nah, I’m not scared of him.”
“Bull.”
“Bull it’s bull.”
“Bull it’s bull it’s bull.”
The big kids could just walk into the bigroom, but the little kids had to line up in front of the steps to the littleroom. Suzy and Kristy and Michelle stood the way they were expected to before they would be let in. The prep kids were already there.
The boy stopped walking and the others banged into each other and him. It was cartoon funny, but he didn’t feel much like laughing.
“What do yah reckon he was gunna do if he brung it down?” Darren asked.
Tim brayed a fake to-be-a-man laugh. “Cook it up like a chicken for his tea. Burk Buuuurk.”
They laughed for real, at Tim’s chicken noises more than the joke over Jeffrey’s dinner.
“I reckon that owl’ll be gone at lastplay. And that shithead will forget all about it,” Dale said.
“Ummah, you swore, I’m dobbin.’” Suzy said.
“Shuttup Suzy.”
“Yeah dobbah,” Darren agreed.
He thought for a second. “Nah, yah better hide in the pipes at last play.”
“I’m not hidin’ from nothin’” the boy said.
Tim coughed. Darren thumped him in the back with his palm.
“Hey, rack off.”
“Just tryin’ to help, thought yah were chokin’.”
Just then the littleroom door opened. Missus McAlpine poked her beak out and the rest of her followed. ”What’s all this noise then? Hands behind backs, shoulders straight. Be quick about it.”
The little kids shuffled in place, hands behind backs in an approximation of being good. Suzy was bobbing up and down on her toes in an attempt to look taller behind Kristy and Michelle.
“Stand still Suzy,” Missus McAlpine snapped. Suzy’s face dropped. She stood flat-footed and crestfallen.
“That’s better. Now inside in an orderly fashion. Chop chop children.” Missus McAlpine didn’t even talk like a real person. Maybe she was an android.
*
When lastplay came he was drifting in a warm haze at his desk next to the big glass windows. The work was boring but not hard. School was mostly nice. The carpet was dark blue and soft and smelled of lavender cleaner. Little bit of pee. Missus McAlpine scratched her chalk across the blackboard, it sent dust flying like tiny asteroids through the rays of sun. He’d been thinking about space.
He rested his pencil at the top of his desk, raised the lid and put his workbook inside.
Closed the lid. Slid across the seat and got up.
He and Darren walked towards the door together.
“Coming to the pipes?” the boy asked casually, as cool as Faceman from the A-Team.
“I spose,” Darren said, lagging. “I’ll just grab Dale and Tim.” It was funny. Darren was usually the first one out the door and Tim the last.
Out and down the steps. He could see Jeffrey already running across the sports field to the dark green wall of pines. Must have been the first one of the big kids out of the bigroom.
“Yah think it’s still there?” Dale asked behind him.
“Nah.”
“To the pipes, boys,” Tim said and made a trumpet noise. It was quite good. Tim was quite good really. He believed in Jesus and stuff, but he wasn’t too weird. He was nice. Normal. His mum and dad were a little suss. Religious. They didn’t have a teevee.
Darren sprang down the steps and landed between them like a scruffy little shit Spiderman.
Suzy was at the top of the steps. She looked in the direction of Jeffrey, the pines. Wrapped her arms around herself like it was cold. Bloody stupid. It was warm.
“I’m not going back there, no way.”
The boys looked at one another.
“Yah can come to the pipes with us, long as yah don’t start dobbin’ or nuthin,’” the boy said to her.
“Why, what’re yah doin’?” she asked.
“Nuthin’,” Darren said.
Jeffrey had disappeared into the pines. Could they have seen the bird from there? It was pretty big. There wasn’t anything now. And no pinecone grenades being thrown.
“Come on.”
The boy walked towards the fort. The other kids followed. None of them felt like climbing it. Past the treated pine structure, along the well-trodden path to the pipes. Darren went first into the big-pipe end, then Dale, then Tim, then Suzy. The boy crawled in and sat by the entrance.
“Why’s he gotta be such a dickhead?” Tim said.
“Ummah, I’m…” Suzy said.
“Suzy!”
Suzy closed her mouth. She looked out from her straight blonde fringe like a rat looking out of a tussock, as Mum would say.
“He thinks he’s tough.” Darren said like he was confiding something.
“Grouse owl. Yah see how big he was?”
“Why didn’ yah say somethin’ then?”
“What? I wanted a better look too, it’s just… I’m not…” Tim trailed off.
“An’ it’s not an owl.”
The boy looked out the pipe entrance to the pines. Still no pinegrenades or Jeffrey. The sky was blue, the grass was green.
*
“Give us a go on yah watch,” Darren said from the far end of the pipes.
“Nah, yah can’t see down there. It’s too dark.”
“Aw bull, it’s not dark. There’s this crack where the light comes in.”
The boy checked again for Jeffrey. Nothing.
“Yeah, awright. Just don’t break it.”
“As if.”
The boy undid the strap on his Christmas present and passed it to Suzy. She looked at it dumbfounded.
“It’s a videogame. Space shuttle. Like Atari. And a watch,” he said. She passed it to Tim with no further idea of what the thing was.
“Yeah, my brother’s got one of these. Only it’s in colour like a teevee. And instead of the space shuttle you’re the Millennium Falcon,” Tim said.
“Aw bull,” Dale said and took the watch. “Your brother’s a spaz and you’re full of shit.”
Tim made a noise like he’d been punched in the guts. Suzy kept silent.
Tim’s brother didn’t even live with him. He’d been sent away by Tim’s dad.
“C’mon, gizzit.” Darren said and took the watch. The plain not-coloured-like-teevee not-Millennium-Falcon space shuttle game watch.
“Yah just press…” the boy said before the pipes were filled with electronic tics and start bloops. Three, one for each shuttle.
“Can you see anything?” Suzy asked.
“I can see fine,” Darren grumbled.
“I wasn’t talkin’ to you.” She looked at the boy, who looked out the hole.
“Nah. Nuthin’. Like he just disappeared in there.”
“Well that’s good. He can bloody stay in there,” she said and put her hand to her mouth.
“Ummah,” the boy said and grinned.
“Ooooh, lovers,” Tim said.
“Shuttup Tim.” So bloody stupid.
“What’s the time on the watch Darren?” the boy asked.
“I dunno, I’m playin.’”
“It’s up the top. You can…”
Clong, clong, clong clong.
The bell. Lastplay was over.
One last Jeffrey check. They scrambled out of the pipe. First the boy, then Suzy, then Tim with his face mopey from being called a liar and his brother insulted. Then Dale blinking in the sun and Darren holding the space shuttle game watch. It wasn’t making any sound. Game over. All shuttles destroyed.
Fast runners, flopping gumboots. The others walked behind. The fort, the foursquare court, the littleroom steps. There was no Jeffrey. He wasn’t coming across the sports field, he must have ignored the bell and stayed in the pines.
“Where yah been Suzy?” Kristy asked as they lined up. The preps were already there.
Michelle joined the inquisition. “Yeah, where?”
“None of yah business,” Darren said.
“Ooooh, lovers,” Kristy and Michelle said together. So bloody stupid.
The door opened and Missus McAlpine’s beak was followed by Missus McAlpine. She tried to look friendly. It was an act. She definitely wasn’t real. Maybe the men who built the fembots on The Six Million Dollar Man built her.
“Are you lined up quietly, hands behind back?” enquired the machine. “Shoulders straight?”
Her phony rubber face changed. “Because I’m not putting up with any nonsense this late in the day. I’m tired and I have a headache. So if you don’t behave yourself...” She slapped the side of the door. The prep kids’ eyes widened in surprise. “There’ll be trouble.” She looked towards the bigroom. “I don’t want to have to get Mister Harris.” She had no idea how to be a real person whatsoever.
The kids formed their quietest, stillest, most shoulders straight line and Missus McAlpine let them in.
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Mushrooms.
He’d risen early, left his nice comfy bed when he’d noticed the alluring sunlight streaming through the hydrangeas and in his bedroom window. For the first time in nearly two weeks of drizzle it was shining on him and all the things around.
Now was the time for mushrooms, when the ground was soaked well from rain and the sun sent down a tender and discreet call from an unexpected blue sky.
He loved mushroom hunting.
Mushrooms were best in the morning, before bugs and worms and maggots and other creepy crawlies could climb the stalks and invade the tender pink gills. Left too long they would turn black and slimy and infested.
Mushrooming was like hunting for Easter eggs only better in some ways. The Easter Bunny was just Mum and Dad with fancy tinfoil chocolates from the supermarket, but the way mushrooms would suddenly appear from nothing was truly astounding.
It was still cold from the night and the late-autumn sun cast little heat. Watery and weak as Mum would say. Lower and smaller in the sky than in the hot dry summer just gone. Still a welcome pat on the top of his head, a tickle on the end of his nose, a slightly warm touch on the back of his neck.
Gumboots on, the ground wet, his slowly thawing fingers held tight to the handle of the bucket swinging as he walked along the gentle slope that swooped above the creek and formed part of the rabbit warrens.
The willows had shed most of their lingering golden leaves and the usually serene and clear water was brown and frothy. He could smell the silt, the boggy churned mud, the familiar whiff of cows and cow shit where they went down to the bank for a drink.
The sickly-sweet scent of wattle was absent, too late or early for the sneezy pollen that would cover the surface of the creek in yellow powder that swished and swirled and made streaky patterns.
The kikuyu was turning green where only weeks ago it was the colour of hay. He was scanning the ground, picking out the pale fungi from the surroundings with a considered gaze.
He could spot them from a fair old distance these days. Rarely mistaking a piece of wood or clod or a faded gum leaf or a knob of bleached bone for the real deal.
Bones were the thing that looked most like mushrooms. That shimmer of white in the green.
There were always bones lying in the paddock. Things died and were eaten by other things there. Foxes would come, or wedge-tailed eagles, or crows, or the cattle dogs, and they all loved to have a go at a juicy ripe leg of stillborn calf or chew on a stinking shot kangaroo tail or head of a mixo rabbit. It was the way it went.
He followed the thin track the cows had scarred into the side of the hill with their clomping hooves, picking his way around any fresh shit. Even though he was wearing gum boots he didn’t want to get shit on him. Some farm kids didn’t mind, liked it some of them, but he was different.
There! By his foot. He’d almost missed it, almost stood on it.
By the side of the cow-track, a perfect white button nestled in the grass. He squatted and scooped it up. The first mushroom of the morning.
Thump Thump.
He could hear a rabbit’s warning to its rabbit mates about his rabbit intrusion.
Thump Thump. Thump Thump.
More thumps from inside the warrens, little hollow knocks resonating through the earth sounding the alarm.
Thump Thump.
He crested the slight rise and looked down to see three greyish brown rabbits standing hind-legged and twitchy-nosed at the entrance to their burrow.
Thump Thump.
A flash of snowy puff and there were two. Two more flashes of puffy tail and there were none.
Rabbits didn’t mind cows, or horses or wombats, or magpies even. They hated people.
He was alone with an empty rabbit hole leading into dim tunnels, a faint gamey pong and a flattened-grass path that he knew was teeming when he wasn’t around.
Dad and occasionally some other grownups would go shooting at the warrens. It was the best place on the farm for shooting because it was absolutely jumping with bunnies, especially in the early morning or late evening.
He wasn’t allowed to follow them, he was too little, that was made clear, but he could hear the shots from all the way back at the house and could tell which direction they’d come from and where the grownups had gone.
Dad was good with guns. He liked to shoot. He said how you had to be quiet to sneak up on rabbits and was always complaining about whichever other grownup he’d taken shooting with him stomping around like a bloody elephant.
The boy couldn’t understand why the grownups were so mad on hunting rabbits anyway, when hunting mushrooms was fun and nothing died.
There was only the faintest smudge of cloud in the pure sky. A flock of corellas, noisy as blazes, directly overhead. Their shadows quick dark fish in the short wispy grass waves rolling across the slope.
He rounded the bend and whooped out loud, saw the first fairy ring of the day.
Mum called them that, said it was a circle where the fairies came and sat and held counsel, whatever that meant. Like the school council he supposed, a boring meeting with sandwiches and sponge cake and cups of thermos tea and talking and talking and more talking and getting home late and tired.
He didn’t think fairies were a thing. He didn’t think fairy tales were any truer than the ones about the Easter Bunny. Fairies would be stepped on by the cows or horses, or run over by the tractor when Dad was feeding out the hay to his hungry herd.
Fairy rings were just mushrooms in a circle.
Fairy rings were special and mysterious and exciting all the same. And it meant at least five or six lovely fresh pink and white mini-umbrellas for Mum and Dad’s breakfast.
He pulled the stems off before placing them carefully in a layer at the bottom of his bucket. Dutifully not letting any dirt fall into the gills or they’d be gritty and Mum and Dad would both complain they weren’t nice.
Yes! There! Another fairy ring.
He stooped eagerly to collect each mushroom, placing them one by one on top of the layer already in his bucket.
He couldn’t count on too many fairy rings to make up a decent feed, but it was a good start. A grouse start.
And There! A real beauty. About the size of his fist. Sprouting singularly and proud.
It was just down near the grey weathered post (wild raspberries clustered around) that used to be part of the fence when Poppa had the farm. Directly behind was the Grandpa oak that had fallen across the creek (and the fence) and that the boy had used once as a bridge to cross and play on the other side. On the forbidden side of the creek.
He gently hoisted the beautiful specimen from the ground, the stem sitting between the vee of his fingers. He snapped off the stalk so dirt wouldn’t fall into the gills.
Turned it over.
Oh.
The gills were white, not pink or brown.
Death Cat. (Some years later he would learn it was actually Death Cap, but that wasn’t as cool. It made disappointing sense compared to the Cat of Death.)
Pink or brown was the only safe colour, all others were poison. He threw it down with a disgusted grunt and it broke into pieces. Wiped his hand on his pants leg and stomped on the largest bit with the heel of his boot.
“Don’t come back pussy cat,” he said.
He knew from the way mushrooms worked that there would be likely even more Death Cats in that spot next year, but it was satisfying anyway. Sometimes stomping stuff felt good, like after he’d gotten in trouble and been yelled at.
“Scat Death Cat. Psssssst, Psssssst.”
*
There were lots of other not-quite-right mushrooms on the farm too. He was careful to only pick the good mushrooms, but it really wasn’t that hard. Some looked like regular ones from the top but hid yellow or grey gills underneath. Any that sprouted from fresh shit were toadstools. The red with white spots ones near the pine plantation were obviously no good for eating and the big burnt-orange ones were simple to avoid because they stood out like dog’s balls. No lacy petticoats, no gills, only a squishy underside that looked like a gross dirty kitchen sponge.
Good mushrooms were fussy. They didn’t like fresh shit or bracken or dead things or being underneath trees.
*
He stopped near the ancient Stringybark that towered above and poked at the sky. It was surrounded by a vicious tangle of boxthorns. Amongst the thorns like six inch nails and the teardrop leaves, berries grew. Green, yellow, orange and red - poisonous to eat although they looked succulent and sweet and attractive like something to put on a pav.
Boxthorns were the business. A vicious pain bringer of a weed, sent by forces unknown to stab and poison the humans and take over the planet. Only he could stand in their way.
“You’ll never stop the people of earth,” he said. “We’re the good guys.”
He brought his face closer to the enemy and spat. It felt good. It felt defiant.
A last few late black and orange monarch butterflies and white cabbage moths wobbled and nestled between the spikes, opening and closing their ragged and damaged wings.
There was a book at school called ‘Where do the butterflies go when it rains?’ He wondered if they came here to the boxthorns. Was that the answer? A safe place to rest.
Butterfly bodies littered the ground beneath in small drifts. A safe place to die.
A real fairy graveyard.
Dad had been here with the tractor. The remains of a long mat of hay stretched back up the rise and beyond to the barn on top of the hill. Completely picked through by the cows, a rejected remnant of spring stomped and abandoned for fresher fodder.
He knew the mushrooms wouldn’t like the hay, so he avoided it but walked up and alongside.
There! More pale mushrooms of just the right sort. Good mushrooms. Fine mushrooms.
*
A little more walking and a couple more lucky finds (no further fairy rings though) and he was done. He felt the satisfaction of a heavy full bucket.
Sometimes after a successful hunt when he got home the larger mushies had dropped spores in patterned circles on the tops of the mushrooms underneath. Cool shapes like wallpaper sunflowers or gumnut blossoms or dandelion clocks.
If he left the mushrooms on the kitchen table long enough they left the same imprints, and he’d draw his finger through and make lines with his fingernail until Mum told him to stop making a mess.
He hoped Mum and Dad would be happy with him when he got home. Hoped they’d sit around the table and peel the mushrooms like pulling off dead strips of skin after a bad sunburn and chop them up with a big knife. Boil them away in a big stinking pot on the stove, fill the house with a revolting ghastly smell that would chase him from the kitchen door.
The boy couldn’t think of a better way to ruin a piece of toast than to slop any of that horrible grey sludge on top. Grownups were weird like that. They could eat all sorts of muck, like tripe or sago pudding or peas.
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One night.
Through and out the window, past the hydrangea leaves that splayed like hands or prying faces against the flywire.
The thing had him by the foot, though he was disembodied. Weightless. Massless.
He was pulled inexorably out the window into the night.
He left the warm light of his mostly safe ‘cept-from-the monster-under-his-bed bedroom. Left the soft glow of his bedside lamp, his books, his comics, his toys and was dragged beneath the cold white light of the moon.
Over the lawn like he was nothing. Across the garden. Through the roses, the silver birch and the liquid amber trees. Down the orange gravel track with the patchy line of grass running down the centre.
The sky covered all like a blanket. The stars stung his not-eyes. The line of juvenile blue gums on both sides of the track whipped powder-coated leaves at him, branches tossing and shaking.
Down the track, floating just above the ground. Through the front gate that was never closed. Past the clumps of agapanthus. The letterbox .
He tried to look back. Couldn’t. Could only see forward. He was snapped suddenly like a rubber band, jerked hard to his right, an iron grip on his whole self. He didn’t know what was happening. He didn’t know why it was happening.
Along the track to the front of the cowshed.
The sloping corrugated tin roof and wooden support struts were lit by the moonlight starkly. A structure more cavern, more cave than a place for Mum and Dad to milk their cows. The pellet silo was a squat crouching rocket, metal ladder on the side leading up and up. He tried to yell, make a noise, but nothing came. Just hopeless fear and the irresistible pull towards something dreadful.
Past the silo and over to the well.
He’d never been so close before, had always been warned to keep his distance. Yelled at if he got too near. It was dangerous. There was no fence to stop anything or anyone falling in.
The well was left over from Poppa’s milking days. A corrugated iron water tank sunk in the ground with concrete rendered chickenwire inside. But it had no bottom, the boy was sure of that. It was deep as the sea.
Dad used it to dump empty oil cans from the engine room (he’s stab them a few times with a nail first so they’d sink) or hessian feed-bags. In the day the surface was green slime, tonight slick black tar.
In the daytime there were frogs. They sat on bits of floating rubbish swelling their throats in and out and talking to each other in froggy croaks. If he threw a rock in they’d launch into the water and, after the plop, colourful swirly petrol patterns would appear. Then the green slime would slowly reclaim the settling surface and the frogs would jump back onto the rubbish. It was fun.
Tonight the well was silent and grim. There was only death and cold and a bleak reflected moon. If he were pulled under the water he’d be gone forever and that would be that. He would see nothing then be nothing, not even a reflection.
Past the well. Floating.
Black trees and white gravel. Stinging stars. Everything like an old film, like the ones Grandma and Poppa watched sometimes. All colour stripped, raw lines and shapes and sharp edges and grey.
He could hear the swamp. Eerie, alien noises even on regular nights in his room, alone but safe ‘cept-from-the monster-under-his-bed.
reeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Insects screeching from the bog.
warp, wallow, wallop, gonk.
Frogs.
eeeeeeeeeaaaaaargh! eeeeeeeeeaaaaaargh!
He didn’t want to know.
The swamp was a thing alive. It farted smelly gas and burbled mud. It was blighted water. It was snakes, centipedes, spiders, eels, lizards, leeches, worms. It was nightbird calls like laughter or screams or screams of laughter. It was rushes and needle tussocks sticking up spears, quicksand that would suck him down, down to horrors below.
The moon didn’t care. The thing carrying him didn’t care. It kept pulling.
The swamp moved past on his left but didn’t get any closer thank God. He’d be a good boy and believe in Jesus and everything. He promised, promised, promised.
Faint droning. Buzzing like a saw.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Humming like bees in the wattle. Or a nuclear bomber on a mission to kill everyone. Or a big truck coming at him on the highway. Or something else, something worse.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Louder. The humming, droning, roaring was enormous. Old Leo’s house was getting closer and closer.
Old Leo was dead and his place had gone to shit as Dad said. Old Leo had been dead for a while now.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRR
He was at the row of cypress’ they called the hedge at the front of Old Leo’s place. It looked like a massive black furry spider in the dark. Something from a bad dream. Dry grey branches like bones inside. A dense barrier between Old Leo’s property and the road.
He was snapped round roughly again by the invisible rubber band, pulled by his not-arms, pushed in his not-back.
Off the road and over the glittering moonlit gutter sludge.
The sparkles stung and the noise was all-consuming. He went through the hedge as easily as through his window. Carried over the weedy lawn, so different to Poppa’s well-kept patch. Sticks like bones all over. Empty bottles. Actual bones.
RRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Old Leo’s house squatted at the end of a ruined concrete path, the veranda slumped and detaching. The windows empty square eyes on each side of the hungry mouth front door. Worn brass knob stuck in its white plank teeth like a filling.
Crushed, bent, helplessly thrust forward.
He couldn’t turn away, couldn’t not see, couldn’t not feel the terror.
The thing that was going to eat him was in there. The thing that was going to swallow his soul before Jesus could get to it. The thing even worse than the monster under his bed.
Sometimes it lurked in the swamp, sometimes the well, sometimes the cowshed, but tonight it was at home.
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The sleepout.
It was a treat to stay at Grandma and Poppa’s house.
Up the concrete path, elegant if a concrete path could be so called, lined with geometric edging. Deco thirties rendered brick with impressive roman columns (also concrete) holding up a wide entranceway with stained-glass doors. Garden clipped and manicured. Trimmed forget-me-not beds and a perfect lawn. Standard roses, not because they weren’t special, but because they were grafted onto hardy standing stock so the actual blooms were big, classic, heavily perfumed. Ten-hut soldiers on permanent parade. Velvety red, pink, yellow, mauve, maroon. One thing the boy knew was that old people loved roses.
The sleepout had been called the sleepout for longer than he’d been alive. It was an extra room for disturbance to routine, a single room cottage out the back of the main house with a bright roses-patterned carpet. A hanging pale green glass and chrome light fixture. Giant feather bed like in the silly song. The sleepout was off limits when people stayed, but as good as a cubby or a treehouse when it was just him. Better.
Without doubt the best thing in the sleepout was the entire wall of cupboard doors. He was only allowed to open one, but that one was enough. It was crammed with interesting things from before new stuff, before plastic. Brass binoculars, bullets, badges. Sunglasses, spectacles, even a monocle. Sepia photographs of stern people in brown frumpy clothes. Coins, matchbox cars, strange tools and devices. Buttons, a tin clockwork bird, tattered Donald Duck comics. Marbles, stamps, a tickless pocket watch, costume jewellery, an endless supply of doodads and knickknacks visitors had left behind. Aunties, uncles, aunties and uncles, friends and acquaintances, old war buddies.
Poppa had been in the war but the boy didn’t know much more than that, apart from the fact that war talk was sometimes shushed talk around him. He knew Poppa spoke differently down the pub or after bedtime.
He hoped he could become a man then grow old one day like Poppa. To know all he needed to know about the world, to shape it with his hands and then be allowed to rest and do whatever he wanted.
Poppa was sitting with his walking stick in the chair next to the feather bed. Walking sticks were the coolest things in the world, ‘cept for swords. White old man singlet, white old man hair, groomed and held in place with white old man brill cream. Beige working man’s pants with a sharp crease that Grandma fussed over longer than she should. Huge strong hands big enough to punch out a steer. Ridiculous fingers like sausages.
Poppa was Mum’s dad. It was strange to think.
He’d trapped rabbits to survive in the depression, cleared the land that was now the farm from raw bush. Milked cows before and after the war. Fought bare-knuckled for everything he had.
Pensioned off, retired but always busy at something, he stalked his immaculate lawns with trusty pocket knife at the ready, whipping it out to remove any daisy that might have the temerity to attempt a pitch at camp on his grass. It was a constant battle, a bitter and protracted skirmish with no end. Poppa extracted each weed and its roots from the dirt as quickly and easily as he cored and ate an apple. No daisies were in Poppa’s lawn for long.
The boy had been given the job of looking through gardening magazines for pictures of red roses. It was fun, like finding Easter eggs or doing a connect-the-dots or hunting for mushrooms.
He’d show a rose to Poppa and Poppa would either say yep or nah. If it was nah he kept hunting, if yep he’d rip out the page and pass it up. Then poppa would carefully cut it out using Grandma’s good scissors and his daft but deft sausage fingers and place it in a pile. Together they built a deck of flat roses like spikey playing cards.
The carpet was rough on his bare legs. The flowers looked nice, but weren’t very friendly. Pretty but prickly like real roses. He spent a lot of time sitting or playing on carpets, so he knew a thing or two about them. Carpets were all the same but different. The one in the main house was shaggy and brown. The one at the school was soft and blue like the sky. The one at home was dark green and itchy and had charred black holes in it around the fireplace. It was fairly flat at least, so he could still play cars or do jigsaws.
“What are we doing this for Poppa?” the boy asked.
“You’ll see,” is all Poppa would say.
The boy didn’t really care why they were doing it, it was just the thing they were doing now.
Sometimes the smells in the sleepout brought mind pictures with them, pictures from long ago. Whispered memories of things that maybe never happened to people he’d never met. Spells or smells, smells or spells, but he didn’t actually believe in any of that magic stuff. Space was real. Batman was real. Magic was just tricks. The roses weren’t real, they were just colourful fabric pulled from some bloke’s sleeve.
When seemingly enough paper roses were torn, passed up and scissored Poppa leaned on his stick and lifted himself from the chair. “That will do us.”
He took a rose cut-out carefully between his sausage fingers and used a little brush to paint the back with white glue. Not clag like in school, something with a much stronger chemical smell.
He stuck it into a corner of one of the many cupboard doors in the wall of the sleepout and smoothed it with his thumb.
“Just one on each, in the corner,” he said. He smeared the back of another cut-out rose with the little brush in his sausage fingers. To the boy it resembled some sort of weird fish with a gaping red mouth and green tail. Or a mutant tadpole, something left over after the Yanks or Russians pushed the button.
*
The boy sat on the rose-patterned carpet.
There were faces in the roses, same as the roses on the curtains in Mum and Dad’s room. Roses were mostly all mouth, but he could imagine where the eyes would be.
One time when he was really sick the curtain roses went bouncing through the room on a giant rubber band. He was in Mum and Dad’s bed. It made him feel sicker to look at the bouncing roses and his back hurt and he felt like he was falling. The mouths were fleshy and dripping on Mum and Dad’s clean blankets. Slurping and bouncing, toothless but still trying to bite. It was scary. Now he was better he didn’t like thinking about it, he could still feel the feeling.
Warm yellow sunlight spilled through the window, shoved past the curtains and sprawled across the carpet bouquets.
*
There were only a few cupboard doors left with no roses. The boy was getting bored and the scratchy carpet was becoming unbearable. There was a pink rash of welts on his knees and an imprint of the fibre.
“Can I have a go Poppa?”
Poppa straightened, as straight as his poor back could get.
Poppa had a bad back after a lifetime of hard yakka. A famously bad back. Nothing helped, apart from the bomb as Grandma called it. Up the arse, at night, when the pain was particularly bad. The boy couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’t imagine Poppa putting a bomb up his arse but Grandma said that’s what he did. He guessed they were left over from the war. Poppa was always a lot sweeter to everyone the day after the bomb.
He rubbed his chin. It made a faint scritching sound even though he was cleanly shaved.
“Will you do a good job?”
“Yeah.”
Poppa didn’t look convinced but handed him the brush.
“Just look at how all the others are,” he said.
The boy smeared the back of the cut-out red rose with the white chemical not-clag glue.
He went to dip the brush in the pot but Poppa said “There’s enough on there,” and pointed a sausage finger at the brush in the boy’s hand.
He swirled the back of the rose. The jagged shape was difficult to cover. He didn’t want to rip the wet flower that was starting to stick to his fingers.
He fixed the paper rose into the corner, pushed it flat with the palm of his hand. Glue squished out, cold and slimy. He hid his hand in his shorts pocket and stood back but Poppa saw.
“How’s that Poppa?” he asked.
Poppa didn’t say anything. He took the little brush back with his sausage fingers. It made his huge hand look even bigger. He wore a copper bracelet he’d made from an old hot water service loosely on his wrist. Someone told him copper helped for arthritis but it didn’t.
The boy sat back down on the prickly carpet with the rosesfaces.
Poppa put the last rose into the corner of the cupboard door in the wall of cupboards in the sleepout. There had been the same number of cuttout paper roses as cupboard doors. The boy wondered if Poppa had counted or if he just somehow knew. So many doors, so many roses. A hanging garden, transformed amazingly from the nothing of blank white painted wood.
The boy looked at his particular rose, his single contribution to the decorating task. The other’s had their stems, their green tails pointing into the corner. His rose was swimming away from all the other weird fish, swimming against the other red fleshy-mouthed tadpole-monster flowers.
He imagined it swimming up the creek at home to where it was quiet and calm and the fallen leaves acted like tiny boats, where he would climb willow trees and swing from them and pretend to be Batman.
Poppa didn’t seem all that happy but the boy was happy. Happy to have a different rose.
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A ride in the truck.
1.
Waving gums by the track, skeletal limbs, bark peeling. Ti-tree scrub and bracken. The same taste of dusty orange gravel as at home in his spit.
The grownups were loud talking. Then they stopped and looked at him.
He was sitting on the ground. There were no bull ants, he’d checked. Dry yellow grass, soldiers of dead dock standing crisp and to attention. Bushflies wanted his eyes, ears, the corners of his mouth.
“All set sport?” Dad.
He got up and nodded, walked back over to the truck.
“Jump in then.”
Dad hoisted him up onto the seat, slammed the door. Walked around to the other side and got in.
“Do I have to put my belt on Dad?”
“Nah.”
Riding in the truck was a special treat. It didn’t get used much, not really roadworthy. Carted hay, helped with certain jobs the tractor didn’t suit. It stood out of place off the farm, like Dad at a wedding or in Melbourne.
Dad stomped the clutch and started the truck like waking a monster gruff and growly. He shoved the gearstick. GROOOONK. The truck made that noise sometimes, it was swearing or something.
Dad’s hairy arms had freckles like a connect-the-dots, but there’d be trouble if he tried to draw on them. One arm was strung round the wheel, the other slung out the window. Faded blue, beaten soft, Dad’s singlet smelled of sweat and Mum’s roses wool wash. It wasn’t a bad smell, it was nice.
The boy crouched grasping the worn but ruddy dash. It was too hot to keep his hands in the same place longer than a few seconds.
Dad let out the clutch and the boy wobbled, the big brown bench seat bucked. It was grouse fun, like jumping on the couch in front of the TV.
Two rough line tyre marks were pressed into the paddock and zigged up the hill. The other grownups pulled in front, in a bashed-up Holden ute wheezing and coughing smoke like Pa with his Alpine menthol cigarettes from the green pack.
“What’s up there Dad?” He asked.
“Usually they use it for shearin’ sheep, ya know, getting’ the wool off ‘em. We’re using it today ‘cause it’s got pens to separate ‘em.”
“Separate ‘em from what?”
“Each other, us, you know. Can’t have too many of ‘em all runnin’ about at once.”
The truck roared, bellowed and bounced. The boy lost grip and banged into Dad’s arm. It wasn’t his fault.
“You’d better sit back, I don’t want ya to crack ya head open.”
He did as he was told. It was like being kicked off a ride at the show.
�� *
He could see a few puffy white clouds through the windscreen. Like sheep, flying high up, but with no heads or legs. They were boring. It was fun to stand up and bounce around.
“You want your window open?”
“Nah.”
He looked at the clouds. Headless, legless, high up in the blue sky. Dad swung the wheel and revved the engine. The truck yelled and lurched.
“How come we don’t have sheep at home?”
“We got cows.”
He looked at the clouds. The worn but ruddy dash. The silver button on the glove box. The clocks and dials on Dad’s side. Dad’s connect-the-dots hairy arm that he’d get in trouble for drawing on. The gearstick jutting like a dead Flintstones flower from the floor of the cabin, petals fallen, stem hardened to steel over the long long time. It was a real treat to ride in the truck.
*
Dad stomped the brake. The boy leaned forward, couldn’t help it, hauled by an invisible force, and Dad shushed the truck. Pulled the Riiiik stick. It made the Riiiik sound that meant it was safe to get out. That’s what that sound meant in the car too.
“Righto.”
The boy slid across the seat and grabbed his father’s hand. He was lowered onto the ground, swinging, then feet crunching kikuyu.
Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa. Baaaa Baaaa Baaaa.
He could hear the sheep.
Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa. Baaaa Baaaa Baaaa.
It was funny. They Baaaaed like in cartoons and the nursery rhyme. Easy to make the noise too: “Baaaa.”
“What’s that smell Dad?”
“What smell?”
“Grassy. Like rabbits.”
“That’s them. The sheep. Don’t ya know what sheep smell like?”
He didn’t. If he’d thought about them, he’d thought they’d smell like clouds and clouds wouldn’t have much smell at all. Fairy floss maybe.
*
A stone grey and rust-red looming giant, the shearing shed perched on rough-hewn slab struts ruling the hill. Ancient planks from old trees, greased dark from animals pressing against, painted corrugated tin with chickenwire windows to let the sun and breeze through.
Dad walked over to the grownups getting out of the ute. They were loud talking again. They never stopped.
The shed was fun but frightening. Fun but not fun. Funny Baaaaing but something else. There was a cavernous underside that seemed to stretch further than the daylight paddock on the other side. A little closer, straining to make out, he could see piles and piles of marbles covering the ground. He could hear the hum of a thousand flies. It was weird how the floor above had gaps in it, even wider gaps than the floor boards of the verandah back home. He could see through to shapes moving above, clattering feet and Baaaaing and tossing down more marbles.
The loud talking from the grownups was moving.
“Coming sport?”
They were stomping up steps to a door made of an X. He ran up behind. His dad pulled the bolt to let them all in. The grownups he didn’t know smelled of sweat too, but not nice like Dad. He brushed past into the shed.
*
The pong of the animals just about stood him up straight, like his nose was being attacked and smooshed into his face.
Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa. Baaaa Baaaa Baaaa.
There were armies of flies, crawling on the walls, the rails, the sheep.
Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa. Baaaa Baaaa Baaaa.
A writhing mob with fearful eyes rolling brown and white and pink. Clattering and Baaaaing and jostling to get away. They weren’t clean and puffy like clouds, they were skinny and dirty and not wearing their woolly jumpers. Scared and probably mean. He didn’t know. He didn’t know sheep.
There were about… Twenty? About that. If he counted them would he fall asleep? Nah, not likely.
Dad fiddled with the latch on a gate and held it open for the two other grownups. The loudest grownup clucked and squawked and pointed into the room. “This’ll do. Already set up.”
At the back of the room, an ugly chain was slung over a rafter. Dry black splashes beneath on the weird slat floor with the wide gaps. A short three-legged stool. A clear plastic tarp tied and held in a roll with bind-a-twine. Stainless steel buckets. An upside-down tea chest. And a filthy leather apron sitting on the upside down tea-chest, also coated with the same dry black splashes.
The other man stuck his belly out to wrap the laces’ around the back of his waist, like Mum in the kitchen making a pie or a roast. “Ya got the knives mate?”
“Ah shit, I left ‘em in the truck.”
The boy went to go through the gate, but Dad said “Nah mate, you stay out here I think. Try not to get in any trouble. Don’t go in with the sheep in case they try to butt ya.”
“Butt me?”
“Yeah. Don’t want to get rammed by any rams,” Dad said and winked. The boy didn’t know what he was talking about, but it sounded scary. Not bulls scary, but still.
“Tell ya what, can I get ya to go down to the truck and get the knives out for me? They’re just on the floor, ya know the green puma bag?”
“Yep.”
“Well, can ya just whip down and grab it for me? Just bring the bag up.” The gate had a spring so it shut itself when Dad let go of it.
The sheep were all looking at him. He didn’t like it. “It’s okay,” he said. “I won’t hurt ya. Baaaa. BAAAA!” The grownups through the gate were loud talking again above the mad Baaaa and clatter and jostle.
2.
Animal pong, hot iron, salt and rust and something heavier and thicker carried on gentle summer evening air. He was holding onto the top rail, leaning his forehead on the back of his hand, pins and needles in his legs and feet. Tired and no way to go to bed. No hope of bed, no bed in sight.
The night had crept in like the thing from under his bed at home. The weird floor now had midnight cracks showing through to a great empty pit. No world outside. Floating in space.
Dad came through the gate and stood there with it open. In the killing room the light was dazzling. Blaring. Blazing. A stark bad dream. Dripping. Steaming.
Fresh blood red apron and arms dark syrup glazed, the loudest grownup called out to Dad. “Only need one more and we’re good mate. Just let the other one back out into the paddock.”
The gate swung shut.
The last two sheep were in the far corner, not bothering to push against the rails. The others had been dragged on their backs, one by one, Dad’s strong arm hooked round. Quiet and calm or Baaaaing with kicking legs and marbles pouring out, it didn’t matter. Through the gate and into the light.
“Look at ‘em,” said Dad. “Two left, only one to go. D’ya think they know?”
The boy didn’t say anything but he wanted to. He wanted to say about the headless, legless clouds in the blue sky. Such a shame the blue sky was gone and would never come back.
His father moved toward the last two sheep, arms outstretched. Slowly but as inevitable as the night.
“I dunno which one to choose,” he laughed. The boy laughed too, but a fake laugh to be a man.
The sheep stood heads down, noses touching. Shaking. Animal pong. Blood in the air. Marbles in the black pit. The bright lights crammed needles through the cracks in the gate into the killing room.
3.
Still lots of waiting when the grownups were finished.
It turned out the loudest grownup was the sheep farmer, and mister Sheep Farmer’s wife arrived red faced and huffing in another ute with cups of tea out of the thermos and triangle cucumber sandwiches and boiled eggs.
Then thanks mates. Then see ya next times. Then back in the truck and down the hill.
4.
They were chasing the moon home now, a friendly fat bulb hanging just through the windscreen. Lots and lots of stars. No clouds. Seat and dashboard and cabin and dark highway. Black trees.
The truck rumbled. Rocked and swayed. Warm. High beams illuminated white lines and bluestone. Occasional smears of roadkill.
The boy’s eyes felt like there was sand from the sandpit in them. He tried to play the game where he’d stare out the window and imagine someone running alongside, but he couldn’t keep it going. It was too much effort, the guy kept falling behind.
“So how did ya choose Dad?”
“What?”
“Which sheep got to live?”
Dad looked at him, eyes off the road. Two little mirrors in the cabin dark. He reached over and pretended to grab the boy. ”I just grabbed the one closest to me.“
The boy yelped and pushed him away. “It’s not funny Dad.” And there wasn’t anything funny about it, even if the other grownups had laughed and loud talked and joked through the whole day. The whole blue sky day.
Dad put his hands and eyes back on the steering, grinning pale teeth, chuckling to himself.
The boy looked at his Dad. Then he looked at the moon. He looked at the silver button on the glove box. He closed his eyes and drifted in warm blood and sweat and roses wool wash.
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Kitten Island.
1.
First he noticed the noise. Tiny eeks, like squeaky baby birds. Birds were all over, different birds, and they squeaked but not like this.
The veranda was long and low. Jutted out the back of the house like an afterthought. Stubby tree ferns squatted the length.
At the tank-stand end a rabid bouganvillea threw purple and green up onto the corrugated tin wave of the roof. Unsatisfied and still reaching it tried to hook tendrils onto the sky.
There was a bald spot of ground by the back door that was dead and smelled of piss.
Straight from dim indoors, his eyes squinty. The bright was broken glass.
Almost afternoon now, his morning was wasted.
Splat flat on the lawn, he listened. Slim grass tongues licking his toes. Bright yellow dandelions smearing sunny paint onto his face.
Wondering at the sound.
Sunlight stenciled prison bar shadows onto the dirt through the cracks in the boot-worn boardwalk. The noise came from somewhere under.
He crawled closer.
Many indignant insects in his face. Buzzing and clicking and skittish.
He could see movement like the swirling grey on black when he closed his eyes at bedtime. Something moving in the underhouse.
*
A stray thought to be turned and examined like something found. Could he make the same sound?
He had a talent for it. For mimic. He could give the three-bell ‘all’s well’ signal to the rosellas. Match the laconic caw of the greasy black crows.
Maybe this was another he could do. A new one.
He drew his lips across his teeth and squashed his tongue. It was a kind of squeaky-yowling he made in the back of his throat. It was “Yew, Yew…”
Wrong.
Close, but not the same.
He shushed. Listened.
No noise. No movement. No swirling grey, just black.
He pressed his fingers hard into the corners of his eyes. Scrubbed at his eyeballs, a trick to bring the sparkling fairy goldies. Friendly twinkling lights, sometime companions that came when he stood up too fast or sat too long on the toilet.
They didn’t appear.
A cloud blotched the sun, shat dim light over all.
He waited for it to fly by in the sky.
Frogs gronked down by the creek. Blowflies farted and zoomed. Cicadas tore strips off the air.
His heart thudded. Distant marching soldiers, louder the longer the cloud lingered.
He tried again. “Eew, Eww…”
It was closer. Almost there.
He worked the sound around. Chewed on the shape of it.
*
“Ehew. Ehew…” He had it. Spot on like a lyre bird, or near as.
Again. “Ehew. Ehew…”
He waited.
Nothing. Just screaming insects because it was so hot.
He drifted for a while under the warm and blue.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm... The afternoon hummed.
*
“Ehew. Ehew…”
Piercing, the noise stabbed the still.
He was swimming, swimming in the creek with the platyp-.
“Ehew. Ehew…”
Awake now and aware. Under the ferns, with a crook neck and itchy mosquito bites.
He responded.
“Ehew. Ehew.”
Two blue eyes peeked out at him through the gap in the boards. He saw them and they saw him.
“Ehew, Ehew…”
It wanted something. He wasn’t afraid though. It was something good.
“Ehew, Ehew…” He spoke to it.
“Ehew, Ehew…” It answered.
This was great.
It was joined by another. Then another.
They too said “Ehew, Ehew…”
“The bloody heck?”
Grey on black swirling. Blue eyes peering at him through the cracks.
“Ehew, Ehew…” he said.
“Ehew, Ehew…” the underhouse things said, then ventured out into the day.
2.
Raggedy kittens, as many as the fingers on his hand. They blinked flinty eyes. Tried to focus on everything at once, swaying their little heads.
Grey tabbies with stripes like tiny tigers, crooked tails hoisted.
Impossibly cute.
Fragile magic, delicate and exposed.
The boy grinned from happy. “Ehew, Ehew…” he said.
*
They looked at him in unison. It was funny. Then they looked at each other.
They were wary of the stranger who spoke kitten.
He was like nothing they knew.
Tempted to flee, follow instinct and scatter, run, hide.
He made his new sound, rising like a plea. “Ehew?”
The kittens stared at him, afraid to move and afraid to come closer.
*
He could wait.
He would wait.
He could smell the sweet grass, the moist earth slightly cloying.
He thought about all the things that lived and grew and died there.
Slugs, seeds, caterpillars, weeds.
Harlequin beetles, grasshoppers and lizards.
Butterflies, stick-insects, bugs, lots of different bugs.
Bugs in your face, bugs in your eyes, eat a horse manure pie.
Too many things to count.
*
A cold shock dabbed briefly his hand. Silk brushed past his elbow like a whisper.
He lay still as a dead rabbit.
A wet kiss in his ear, startling.
The kittens were there, soft and suddenly all around. Jumping, climbing, scrambling over him. Scratchy claws catching in his t-shirt. Paws poking into his back, trotting down his spine. Whiskers swiping his nose and tickling his legs.
An adorable patchwork menagerie, stuffed toys come wonderfully to life.
“Ehew, Ehew, Ehew, Ehew, Ehew, Ehew, Ehew…”
3.
A head picture flickered, took form, played like a movie. He was the hero, the star, an idea that literally moved him.
Carefully so as not to alarm, he sat up.
The kittens looked up at him wide-eyed.
He slowly stood. They were unsure, but still squirming on the grass.
Then he moved quickly. He didn’t look back lest the magic vanish.
*
The shed was peeling weatherboards on an exposed wood frame and a dark mouth yawning.
Shabby white sheets nailed to an elephant’s skeleton full of spiders.
Hanging waving cobwebs and the strong smell of rats.
Moldering piles of junk almost to the roof and sprawling across the crammed gravel floor. Stuff and more stuff.
There were lead pipes and a bicycle pump.
Gamey horse blankets, horse ropes and leather bridles, horse medicines, horse shoes, horse stuff.
A metal bucket, a selection of birds nests and a big tractor tyre.
An untouched packet of ratsac and a half-full bag of super-phosphate.
A butcher’s knife, a fishing pole, a kerosene lantern.
A bunch of thick maroon books, pages slowly fleeing their bindings.
A stringless tennis racket, a box of nails, a mangy or moth-eaten fox’s tail.
A bunch of empty plastic bags, brittle and disintegrating.
*
It was resting on its side close to the back of one of the smaller piles.
Woven by some deft hand, the cane basket Mum used to haul fruit up from the orchard.
Peaches, pears, apricots, apples. Whatever the coddling moth or possums hadn’t got to first. He was pleased; it would be ideal.
He grasped the handle and hoisted.
It felt good in his hand and smelled faintly of lemons.
It was dusty so he wiped the inside of it with his shirt. Now he was dusty too.
That shirt would be big trouble later with Mum.
Sunlight fingers felt through the cracks in the shed wall. Motes swished in the shards, swirled, slowly fell.
*
The flattened patch of grass by the veranda was empty when he returned.
He sat and called to the kittens. “Ehew, Ehew…” he said. “Ehew, Ehew?” he asked. There was nothing.
“Ehew, Ehew…” he said louder. “Ehew, Ehew?” he asked louder.
The emptiness ached a bit, so did his stomach.
He called until at last they answered, little mouths opening to show little pink tongues.
Little inquisitive faces poking out from the gloom.
4.
“Ehew, Ehew…” Up from inside the basket, a swinging pendulum from the crook of his fingers. Rock-a-bye-babies, his responsibility now.
Panicked blue eyes, they couldn’t get out.
He couldn’t see Mum. That didn’t mean she wasn’t watching, but he didn’t think so.
There was no yell to “Get here right now.”
He wasn’t doing anything wrong, but she wouldn’t understand.
She would take the kittens away. Hurt them, kill them.
Ferals.
This was no place.
He carried the basket like a secret up the garden path.
Grey concrete pavers, fragrant roses along the way.
At the end a wrought iron gate, ornate but exhausted. Old paint flaked off like dandruff.
Its hinges complained bitterly when he shoved through with his hip and into the back paddock.
It was ill, he should show more respect.
*
He wasn’t supposed to be in the back paddock, there were bulls.
He couldn’t see any but Mum said so. He’d never seen any but the fear was there all the same.
Bulls were all big horns and snorting fury.
A lone crow wheeled above and decided on the bony remnants of a gum.
Brooding and dreadful it sat in judgement. Then with a flap and dismissive “Waark…” it was gone.
A cockatoo shrieked and for a second he thought it was Mum.
No, not her.
Just a bird.
The sun baked the side of the hill. The air wavered in the heat.
Thump, thump, thump.
His feet determined thumps in front.
Over short crunchy stubble, summer-scorched pasture parched and beaten. Mainly kikuyu, some dock here and there.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
The kittens wept, their eyes pleaded.
He made the sound to them. “Mhew…” It didn’t help.
*
Reaching the base of the hill, he approached with caution a crowd of scotch thistles, most standing taller than him.
They were menacing, alien things. Huddled in groups, dire needles sharp and glinting.
Vibrant purple crew cuts sprouting from faceless heads held together in nodding conference, watching, whispering.
He picked his way through, feeling an occasional quick sting to his legs. They tried to grab the basket but he wouldn’t let them.
He was relieved when they thinned out and he spotted the creek fence, bedraggled posts struggling to stay upright under the constant duress of standing. Two strands of barbed wire hung red-brown and speckled with bird shit, drooping like a low clothes line.
*
He stooped and lifted the top wire, careful of his fingers, careful of the tet-nus.
Tet-nus meant big needles in his belly Mum said. Doctor’s needles, bigger and sharper than even thistles.
The kittens begged him to stop.
He squatted through into the rudely lush foliage edging the blasted paddock.
It was a riot of green.
Patches of clover, milkweed and waving bracken.
Long grass probably full of snakes.
Bunches of turnip gone wild, a hang-over from earlier days when the farm was still being properly worked.
Sweet yellow wattle. Ragwort, also yellow but sour.
Clumps of slicing razor tussock, innocuous enough but with hidden bastard blades.
He couldn’t see the water, but he could smell it.
The only way down was a steep narrow cow-track scar worn into the slope by generations of hooves. He used his free hand to grasp tufts of whatever; anything to steady.
He dug in his heels and slipped straight onto his arse, still holding the basket but quickly sliding out of control.
A jarring stop at the bottom and he saw the goldies at last.
It felt wet where he was sitting. The kittens were frantic, spitting and trying to climb out.
“Ehew, Ehew…” he said to them.
“We’re here now. Calm down. Don’t cry.”
*
He stood on the edge of the squishy bank and dipped his toes just into the water.
The intrusion stirred the silt.
Brown clouds drifted.
He stepped in up to his ankles.
Brown clouds billowed.
The basket was heavier now than when he’d left the yard. The handle seemed to strain in his hand just from the sheer weight.
Paddling water-clocks tilled the surface and left expanding Vs in their wake.
They paused occasionally to make the crazy ticking circles that gave them their name.
Weeping willows trailed golden strands from above, languid in the drowsy breeze. Tangled limbs embraced, rubbing and knocking, their gnarled bark skins as tough as tonka.
Friendly guardians of the creek, his favourite trees by far. Tall and stooped like Grandad, nicer even than oaks or poplars.
He would sometimes swing on them with a big handfull of their hair, out over the water, feet kicking, before returning safely to shore. Sending haphazard leaves spiralling down. Miniature yellow gondolas that settled to drift untethered, race trills and currents, or float helplessly caught on some piece of jetsam.
The sky, blue like no other colour, reflected up at him from the water.
It was a mirror. In it he looked small and weak.
It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair.
He looked at the wriggling kittens. They were small and weak too.
It was easy to get lost watching the water.
Time flowed gently down the stream. The creek was beautiful, but not to be trusted.
There were deep holes with snags where kids could drown.
Slippery black eels hungrily patrolling the depths, bellies white and fleshy.
Crayfish with snipping claws and beady eyes on stalks in hollow-log lairs, scuttling under shelves of wormy willow roots or flipping their tails and shooting backwards through the murk.
Mesmerising sounds, hypnotic ripples, boggy traps of sucking quickmud, dangerous crossings…
Once in winter he had seen a platypus playing.
The water was brown and fast, right up the sides of the creek and spilling over.
Mum told him falling in meant dead as dead so to stay away.
The platypus was rolling on its back, bobbing and diving, having fun in the speeding flood.
Dead was dead though, so he’d just watched until eventually it bobbed under and didn’t come back up.
5.
The bridge to the island was a half submerged root, like a pale wet bone reaching.
The island itself no more than a bump.
Two slow roads flecked with whitish foam flowed around.
Cress and water-weeds fringed the shore. Baby gudgeons bulleted, flashed, sucked at the waving strands.
Fishbone ferns gave an impression of solidity, alongside blanched drifts of disintegrating leaves.
Piles of wattle baubles - no longer golden but gritty soaked orange.
*
He tried not to think and just did.
He walked the root.
He jumped at the end, planted his feet and landed with a splotch.
He stepped forward. He hadn’t fallen in.
Tawny water seeped shallowly into his left-behind footprints.
*
At last they had arrived. Kitten Island.
A place away from all the bad things in the world.
A place he could visit any time he wanted.
A place where he could watch them grow, his beautiful secrets.
Tenderly he tipped the kittens out of the basket. They toddled onto the ground, lost and frightened. They were not where they thought they belonged.
He was sure they were wrong though.
They would be happy here, safe and privileged and private.
*
The way back was easier without the weight of the kittens in the basket.
It felt so much lighter.
He felt so much lighter.
Epilogue.
After a sweaty night he wakes still tired.
Rags of lucid dreams. Something about his stuffed toys attacking him, circling with bared teeth.
Then he remembers the kittens and leaps from the bed.
*
A hurried bowl of coco-pops and a disapproving scowl from Mum.
He smiles and tells her he’s going outside to play.
“Alright,” she says. “But stay in the yard.”
He steps off the veranda into a scalding wind.
No noise from the underhouse.
The insects scream about the heat. He doesn’t care, lets them scream.
He feels a sort of thrumming anticipation, the twitching tug of a line running to his guts and pulling at his insides.
How happy they will be to see him.
They’ll purr and rub his bare legs with their chins.
Little darlings.
A blowfly buzzes by. Fat and slow, patrolling for a feed or somewhere to lay its eggs.
It diverts to the plum tree, attracted by the soggy bombs that sticky the ground dark red with juice.
He avoids going over there this time of year. Hates the disgusting feel of the plums under his his bare feet. Imagines walking across a field of bloody eyeballs.
Spring is better. Petals cover the ground in pink snow.
He makes his way up the path and through the gate. It’s still sick and lets him know.
*
Mum is wrong, the back paddock has no bulls.
He isn’t afraid. He’s yelping and rushing forward, his feet quick thumps in front.
Thump, thump, thump.
Whacking the thistles with a picked-up stick, laughing.
Through the fence, the green curtain, sliding down the slope easily.
His heart drums fast-marching soldiers. The blood sings sugar in his ears.
Nothing could be better.
The creek is a shiny silver worm, a dark mirror over which iridescent dragonflies skim and linger.
The weeping willows groan and sway in the hot gusts, tossing leaves to the cool water below.
He looks to the island and his smile sinks like a clod thrown into a dam.
It sinks like Mum’s smile when he’s again broken something.
“Ehew, Ehew..?” he asks.
Kitten Island is empty.
The kittens are gone.
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