Bird North and Other Stories Read online

  There were sounds from in the house and then footsteps on the deck. Sheryl heard their mum say his name and then their mum was on the drive and Sheryl carefully crossed the roof and got onto the top rung of the ladder and with each step down she said, ‘Wait for me. Wait for me.’

  After dinner Sheryl and Marcus climbed back onto the roof. There were pine needles sitting like pick-up sticks across the ridges and grooves of the iron and Marcus crept over the roof collecting them.

  ‘Careful,’ said Sheryl. ‘We can’t have you breaking your neck.’

  They sat side by side. A large white boat was docking at the wharf out in front of the township.

  ‘They do tours on Christmas Day?’ said Marcus.

  ‘The glow-worms don’t know about Christmas,’ said Sheryl, and then, ‘You could get a guiding job in the caves.’

  ‘This roof,’ said Marcus, kicking his heel down the iron. ‘Do you remember?’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better than washing dishes?’

  ‘I said yellow and you said green. You called a family meeting.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ said Sheryl.

  ‘It was the only meeting we had,’ said Marcus. He’d bunched the needles, tying one around the others, and now he held them out to her like they were a bouquet.

  They were about to get off the roof when they heard and then saw the plane. It was flying fast over the lake. It had a huge nose and many windows. It went up on its side, turned away from the lake, and roared over the house. There was the white underbelly and the black outlines of the various flaps.

  ‘What should we do?’ shouted Sheryl. She stood up as the plane banked again and made another sharp turn over the township.

  ‘The pilot must have dropped something,’ said Marcus.

  Sheryl crouched, looked at her brother, and then sat down again.

  Across the road the woman with the balloons came out holding up a bottle of bubbly wine. ‘Santa’s going home first-class,’ she shouted.

  The plane made several more loops: going across the lake towards the mountains, then rounding the edge of the lake, before following the road from the start of the track back into town.

  The man on the mobility scooter reappeared. He was slaloming in and out of the dashes in the middle of the road and singing, ‘For auld lang syne.’

  Sheryl put her hand on her brother’s shoulder, then on his neck, and they sat there long after the singer had gone and the plane had finally gained altitude and disappeared over the low hills north of the town.

  Two hawks

  She came into the lounge carrying a blue plastic pharmacy bag. From the bag she took a slim rectangular box. She shook it at him as if preparing the mercury in a thermometer.

  ‘Tonight?’ Ray said.

  ‘Tonight,’ Karen said.

  ‘Now?’

  She nodded and he got up and followed her to the toilet door.

  ‘You’re not coming in,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘that sounds right.’

  He watched her smiling face narrow and then disappear as she closed the door. At the table he chased the salt shaker after the pepper, then, listening in the direction of the toilet, he made a salt hill. The toilet flushed. He split the hill in two and built the walls of a house. She came into the room.

  ‘What are you making?’ she said.

  He put his finger through the salt. ‘A snow storm,’ he said.

  ‘Is it Scotland or Norway that has the blue cross on the flag?’ she said, holding up the thin plastic test. She laughed, but there was a worried set to her mouth.

  They stayed up late, talking in the different parts of the house. She came into the toilet while he was there and told him a thing she’d heard from a woman at her work. It’s as much to do with the woman’s health – plenty have children in their forties. Modern medicine is amazing, he’d said over the sound of his water. They tried some wine, but it didn’t fit and they ate a packet of biscuits. We have to consider all the angles, he said. She was sitting on the floor while he lay on the couch, and she went to him and put her hand on his cheek. Two angles, that’s all I can see, she said. And later, when they were getting ready for bed she said, You get the pension, that’s how old we are. He’d held out his hands. Do these look retired? You know what I mean, she said.

  The next morning Ray parked his ute and walked around the tree. Two big branches – they were long and thick and there were rip marks where they’d left the trunk – and a lot of smaller stuff had come down. The farmer had sold it as a day’s work, which looked about right. Already it was warm and blustery, and Ray was breathing a little when he got back to the truck. He drank from a bottle of water and passed his hand across his face.

  There was the paddock with the tree, another paddock containing a small flock of sheep and, abutting that, the farmhouse’s back lawn. There were two lambs amongst the flock. They had black socks and black faces and they sprang about and hit their mother’s udders.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Ray, frowning and checking the shape of his chin. As he did a pool toy, caught by the wind, rounded the house and tumbled over the lawn. It was gold with a white belly – shaped like a lion – and it pressed against the fence as if wanting to get out.

  . . .

  The farm wasn’t far from the river where he and Karen had swum on their second date. It was a year ago – the middle of the same hot sort of spring that was more like summer. She’d taken him to an ice-cream shop that turned out to be closed and they’d ended up sitting on a river bank. Ray had been distracted. Their first date had been in an oddly-lit restaurant and there’d been plenty of wine – was she somehow unaware of his age? When she’d suggested a swim he’d blurted, ‘Aren’t I too old for you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she’d said, getting carefully out of her jeans.

  He’d followed her into the black, slow water and gone to where it slithered around his waist. Down river was the bridge they’d used, and he’d watched a truck cross and tried to think of the right way to do things. She’d floated by smiling and then, like an otter, rolled onto her front and disappeared. By the river they’d talked about people they knew – it wasn’t a big city and they’d shared a few names. Ray had taught at the university with the father of one of her school friends. It wasn’t in question – he was old enough to be her father. Then he’d felt her around his knees. She’d swum upstream underwater and hooked on. There were her long arms, her long back and, trailing off her long legs, her long feet. Smiling, he’d widened his base with little steps, then setting his hands on his hips he’d waited for her air to run out.

  He’d never stopped worrying about the age thing. There was sometimes a look on her face after they’d made love – she was, he was convinced, imagining a more supple machine. And socially it could be awkward: a night on the couch followed her work do when he’d failed to correct an older woman who’d assumed they were family. But really it was nothing. She’d say things like, This week we’re getting right into kissing, or, Wear my legs like a scarf, things that made his heart crank.

  He worked with intensity, and by lunch most of it was done. He’d started by using the saw like a filleting knife, sweeping away the whippy outlying branches. Then, as the clouds shaped a nor’-western arc, he’d sawn through the large branches, making sappy rounds – stopping only to clear the sweat, to refuel the machine, to tighten its chain. He’d felt good, and as the sun pricked hot and silver he’d taken off his shirt and then his singlet, and now, as he cut the fuel to the machine and walked back to the truck, the old meat of his hairy belly and arms and shoulders was white with sweet foamy sawdust.

  He put his head to one side and then the other and poured water over his hot ears. He sat on the shaded side of the truck and held the meatloaf sandwich in his fist and first the faraway drone of cars on the motorway, then the wind through the tree and finally the sounds of the sheep reached him.

  When Ray opened his eyes the lion was flying over his head. It landed,
went end over end like a chip packet, and then, seeming to lose interest, stopped and just hovered. ‘Excuse me,’ said a woman jogging past. She was dressed in two halves: bare feet and old red shorts then a crisp blouse, make-up and jewellery. She came back with the toy stuck under her arm. ‘It’s the kids’ favourite,’ she said.

  ‘Likes his freedom does he?’ said Ray.

  ‘They use it for tackle practice.’ The wind gusted and the lion’s rear wagged back and forth chirruping against her arms. She spun the toy expertly and dug around its ears. There was the sound of released pressure and the tightness went out of its skin. She looked up at Ray and said, ‘He’s under the house.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My husband. It’s the best place for him.’ She smiled brightly as if having made the same joke earlier.

  ‘Men eh?’ laughed Ray, holding out his hands.

  But she’d finished her joking and wringing the air from the plastic said, ‘Piles, you won’t get far without good ones.’

  In the moment it took to turn from the stack of wood, Ray thought that the voice he’d heard was the farmer’s wife’s, that she’d returned with something cold from her kitchen. But it wasn’t her. It was Karen. In tall black shoes and a black suit, and wielding a thin branch as if it were a wand, she looked straight out of a fairytale.

  Fast as summer rain they both started crying.

  She dropped her branch and he went to her. She felt as long and cool as a cucumber. ‘God etter middag,’ she said into his neck.

  He held her at the length of his strong arms. She nodded solemnly and said it again. He made his face into a question. ‘Norwegian,’ she smiled. He laughed and mimicked her. She made her eyes wide and said it as if it were a reprimand. He gave it another go and spit filled the corners of his mouth. She took his big old ears and this time said it with great surprise. He laughed. She laughed. Then they really let go. They held each other’s shoulders and bent forward. The wind gusted and they went over like milk cartons, laughing until their wet faces shone like Christmas balls.

  Years later Ray and his daughter were standing in front of a tall shallow cave. They’d walked down a long strip of grass that aisled the farmland. There were two pyramid-shaped formations of rock and sandy dunes down to the ocean. They’d been headed back to the car when, at the back of the smaller of the two pyramids, they saw the cave.

  ‘Doesn’t smell much like a cave,’ said Ray.

  ‘What should it smell like?’

  ‘Animals, old water. Rot,’ said Ray. There was a wide shelf in the rock and he sat down. The girl sat down too, and they looked out over the lupins at the blue sky. There was the popping of the broom pods and the smell of hot earth.

  ‘Hawks,’ said the girl, pointing.

  Two birds, their wings framing the action of their bodies, fell together through the cloudless blue sky.

  ‘Are they fighting?’ she said.

  Ray squinted and made the sound of a bomb falling and, just before the earth and just before his daughter whooped, the birds parted and went back towards the sun.

  The moon

  The lift doors open and Peter steps out into the office. His sock is wet from the hole in his shoe. Phones are ringing and people are talking. He walks past his team leader, Bevan, who gives him the thumbs up. Peter sits at his desk and shakes the computer’s mouse. The monitor comes on. He pushes his shoe off, puts his headset on, and then enters his password. The big clock on the wall says nine o’clock. He places his cursor on a red phone on the screen and presses a button. The phone turns green and starts blinking. ‘Thanks for calling you’re speaking with Peter,’ he says, watching Tracey, the woman who sits next to him, wave to Bevan as she runs across the office.

  At eleven o’clock Peter makes the phone on his screen red. He takes off his headset. His sock is mostly dry and he pulls his shoe on. As he ties the lace it breaks off in his hand. He turns it in his fingers and sniffs at the damp frayed end then puts it in the bin. He shifts forward in his seat and gets up. Melanie, who sits in the pod opposite him, sees him and smiles, then, still smiling, points at her mouthpiece and rotates a finger by her ear.

  Peter goes to the lunchroom. He has to curl his toes to stop the shoe coming off. He buys a Coke from the vending machine and sits on a couch. A tall man with glasses and a thin Polynesian man are playing table tennis. The tall man smashes the ball past the Polynesian. It stops in front of Peter who throws it back. ‘Thanks,’ says the man.

  ‘Not a problem,’ says Peter.

  At eleven-fourteen Peter pulls himself to the edge of the couch and gets up. When he walks away his shoe stays on the floor. He picks it up. Melanie comes into the lunchroom. ‘Hi Peter,’ she says, smiling at the shoe in his hand. ‘You all right there?’

  ‘Not a problem,’ says Peter.

  He lifts his foot to get his shoe on and has to hop to keep his balance. His face is red.

  ‘Ooh,’ says Melanie. ‘Careful.’

  He feels her hand on his side. He gets the shoe on and stands up breathing hard. He smiles and says, ‘Have a good one.’ At the door he looks around. She’s putting money into the vending machine. Once, before a team meeting, she sat beside him and asked where he lived and what he did in the weekends. He told her he was part of a karate club and that he went out sometimes. She laughed and made cutting motions with her hands. Her breath smelt like raspberry lifesavers.

  Back at his computer he puts his headset on and makes the phone on his screen green. His phone rings.

  At twelve-o-nine a female customer asks Peter if he enjoys being an arsehole. In the background Peter can hear a man laugh. The woman asks to speak to a manager. Then she laughs in a hard way and says, ‘Do you even know what that is?’

  Peter puts her on hold. There’s a tight feeling in his stomach. Bevan is drinking from a can and talking to another team leader. Peter rings his extension. Bevan looks down and then over to Peter. He waves his hand and shakes his head. Peter tells the woman someone will call her back. He asks for her phone number. She says the numbers slowly, ‘Did you get that, moron?’ she says.

  In the background the man says, ‘Let me talk to him.’

  Peter hangs up. He takes his headset off and stands up. Melanie has her back to him. He goes to the toilet. In the cubicle there’s a scab of snot on the door. He sits for a while. Someone else comes in. Their shoes squeak on the tiled floor. The urinal flushes noisily and the door closes again. Peter goes to the basin. He tilts his head back, looks into his nose, and then washes his hands. The towel on the dispenser has come free. It hangs down the wall onto the floor. He goes back to his desk.

  ‘Having a good one?’ asks Bevan, walking towards him.

  ‘Not a problem,’ Peter says, putting his headset on.

  ‘Don’t forget my leaving drinks tomorrow night,’ Bevan says, bringing his hand to his mouth like he’s drinking fast. He pats the back of Peter’s chair then goes and stands behind Tracey. She turns around and smiles.

  After work, Peter goes to a shoe shop. There are shoelaces under a glass bench. A blonde woman is at the back of the shop. She’s using a cloth to wipe a white shoe. The shop smells of leather. Peter looks at the laces and takes some coins out of his pocket. The woman puts the shoe back on the wall and walks over to him. ‘Yes?’

  ‘How much are the laces?’

  ‘Seven dollars.’

  Peter counts the coins. There isn’t enough. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Sorry, I left my wallet at home.’

  She looks at him for a moment and then walks away.

  Peter leaves the shop and walks slowly up the street. In a pub he buys a glass of Coke and goes into a small room filled with pokie machines. There’s an elderly woman sitting on a stool in front of a machine. Beside her an Asian couple are whispering to each other. Peter feeds four dollars into a machine and bets one credit a time. He loses the money. He finishes his drink and goes to an ATM to check his balance. 23 cents. He starts back towards his apartment.

&nbs
p; Peter was five when his father said to him, ‘Your mum’s gone to the moon. She has some special work to do. I don’t know when she’ll be back.’

  Five years later Peter was at the mall when he saw her being led by a tall man. She was running her hands across her mouth as if eating a cob of corn. There was another man too. He had skinny legs and was walking fast. Every three or four steps he shook his head and made a parrot sound.

  ‘Look,’ said Peter’s friend, Simon. ‘Loonies.’

  Peter started crying.

  ‘Why are you bawling?’ said Simon.

  Peter covered his face. ‘I’m not.’

  He looked through his fingers at his mum. Her long hair was now thin and grey. He wanted to go over to her, but he didn’t know if she would remember him. She didn’t look the same, and the parrot man scared him.

  ‘C’mon,’ said Simon.

  Peter followed him into a shop. Simon went to the counter and came back with three Instant Kiwis. He gave one to Peter. ‘If you win you can have half the money.’

  Peter scratched the ticket. He got three twenty dollar symbols. He stopped crying.

  ‘Wahoo!’ said Simon. ‘Let’s get milkshakes and more tickets.’

  Peter went home when the money was gone. His father was sitting at a table smoking a cigarette and looking at junk mail. He worked at the public library. Sometimes he brought a woman from the library to their flat. ‘We’re doing a project,’ he’d say. ‘It’s like your one on Ethiopia but more important. That’s why L has to stay late.’