The Lost Child (6 page)

‘Was that you I saw out near Stickynet? With those Daley kids?' I nod. ‘What were you thinking of? What if you'd fallen in and drowned? Did your mother know?'

‘She was in Muswell.'

‘Well, that's when you need to use your head and think for yourself.' She picks up my bandaged hand. ‘What's this?'

‘Making toffee.'

She looks into my eyes as if she knows exactly how it happened. ‘You're too young to be making toffee by yourself.'

‘I'm almost six.'

Now she looks as if she's doing sums in her head. ‘Five and a bit isn't six. How's school?'

‘All right.'

‘Thank you.'

‘All right, thank you.'

‘Come and stay with me next weekend. Give your mother a bit of a rest.'

She stamps down the drive. Uncle Ticker has her door open and the engine running. They forget to wave.

Who is that Wallis woman? What is a divorce? There are prickles inside my nose and my hand throbs. I can't think why I want to cry, because the Phantom is made of rock. I listen at the door with my thousand ears but there are no more yelling voices. I know I should go in but he who sees the Phantom's face dies a horrible death so I sit on the step and wish Grannie was still here ruling our roost so I wouldn't have to use my head and think for myself.

5

Dad puts his foot on the chair next to mine and ties double knots. His hair is slicked down smooth and he smells of my shampoo. He's going to the footy because the Roosters are playing at home. Dunc and Pardie are already there. Mum says she might take me after she's made a sponge but I know she won't; she doesn't like footy.

‘Ticker's lost his marbles,' says Dad to his shoe. ‘He's shaved every bloody tree off the ridge on Robe Road. I asked Denver bloody Boland if he knows what's going on. You know what he tells me?' Mum's beating eggs so Dad flicks a look at me as if I'll do for the asking. ‘Ticker's building a bloody big ditch. Reckons he can drain the swamp right through the range into the lake.'

‘Big ideas,' says Mum, putting down the beater.

It's not the right answer. I can tell by the way Dad pulls on his nose and frowns at his fingers. ‘Big?' His voice gets louder. ‘Try barmy. Try ten bob short of a shilling. Goes off to New Guinea and builds a few bridges for the war effort, comes back thinking he's an engineer. How many years ago is that? Ten?'

‘Something like that,' says Mum.

‘I worked on the roads in the Top End and dug plenty of dunny holes in the jungle around Darwin and I didn't come back thinking I was the council engineer, did I?' Mum doesn't answer and Dad looks at me. Before I can shake my head, he goes on: ‘Anyway, I said to Denver: How'd this get through council? You're the bloody chairman, I said, shouldn't people be given a chance to object? He says it was advertised in the
Mail
. And I say: Yes, in print the size of fly shit. Then I said: What about the orange-bellied parrot? And ya know what he says?'

My eyes go cross-eyed with looking and listening.

‘
Orange-bellied what
? That's what he says. I'd get myself elected if I thought it'd do any good but who'd want to work with that group of mugs. Anyway, I told him the orange-belly breeds in Tassie and comes here to winter. Told him they need saltmarsh and samphire and what's going to happen when every swamp's been drained for miles around? You know what he says?'

I uncross my eyes. Mum turns from the stove with her mouth twitching and I wonder what I've missed in my listening because nothing seems funny to me. Then she blinks at me, just one blink—or is it a wink?

‘
Can't it find another swamp?
That's what he says. Can you believe it?'

A sound escapes from Mum's mouth. ‘Maybe Denver's right,' she says between snuffles that grow into giggles. ‘We've got nothing but water around here. Aren't those purple parrots'—more giggles—‘smart enough to find another swamp?'

Dad doesn't laugh. He pulls on his nose and watches Mum as she wipes at her eyes with the tea-towel and her giggles slowly stop.

‘Orange,' he says quietly, before heading into the lounge.

‘Orange. Pink. Purple.' Mum slides onto the chair next to me. ‘Who cares?' She shakes her head and sighs heavily. ‘Who's the mad one? How'd you ever know?'

Suddenly Dad's back at the door, rifle in his hands, face smiley smooth. He lifts the gun. ‘Think this is funny?'

‘Don't be stupid…Mick…'

A shot explodes in my ears and eyes, piddles my pants, the smell of bonfires and Guy Fawkes, rabbits in spotlights, their sad floppy ears. But when I open my eyes, Mum's right there, staring at a hole above our heads where plaster is drifting down like snow. At the door, Dad looks cocky.

Mum reaches to the sink, grabs a saucepan and hurls it at his head. ‘Get out!' she screams.

Dad ducks into the laundry porch. When the saucepan bounces off the door, he pokes his head back in. ‘Rotten shot.'

Mum throws the saucepan lid. ‘Get out and stay out!'

Now she grabs the jam dish. It hits the wall high up and Dad laughs a crazy laugh, and then I see the dish sliding slowly down the wall with a snail trail of apricot jam following behind. It hits the skirting board and topples onto the floor. I think of snail shine on the morning path. Of Chicken McCready jumping on snails and the way their green stomachs ooze out.

When I look back, Dad has gone.

I hide in the leaves of the kurrajong tree. I hide in my reading and writing and sums. I hide in my Sunday-school singing and Mrs Bullfrog's big bosom breathing the hymns, that same secret bosom I've seen at the lake without her pink-strapped brassiere. I hide in the stillness that flattens the sea before the storm comes, in the cloud of black ducks that spreads like an inkblot across the white sky. I hide in Miss Taylor's kind eyes. I hide.

*

‘For once in your life, just do what you're asked and take her with you.'

Dunc says they can't dink me, not carrying the net and bucket. Pardie opens his mouth to speak but Dunc frowns him into silence.

Pardie has grown red fur on his face. In the light from the window, he shines like an angel with a halo. I have stuck my Sunday-school stamp into my Jesus book. It is the Rock of Gethsemane stamp and Mrs Bullfrog gave it to me because I knew it took three days for Jesus to rise again. Dunc doesn't go to Sunday school because it's for Methodists and we're Catholics, but the priest only comes once a month so Mum says, what does it matter, she was a Methodist before she got married. Dad says we're descended from apes and anyone who thinks there's a Heaven or Hell needs their head read. There are a lot of redheads in Burley Point—Jude and Pardie Moon, Mr Sweet and his son Kenny, even Blue Daley is a darkish kind of red, which is why he's called Blue. Redheads are always called Blue.

Mum narrows her eyes at Dunc. ‘It won't hurt you for once.'

Who will win? The Demon Dunc or The Phantom Mother? Who will take the Jungle Girl into the Deep Woods where the pygmy people live?

Pardie saves the day. ‘It's all right, Mrs Meehan, I'll dink her.'

‘We're not taking turns,' warns Dunc as we wait for Mum to make sandwiches. ‘She's all yours, the whole way.'

Outside the Institute there is a poster for a film called
Oklahoma
. Pardie says he wouldn't miss it for quids. Dunc rides ahead, skidding around Lanky Evans as he crosses the street. The sea is a bright autumn green, with the boats all riding their moorings; soon it will be the end of the season, no more fishing until next spring. After Stickynet, the wattles are bent over the road in a long tunnel. The sun shines through in dappled patches and Pardie's hay fever makes him sneeze even though there are no flowers. At Big Tree turn-off, the farms are a green rug all around and Dunc on the road far ahead. When we arrive at Five Mile Drain, he's already tying meat onto strings.

I squat on the edge of the canal and watch the water swirling towards the sea. There are skater beetles catching a ride, a spider on a leaf, even a dag of wool from a sheep. Dunc's legs next to mine are brown and scabby. After we've caught nine yabbies—two of them mine—we eat our sandwiches on top of the bank and there's a happy buzz in the milkweed and an old black crow watching from the other bank. When a tractor starts up on the range, Dunc tells Pardie it's probably Uncle Ticker and why don't we leave the yabbies in the bucket and take a look at his ditch?

As we ride beside the lake, three pelicans fly so low over our heads that we can hear wind through their feathers. Pardie says they're flying home to their breeding grounds with their bellies full of fish from the reefs. Dunc says they mate for life and maybe one of them's a young'un and they're coming home from Lake Eyre. Pardie says the fathers sometimes peck the young ones to death, but the mother feeds them with her own blood and after three days they come alive again.

I wonder if Dad's orange-bellied parrots could fly to Lake Eyre for a good feed. If parrots mate for life like pelicans? If parrots peck their babies to death, and if they come alive after three days like Jesus did? There is too much to know.

At the top of the lane that leads to the ridge, Uncle Ticker has fenced a viewing platform but there's not much to see. The tractor has cleared all the trees and there's white rock underneath. Pardie says it's got a long way to go and wouldn't a bulldozer be better? Dunc says a Caterpillar with a double winch and blade is just as good. He says before long they'll be blasting right through the rock. It's hard to see who's driving the tractor—Uncle Ticker or Chicken's uncle who works at Bindilla. The swamp is a purple-green sea far off to the fence line. I think of all the snakes that must live in those reeds and I'll be glad when they're gone, whatever Dad says about parrots. Dunc says when Uncle Ticker's finished he'll have himself another thousand acres so it's not such a hair-brained idea.

Pardie lobs a rock into the ditch. ‘Who says it is?'

Dunc lobs a rock too. ‘My Dad, for one.'

And suddenly they're both firing off rocks as if it's a fight with no rules and there's nothing but rocks raining down on the ditch until the tractor turns and trundles towards us and we tear into the bush on the other side of the road, crashing through bracken and banksias, wattles and heaths, running fast, me in the middle where it's safest from snakes, running fast to keep up, my legs scratched by branches and slipping on rocks, Pardie laughing and sneezing close behind.

We stop in a small clearing surrounded by black yakkas and wild cherry trees and a giant muddy gum growing beside a big rock. The sound of the tractor is now far off. Dunc says there's a cave around here, millions of years old and full of fish fossils because once it was under the sea. He says an Abo used to live there, and maybe still does. I can hear my heart thumping loud in my ears and I can feel the sea breathing in the grass under my feet. We sneak around looking for the cave, whispering so the Abo won't hear. Everything is warm and quiet like a secret and I have a feeling of being watched by someone like God who knows all my hidden thoughts.

Suddenly there's a loud rustle in the bushes and we turn with a fright in case it's the Abo. It's an emu! Staring at us with crazy bold eyes and, as we stare back, not breathing, not moving, its long neck pokes at the air like a stretched question mark. Then Pardie sneezes, sending it sprinting off in a flap, our laughter chasing it into the scrub far away.

Pardie's freckles are bright against his pale skin, his eyes wide and as crazy as the emu's. ‘Let's get out of here.'

Dunc doesn't argue and leads us over logs and dead branches, me in the middle and my mind full of black men with spears, and snakes and emus that could peck out your eyes, all of it mixed up in the panic of following. We are almost clear of the scrub when Dunc stops. There on a fallen tree is a beautiful green and blue bird, twittering and talking in a pretty bird voice.
Georgie
Porgie Georgie Porgie,
it says, clear as a bell. One step at a time, Dunc moves forward, the bird still talking:
Georgie Porgie Georgie
Porgie.
Closer, Dunc reaches out with his hand and the bird steps onto his fingers and walks up his arm. Dunc says it's a budgerigar which is really a small parrot, sometimes called a lovebird. He says it must have escaped from a cage and might not survive in the wild. He lifts the bird to his face and makes kissy sounds and the bird nuzzles his lips and whistles happily. In the same quiet voice, Dunc asks me if I'd like it for a pet. I'm so surprised that I don't answer but Dunc tucks it inside his shirt anyway. He says I can keep it in the cage he found at the tip and used for the rosella that died. He says I'll have to clean out the cage every day and give it a name. That's easy, I say, Georgie Porgie, that's his name.

When we get to the bikes, Dunc says he'll dink me because it's downhill all the way. I'm surprised for the second time and climb on the bar in front of him. We coast down the hill, gathering speed, Dunc singing ‘Rock Around the Clock' and Georgie Porgie squeaking inside his shirt.

At the bottom, Dad's jeep is parked by the side of the road, half-hidden behind a she-oak. His binoculars are trained on Uncle Ticker's tractor. Dunc stops singing and rides past without stopping, pedalling faster, faster. The sky is enormous, blue without one cloud. I won't tell Mum we saw Dad. You can forget everything if you want to.

Dad comes home from the Coorong with a train full of brumbies for bait and there is buck-jumping at the station stockyards.

Aunt Cele and Pardie's mum are sitting on the rail opposite Lizzie and me. Next to Aunt Cele is that Lewis woman who is married to Mr Lewis with the ginger moustache and the war medals on Anzac Day. Lizzie says if they're going to kill the horses for bait they should do it straightaway and not play rodeos with them, they are poor dumb creatures and they don't know what's happening. She says she'd rather go and get a Paddle Pop. Or we could spy on Wanda the Witch. I tell her I want to see my dad ride.