Sing Fox to Me (15 page)

‘Catch what?' asked David.

‘The lights,' said Samson. ‘How would you catch them, if you could?'

‘Ah,
with silken lines and silver hooks
,' said his dad, in a faraway tone Samson had come to recognise as his poetry voice. ‘
Let others freeze with angling reeds, and cut their legs with shells and weeds
…'

Samson didn't ask what he meant. The jetty was his dad's place, and Samson was just happy to be there. Together they watched the lights from town fling themselves across the water. Once his dad said there might be another town under the water, and their town was only a reflection.

They lay in silence for a while, watching the lights hover, dart, meander across the night sky.

‘I only talk down here,' said Mattie, her voice unnaturally loud. Her hands followed. Samson could hear them knocking together as she formed words he couldn't see. ‘I shout, I scream. Sometimes I think maybe I will shout so loud, the cave will come down and I won't even know. I could hear a bit when I was little, leaves, words. My mum's voice … You are lucky.'

Samson repeated her with his hands, and the sign for
lucky
was a finger on the nose turning into a thumbs up.

‘I saw a platypus here once,' said Mattie, ‘in the cave by the wall.'

Samson thought about the brown felty platypus swimming through the darkness of the cave, catching light fish in his bill and gobbling them up. Maybe his belly would light up from the inside and keep the platypus up when he tried to sleep.

Mattie switched the torch on. There was a stroke of light, and Samson could see his arms and legs and hands again. His breath was thick and looked like smoke. Above him the lights dimmed and scattered. After a moment of torchlight, most of them vanished. His eyes were overwhelmed. He shook his head.

Mattie asked if he wanted to see the platypus pond. The sign for
platypus
was the same as pretending to have a duck bill.

Samson nodded, and she led him back through the tunnel and towards the entrance, where he could see the outside shining through. In the side of the wall was a sunken, slow-moving creek, and at the elbow of the creek was a small, clear pond. Mattie shone the torch onto its surface. The floor of the pond looked like a huge scaly coil of frozen white snakes. She switched off the torch, but they were pretty close to the entrance and it was light enough to see.

Samson pointed to the snake rocks beneath the surface.
Why is the rock like that?

Because the water funnels it one way, and the rock responds
.

She took his hand again, and he wanted to look at her but his cheeks felt red and spiky, so he kept his eyes on the scaly snake rocks.

We can come back
, she signed.

Samson nodded.

Mattie dropped his hand and turned to face him. Some things needed both hands and eyes to say.
You are my first real friend
. Her fingers intertwined with his. Strong, purposeful. She had signing fingers, story fingers, speaking fingers. He didn't have story fingers. His fingers were short and stubby and had extra lines, his dad told him, because of his Down's Syndrome.

Mattie dropped his hand and turned to him. Her face looked grey in the dimly lit cave.
Do you love me?
she asked with her hands.

Samson nodded.

You like this?

Yes.

You can't tell
.

Samson's body shivered like a cicada about to shed its shell.
Why?

Mattie explained that their world was special, different, and there were things they could understand that other people would think were weird. In using their hands, she told him, they could pass knowledge back and forth between their bodies. She was like a dancer, she signed, and it was a dance on both sides.
Body S-Y-N-T-A-X
, she called it.
Like this
, and she pressed the sign for
this
into his skin.
You
, she signed on his arm, and
beautiful
on his back.

Soon Samson was signing too. Sometimes they laughed because they were nervous, and sometimes because Mattie had signed something funny like
armpit
, but mostly they were soft, and quiet, and learnt the language of each other.

five

T
he next day Jonah waited patiently as his brother and granddad finished breakfast. He waited for Samson to excuse himself to do whatever it was he did every day, and he waited until Clancy went out looking for his dog, as he had every morning since the day after the attack under the house. Jonah waited for the house to be empty before he opened the box hidden behind a stack of old phone books. He waited for the deep, knowing silence that could only fill a house when no one else was inside, before he took the key down the hallway and slid it into the locked door.

The key turned easily, and the door opened. Jonah wondered if the tiger skin would be as loose on him as it was on Clancy.

He looked around. Rainbows danced over the floorboards and furniture. Jonah had guessed that the locked room was a bedroom, but looking around now he realised that it wasn't
just
a bedroom, it was a
girl's
bedroom. He remembered seeing the line of white-faced dolls from the other side of the window. Jonah looked over, but the dolls were still staring mindlessly into the bush. He shivered slightly. Girls' rooms were creepy.

He turned to the bed, and there it was. The skin, black and orange in the dim morning light, was rolled over and around, its legs resting on daisy-print sheets so it looked like a real tiger.

It reminded him of something his dad had said not long before they left Queensland for Tasmania. ‘Tassie loves the tiger now.' David poured himself a fourth glass of wine. There were dozens of red circles on the bench from the base of his glass. The subject of tigers was only banned when his mum was home, and she had already been gone for over a week.

‘Why?' Jonah asked.

David swallowed a mouthful. All the cracks between his teeth were stained red. ‘Cascade's putting one on their label. Did you know that?'

Jonah didn't even know what Cascade was, but he nodded anyway.

‘What does a tiger have to do with beer?' His dad paused to take another sip. ‘Soon enough they'll have it on licence plates and government stationery.' He laughed at his own joke. Jonah stayed silent. ‘The entire country's going to be saying sorry forever. We love a
version
of the tiger, and it's not real. Fifty years ago, the government had a price on hides. Sheep stealers and baby killers, that's what they were. No one loved them then. My book was one of the first. Those tigers weren't villains, but no one gives a shit about it now …'

How could it have taken him so long to figure out, thought Jonah – the orange shadow, his mum's reluctance to let any talk of the tiger into their house, his dad's poems still bunched up in the satchel under Jonah's bed? Even Clancy's anger the night they arrived and shouted ‘tiger, tiger!' while jumping up and down on his bed. Everything was slowly beginning to make sense. The tiger was Clancy's secret, but it also had something to do with his dad.

‘Am I right?' said Jonah, reaching out towards the bed.

The tiger shuddered.

He pulled his hand back. Had it really just moved? Had the hairs stood up a little in response to his almost-touching fingers? He was sure he'd felt something.

He waited. The skin didn't move again.

Jonah spread his hand over the gently humming membrane of the skin. The tips of his fingers tingled until they almost burned. He let his hand rest, just for an instant, on the needle-hard fur. Then he pushed his fingers into it.

He touched the tiger everywhere. He touched the unnaturally wide neck and narrow snout. He grabbed the skinny tail and balanced the empty paws inside his palm. He ran his fingers underneath where the skin was furless. He bent down, level with the tiger's face, and looked into its dark, questioning eyes.

‘Hello, tiger,' he whispered.

The skin shuddered again, and this time Jonah understood. The tiger knew he was there and it trusted him.

He tucked the tiger under his arm and locked the door behind him.

Clancy hung his hat on the hook by the door and left his boots underneath. He'd been out for almost the entire day, walking all over his mountain, but hadn't seen so much as a single cairn, let alone any sign of his dog or his daughter.

He walked down the hall to the bathroom, undressed, turned the shower taps on and stepped in. After he was clean, he turned the water off and stood for a few minutes in the quickly cooling recess. He didn't reach for his towel or try to get warm. His leg throbbed. It had taken a thrashing over the past few weeks.

After he got out of the shower, he looked into the full-length mirror behind the bathroom door. The image staring back at him was grey and formless. It shivered like a reflection in water. Clancy moved closer, cutting through the hot-water haze. The ghostly outline of his body settled into place. He looked like his da.

Clancy stepped back and the image grew misty again. He waved. The mist waved back. ‘You won't recognise yourself, ' his da had said once. Clancy ran his fingers through his beard, but the rough tendrils didn't part. The mist twisted around his da's chin. He had always hated Clancy's beard. ‘Your ma likes it when you're neat and tidy. Can't go to church looking like that.' ‘You're right,' Clancy had said, and stopped going to church.

A shudder ran through his leg. He held his hand to the vibrating flesh, not wanting the tremor to move any further. There was no keeping the memories at bay, not anymore. He closed his eyes and dug his fingers into his thigh.

River used to say that she could sing the tigers to her. When she was small she would run around the inside of the fence, or dance through the grey lavender, howling to the bush. Later, when she was older, the song changed and became more dangerous, more like the sounds Clancy remembered from when he was a child. Barking, angry animal sounds. River wasn't afraid. Clancy told her that tigers stole sheep and ripped out throats, but she didn't believe him. She thought it was funny.

‘I saw one,' she said, not long after Essie first told them she was sick.

‘Saw one, did you?'

‘Fair dinkum. Near the waterfall.'

Clancy helped George lift a pole down from the ute tray. ‘You hear that, mate?'

George nodded. The pole was heavy.

‘I saw it and I yelled,' said River, ‘and it growled and got up. And then it came forward, like this.' She mimed its approach. ‘It tried to take a bloody bite of me. Little bugger.'

‘You better not tell this story in front of your mum,' said George.

River hitched her dress up into her underwear and tucked it in around the leg holes. ‘Mum won't care, hey Dad?'

‘I reckon she might,' said Clancy, though he knew Essie wouldn't. She had worse things on her mind.

River smiled. ‘See you later, old buggers,' she called over her shoulder, before vanishing into the trees. ‘Got to catch my tiger.'

They left her to her game and went back to work.

Later that afternoon, after George had left, River came bounding from the bush like a startled wallaby, shouting, ‘I've seen them again, Dad! The tigers.'

‘Where?' asked Clancy.

‘I touched one.' Her face was flushed. ‘It scratched me.'

‘Don't tell fibs.'

She showed him the mark on her arm.

‘Where did you see them?' he asked again, this time more seriously.

‘Up there.' She gestured her head towards the top of the mountain.

‘How many were there?' Clancy turned her in a circle, looking for wounds.

River shrugged. ‘Lots.'

He pushed the hair away from her face. Her forehead was wet. ‘Are you telling stories again?'

River had scowled then. ‘Nah, I definitely saw them,' she said, and her voice echoed around his empty house like her words were still fresh and not stale remnants of the past. Clancy waited and after a while the tingling in his leg lessened. He pulled on his trackie pants, then wrapped his fingers around his thigh again. He didn't let go until he retrieved the key from his ditty box and walked down the hall to River's room. Slowly, he unlocked the door.

The daisy field was empty. The tiger was missing.

Jonah ran alongside the creek, holding the tiger like a flag over his head and trying to outrun the water. They whirled, jumped, whooped, kicked stones and watched them shower across the pebbly creek bed, making a sound that reminded Jonah of wooden wind chimes. After they were done at the creek, they chased a wallaby and scattered a cloud of brown kookaburras. Together they climbed trees and jumped over rocks. Sometimes Jonah wasn't sure if he was moving the tiger, or if it was moving him.

When they were too tired to do anything else, Jonah and the tiger lay down in the grass. Jonah spread the tiger out beneath him and lay his head where its belly would have been. He told the tiger about King. It understood. There were plenty of dead birds in its past too. He imagined the orange and black stripes reaching up around him and swallowing him whole.

Then he told the tiger about being born small and bluish grey, and how his mum thought he was dead at first. His skin, Jonah explained, had been a shroud that, when stretched over his small body, kept anyone from getting too close. The fur moved against his face as if consoling him.

Jonah pulled the tiger's arm around his chest and rolled until its skin was laying over him. They were face to face. He looked deep into its black eyes and pressed his nose to the fur. ‘You like me the best,' he asked, ‘don't you?'

The black eyes stared back at him, unblinking but full of promise. Jonah licked the tiger on its hard black nose.

They stayed there together until the sun dipped below the trees, then got up and followed the creek towards the house. Jonah stopped at the fence and folded the tiger into a tight ball. He stuffed it inside his jacket, which he zipped closed, and then tried to cross the lawn as if nothing was out of the ordinary. He was almost at the door when he heard his brother talking to someone.

Jonah followed the verandah around to the back. His brother was almost concealed in the long grass beneath the water tanks with another kid. A girl. Jonah ducked beneath the verandah and watched from the darkness.

Samson was singing her a song. It was one their dad used to sing sometimes when he was drunk and trying to write. The girl smiled and signed something to his brother. This was Tilda's daughter. It had to be. She was deaf, and Samson was singing to her.

Then he stopped, and Jonah watched them both lift their hands into the air and sign over their bodies.

‘Retards,' whispered Jonah, but somehow the word didn't feel as powerful as it had before.

He crawled deeper under the house. He and the tiger lay down in the dirt. The air smelt like trapped dog. The tiger growled quietly beside him.

He should have known that Samson had someone helping him when he came home every night unscathed. His brother was always getting lost. Shopping centres, school excursions, bush walks, even on their twelfth-birthday picnic. Jonah was the first to notice that Samson was missing but he didn't say anything. He was already hungry and knew his parents would overreact. It was his birthday too.

Eventually their mum noticed. She went hysterical.

‘Where did you leave him?' asked David, holding her by the shoulders. Jonah couldn't tell if his dad was trying to comfort or shake her.

‘He was right beside me,' she said. ‘He was!'

David rounded on Jonah. ‘Why weren't you watching him?'

‘There, look,' said Jonah. He pointed to the trees.

Samson came wandering out as if nothing had happened.

Their mum burst into uncontrolled sobs. ‘I can't do this,' she said, over and over. ‘I can't do this, David.'

‘What's for lunch?' asked Samson, and their dad slapped him across the face.

Afterwards David held his hand like a wounded bird, while Samson sobbed.

That night, while Samson was asleep on his side of the partition, Jonah snuck outside to the back verandah and spied on his parents.

‘At least we won't have to worry long-term,' said Alice.

David poured them each another glass of wine. ‘Because of the services act?'

They'd been talking about some new government disability thing all year. Jonah didn't understand what it meant, but they acted as if it would save their lives.

‘Yes,' said his mum, taking her glass back from his dad, ‘but that's not what I meant. I meant Jonah. He'll always be there. Samson won't ever be alone.'

Jonah shook his head, even though no one could see him. He hated his parents and he hated Samson and he hated the stupid services-whatever act if it meant he was going to be responsible for a retard. He looked down at his hands, boiled red from making fists.

Jonah never told his parents what he thought about their plan. He didn't tell them that as soon as they were dead, he was going to send Samson to the nearest institution, leave him there and never look back. If his brother was gone, Jonah might even be able to make his own friends. Friends like the girl under the water tanks. No one wanted to be friends with Jonah when Samson was around. People thought his brother was charming, and Jonah was weird.

He turned to face the tiger and stirred up the soft, thin dirt. It surrounded them like a dark grey mist. Tears fell, drop after drop, from the end of his nose. The tiger licked them away.

‘We don't need them,' said Jonah, and he scooped the tiger up in his arms.

Together they broke free of the house and lawn and fence, and disappeared back into the darkening bush.

Clancy stared at River's empty bed. Jonah. That little shit. How had he got into the room, and what had he done with the pelt? Clancy started by searching in the closet. He removed every shirt and every pair of duds. He looked in Jonah's empty suitcase and backpack. He looked through the desk and in all the drawers.

‘What're you doing?' asked George from the doorway. His hair was neatly slicked back, and he was wearing the same navy blue suit that Clancy had worn to his wedding. Time hadn't kicked the shit out of him the way it had with Clancy.