Sing Fox to Me (17 page)

‘Get lost.'

Her mouth curled back, and she bared her teeth.

‘Stop it,' he said, his voice shaking.

Queenie barked, and something changed. The tiger tightened around Jonah. The legs folded in over his arms, then the head moved forward. Something transformed inside him, and Jonah was the tiger. He was something powerful. The fear left him, and he tumbled to the ground, shedding his boy skin. He leant forward and bared his teeth.

The dog lunged. Jonah was knocked backwards, and the branch – which he hadn't even realised he was still holding – went between them.

A loud yelp, and the horrified dog tried to fling herself back, but the sharp end of the branch was in her belly. Blood pooled over Jonah's waist and thighs. She couldn't move while he was holding the other end. He let the branch go and tried to get out from beneath her body.

Queenie yowled again. She was skewered and couldn't lift herself off the branch. She swayed back and forth, every movement sinking the branch in further. She tried to jump, pushing with her back legs, but she couldn't jump high enough. She yowled once more and was still.

Jonah waited, then asked, ‘Dog?' No response.

He closed his eyes and tried to think. She was dead. He had killed her. This wasn't like the kookaburra. He couldn't hide something this big. What was he going to do? Make it look like an accident. But how? Maybe she wasn't dead yet. He crept forward on his knees, approaching the body. Blood oozed from the hole in its stomach and down the branch. He glanced at his clothes. Blood everywhere.

The eyes were still open, and he tried to look into them. Bluish white like two drops of ice. He waited for them to blink, but they didn't.

Could he drag the body to the creek and dump it in? No, he couldn't do that. It would float like a buoy, and everyone would know what he'd done.

Then he remembered his burrow beneath the tree. He could keep the body there. It wasn't far, but dragging the dead dog would still be difficult and messy, so he pulled the tiger from around his body. It felt like pulling hair out of flesh. If the tiger belonged to him, he would never take it off, but he couldn't risk getting blood on it. He folded it up and zipped it into his windbreaker.

This time when he reached for the dog, she let him touch her.

Samson tried to tiptoe through the kitchen and past the living-room door, not wanting to distract Clancy from his video, but Samson's chromosome was heavy and his feet made stomping noises on the floorboards.

‘Who's there?' shouted Clancy. He sounded angry.

Samson stopped. ‘Just me, Granddad.'

‘Samson,' said Clancy. ‘Is your brother with you?'

‘I haven't seen him.'

The anger evaporated from Clancy's voice. ‘Come on in here and meet George.'

‘Who's George?' asked Samson, as he walked into the living room. The only light was coming from the telly.

‘What?' His granddad was alone.

‘You said “George”.'

‘Nonsense. George is dead.' Clancy pointed to a bunch of empty bottles on the coffee table. ‘Want a beer?'

‘I'm not allowed.'

‘Never too young to start.' Clancy turned in his chair, facing Samson.

Samson tried to smile, but his granddad's face reminded him of the driftwood he and his mum sometimes found washed up on the beach after a storm. Old and rotten, but hard and somehow still above water. ‘I'm tired, Granddad.'

Clancy turned back to the throbbing telly screen. ‘Right-o, son. Sleep well.'

Samson walked down the hall to his bedroom. His brother wasn't there. He undressed, put on his pyjamas and made sure the window was closed before tucking himself in. He closed his eyes, but all he could see was Mattie storming away.

He tried to tell himself a story about the Other Samson,
but none would come. Water welled up behind his eyelids, and he tried to keep them closed, but his tears still got through and poured down his cheeks. He missed his mum and his dad, and Mattie had said Jonah was to blame for King being missing, and even though Samson had defended his brother, a memory just wouldn't go away.

The memory of the cloud of black fruit bats.

Their backyard in Queensland was full of red flowering trees. His mum told him once that they were called flame trees. When Samson asked why, she said it was because they burst into red at the start of summer.

‘What happens after summer?' he asked.

‘They burn out.'

There was also a small mango tree. ‘A straggler,' his dad called it. ‘Nothing like the mango trees in Brissie.' But the tree still managed to give fruit.

Every summer, the fruit bats would come and live in it while the flame trees bloomed. Samson would creep into the dining room after everyone was asleep and open the curtains so he could see all the way down the backyard. The bats hung from the limbs of the mango tree like large black cocoons.

One year, all the bats got sick. They crawled instead of flew and couldn't make it up the tree, so they slept huddled on the ground like plovers. Samson watched them grabbing and biting and sucking anything they could find, even compost scraps.

His mum said they were all dying. ‘It's some kind of plague, darling. They're dropping everywhere in the state.'

Why are they sick?
Samson asked with his hands.

‘Voice, darling,' corrected his mum.

‘Why are they sick?'

‘Because they ate something on the fruit that their bodies don't like.'

‘Is it in
our
fruit?'

‘We clean all our food. But, it's important that you and your brother don't touch them. The paper says they can be very harmful.'

After his parents had gone into the living room to watch telly, Samson opened the curtains, looked out the window and watched as the bats lifted their bodies up on the elbows of their wings. One by one they crawled from the mango tree, trying to find food. It looked as if the shadows beneath the flame trees had come alive.

Each night he left them something. New tomatoes, open bananas and fresh pears. Nothing from the compost bucket, only from the fruit bowl.

‘Sammy,' said his mum after a few days, ‘are you giving our fruit to those disgusting bats?'

Samson shrugged. ‘No, Mum.'

The next night he took tomatoes and a pawpaw. Back inside the house, he opened the curtains and watched. Jonah stood just beyond the shadows. He darted into the darkness. Samson waited. A screech, followed by silence. After a few minutes, Jonah crawled from the darkness, and it seemed to stretch and follow him.

In the morning, Samson found two dead bats beneath the mango tree. His mum said they'd died from the disease, but that afternoon he saw his brother walk around and around the base of a smouldering flame tree. Jonah whipped the leaves with his hands and ran circles so fast, it was as if his feet were going to cut the tree right out of the ground. When he was finally tired and red-cheeked, and his chest was going up and down, he stopped and rested his face against the tree. Samson watched Jonah close his eyes, as though he was trying to vanish into the bark.

Samson wondered if King was lying dead under a mango tree somewhere on the mountain.

Jonah opened the back door and stepped inside. The tiger scuffled inside his jacket. It didn't want to go back into the locked room. ‘Shhh,' he said, trying to soothe it.

The house smelt of old man and something else he didn't recognise. Jonah sniffed the air. Alcohol, but not the red wine he was used to smelling. His dad's office always smelt of wine and cigarettes and perfume. The alcohol smell in Clancy's house was stronger and more peppery.

Jonah checked the clock. 11.30. It had taken much longer than he thought to drag the body all the way to his burrow. More than once it had snagged on a rock or stick, and he'd had to stop and undo its flesh like a latch on a gate. He'd shoved the body into his burrow headfirst until everything but the red and white fox tail was hidden.

‘Clancy?' he whispered. No answer, but his granddad must be home because his boots were at the door. ‘Samson?' Nothing. They must both be asleep.

Jonah removed the key from the box and silently made his way down the hall to the locked room. He replaced the tiger and closed the door behind him. The tiger growled as he turned the key. Slowly, he went back down the dark hall. He put the key in the box, closed the lid and pushed papers up around it. Then he took a deep breath and smiled. He'd done it, and it had been one of the best days of his life.

He was about to leave the kitchen when he heard a voice from the living room. He pressed himself up against the wall and waited.

‘Just like the pup,' mumbled Clancy. ‘Just like that pup, and no one said nothing.'

Jonah peered around the wall that divided the kitchen from the living room.

Clancy was alone and sitting in his armchair, staring at the television. ‘I tried, I tried. She wouldn't let me. I was right though, wasn't I? You saw the eyes too.'

Jonah slipped off down the hallway and opened his door. It clicked as it closed.

Even though he was still dirty, he didn't feel like a shower, so he left his clothes in a pile on the floor and shrugged into his pyjamas. They felt itchy after the skin and made him almost claustrophobic. He pulled back the rumpled blankets and crawled into bed. Dragging the covers over his head, he imagined sleeping in a tiger's cave.

‘Are you awake?' whispered Samson.

When Samson asked, ‘Are you awake?' his voice was like a boat bobbing through the waves.

The sheets and blankets on Jonah's bed rustled. He said, ‘Yes.'

‘Do you like Murray?'

‘Go to sleep.'

‘Do you?'

‘Um, not really,' said Jonah.

‘And Granddad?'

‘He's okay.'

‘King's gone,' Samson said.

Jonah turned over in his bed.

‘And Queenie.' With Mattie's words in his mind, Samson signed,
Did you take them? Did you
kill
them?

Silence stretched over everything. Over all the dirt beneath them, all the bush and sky. Trees were silent, clouds were silent, stars were silent. Everything waited for an answer.

Did you?
Samson asked again. He could hear Jonah's breathing. Up and down, in and out.

‘Go to sleep,' said Jonah, as he pulled the blankets up over his head.

Please don't hate me
, signed their dad again.

Samson couldn't sleep. He got up and walked down the dark hall to the living room. Clancy's chair was empty. He walked through the living room and looked into his granddad's bedroom, but the bed hadn't been slept in yet. Samson left it as it was and went into the kitchen. Even though the coals were still glowing in the fireplace, the kitchen was freezing. There were lots of empty bottles on the table. The dishes were all washed and put away. Floor tiles moved, like fish scales beneath his feet, as he took a step towards the window. The curtains were so cold they felt damp. He pulled them aside. At first the light made it hard to see, but after a while his eyes adjusted.

Something moved on the grass.

His granddad emerged from the darkness, moving like a tugboat through the dark ocean lawn. He stopped and crouched over something.

Samson leant across the sink to get a closer look. Clancy was piling up little towers of white and grey river stones, like the ones Samson had seen not long after he and Jonah had arrived on the mountain. The stones were everywhere. Some were gathered close together, others were alone. His granddad moved around, building the towers as though he knew where they were supposed to go.

From the kitchen, the towers almost looked like empty glasses. They reminded Samson of a party his parents threw once, when he and Jonah were still little.

The party had been for their wedding anniversary, and even though Samson and Jonah had been invited for a little while, they were made to go to bed while everyone was still having fun. They waited in their room until the music stopped and the voices had all faded away. Then they crept out into the kitchen. Samson helped Jonah climb onto the bench because he was too small to reach on his own. Samson followed, but had to keep his knees in the sink, where he was already too big to fit.

Outside on the lawn, glasses and bottles had grown like mushrooms everywhere. No music, but his mum and dad were still dancing.

‘That's gross,' said Jonah.

Samson pressed his hands to the glass and nodded. But he didn't think it was gross. He wanted to be married one day too.

The backdrop of the party changed, and his parents were on Clancy's lawn.

His granddad didn't look up. It was as if he didn't know they were there, so Samson's parents kept dancing. His mum smiled, and his dad held her close. Around and around they turned again. Twirling, like flowers falling from high above. They didn't stop, and Samson didn't call them. Somehow he knew they weren't really there and wouldn't come inside. He pressed his hands to the glass again, like he had when he was little, and watched his parents dance away into the bush.

His breath left misty rings on the window. He rubbed them away with his sleeve. Clancy was still piling the stones, but Samson wasn't going to disturb him. He shut the curtains and walked back to bed.

Jonah woke from a warm, dark sleep filled with images of tigers and dens and caves to someone shaking his feet through the blankets. ‘Stop it,' he said, as he kicked his brother away, but the shaking only got stronger.

Jonah opened his eyes. It was Clancy.

‘Get out,' his granddad said.

Jonah sat up. ‘What?'

‘Get. Out.'

Jonah shook his head as though sleep was water he could flick from his hair. ‘I didn't touch it,' he said. ‘I swear.'

Moonlight shivered across Clancy's face, and Jonah saw the old man's eyes. They were bloodshot and droopy, hanging too low. This man didn't look like his granddad. The man in his room looked like someone else, wearing Clancy like a suit.