The Chantic Bird (25 page)

Old whiskers used to trundle his barrow of vegetables up that street when I was a kid; it was funny to think that I could remember the exact spots I’d seen him and here he was, dead for years.

I took home a dozen bottles of beer, I had to get a taxi to carry them, I was getting puffed much sooner lately.

The kids liked their beer, it was good for their stomachs. Even Allie wasn’t too young. All they had to remember if they got headaches was to have a big drink of water; that would dissolve their aches. I can tell you more about the family now there’s no Petersen to get in the way.

Bee was fond of her beer and it was nice to have the whole family happily swallowing. I guess I was pretty clumsy, mainly because I was glad to see them all enjoying themselves together. Chris asked me later, ‘Why can big people tread on your foot and not say sorry?’ That was the first I knew that I had trodden on her. Even Stevo was able to look at problems of life and human existence after his second glass. He was looking at the wrinkles on his heel.

‘Look, Mum. Afraid I’m getting old.’ Bee laughed out loud. She always looked more cheerful after a glass of beer, until about the third one. Then she got to the stage where she doubted that she should be drinking beer at all. On the fourth, though, the world was right again.

‘A boy is a boy,’ she said, and it seemed a very deep thing to say. He was going for some sort of test the following Wednesday, I think it was an IQ test. We decided over the beer that he would do well.

The kids had wanted to have coloured sheets on their bed after they saw them in the shops and it wasn’t long after that that I was able to give Bee enough money to get them. I won’t tell you where the money came from, this time. When we got the sheets and Bee put them on the kids’ beds, Stevo came out with; ‘I’m glad I made those comments.’ He made the original remarks about the sheets, it was only fair he should take the credit.

Bee asked Chris about the scripture class at Sunday school. ‘What did you do at Sunday school, Chris?’

‘I put some glue on Jesus.’ I think Bee only asked her that to get one of Chris’ funny sayings out of her, but we all appreciated it, even Stevo and little Allie, who laughed when she saw the others laugh.

It was nearly the same as when we looked in Stevo’s book that he used at home for his sums. In the holidays they bring their old books home. You could find bits of notes any old time with the words ‘I love Miss Thomson’ in his shaky writing. He nearly went through the paper with each stroke.

It made me feel very good to be sitting there watching the beer take its effect on Bee. Actually the curve part of her eye where the eyelashes stick in was probably worth more than my whole sixteen and three-quarter years together, it was so beautiful.

She must have seen me watching her this time, because she was just at that stage of the beer where she could get mad over some little thing. She couldn’t very well do anything to me, so she tore up some sheets of paper the kids had used for scribbling and acted mad that they’d been left around.

‘Do you always tear up things when you’re angry?’ Chris asked. Bee saw reason then and smiled and the bad feeling passed. Those things always passed quickly in our house.

‘I’m not really angry at them,’ she said. ‘I’m just on edge a bit, but how can you convince a kid of that?’ She didn’t want to have to tell me she’d caught me looking. I still can’t understand why she was so sensitive about it.

She covered up a bit by getting back to the scripture classes; this time she asked Stevo how he liked them.

‘They used to tell good stories but now they only tell you you’re naughty.’ Poor Stevo, the other kids were telling on him for playing under the bridge on the way to Sunday school and the big ones called him Herman Munster, he had big eyes and a crew cut. Bee tells me he’s in trouble for chopping other kids with his hand.

Chris started then on a story about the kids at school and how one naughty little boy lifted up her dress and spat on her.

I wish they’d never had me. Out of millions of little wrigglers, why couldn’t it have been someone else?

The kids seemed to be growing up and I was still only sixteen and three-quarters.

‘There’s a girl at school,’ Chris went on, ‘That I’m going to murder. She says, Stop pushing, little girl.’

Stevo had been thinking. He had slowed down, he had half a glass untouched.

‘Mum, is it true there are some people you can never trust?’ I suppose I had told him that, and it was only coming to the surface now, winkled out by the alcohol. We got him off the subject and started to sing a bit with Chris, Lay down yonder in the paw-paw patch, except that Bee made us sing Way down, instead of Lay down.

But even in the middle of singing I was thinking to myself, I wish I knew who took those photos of Ma’s. Something in me wanted to be miserable. You could see Sydney out the kitchen window. From the distance the city’s a big garden of hardy perennials, made of concrete, watered with money.

Something came up then that took me away from our little family meeting. I had to kill the black dog. Old Shieldsy had a black dog that was always making a pest of itself and for it to come round barking when we were happy was too much. Too much. I got the rifle and tied up next door’s cat to the clothes line and waited under the house. Sure enough, the black dog came and tried to torment the tied-up cat. I loosed two twenty-two slugs into it, but that didn’t kill it outright. It was making a bad noise and dragging itself away into old Danny’s place, so I picked up a rock about eighty pounds I reckon and let it fall on the black dog to slow it down, but it still kept making that bad noise, not so sharp and barky as before, but more moaning. I had to run back and get the axe to stop that noise, it was getting to me. The neighbours all kept inside.

I had to run a bit to catch up to the black dog, but it was worth it. Five or six overhead swings with the axe stopped the noise. I dragged the black dog by the feet down into the soft ground right down the back and buried him near where I tried to grow a potato patch. There was three feet of soil there before you hit the clay. He went in easy. When I got back near the house I put the rock back with the red side down on the ground. There was no sense upsetting Bee. There were no neighbours’ heads in sight, I guess they heard the shots, but they were used to that.

‘What did you do out there?’ Bee said.

‘I didn’t do anything. Higgins did it.’ I sat down as if nothing had happened, but all the time I had the bad feeling in my chest coming and going. It wasn’t so violent, but it was there most of the time, as if the blood couldn’t find the proper way round the circuit and was trying to bulldoze its way back in the wrong direction, and getting all tumbled and swirled about in the process.

I didn’t let anyone see there was something going on. I told the kids the story about the white-foot cat with the black fur, he was a sort of hero among the cats we had, every day there’d be a big rat or a bandicoot brought up to the house with its insides missing. Every few sentences I had to stop a bit, there was something stopping the air getting into my chest. Maybe it wasn’t the air, I’m not a doctor, but if it wasn’t the air it was blood, and I was starving for it.

While I was going on about the famous black and white cat there was a sound of whistling like an eagle in the roof. In the mood I was in I was ready to think it was all sorts of things, but really I knew it was a possum. When they were bad in the roof, before Bee came there, they used to wet down through the ceiling and the smell was just like a human’s when he’s getting sick with something; it was a nutty, strong smell. I never forget smells.

Suddenly, sitting there with the kids and telling them stories and knowing I’d probably be there for a while if Bee didn’t kick me out, I felt I could live forever. If only it wasn’t for internal weaknesses. I hit my chest, though, and I could feel blood and things swirling around. I put the kids off, and helped Bee get them to bed. She was a colossal organiser and made allowance for my help, so I didn’t feel I was in the way. Anyone else would have told me to shoot through.

A few distant shells out Ingleburn way whumped and thumped and made me think whether I would give everyone a break and join up, but when I thought how useless it was to be fighting for our government, with no one’s heart in it and just shooting because the leaders couldn’t think of anything more to say, I gave it away. It wasn’t like one man going in and getting something out of it, shooting when he felt like it and stopping when he wanted to. Suppose it’s not very modern to hate teams and leaders, but that’s the way of it. Maybe that’s why I’m getting out of the crowds.

Bee was trying to take an interest in the world, at that stage. Always she had books around the place; I think she wasn’t too satisfied with just going on living from day to day, she must have wanted to get out of the place, even if only inside a book. She nearly killed me with the expression on her face when I didn’t know what Overkill meant.

Then she revived me with the sound of a tiny spoon chiming on her cup lip. I tried picking up her books and reading them, but I couldn’t stand being glued in the one place for a long time; I could sit in the roof all night, but I couldn’t read a book. I suppose it was because the book was trying to do something to me. I wouldn’t have minded a book about some thin Australian hero dreaming of the bludging days gone by, standing in a pub, ordering ‘Schooner a fifty…’ That sort of thing.

She never said so, but I think she believed in progress and human betterment and all that. I think it’s rubbish. We’re no worse than our ancestors that stood stupidly at the mouth of a cave grumbling about the weather, but I reckon we haven’t changed. We just do different things with our hands and say different words. I didn’t say that to her, there was no sense in arguing with her for fun. There’s a big enough wall between us now as it is.

I kept thinking, while I was cooped up inside the house, that I could hear a gate. I couldn’t tell if it was opening or shutting. It was just making a noise. Maybe I should have taken its hint when I first heard it. When it came to clearing up the tea things I came across some pumpkin seeds; perhaps I should have gone outside and planted them and not come back. I planted them anyway; there seemed something so easy about putting living things in the dirt and going away knowing their life would take over and some time later there would be growing things to eat. All for just putting them in dirt, and giving them a drink of water.

We spoke together. She said, ‘I want to finish that book.’

I said, ‘Here, you better take your book.’

For some reason, she seemed pleased we spoke at the same time. It was a bit like old folks talking. It gave me a good feeling but I knew it wouldn’t last.

For a while all I could hear was the sound of a book page. You know that dry, clean sound. I switched the TV on and saw the third movie I ever saw in my life, the Phantom of the Opera. That was years ago, and it was from right inside the theatre, not just underneath. I enjoyed that picture, because it made me glad to see poor Claude, all ugly through no fault of his own, scaring people to death and taking a beautiful girl down under the ground in a sort of cave. Boy, was I sorry to see him get it. So was a whole theatre full of other kids.

It wasn’t so good on the TV, it didn’t scare you a bit.

In the morning I hung round Stevo a bit, trying to hear the rest of the Chantic Bird story, but he snapped at me. I reckon he’d grown out of the Chantic Bird. Just when I was ready to hear it. Still, I guess he was waking up that you get no magic in this life; getting the big, rich, beautiful song out of the little grey bird is fairy story stuff.

They had the early TV on then and the last thing I remember Stevo saying was to the man in one of the ads; ‘How would you know? You’re only a puppet!’ It was the same tone of voice he used to snap at me.

The next time I saw him he was riding half a mile away with Diana, his girl friend. They were on big chestnut horses, ambling around the district, going away.

I picked up one of his school compositions from the little shelf where he had his books, it was called

‘A dead Lizid. In the holidays we went shooting rabbits.

In the way was a lizid. I shot him in the eye. He did a funny little dance before he was Dead.’

For some reason, I don’t know, I folded the page and stuck it in my pocket. Now that I’ve given the kids a life and got them money, I can see them getting fatter and turning away from me. Or rather looking over my shoulder, past me at the world they think I stand for. I’ll go before they start avoiding me.

This is nearly the end of that part of the story I’m going to let you hear about. It will be up and away for me soon. I know that in a lot of places there will be things I have left, things only I could have left. The world is not exactly as it was before me. That’s something.

This funny memory is always with me. I can still see my brother in hospital, the same hospital where I had my appendix and tonsils out, and where we took Stevo for his burned leg. There was even an old man up one end of the James ward there dying at the same time as my young brother. It didn’t seem right for an old cow like that to live so long, but at least he was cheerful and my brother was pretty miserable. It turned out to be a man we’d all given a lot of lip to when we were kids. He didn’t seem to remember, though. I would have.

The next morning we had Allie in bed and the other kids at school when some of Bee’s relatives came to the house. They knocked on the front door and since the main bedroom was in front we had to tumble out of bed and scat. Bee put on a dressing-gown and went to the door and told them she was in bed and not feeling very well and there was no news and the baby was asleep. I could hear from the way they spoke they suspected, but Bee got rid of them. I was sitting naked on the floor behind the door, you make less noise when you sit down, there’s no bones to creak and you don’t breathe so often.

A little kid came to the back door later on after a couple of eggs for its mother. I went for that one, without any clothes. The kid was too young to know, I reckon it had seen its father often enough not to worry. Bee’s dog Puddin’ was fighting with Stumpy, Stevo’s lizard and Gubby, the she-cat from next door, but they made very little noise so I didn’t worry Bee with it.