The Chantic Bird Read online

  He got out his BB gun and we took it outside and blasted away fiercely at a book my old man left behind. It was a book of Kipling stories with nice thick paper that didn’t make the BB’s go oval. You could use them again. I taught him little things like that in case I wasn’t always there to pinch bullets for him. And guns. I think it’s better if they don’t know where the goodies come from, but you’ve got to make sure they’re not altogether helpless in case some bottle or bullet or drunken bum takes you off stage before you expect to go.

  Stevo was really getting the idea of guns. You should have seen him, with one eye shut tight and the other straining to line up the sights. He was too young to get him to relax. It made me feel a better bloke to see him getting fierce and strong and joyful, and aiming straight.

  And the things he said! When the phone rang—when I was ringing up Bee—and there was a letter came for me, which wasn’t often, he yelled over the phone, ‘Here’s a letter for you, look!’ And when the day was narrowing down to a last few things to be put away, with bed next, he would say, ‘Put things away! Put things away! Why I have to do all these jobs?’ I liked him saying those things you wouldn’t expect to hear any old time, especially times when he was cranky at having to do something. He was like me. As soon as anyone wanted to tell me what to do or how to do it, that was the finish. I knew what had to be done and I knew what I wanted to do. Other people might not like it, but they weren’t me.

  Stevo was a good kid when he knew what he did pleased Bee.

  ‘Now we’ll get Bubby to bed,’ Bee would say.

  ‘All right. If that’s the way you want it.’ That was Stevo. I suppose I don’t really want him to get like me. Some of the things I believe in wouldn’t help him. Like idleness. You know, not doing the sort of things the authorities like. Idleness, the way I do it, is a counterpunch to all their rush; they’re going nowhere anyhow, the real important work in this world is done inside people, with no one watching. Besides, I can never stop hearing a sort of inside laughter that tells me beyond the next heart beat there may be nothing.

  When we’d fixed him up with some hot water to splash about in, Bee told me something he said that day. She’d been trying to get them dressed first thing that morning and she didn’t feel too bright, but she tried not to yell and screech at them.

  Stevo remarked to her, ‘Sometimes when you talk it’s like crying.’ She thought that was pretty funny. I did too.

  After their bath, Bee made me listen to the Chantic Bird. Made me. Stevo went over it all from the start, about the china palace and the garden of a thousand miles and the foreigners who came and praised everything, but praised the Chantic Bird, most of all. And how no one in the tinkling palace knew where to find the bird with the chantic song.

  How did she make me listen? Stevo was getting into his stride and there was a very bright sort of light over his face because when he smiled he smiled with his whole face, and he didn’t see what Bee was up to. But she’d walk in and out, listen a bit, stop, turn around, and come back. It kept me off balance. Usually she knew where she was going, exactly. She went straight to something and what she did was definite. I suppose I’m a bit like a wild animal, sort of on the look out for aimless movements, signs of bewilderment, the sort of vagueness and weakness that I could move in on, and I’d say she knew it. But what got me even more than seeing her not know what she was about, was the sight of her pretty pink heels. She had on these skimpy little slippers—she didn’t have great sheila’s feet; she was small and neat, with no twists and burred over toes—and the slippers showed her clean feet, all pink, a very delicate pink, and it got me. Mostly she dressed right up to the neck, it seemed to me, compared to the sluts I was used to, but now she’d scraped off her lip colouring and pulled her hair back from her ears and the white part of her neck under her hair. I could have eaten any part of her. And when she passed near me she suddenly let loose her hair and I was suffocated in honey gold.

  That’s how she made me sit and listen. When I say sit and listen I actually mean just listen, because I don’t sit for very long, I have to move around, even if it’s only from one foot to another. I guess I think I’ll be fixed in one spot if I stop for too long.

  Stevo was up to the part where they asked the kitchen maid and she said, ‘Yes. I know the Chantic Bird very well. She lives by the sea and when she sings, the tears come in my eyes.’

  ‘Silly girl,’ they said. ‘Take us to the bird, the King must hear it.’ On the way, the officials heard cows mooing and thought that was the bird; they heard frogs and said, ‘That’s the bird.’ But they only thought they knew what they were listening to. Then the Chantic Bird sang, and the girl pointed to her proudly. But all they saw was a little grey bird. The Chantic Bird sang beautifully, but they were not impressed; they were disappointed she didn’t have pretty feathers.

  ‘Will you sing for the King?’ said the kitchen maid.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Bird, ‘but I’d sooner stay in the green trees by the sea.’

  Pretty soon, when Bee thought Stevo had had a fair crack of the whip, she made herself scarce. She knew I’d go if there was nothing solid to stay for. I told Stevo that was enough for that night and I’d see him tomorrow. He got a sort of questioning look in his eye like when his leg got burned, just before the pain hit him.

  I’m always doing that. I suppose my brother that died must have looked at me like that when I’d visit him once in a blue moon, then go after five minutes. I was there when he died, though. If I could have got to him later when his face was setting, I would have changed his expression into something fierce and knowing, and got rid of his bewildered and helpless look.

  Thinking about these things shoots me. Personal integrity, the value of work, consideration for others, good manners, all the things Stevo was learning, all the things my brother’s death and my parents’ death made me think of, I know they’re good and all that. But sometimes I can’t stand them. Thinking of them makes me want to spew. The ideas I get to trick people and do what I like, I bet the ordinary bloke only gets those ideas when his woman Noes him or when sickness, accident or death back him up against a wall.

  I got back near my tent. I hung around a while before going right up to it, because of natural animal caution. Just as well, too. A man and a woman were standing a hundred yards away and I could see they were edging near it, looking for a place to lie down. I let them go, so what? I didn’t even feel like sneaking up on them. They looked around a lot and at last ducked their heads and went in. The sides flapped, I guess they were taking their clothes off. That made me curious, so I crept up on them, but I wasn’t really feeling like it.

  Sure enough, they had their clothes off and what they were doing would make you laugh. There I was, sixteen and three-quarters, and I knew how to do properly what they were trying to get round to. The woman at the riding school that got me into the 69 club was an Einstein compared to these bunglers.

  Suddenly I was disgusted. I wouldn’t admit it to myself, but the sight of Bee’s pinkness still had me. If I couldn’t have her, why should these old lovers have any peace? I eased the pegs out of the ground till they were all holding by an inch, then when I was ready I lifted the main stay right out of the ground and let go. Canvas collapsed over them. I walked away, I knew they couldn’t chase me naked. Besides, I didn’t feel like running, for once.

  I was still in the bush when this feeling closed round me, just like the tent closed round the man and woman. I had sense enough to get off the main track on to a tiny clearing where I could get off my feet. Suddenly I’ve got no energy and all I want to do is sleep.

  8

  BOAT

  All of a sudden, on my way out to the jetty, I got these big thumps in the chest. I had to stop and bend over, breathing in like mad, but I didn’t seem to get any air. Something was certainly twisted in there. I didn’t feel funny in the head, so I must have been getting blood up there all right, just a mix-up in the chest. I leaned, I sat down,
I sat back, I lay flat. While the swirling got dizzier in my chest, I straightened up, lifting my head and saw a cloud in the sky and the little patch of cloud I was looking at seemed to rush down into my eyes so that wherever I turned my head all I could see was the thick of a cloud. I don’t know how long it lasted, but you’ve got to take your mind off yourself, so I looked round the sky and the clouds, trying to imagine the whole of the universe. The water sounds, lapping at the crusty old piles of the jetty, were silly compared to the silence you could see right up there as far as eye-power could take you. I realised I was nothing, dumped on a putrid mound of nothing, ready to get under the mound as soon as I am putrid, too.

  Is it a sort of happiness that moves the sun and the stars? There must be a lot of things that words can’t stretch enough to fit round. There must be a lot of words waiting to be born to attach themselves to things we feel are near us. I rubbed my chest a bit, but I soon stopped rubbing and thinking. A piece of my fingernail had got split at the edge and it kept catching in my nylon shirt. It got me on edge so much I had to get up and tell myself I felt a lot better. What I did, I took this boat out and rowed it round the point till I got to another bay and when I saw a fishing boat that had just got in, tied up at a wharf and the men gone ashore for a drink before they unloaded, I found a thing to do. I put the fish that moved over the side and let them swim away. I left enough for the men’s dinner, allowing enough for two men.

  That didn’t make me feel much better, though, because that hangnail kept getting in my shirt, or catching in the ropes or in the canvas. It nearly drove me mad.

  The boat I pinched wouldn’t be used or missed until the weekend, so in the meantime it was an ark for me, somewhere to rest and sleep in the sun. Late afternoons, though, heading it into the sun, I was a Viking in a Viking ship and I stood up front. I know you call the front the bow and a boat is a she, but that’s when you’re tied to the sea. I couldn’t have cared less about the sea or the boat, even though I liked it for a few days, so I didn’t reckon it was right to pretend to a love for it that I didn’t have. I know that’s a funny sort of way to be honest, but I’d rather be honest to myself than to anyone else.

  I got the hangnail down, rubbing it flat on the wood at the edge of the boat, where the paint had come off.

  I put in where there was about fifty yards of beach, and walked up to a pub to have a few beers. There were some kids around my age and big like me, so I got talking to them. But the noise kept getting louder and louder, heads were beginning to spin and barmaids starting to short-change the drunks, and one of the kids started falling off his bar stool and when they went out for some fresh air and gave a driving lesson to one that couldn’t drive, I could see I ought to clear out, since I liked the boat I’d pinched and didn’t have any use for their utility truck. What they did, they started up and the one at the wheel was so drunk he headed straight for the little cliff they had there just above the water. To get that far, he had to go between two big gums and miss another one, so I jumped off the back. When they stopped and went through a little white fence that was a memorial to some locals who got killed in the war and knocked the statue in half at the legs so there were just these two legs standing up, and one of them who’d been asleep in the back got out and saw what had happened and threw up his fish and chips on the grass out of giddiness, I off.

  It’s no use trying to team up with other blokes. It never works, not even with a few beers aboard. I cast off and headed back to this jetty I know, and since it was a nice night, I had a lay down on the planks. I thought it wasn’t as much fun knocking statues about if you couldn’t do it all yourself.

  It’s not that I’m afraid of other kids. I’m not afraid of anything I can yell at. What gets me is inside. I’m being sniped at from inside and all the bullets are hits. Whoever is inside me, sniping, has no misses.

  The sound hit my ear first. I put my head right down to the old adzed plank and what I heard got me over the side into the boat and cast off in about two shakes of a bird’s tail. The prawners were out. There were so many tins rattling and things, they didn’t hear me, but pretty soon they would see me.

  They didn’t, though. I kept away from them on the dark side of the river, there were only two of them, and later when I drifted the boat round back to the jetty, I got a few handfuls of prawns and one of their empty tins and anchored the boat later across from Lane Cove and went to sleep with tomorrow’s lunch beside me.

  I cooked them ashore next morning in the tin with some sea water, I had no other salt, cooked them till they just turned pink. Delicious. The blackberries were out, so I ate till I rumbled. They left my mouth mainly sweet, but there was a sharp sourness down my throat. It must have been someone’s land, because this man came up through the bush, you could hear him half a mile away, but I didn’t go like he said. How can a man own dirt and rocks and she-oaks and mangroves? If you had to move every time someone said you were standing on their property, you’d have to suspend yourself a foot above the ground, even then you’d be violating their airspace. You can’t all live together on the skin of the world if you have to keep off every place owned by someone. Who hands out the right to own bits of the planet?

  He wasn’t big enough to get too close to me, but I didn’t want to scare him enough for him to get help—I wasn’t finished eating—so I started chatting about early history. I’m not completely ignorant. There was a place called the Butcher’s Block near there in Tambourine Bay; someone gave it to someone in the early days with an axe or a chopper or something. You’ll find it in any history around the times of Mary Reibey. This man didn’t seem to know too much about it. He wasn’t interested in history, only title-deeds.

  Finally he sat down and sulked, waiting for me to go. I told him I wouldn’t hurt him, but when I went over to talk to him man to man, he scooted back into the brush. As if he had protection there. So then I pretended I was a bit of a woolly-woof. I invited him out in the boat with me, I even started lowering the old strides. Ready to flash it. That got rid of him. You’ll know better than I do how eager everyone is to deny he shares any of the naughty ideas that homosexuals get lumbered for, but did you ever spend a couple of minutes watching these same blokes, miserable at home with Mumma, but faces shining like new pennies with their mates, punching each other lightly when they look as if they’d rather be holding hands, yelling belligerently at their mate when what they’d like to do is coo and kiss.

  It’s everywhere, I tell you. I see it all around me. But as far as thinking about what you might do, anything is possible. Anything at all. You can’t trust yourself not to do a certain thing. You don’t know what you’ll do.

  I got away from there and round to Fuller’s Bridge and went for a bit of a run through the bush and that made me feel better. What cheered me up, too, was having to hurdle a blanket. This little dip in the track, a tiny valley, and at the bottom of it a man and a woman in a blanket. When I say in, they were really wrapped. I reckon they were taking a day off work, there was a little tinny English car on the main track two hundred yards away, I thought of taking it, but I was so pleased to see two natural people together that I let them have their car. They’d be tired, later, what with all their hugging and things.

  I enjoy jogging through the bush. Did I tell you? One of my favourite things is to walk or jog on a bush track or even across country and let my head go on thinking. Now and then you stop and if it’s summer you chew a sarsaparilla leaf or grab a handful of wild currants—they’re very sour and they bring all the juices up from the lower side of your tongue and make it tickle. Or the nutty parts of those woody things that look like fat mountain devils; you have to split them on a rock and you eat the black kernel with the white inside.

  I remembered Stevo saying, ‘Would you buy me a Captain John hat and clothes so I can be happy?’ A lot of the things I think of come from the house and Bee and the kids. We used to live at Lane Cove once, I remember trying to make boomerangs out of the mangroves across
the river from Ludowici’s.

  Back to the boat in a big circle, no one had touched it, and when I picked up the frayed rope I tied up with, I thought of Stevo asking could he help me paint the roof. You tied a rope to a verandah post, threw it over the iron roof and pulled yourself up the other side. He wanted to help on the roof.

  ‘I will do it, for I can do a really good, hard, splendid job,’ he testified. I had to tell him the iron was too hot, and just to make him feel he was still a man, I gave him the girl guide’s knife I found at school once and the pair of black hockey pads. Actually, I found them a little before they were lost.

  And when I came down for lunch that day—I don’t know how Bee got me painting that roof—she had ready a pastry thing with fluffy white lolly on top called meringue. Stevo asked, ‘Can I have some of that? And if I like it, I’ll beg you for some.’

  Bee used to say he was a dear little kid and that always used to make me feel peculiar, but I used to make myself remember he was my brother and only little, and the peculiar feeling went away.

  We got the works that day. Stevo not only got some of that lolly stuff, he got jelly. Boy, could he put jelly away.

  ‘Jelly gives me strength,’ he used to reckon. ‘Come on, let’s fight before I lose my jelly!’ And he’d punch and swing like mad, head down, a roundhouse swinger.

  When I was a kid a retired minister took us away for a holiday to Wamberal. We’d never had a holiday before, and there was a kid there about my age now, and I used to get him to fight with me, just like Stevo did with me. I wish I’d had an older brother to fight with and play ping-pong with.

  There was a little kid that was going to get what he wanted, that Stevo. Listen to what he said once to get himself another drink of milk. He went up to Bee, not too close, and started to lecture her.

  ‘Are you thinking of God, or silly things?’ He’d just been to Sunday school. ‘God is the law around here, around the world. Even the Indians and medicine men and natives pray to God. And God said I can have some milk!’ That slayed her. He got the milk. If she hadn’t given it to him, I would have.