Sing Fox to Me (14 page)

‘Queenie loves Samson,' said Clancy, ‘but she attacked the other one. He was under the house. She's never been territorial before.'

George lifted his Akubra and ran his hand through his immaculate black hair. It was perfectly combed and glistening as always. ‘Why was she under there?'

Clancy felt a wall inside him move, rumble, shift and start to break apart. He'd had a go at Jonah for scaring the old girl, but he wasn't angry. Clancy knew why his dog had concealed herself under the house. His da had given him the answer years ago, after they found his 27-year-old kelpie dead inside a log. Clancy'd only been a boy then and wanted to cry. He remembered the bloated face and the way the legs seemed to reach forward, as if trying to drag itself free. He remembered the white tears as the kelpie's eyes turned to water.

‘No point mourning,' his da said. ‘She lived a good life, that bitch, and dogs don't die in the company of others. They find some nice dark, warm place and die alone.'

The kelpie couldn't be dragged out of the log. It was too fat with death, so Clancy's da plugged up the holes on either end with circles of wood cut from another dead tree. He told Clancy never to open the sides, and Clancy soon forgot which tree the kelpie was inside.

Years later, one of River's search party found the log. The papers called it ‘the tree coffin' and asked Clancy how long he'd being killing things on the mountain.

George took a pack of Craven As from his back pocket, knocked a durry out with the side of his palm, pressed it to his lips and closed the lid. George didn't offer one, but Clancy didn't mind. He hadn't smoked since he was married. Essie hadn't liked it – although George always smoked, so maybe she just didn't like it on Clancy.

‘Will you come back to the house with me?'

George shook his head. ‘It would take too much explaining to my boy.'

‘She's gone, isn't she,' said Clancy. He knew the answer already.

‘There's more important things to worry about, mate.'

Clancy knew what his friend meant, but he wasn't sure how George knew about the girl running in the bush. ‘Could have been anyone,' Clancy said. ‘A kid from town. Tilda Kelly's girl, Mattie –'

‘This isn't what I wanted, you know,' snapped George. ‘I never wanted to come back here. I'm only here because of you.'

‘I know, I know.' And Clancy did. George had left for good and he wasn't the kind to go back, not even for Essie. Not even for River.

‘I don't have any answers for you,' said George. ‘I've been out woop woop.'

‘Couldn't it have been someone else?'

George took a long drag on his durry to finish it off. He stabbed the butt out on the rocky overhang and pocketed it. ‘Who?'

Clancy thought again of the running legs and the long hair. Had the hair been brown, or red like River's? He thought of the arms at right angles, running like she'd been taught to run. Had he ever done that? Had the girl's skin been pale like stars, or the colour of melaleuca honey?

‘River,' he said.

George didn't nod or shake his head. He just stared, as though the answer was inevitable. He pointed to Clancy's bulging sleeve. ‘What's inside there?'

Clancy glanced down at the woollen cocoon.

George shook his head. He didn't like Clancy using the pelt and had told Clancy as much almost a year after River went missing. Clancy had been fresh back from a hunt. Naked but for the tiger on his back and wallaby shit crumbled into his skin to hide his smell. It gathered in his chest hair like bark on a tree. He unfurled the tiger from around his body and hung the pelt back on the wall.

George was at the kitchen table. He smelt of smoke. ‘You going up there is just keeping it in all our minds.'

‘I need a shower.'

‘I loved her too,' said George, ‘but you're keeping her spirit restless.'

Clancy didn't remember pushing George into the wall, but he did remember holding him there.

‘You'll go missing too,' gasped George.

Clancy let go, but maybe he hadn't really let go because George was back on the mountain, staring at him as if wearing the pelt was a sin he needed to atone for. Clancy moved towards his friend, arms outstretched in an apology.

The tiger moved again, only this time as though it was about to pounce.

George took a step back. ‘I can't stop you,' he said.

The sky blackened, and Clancy looked up. Dozens of silent kookaburras flew overhead, mouths agape, having left their laughter repeating somewhere deep in the bush. Clancy sensed the tiger curl sleepily into his side through his sleeve, and he felt like tearing the pelt to pieces.

Jonah's stomach was empty. He looked into the sky, but he still couldn't read time in Tasmania. Even if it was almost dinnertime, he wasn't ready to go back to the house. Not yet. He wanted to play his hunting game, like Mowgli in
The Jungle Book
. He just didn't know how – not without his brother. He always made Samson play the part of the prey, but he didn't know where his brother was. There had to be something better to hunt on the mountain. Something wild and sleek, and hard to catch.

Jonah listened to the trees. He squeezed his toes. Damp earth oozed around his feet. The rain made everything softer. Wind sighed past. Jonah closed his eyes and tried to pull the threads of sound from beneath the canopy. Scuttling. He could hear that. A ruffle, followed by a squawk. Wings beating. Falling leaves. Maybe even the faraway call of the waterfall.

A branch snapped. Jonah opened his eyes. Footsteps, heavy and slow. He moved behind a tree and waited, the tree trunk steady in his hands. He closed his eyes and took a deep, slow breath. Everything around him was a wave of familiar and unfamiliar smells. He took another breath. His nostrils felt cold, but he could still smell his granddad.

Pretty soon, Clancy shuffled through the trees using low-hanging branches and rocks for balance. He was wearing the skin. Its front legs came to his elbows, and its legs hung loose from his lower back. The long reedy tail wilted across Clancy's tailbone, coming to rest between his buttocks. Jonah wondered if it smelt. His granddad was naked underneath, his penis shrivelled and grey.

Clancy stopped and coughed. Smoker's cough, his dad called it. The old man spat something into the scrub and kept walking. He started talking to himself. Jonah followed. ‘I fuckin' well knew … no one bloody listens. And where's George anyway? Why didn't she stop, three feet and she didn't stop …'

Light trickled from the canopy and shimmered through the ginger fur. It slid between the dark, wavering stripes. Clancy's own skin looked thin and pale. Almost as if the pelt was holding the pieces of him together.

Jonah watched as Clancy shifted the weight of his body onto his injured leg. Both legs buckled beneath him. The pelt slipped from his back and tumbled onto the dirt. It curled into the leaves and looked immediately at home, like a wild tiger sleeping.

Clancy braced himself. Jonah watched him press his forehead into the tree. He stayed that way for a long time. Jonah kept his eyes on the pelt. Then, his granddad came out of the slump with a roar. He punched the tree. One, two, three, four. Jonah stopped counting. Clancy's voice was like fire. He sobbed and called to the river, and burnt the silence out of everything.

Jonah wondered if he could reach the skin without his granddad noticing.

Then Clancy stopped. His breathing was heavy, and his knuckles were spotted with bloody lumps. The tree looked untouched. Clancy said something to the pelt that Jonah couldn't hear, then nudged it with his foot. It didn't move.

Clancy lifted his good leg up and brought his heel down on the tiger's head.

Everything stopped. The trees stopped. The wind stopped. Even the birds stopped calling. Everything waited. Everything wanted to see if the tiger would fight back.

Clancy lifted his foot up again and brought it down over, and over, and over.

Scared, Jonah pushed himself into the base of his tree. The ground weakened beneath him. He brushed the leaves and dirt away. A burrow. He crawled inside, and it closed around him like a hand. For anyone else it would have been impossible to fit inside, but for Jonah the burrow was almost perfect. It smelt like cats and mice and birds, and something else he couldn't place. Jonah put his hands over his ears and thought about the tiger pelt until he could no longer hear his granddad shouting.

Jonah knew a little bit about the thylacine from school, but long before they started school his dad had told them about tigers as well. ‘The place where I'm from,' David had said, ‘is the real wilderness. There are still places in Tassie where no person has ever been. A forest that grows sideways and lots of wild animals.'

‘What sort?' asked Samson.

Their dad smiled. ‘The devil, and the tiger.'

Jonah knew from school that the thylacines were probably extinct, but he didn't say anything.

‘What are they like?' asked Samson. His school was different. They didn't have Science.

‘They're like long, lean tiger-dogs.'

Jonah smirked. ‘Whatever, Dad.'

‘Do they bite?' asked Samson.

‘Doesn't matter,' said David. ‘They're extinct.'

‘What does “extinct” mean?'

‘It means we killed them all.'

Their mum didn't like any talk of tigers, and that night she and their dad fought across the kitchen shouting words like, ‘tiger' and ‘lost' and ‘lies'.

But, none of that mattered now because Jonah was already replacing King. As his granddad's screams got lower and shorter, Jonah started to imagine how his life with the tiger might be. It wouldn't leave him. The tiger was already older than him and stronger than King. Maybe, thought Jonah as he watched Clancy reach down, grab the skin and fling it over his back again, the tiger was why he had come to the mountain.

Jonah watched as the tiger's head settled back into Clancy's collarbone. The nose turned, just slightly, towards where Jonah was hiding. His granddad grunted and moved away. Jonah followed silently, a plan already forming in his mind. He would trail Clancy back to the house and watch from outside. His granddad would hide the key to the locked room somewhere. When he was asleep, Jonah would take the key and unlock the room.

He was going to make a great tiger.

Samson came to the end of the tunnel and straightened up. Mattie was waiting in another cavernous room. She pointed the torch over her head and made an umbrella of light. ‘Wow,' he said quietly. Mattie laughed, and her laugh echoed across the walls and swirled towards the ceiling, which was so high that not even the torchlight could reach. Samson looked up, off-balance. It was the first time he had heard her voice.

Everything was huge and different and ghostly.

Mattie directed the light into the rocky overhang. Big lumps of grey rock poked out from the walls, and long, spindly drops hung from the edges. Everything seemed ancient and stable, but precarious at the same time. Samson didn't think there was a sign for ‘precarious', or if there was he didn't know it, so he made the sign for
risky
instead. The sign for
risky
was two fingers pinched in at the throat.

Mattie shook her head.
Safe
, she signed, but the sign for
safe
was two-handed, and she was still holding the torch. The light jumped. Mattie pointed up to the spindly drops of grey rock.
Lie down
, she signed, and the sign for
lie-down
is one hand open like a bed and two fingers, like legs, sliding over.

It took Samson a few seconds to understand, because Mattie was still holding the torch and she used it as the bed instead of her hand. She sat and patted the damp-looking floor next to her. Samson's brow furrowed, which wasn't exactly a sign but still meant he was nervous in the dark.

It's up to you,
she signed, but it wasn't really because Samson wanted to be closer to her. He wanted her to think he was cool, and strong, and not a retard, so he lay down on the rock next to her. Even wearing his big winter jacket, a jumper, a long-sleeve shirt, a singlet, and the slow-feeling skin from his Down's Syndrome, Samson could sense the ground, and it was like plunging cold hands into boiling water.

Ready?

Samson nodded, although he wasn't. He pulled his beanie down, tucked his hair into his collar to keep his neck warm, and lay back
.
Click
. Darkness rushed around them like water breaking through a dam. Then all of a sudden there were thousands, maybe millions of stars. White glowing stars that looked brighter and closer than any he had ever seen. He reached up, and the stars danced around his fingers. One by one they fell, until each gem was floating through the night sky, and Samson felt as if he was floating too. Well, maybe not exactly floating, because he didn't feel detached. It was the opposite. He was so much a part of everything that his body evaporated and there were no edges to him anymore, nothing to keep him in or hold him back. His legs were the rocky floors, and his arms were the salty walls. The hairs standing up all over his skin were stalactites, and his mouth was the door to the cave.

‘Fireflies,' said Mattie, and her voice was different to any voice he had heard, even at Special School. It didn't sound like his, though his was different too. Often he stumbled over words that other people could manage easily. But Mattie's voice seemed thick, heavy, like an echo coming up through pipes from an underground well, or as though she was calling to him from under water.

He wanted to say that her voice sounded like a cast-iron bell, strong and old and safe, but she couldn't hear him.

‘They're mating,' she said.

And even though Mattie couldn't hear him, Samson said, ‘I think you could catch them', because he wasn't on the floor of the cave anymore. He was on the jetty near their house with his dad.