The Chantic Bird (3 page)

Who got the hardest hits of the horsewhip? I’ll tell you who. Who had to get rid of Gyppo’s pups? I did. I didn’t have to shoot them, but I wanted it to be messy so the others would realise what they were getting out of, not having to do it themselves. Who had to take Gyppo along to the vet? And who had to pay the bill, with the vet writing complaining letters about having to light the furnace at midnight? It was always me. Who had to stuff up the cracks in the old man’s room and burn sulphur in there to kill the germs after they took him? Me. I can remember when my only friend was our old scarred white cat, the greatest dog-scarer north of the Parramatta.

These thoughts made me miserable, so I got up and went over the wall. On the way I stopped to wave the wand about and to heave some rocks down into the bush at the south-west corner of the Zoo park. I suppose they’ll have a drive against me soon.

When I turned seven I legally became a delinquent. Before that, all they can do is tell your mother.

I went back to the house to see Bee and the kids.

Stevo was standing in the kitchen when I got there. I waited outside to listen, like I always did. I don’t believe in barging in; often you find you’re not wanted.

Stevo was standing still looking at Bee. You couldn’t get past that look. You’d think he was made of stone. Like a park statue. Still, it’s no use making a mystery out of it, he was just a little kid and I’ll be satisfied if he looks at me and takes me for what I am, too. In the kitchen I heard a cup chime. Bee always did that with her spoon on the lip of the cup. There was the sound of a greaseproof foodwrap; she must have been cutting some lunch for them for tomorrow.

When I looked back at Stevo he had a banana in his fist, peeled and sticky. He’d been washing it.

‘I can’t get the sticky off, Mum,’ he said. ‘I can’t even get it off wid soap and water.’ Bee grabbed the banana and washed Stevo’s hands.

‘I’ve got a headache in my tummy,’ he complained, just to hog all the attention.

‘Never mind your tummy. I’ll get you some meddi for that.’ She manipulated a brown bottle and a spoon, while he clamped his lips together.

‘Say cat,’ said Bee.

‘I’m busy,’ said Stevo, but she got the medicine down him.

‘My better now,’ he said after one teaspoon. ‘Lollies make me better, too,’ he added hopefully.

‘No lollies. Bad for your teeth,’ she said, like a mother. Only she wasn’t his mother. After I got them out of the home at Ashfield all thin and beaten up, I told them Bee was their mother. That was good enough. I haven’t finished with the keepers at that home yet. I’ve been picking them off one by one. Not killing, just little things like running them under, waiting for them round corners. It keeps you very busy, getting even.

The other littlies were pretty quiet. She had them eating. Stevo was still in the toilet. Bee got mad, and when she hurried him he was addressing his little old feller.

‘Nice little wee-wees. Come on, little wee-wees, have some dinner.’

‘Will you please get in and sit down!’ she yelled. Stevo looked up at her with sympathy.

‘Never mind,’ he said, very understanding. ‘You do poohies. You feel better when you do poohies.’ She couldn’t help laughing then. Neither could I, so I went in to say hullo.

I always felt a bit sorry for Stevo. There was a lot I could have told him and taught him, but the time never seemed to be right, or he had to go to bed, or have his tea. I always liked going back to the house, except that Bee seemed a bit nervous while I was there. I could never stay long. I sat on the big bed on the verandah, the one I used to sleep in with one of my brothers that died. I sat there, talking to the kids, listening to the birds’ feet scrape on the iron roof. But I have to admit it, there was never really much to talk to them about, even Stevo, so I asked him about the Chantic Bird just for something to say.

He was full of the Chantic Bird. I asked Bee what was the strength of it, but all she’d say was that it was a story Stevo liked and he wanted to tell it to me. But I never seemed to have time to listen.

Most of the time I could do as I liked to people, as if they were stones to be thrown or bottles to be broken. Objects, that’s it! Just things. But anytime I wanted I could feel what was happening to the people I damaged; anytime. I just had to let myself go and there it was, grade A sympathy just pouring out.

But hating isn’t loving; you can’t turn them off and on so fast, so the damage I did and the sympathy I turned on couldn’t be either hating or loving.

When Bee passed close to you, there was a cool smell from her hair. It made me think of spring nights and the freesias in the grass banks by the side of the roads and the dark leaves and the scent of the pittosporum that you get when you walk round a lot at night like I do. With the smell of her in my nose I sloped out of there. I hardly recognised the sound of the underfoot stones as the sound I made; I was still on about the smell of her. It was pretty good just going in the room with her and breathing her air.

I walked away remembering the warning we’d had from one of the new people that moved in the street; they only had the story we’d given the kids, they thought we were their parents. They warned Bee, not me, about breeding like rabbits. They didn’t have any kids themselves, so I don’t think they worried Bee. She came from a big family, like I did. I didn’t do anything to those people, it was too near home. I wasn’t always there to fix any trouble.

It was dark. I passed over a spot in the yard where something moved. I just had to sneak back into the house and get my rifle and blast it, but it was only an old mother bandicoot. When I turned it over with my foot the babies were struggling to get out of it; all the skin along its stomach was torn open. For Bee’s sake I trod on them and shoved them under a rock; I didn’t want her to have to look at sights like that. It might put her off later when she had her own babies. She was used to me blasting away, so she didn’t ask what I shot. Come to think of it, she probably thought I missed, but she didn’t like to say so. Girls often think you’re no good at things, when you really are.

And even if you prove it they never believe you.

Up the street I thought of my old grandmother and how she used to walk miles, when she was alive, just to get apples a bit cheaper. That took me back to my great-grandfather who was supposed to have got his eye torn out in a fight in Pitt Street and clapped it back in his head and chased the man that did it. That was before this century. My old man told me that one. We still had the eye in the family, because when he had to get a glass eye—the other one was never any good even though he clapped it back in—he put his real eye in a bottle with some metho before it went bad. It’s still in the family. You have to change the metho now and again. At least they told us kids it was the same eye. The others may have got Ma’s photos but I got the eye.

I’d been dawdling along, until I suddenly found myself running. That was me, running or dawdling. I could keep running for a long time. I felt pretty strong. There was rain, grizzling in the gutters and getting guzzled down the drains.

I get ideas when I’m running. The idea I got this time was to do what I’d seen two men in Hyde Park doing. One sort of kept looking around while the other one knelt down by this sailor who was drunk, and turned him over gently and took all the money out of his pockets and the watch off his wrist and a ring off his finger that had a square black stone in it. I was only a small child when I saw that, but it made a big impression on me. It looked such an easy way to get something for nothing. So what I did, I waited outside the old Railway Hotel at Hornsby—it was a bit of a bloodhouse then before they knocked it down and built it up again—until closing time. I saw a prospect picking his way carefully and at great length down the top steps to the footpath. He wasn’t out of the pub fifty yards before he wanted to use the gutter as a toilet. I was behind him, but just as I hit him his head rolled to one side as if the wires were a bit slack.

Do you know that funny moment when you’re mad in a rage and you bash out at someone and it all goes funny before your eyes and you think you’re going blind? The old brain seems to shift and twist and you can’t see what you’re looking at? Well, I suppose everyone knows what I mean; everyone gets mad.

I hit him then. Properly. Several times, it was. Maybe a few dozen good hits. I didn’t forget to get his money, but he had no watch. I had to wipe my hands on his coat and at the finish there was so much blood and slobber everywhere I had to take out my thing to wash it off my hands and down the gutter. I hosed him down a bit, too, part out of spite, I reckon, and part to tidy his face up a bit so anyone who passed by would only think he was a drunk gone to sleep and leave him alone. I suppose it was anti-social, but your family has to come before the filthy public.

Bee got a bit extra that week to buy fruit for the kids. I told her to get herself a haircut out of the rest, she was always pushing this goldy colour hair out of her eyes. But that wasn’t right away; after I’d rolled my first drunk I got back to the Zoo.

All round Sydney lights were on, all the people were sitting up in millions of houses filling in insurance policies on their fowls, their wrought-iron railings, concrete paths, light globes, their health, funeral expenses, borers, carpets, insuring against loss of work, loss of clothes, loss of conjugal rights, loss of money, loss of friends. I wonder if they had policies that could protect them from me.

I kept on like that for a few days, getting a bit here and there, quite a bit in fact, but something happened in the Zoo that got me kicked out. They didn’t actually kick me out, but if they caught me they would have.

These people were looking round the Zoo, at the animals, making happy noises and plenty of litter with milk cartons, soft drink cans, lolly papers, sandwich crusts, and there was a kid there younger than me, about fourteen I’d say, a girl, with darker hair than Bee’s and boy, was she pretty. She was that dark sort that has to shave their legs a lot later and right then the hairs on her legs were starting to grow, she was about that age, but I didn’t worry too much about that, she had these beautiful red cheeks on her face. Apple-cheeks.

I couldn’t help following them just to get a bit of a look at her now and then. You don’t have to worry, they didn’t notice me. But it got too much for me, and ever since I’d taught myself to roll a drunk I’d got more impulsive, if you understand me, and what did I do but buy a little bag of fruit and go up to her when she was a bit away from the others and give them to her. Or tried to, rather. I think I was even pleased that she said no thank you, that showed she wasn’t too cheap and likely to say yes to anyone. But I felt a fool having to eat the whole bag myself—a bag of apples—so I asked her again then sort of put them in her hands. She had brown eyes that the sun got into, the sun sort of got under the brown and shone them up very shiny.

Well, they got too wide to be pretty. She started making loud screams and a lot of people took out after me. In twenty minutes everything was quiet again, I’d lost the chasers and the girl was looking in at the snake cages where the poor old snakes were having a snooze since their cages faced the sun. She even forgot the apples enough to start tapping the glass cages to wake up the snakes. I watched her, a bit disgusted; she tapped every cage. But I couldn’t forget those apple-cheeks. And until I left there I had the feeling I was being followed. Any minute I thought someone would come up behind me and say, ‘This is the one that raped that girl in the Zoo.’ I didn’t rape her, you know I didn’t, but everyone knows how these things get blown up when the public gets hold of them. They don’t care what happens to the original facts, they don’t even know if the original facts were facts.

I had to go; they were on to me and I didn’t want to be shot out. I tell you what, I felt so good that no one could catch me—a sort of energy or power—that I ring-barked every tree in the park with my knife. There was a silly war statue there, too. I knocked the arms off that, they were the only things on it that I could twist. Boy, did they make a fuss about that! Don’t they act up when you touch their property! Do people think their silly old property will ride proud and shiny before them into heaven?

I had felt quite at home in the Zoo. The peacock was one of my favourites. He’d lift his tail up to impress you and there’d be staring eyes all over it, looking through you. Come to think of it, I felt quite at home in the whole world, doing what came into my head. But I must admit that sometimes I almost stopped to wonder who put all these things in my head in the first place. I used to laugh at the animals and tell them they were in hell. Get it? They’d been bad in Africa or South America or where they came from, so they were sent here to hell in cages. They were just the bad ones. And when I left the Zoo I remember thinking it’s just the same for people. Or maybe it’s just the same. This is hell now, the after-life we were sent to because we were bad where we came from. That’s why practically everyone you know has such a lot of bad in them.

It seemed a good idea when I first had it, but I soon got tired of it. I get sick of everything very quickly.

I walked all the way back to this cave I knew, seventeen miles from midnight to five o’clock. The darkness was warm. It was when I was near streetlights or shopfront lights that I felt the cold. I lay back and had a rest till the sun was up a bit. I thought of myself lawless as a meteor, burning what I touched.

The cave, if you lay back and looked out of it, was nothing more than a hole in the rock, aimed one way at the cooling core of this poor old dying planet, and the other way at a big sweep of outer nothing. Before I got round to getting something to eat, I started to scratch some drawings inside the roof of the cave with the pig-stabber end of my knife. It was a high cave and I had to get some thick saplings stuck in side ledges to reach up there. I cut fairly deep into the sandstone, then rubbed in some dirt and ashes from the floor. They were pretty coarse drawings. I got rid of the saplings and dusted off the marks they made.