Sing Fox to Me (8 page)

As he walked back down the narrow hallway, Jonah pushed doors open. Bathroom … linen cupboard … only one door left before the room he shared with Samson. Jonah pushed, but it didn't move. He jiggled the handle and tried again, shoving the door with his shoulder. Nothing.

He lay down on his stomach, peering through the thin gap between the bottom of the door and the floor. Two wooden legs, probably the end of a bed. Rainbows danced on the floorboards and around the edges of the walls. Jonah wished he could see more. He needed to find another way in.

A door opened further down the hallway.

Jonah stood up. The front of his clothes was covered in a fine film of dust and dirt. He turned away, trying to brush his chest clean.

‘What game are you playing?' asked Samson. He closed their bedroom door.

‘Nothing.'

‘Hide-and-seek?' Samson sounded plaintive.

Jonah ignored him. ‘The door's locked,' he said. ‘Try it.'

His brother rattled the handle. It didn't open. He shrugged.

‘Don't you want to know what's inside?'

‘Not allowed,' said Samson, as if this was the most logical response.

An old kind of anger rose up in Jonah's belly and ran through him. What was
wrong
with his brother? How could Samson not want to know what was behind the locked door, especially when they were being forced to share a room? It wasn't
fair.

‘You're an idiot.'

‘What about hide-and-seek?' asked Samson again.

‘I'm too old for that. Go do something by yourself.'

‘I'm supposed to stay around the house. Dad said.'

Jonah laughed. ‘It's not like he's here to stop you.'

Samson opened his mouth and closed it again.

‘What?'

‘Please don't hate me,' said Samson. His eyes had gone strange, like they were somewhere else, looking at something else.

‘What?'

‘Let me think first,' said Samson, flustered.

Jonah pushed his brother out of the way and walked back to the empty kitchen. He didn't turn around, but he could feel Samson's eyes staring hopefully into the back of him. After a few seconds, Jonah heard the front door open and close.

Fine. It wasn't his job to look after Samson. If his brother got lost, it was his own fault. Jonah had better things to do. He touched his hand to the stain. The skin was probably in the locked room, but how was he going to get inside? Maybe he'd be able to see in from the outside. The window might even be open. He was small enough to fit through most windows, no matter how narrow.

Jonah opened the front door and checked for Clancy's dog. She wasn't on the doorstep. Jonah didn't close the door. He went outside and followed the windows around the house, counting as he went. Clancy's window … living-room window … back door, open. Jonah looked in. There was still no sign of Clancy's dog. He kept going. Another living-room window … a gap for the linen cupboard … hallway. Then he stopped. There it was. The window to the locked room. The curtains were closed, but they seemed pretty thin. He pulled himself up onto the sill and pressed his face to the glass.

Four hideous white dolls grimaced at him.

His foot slipped, but he held on to the ledge. He came up onto his tiptoes and tried to see over the dolls. All he could make out was the shape of a single bed.

The glass vibrated against his face, and Jonah jumped down from the sill. The walls shook. Footsteps inside. His granddad was up.

Jonah darted between two dead bushes and crawled under the house. Cold and dark, but the dirt was soft. Squatting, he wormed beneath the rooms until he was fairly sure he was below the kitchen. He lay on his back and listened.

His granddad moved overhead, dragging his sick leg.

Something growled nearby.

Jonah rolled over quickly. In the dark, he could just see Queen Elizabeth's long white teeth, her curled lip, her yellow eyes and claws. She growled again.

‘It's okay –' But before the words were out of his mouth, Queenie barked. Her voice was so loud and terrifying, Jonah didn't even try to back off. He pushed himself up on his toes and elbows, and crawled away as fast as he could. By the time the dog barked again, he was free of the house and running towards the open gate.

For the first time since he'd arrived on the mountain, the bush beyond the fence looked safer than the house.

Samson was hardly ever able to walk this far on his own, and never with permission. He stopped and looked up. Light dazzled his eyes. He blinked and looked again. White tree trunks stretched all the way into the sky, long spindly ghosts. He pushed a giant fern frond out of his way. It showered droplets of water over his hands, and for a second the crease through the middle of his palm was like a real river.

At home, his mum kept ferns in pots. ‘They add a bit of lushness to the garden,' she always said. On the mountain the ferns were everywhere, piled over one another and draped across trees and dirt. So thick, it was like the sun had given up.

Samson kept walking. He saw birds and nests and hollows beneath trees where insects and spiders made wide silver webs. He saw stumps covered in flowering vines. He saw dappled light and dark hollows, large rocks and huge trees. He saw drooping branches that cast shadows like cages, hollowed-out logs and new little plants growing from thick sheets of iridescent moss.

Everything smelt like dust turning to mud, or a cocoon just as it opened.

He'd never been allowed to wander outside by himself. His mum said it wasn't safe. ‘What if he gets hit by a car?' she asked his dad once, after Samson asked to go to the park by himself. ‘Or some weirdo tries to pick him up?'

His dad shrugged. ‘Don't they explain that sort of thing at his school?'

‘I'm not comfortable with him going on his own,' she said. ‘It's too stressful … I'd just rather not know he was gone.'

They often talked about him like he wasn't there.

Samson looked over his shoulder. The trees rustled, light wavering between the leaves. He was completely alone. Something flickered deep in his chest.

No one had followed him. No one was worried, or watching. He was completely alone, and completely free. The flickering in his chest turned to flapping, and the flapping turned to an almost painful beating of wings, as though a bird was trapped inside him. He opened his mouth, ‘WHA-HOOO!'

The bird burst from inside him and out his mouth into the sky and trees. He looked up again. This time he tried to follow the bird, but the early morning sun through the rain mist dazzled his eyes. Then he ran. He ran through leaves and under branches, over rocks and around trunks. He ran until his feet were sore and his throat was dry from yelling. A loud rushing got louder and louder, and all of a sudden there was the smell of water and the sound of water, and Samson was thirsty.

‘Oi!'

Samson turned. Clancy's friend Murray was holding a fishing rod and standing alongside a deep, bluish-grey creek. He was wearing the same cowboy hat as yesterday, and the big, fat black kookaburra was still perched on his shoulder.

‘You allowed down here?' he asked.

Pardon?
signed Samson. His hands felt nervous.

Murray raised his eyebrows.

‘I don't know,' said Samson. He hadn't asked if he could leave the house or waited for his granddad, in case it wasn't alright to be out on his own.

‘Looks like you're going fine,' said Murray, but then he eyed Samson. ‘You need help getting home?'

Samson thought of their house in Queensland and wondered if he would ever get home and where home was anymore. ‘Nah,' he said. ‘I'm going all over this mountain today. I'm going see
everything
.' His hands followed his voice, and the sign for
everything
was like holding the entire world in his hands.

Murray smiled. ‘Everything, you reckon?'

‘Everything,' said Samson, even though his mum said he shouldn't repeat.

‘Ready for what you might find?'

Samson shrugged.

The kooka on Murray's shoulder snapped its head from side to side, as though it was trying to understand.

‘You never know what'll come out on a walkabout,' said Murray. He flung his fishing line into the water and swiftly pulled it out again. One hand coaxed the line through the reel, and the other held the rod. When he pulled it back again, the line spooled out beneath him.

‘What's “walkabout” mean?' asked Samson.

Murray waited a bit. Maybe he didn't want to explain. The bird opened its beak and closed it again. Then Murray said, ‘A walkabout is a journey that teaches my mob about our ancestors.'

‘I'm sleeping in my dad's room,' said Samson, but it sounded like a question rather than an answer. ‘He's
my
ancestor.'

Murray smiled. His lure split the surface of the creek again. ‘It's not quite like that.'

‘Are my mum and dad on a walkabout?'

Murray took a long moment before answering. ‘Have you heard of the Dreaming?'

Samson shook his head, which was a sign everyone knew.

The line flicked over Murray's shoulder and back into the water like a needle pulling thread. ‘Some people have different stories for how the earth got to be the way it is. Your lot have the Big Bang or God, but some of my mob reckon a huge Rainbow Snake moved around the world shaping the mountains and the riverbanks, making it the way it is now.'

Samson had seen rainbows before, after thunderstorms, stretched over the ocean in glowing arches. But in his mind, this Snake wasn't like that. It was like a rainbow Paddle Pop. Swirling pink, blue, yellow, purple and green, making new but sometimes greyish colours where they overlapped. Frozen together in a single moment, slithering over the mountain and town and island. Lifting up parts of the ground and pushing down others.

‘I like the Snake better than the Big Bang,' said Samson. ‘Or God.'

‘Me too, mate,' said Murray.

Samson pointed to Murray's shoulder. ‘Is that your bird?'

‘He's not mine. We're more like brothers.' He didn't ask Samson if he wanted a pat, like he had with Jonah the night before.

‘Better watch the Rainbow Snake doesn't get him,' said Samson.

Murray smiled. ‘Old King? He'll be fine.'

‘How do you know about the Rainbow Snake?'

‘From here and there.' Murray glanced away, as though his answer wasn't the entire answer.

Samson wondered if he'd asked the wrong question. ‘Did your mum and dad tell you?'

‘I don't think they knew too much about that story,' said Murray. ‘My dad's parents died when he was young, and my mum was taken from hers. They both lived with lots of different families. Those families had stories of their own.'

‘My dad said he knew you when he was my age?'

Murray nodded. ‘And long before.'

‘Was he your friend?'

‘Not really. We spent too much time together to be friends.'

Samson nodded, though he didn't understand. ‘My dad's gone,' he said. The sign for
gone
was a hand brushing something away as if it didn't matter.

Murray wound in the line, this time using a reel instead of his hand. He tugged the rubber lure from around the hook and dropped it into the tackle box at his feet. The lure looked like jelly. Murray bent down, and King stepped around his shoulders. He closed the lid, clipped the latch and picked up the box by its handle.

‘Can I come with you?' asked Samson.

Murray shook his head. ‘Sorry, mate, I'm heading home to have some tucker.'

A dark, empty space opened at the bottom of Samson's stomach. He hadn't had his brekkie yet. The space growled.

‘You'd better do the same, I reckon.'

Samson patted his stomach like it was an animal he could calm down.

Murray switched his tackle box from one hand to the other. ‘Be careful walking around here,' he said. ‘Maybe you should head back … Go have a muck around with your brother.'

‘Jonah doesn't like playing.'

‘Your dad didn't either,' said Murray slowly, almost like he wasn't talking to Samson anymore. ‘Reckon you've got a bit more of her in you.'

Samson wondered who ‘her' was, but his chromosome was heavy, and Murray was gone before he thought to ask.

Clancy sat at the kitchen table with four plates of scrambled eggs and bacon in front of him, staring at the shadow of the hidden tiger. He waited for the boys until the breakfast was cold and tried not to think about the empty couch or his son's missing bags. David had shot through, he was sure of it.

The air felt thick with silence. Nothing moved until his panting dog walked into the kitchen and crawled under the table. Once there, she dropped her head onto his foot. It was his good leg – Queenie knew better than to try his crook one. Clancy gave her ears a scratch and wondered how the twins were coping with finding David gone.

The twins were Clancy's problem now, even though he wasn't equipped to look after teenage boys on his own. He'd had a go with David, and look how that'd turned out. ‘We got ours, didn't we, girl?' he said quietly.

Queenie sniffed loudly but didn't move from his foot.

Clancy wanted to go out and find the boys. He wanted to teach them to fish and build, chop wood and walk through the bush without disturbing the ground, but all that was lost to him. The tree had taken his leg the day River disappeared and, like the rest of him, it had never been the same.

There was only one easy way he could see his mountain now.

Clancy stood up, and Queenie scuffled out from under the table. She followed him into the living room, where he opened one of his unmarked black videotapes and fed it into the VCR. The machine clicked and swallowed the tape. He sat on the edge of the coffee table, stretched out his leg and switched on the telly. The screen lit up, murder on his eyes. He pressed the play button. Another click, and a black-and-white view of his mountain appeared on the screen.