The Chantic Bird Page 18

  ‘Dad, I hate to tell you this,’ said Stevo, ‘but burglars wear them!’

  ‘I am the burglar,’ I said with menace, spreading my arms like they do in the horror films. Somehow I expected him to be as scared of one as of the other. The kids liked scary things. Bee got him off that subject by showing me his latest homework.

  ‘Show Daddy the kangaroo and the lion.’ He got out his little exercise book with the salmon cover and showed me.

  ‘Read it to Daddy,’ she said.

  ‘The kangaroo and the lion. Once while a lion was eating in the jungle he heard a noise. It was the kangaroo in the bushes. The kangaroo sprang at him. After that they were friends.’ He stopped, Bee clapped, I thought it was colossal. Actually it was. There was a little kid searching in his brain for words about animals, and finding some. They didn’t make all that much sense, but they were words from inside him.

  I was so pleased I helped Bee get them to bed, then out to my mobile cave to drive round a bit. In a car you carry your own darkness with you at night, you can see out better than anyone can see in. I slept parked on the driveway of a service station, you’d think it was just a car left there for sale. The next day I got Bee to keep the kids home from school and come for a good long drive. They had their coloured pencils and books in case they got bored. I got the idea of allowing them to decorate the inside of the car, too, with their paints. It was easy enough as long as I didn’t go to town on the brakes or slice the corners too much. Bee didn’t like them getting in a mess, but I got her to let them wear their old things, so that was OK.

  It would have been a good day only it started to rain. Chris livened things up with her song about ‘Lay down yonder in the paw-paw patch’. That was always good for about twenty minutes, but after that the others started to get very restless.

  ‘All the houses look little when it starts to rain,’ said Chris, going straight from song to words.

  ‘How many days is it to Christmas?’ queried Stevo. I started to answer him when I remembered I didn’t have any presents for them. We were going through poor old Lithgow, the people looked cold and miserable in the streets even in December, but the shops were putting on a cheerful show with flags and signs and streamers, trying hard to loosen the last bit of change in the citizens’ pockets. A big banner said something religious about Bethlehem.

  ‘Lithgow is a long way from Bethlehem, isn’t it Daddy?’ I didn’t want to tell him how much further I was. I was further still by the time I’d gone to town on one of their sports stores. I got a few little things for Stevo, enough to ease my conscience. I’d have to leave it a bit longer for Chris and Allie. I had to leave them waiting for about an hour while I spied out the streets behind the shops, so as not to make any wrong turnings when the shop workers were after me. It was risky, in a foreign town, but as usual the one who acts first has the initiative. Bee gave me a slight needle when she saw me ditch the things under the boot lid.

  ‘You’re starting to find things everywhere.’

  She meant before they were lost. She was getting a bit too quick on the eye, and a bit too ready to unlock the tongue.

  ‘You’re starting to see things.’ I didn’t mean it to sound like that, but once it was out, that was it. She sat a bit further away and looked out the other window for long enough to get Stevo in.

  He said, ‘You mustn’t be upset, ’cause Daddy’s a friend.’ That didn’t make any difference to her, but she smiled at the kid. I could see by her face she was having pains and I thought I remembered seeing the grateful way she had sat down when she got into the car. I started to get her talking but all I could think of to say was ‘What direction is the last town?’ She never knew which direction was which. You could box her up just by going round a corner. It’s different with me, I never lose track of where the west and the north are. I don’t think south and east, only north and west; I get all my directions that way.

  We stopped for eats half a dozen miles outside Lithgow and the kids were so happy playing round near the water—we stopped by a bridge—that I lay on my back and went to sleep.

  Sure enough, up came a coloured dream. I was in a boat, finding my way home to port and when I got outside the harbour I radioed my position to the port officials and so on, then I came in the harbour, but I kept getting strange answers to my calls. There I was, in the middle of the stream, and I could see them milling about, getting into boats, coming to look for me. They kept saying, ‘Confirm your position’, and ‘Show yourself’, and when I got them to put a direction finder on my radio signals they had to admit I was where I said I was, but they couldn’t see me. That was silly. I repeated everything, so they couldn’t possibly make a mistake and they started closing in on me, still saying they couldn’t see me. In the end they were right on top of me, aiming everything at me and I was screaming into the radio, ‘You must be able to see me, you’re right on top of me,’ but all they could say was, ‘We get your signals, and directionally you’re there, but we can’t see you’.

  And to themselves they said, ‘There’s nothing there. It’s his voice all right, but we’ve got the finest directionals and the greatest magnification possible in the world, trained right on where the signals come from, but as far as our instruments show, he’s not there.’

  I was pretty wet when I woke up, apparently I’d been thrashing about in my sleep. Bee looked at me pretty worried, and the kids were playing further away but kept looking back at me. She must have told them to go away.

  That was the most embarrassing part, having Bee see me in one of those dreams.

  Why did they? Why did a man and a woman get together that particular time just to make something they could be parents to? Why couldn’t they have used self-restraint just once? It wasn’t worth it, to be alive with Bee looking at me like that, looking and not looking, and the kids looking over their shoulders, with Stevo loyally trying to get Chris to play. Allie was too young to notice, that was the only good thing. She smiled most of the time.

  In the car Stevo took my mind off my own whys and wherefores by getting involved in mathematics. Numbers seemed to get him.

  ‘The biggest number in the world is a hundred million thousand. You can’t have any bigger. You can’t go any futher ’cause then there’s Pole.’

  Don’t ask me, I haven’t got a clue what Pole is, all I know is he said it with a capital letter. I wish I knew what went on in his head, maybe he was a brain.

  ‘How you getting on at school, Stevo?’ I asked.

  ‘All right. I’ve got a new teacher, though. Miss Thomson.’

  ‘Which you like better, Miss Thomson or Miss Adamson?’

  ‘Miss Thomson, just a twinkle better.’

  ‘Did you tell Miss Thomson you didn’t go to the Show?’

  ‘No, I think that would be a very sad thing to say.’

  Bee said, ‘He was pretty quiet about the Show. The other kids all mentioned it in their compositions.’

  That shut me up. I wasn’t on deck to take them to the local Shows, either Castle Hill or Parramatta. We ruled out the big one in town, it was too noisy, too crowded and too dirty, Bee said.

  The kids went back to their picture books and singing. The next I heard was Bee giving Stevo the rounds of the back seat for saying bugger.

  ‘I’m not saying it to other people, just seeing if I can still say the word.’ He was right behind me when he said it, making sure I heard his excuse. He sprayed a circular waterfall when he spoke, and I had a wet neck.

  When we stopped at a little store, I gave the kids money to buy something for themselves and you should have seen what a little taste of money did to them. They wouldn’t show each other what they bought, as if they would lose a little of it if someone else saw it.

  I knew they would never grow up and I hoped so, too. I would never be a mature citizen until I was rigid in my box, and I guess I didn’t want them to be, either.

  I was so involved with the kids I took a wide corner too fast and nearly coll
ected a country ambulance from Bathurst going like mad back to Sydney with a case the country doctors couldn’t handle. The ambulance didn’t shift its course on the curve and it was left to me to haul on the wheel enough just to scrape paint.

  Bee looked more scared that time than when I really went off the road. She covered up by asking Stevo to tell me the story of the Chantic Bird.

  ‘What story? I don’t remember any story,’ he replied.

  ‘You know, the one you were telling Daddy.’

  ‘I’ll tell him one from my new book,’ he said.

  ‘Never mind,’ I put in.

  ‘That’s not nice, Stevo,’ said Bee. ‘You know very well what story.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘No. He should do what he said he was going to.’

  ‘Don’t go begging the kid for me. He said he’s forgotten it, that’s good enough for me.’

  ‘I’ll let you know if I remember,’ he said. It sounded pretty cheeky to me, but what could I do? I never worried about him being cheeky before.

  ‘When I’m bigger I want diamonds,’ Chris said suddenly.

  ‘What brought that on?’ Bee asked.

  ‘I just heard a lady on the TV say it.’

  ‘She’s always wanting something fresh.’ That was Stevo. The limelight had been shifted away from him, his sister was coming ahead, fast.

  I took them home, all fast asleep in the car. I didn’t mind going out of my way to do something for them, they were as good as my own kids. But I started to think the best way to look after them all might be to stay away and send money. They’d soon forget me; there’s not much to remember.

  I parked the car outside the house that night and slept in it. It was a bit like guarding the family. Next morning a kid I used to know made a point of pretending to pass by and when he got to the point he wanted me to come in with him tapping a petrol line down on the Parramatta where it comes across from a big refinery under the river to feed the tanks of another oil company and across some open ground to the tanks of a third company. He told me his method of getting into the line and I wiped him right away. Not only because I would never go in with someone else, but because I thought of a better way of tapping the line, while he was talking. I’d better not tell you too much about it, but my way made no noise, caused no sparks and took half a day, using acid. This kid would probably have got into the top of the line and had the stuff spraying all over the place. The time to get it was when they weren’t pumping and you could tell that by putting your ear to it. Then when you had your own half-inch line tapped in, all you had to do was fill your drums in the mangroves and float them out.

  I got rid of this kid and he went away mumbling about how I’d change when I saw him in his eighty-guinea suits. There was no sense answering him, but I told myself I’d change when I was good and ready. They weren’t going to change me. I was incorrigible. Just the same I didn’t like letting him off altogether, going away muttering and me not doing anything to cure him of the habit. It gave me a bad feeling not to get even.

  Once when I was a kid the old man, who was a very excitable type, was excitable in the wrong company and got bashed up. That was in a vacant block on Parramatta Road along from the Saleyards pub. I got even for him. That’s what I believe in—revenge. Getting even. The man that did most of the kicking at the old man, I waited for him the day I turned fifteen and a half, it was a Saturday, I had to follow him far as the railway to get a chance to do him. He got off the train before it had stopped and ran before slowing down. I didn’t let him slow down, I ran alongside him and pushed him off the other edge of the platform. There was no train coming the other way, lucky for him, but he was messed up a lot. When they get over forty they can’t take knocks.

  As I walked back along the platform, I casually eased my knife out of my pocket so that the metal of it shone in the sun. The workers in the train made no move. The public’s got no guts, they need leaders and bosses and things to lean on.

  Inside the house there was a small emergency. Stevo had kicked over the traces and Bee had to strip him and give him a going-over with a whippy stick. The smell of breakfast got me into the house and I came in on the end of the argument. I tried to say something oily to calm them both down, but they both snapped at me. At least Stevo snapped at me; I only felt that Bee did, she didn’t actually say anything.

  I gave Stevo a whack that was not well judged and he had to pick himself off the skirting board. He went away and when we went to look for him we found a note but no Stevo.

  It read; ‘Sorry I will never ever come back, again, good by for ever. Sine Stevo. It is realy, that is a finish. You don’t like me, do you.’

  Bee was still watering at the eyes when I left to look for him. I tracked him a little way by his shoes, where he walked over the dew on the grass, and finally ran him to earth under a low-spreading tree outside a neighbour’s house. He hadn’t run far and I only caught him from the sound of a plastic glass of pineapple drink against the tree trunk. He wanted to run away and he’d taken his supplies, but already they were half finished and he was only two hundred yards from home.

  There was nothing I could have said to him on the way back, it was just as well I left it to Bee; she only needed a couple of words to poor old Stevo and he was in tears and burying his face in her lap. If she spoke to you in the language of the Watutsi or in Estonian you’d want to kiss the words as they floated in the air. That’s how her voice was.

  The sight of a man in a sort of uniform straightened me up a bit, you know how I hate uniforms. But it was only a service-station dress; it was a man I knew that used to go around damaging people’s cars then turning up in time to recommend them to his mate, who had a panel-beating business. He either hit a car with the heel of his hand and pushed in a panel, or scraped the paint off with an ornament he had on his key-ring. It was made of stainless steel and the scrape it left looked like a brush with another car. Something about the way he looked at the car made me prick up my suspicions. I decided to get out of there; it was just as likely that he might dob me in to the coppers just to get a good mark for himself.

  I drove away eating potato chips, thinking to myself I was making a hole in space, through and through the vastness of the daytime that covered the hemisphere, imagining that if I could keep the car going straight, I could get it in a gradual climb off the surface of the earth and end up aimed right away from this planet. A kid on a bike, lairising, leaned right over in front of me, a pedal touched the ground, and he went ass over tip right in front of me. If he hadn’t rolled over as soon as he hit, he would have been minced because I didn’t move the wheel a fraction. It reminded me of a game we used to play, throwing sticks out of someone’s car, aiming them between the spokes of bikes and watching the riders hitting the dirt. Or the concrete.

  When I stopped for gasoline at the green and gold sign of one of the oil companies involved in what I said before about the business of using the same product, some older kids told me they had a good thing going in stolen cars—they looked at mine very close—but presently a fellow bowled up, better dressed than them and it turned out here was another leader. Leader! I told them what they could do with leaders.

  Just then there was the sound of a car behind me. I thought they might have signalled a passing prowl car and had it pull in behind me, but I was lucky. I listened a bit more and it turned out to be a little fall of water in some underground pipes, under the driveway. I don’t think the others heard it. I’ve got ears like a wild cat.

  I ditched the car and went back home. There were too many people knew me, too many kids trying to get me in with them. There was only one place I felt comfortable.

  By this time I had something in mind for Petersen, so I let him worm it out of me that Stevo and the kids weren’t my little brother and sisters but my kids and Bee’s. Mine as far as I knew, anyway, because at one stage she had the bad luck to be initiated up behind the factories in Duffy Avenue. I say I had something in mind, b
ecause by this time my own story seemed to be his. He treated it as his, he was getting inside all my secrets and I had started to feel he was like one of those men that had been following me. He might even be the most dangerous of them.

  That’s why I’ve kept a lot back. That’s why I didn’t tell him the truth about the kids. When I told him those lies, I could see he was more curious than ever, his skinny frame jerked with anticipation of more secrets to come.

  When I got back home to Bee she had her head on a pillow, sick.

  17

  HOUSE

  Some things are easy to remember. The cab I had was a real old Mercedes diesel, they have a few of them round Parramatta and I was on my way to the house and no one there. Bee had taken the kids with her to the Entrance for two weeks of the holidays. She told me she would be back in time for Christmas, she liked to be home for Christmas. It was pretty luxurious taking a cab, and you can bet I didn’t stay in it right up to the door. Right where the pedestrian crossing is in Bee’s suburb the cab stopped for old Miss Jones—that was the old lady that made a lifework of taking in stray kids—to stagger across and when he was about to go, with a line of traffic behind him and a line in front so he couldn’t turn right, I whipped the door open and hopped out. It was just that part of the day when the light is going and the dark is almost enough for cars to switch on their lights, which they are very reluctant to do. I was down the railway path and round behind the shopping centre and across the road before the driver could turn the car. If he’d been quicker and speeded up when he saw me go for the door, he’d have got me, but people are too kindhearted; they pull back from hurting you just when they could have you on a plate.

  It was dark enough when I got home; it was silly to have neighbours see you when there was no need. The house smelled dark, like a cave, inside.

  Sitting in there alone and all the bad things I’d ever done started to rise up in front of my eyes. I grinned in the dark over most of them, but not about scalding Stevo, or taking their friends from the others, and not about leaving the old man alone for three years in hospital or Ma when she was dying for six months, or even my young brother that died. Next to Stevo, that one that died was on my conscience about the most. Although Ma and the old man had a pretty rotten go, too. Ma used to try to get us to think he was the finest man on earth. I hope no one ever talks like that about me.