Crow Country (3 page)

T
hree days a week Ellie was supposed to finish her shift at the hospital in time to walk home with Sadie after school. The school and the hospital were practically next door to each other, but no matter how long Sadie dawdled, Ellie was never ready to leave when she arrived.

On Wednesday Sadie made her way to the emer- gency department. As usual, there was no sign of her mum. The nurse on duty smiled and said, ‘I'll let her know you're here, love.'

‘Thanks.' Sadie took a seat and tried not to stare at the only other person waiting – an Aboriginal boy Sadie had seen around at school. He was sitting on the other side of the room, flicking through a magazine. He was in Year 8, a year above her. He was new this term, too; he'd come from Mildura, up on the Murray River. Everyone knew he'd been in trouble with the police, though no one seemed to know exactly what he'd done. Someone said he'd stolen a car, someone else said he'd stabbed a kid in a playground, and someone else that he'd been caught dealing drugs. Everyone agreed he was ‘psycho'.

Sadie stared at him from beneath her eyelashes. He had wild curly hair and smudges of shadow under his eyes, and the corners of his mouth turned down. He didn't look like a psycho or a criminal; he looked kind of sad.

‘Sadie!' Ellie swooped down on her, smiling and breathless.

‘You're late,' said Sadie coldly.

‘Sorry, I lost track of time; I ran into someone.' Ellie's eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed. She glanced over her shoulder at a man with pale-brown skin and a wide smile. ‘Sadie, this is an old friend of mine, David Webster. He's a social worker; he looks after this whole area. We knew each other years ago. I can't believe I didn't run into him till today! I can't believe he still lives here!'

‘Come and gone a bit. Haven't been sitting on my bum by the lake the last twenty years.' David grinned and stuck out a big, warm hand to shake Sadie's.

‘How you doing, Sadie?'

‘All right,' Sadie mumbled.

‘Perk up, sweetheart; I'm not
that
late!' Ellie ruffled Sadie's hair, and Sadie squirmed away, frowning. Ellie rolled her eyes. ‘Kids!' She and David smiled at each other.

‘I've invited David and his nephew to dinner,' said Ellie. She glanced around and waved to the Abori- ginal boy. ‘Hey! You must be Walter! Come and say hello; we won't bite. I know, I've got a
great
idea – you can come home with us now while David finishes up here! You had school today, right? You can do your homework at our place, then you and Sadie can hang out together.'

Nooo
, thought Sadie in agony.

Walter moved closer to David and almost imperceptibly shook his head. David slung an arm across Walter's shoulders.

‘He'll be right with me,' said David easily. ‘We'll be along in an hour or so.'

‘Oh,' said Ellie. ‘Okay. See you soon.'

Sadie stumped behind Ellie back into town, in the direction of the IGA supermarket.

‘What's wrong with you?' said Ellie.

‘Nothing.'

‘Don't crack the sads with me. David's a lovely guy; you'll like him.'

Sadie glared at the pavement.

‘And be nice to Walter, okay? You've got a lot in common.'

‘Yeah? Has he got a crazy mother too?'

Ellie threw her a sharp look. ‘As a matter of fact, his mother isn't very well, so you might want to keep remarks like that to yourself.'

‘Okay,
sorry
,' muttered Sadie.

‘I meant you're both new in town, that's all. You could help him a lot. Walter's had a hard time. He was in some kind of trouble in Mildura, that's why he's moved here to live with David.'

‘Yeah, I know.
Everyone
knows,' said Sadie crushingly. It didn't occur to her till later that she'd missed her chance to find out what, exactly, Walter's trouble had been.

They walked into the IGA and Ellie began searching the aisles for curry ingredients.

‘Not as much choice as in Melbourne,' observed Sadie.

Ellie frowned. ‘Now listen,' she said, halting sud- denly in front of the rice shelf. ‘I'm going to tell you something.'

‘What?'

‘David and I,' Ellie said in a low voice, ‘well, we used to go out together.' She glanced about, but there was no one within earshot. ‘Years ago, before I met your father. But it was – difficult.'

‘Because he's black?'

‘Yes, partly. Mostly.' Ellie hesitated, and dropped a packet of basmati rice into the basket. ‘It was – complicated. There was stuff going on. We were young. We just didn't know how to make it work. But we're older now and hopefully wiser.'

‘Jeez, Mum, you just met him again five minutes ago. How do you even know he wants to go out with you?'

Ellie laughed. ‘He told me he's single. And I picked up a certain vibe. Don't you think there was a certain vibe?' She punched Sadie's shoulder. ‘Dontcha reckon? You think I'm rushing things again, don't you?'

Sadie frowned.
Like you rushed into moving to the country. Like you rushed into breaking up with Dad. Like you rushed into asking Walter back to our place when he doesn't even know us.
But she didn't say anything.

Ellie got flustered when she was preparing a big meal; she didn't cook well under pressure. So Sadie wandered down to the end of the backyard. Even though their house was fairly new, it had still accumulated a pile of junk. A dead fridge leaned tipsily against the shed, and an abandoned old ute was slowly sinking into the ground in the shadow of a low-spreading mallee gum.

Sadie climbed into the cabin of the ute, tipped her head back and gazed up at the leaves and the darkening sky through the gap where the roof had rusted away. A pink-and-grey parrot was squawking in the branches of the tree.

‘Seen any crows around?' Sadie asked the parrot.

‘Nope.'

Sadie jerked upright and banged her forehead.

Walter leaned his arms along the empty window-frame and peered in at her. ‘Your mum sent me out here,' he said. ‘Said she'd yell when dinner's ready. You all right?'

Sadie gingerly touched her forehead. ‘Yeah.'

‘C'n I get in?'

‘There's only room for one.' Sadie showed him where the driver's seat had been yanked out. She wrenched the door open and clambered out. ‘We can sit under the tree if you like.'

Walter shrugged.

Night was beginning to creep across the paddocks beyond the railway track. Sadie hugged her knees and hoped dinner wasn't far away. She picked up a feather from the ground and began to draw on her shoe. With a start she realised it was a crow's feather and dropped it as if it had burnt her.

She knew Ellie would interrogate her later.
Did you talk to Walter? Did you try?
Sadie never knew how to talk to people. Crows: yes. Humans: no.

‘So – David's your uncle?' she said awkwardly.

‘Yep.'

‘You live with him now?'

‘Yep.'

‘What about your parents?'

Walter shrugged, staring into the dusk. After a minute he said, ‘Mum sent me down here. Thought Uncle was the best one to look after me. We got some family round here. Auntie Lily and Auntie Vonn live here in Boort too. You know 'em?'

Sadie shook her head.

‘Got some cousins in Wedderburn. Couple more aunties in Kerang.' Walter fell silent. Then he said, ‘Things weren't too good in Mildura.'

Sadie didn't know what to say. She wondered if it was true that he'd stabbed someone, but she was too scared to ask. She stared up at the sky. A single star glowed in the depths of blue. She said, ‘My dad's out west. He's an engineer with a mining company. He's making heaps of money.'

‘Yeah?' said Walter.

‘He says he might move to Dubai. Or Africa.'

‘Long way.'

‘Yeah. But so's the west. And he emails all the time.'

‘So you don't need another dad,' said Walter.

‘No.'

‘And I got my own mum. So I don't need a new mum, either.'

They looked at each other in the gathering dusk; it was getting hard to see. ‘Glad we got that sorted,' said Sadie.

Walter made a soft noise that might have been a chuckle. ‘Uncle says your real name's Saturday. Reckon he was having a joke with me.'

‘No, it's true,' sighed Sadie. ‘But no one
ever
calls me Saturday. I
hate
it. It's a
stupid
name.'

‘There was a warrior, back when the whitefellas first came. They called him Saturday. He fought for our lands, like a guerrilla fighter. He resisted; he was a hero. Uncle told me.'

Sadie wished she hadn't been so quick to call Saturday a stupid name. ‘What happened to him?'

‘Got killed.'

‘Oh.'

They were silent for a moment. Sadie said, ‘Mum had a deal with Dad – if I was a boy, I would have his surname, but if I was a girl, I'd have hers. And I was born on a Saturday, so that's what they called me. It could have been worse. I could have been Anzac or Melbourne Cup.'

‘Grand Final?' suggested Walter.

‘Or Boxing.'

Walter gave an appreciative snort. He was almost invisible in the dark. He was okay, Sadie supposed, but just because Ellie wanted to go out with David didn't mean she and Walter had to be best friends. The harder Ellie pushed it, the harder Sadie would push back. She could be a resistance fighter, too, like Saturday the warrior . . .

More stars appeared – silver sparks on blue velvet. The back door creaked open, and David called out, ‘Hey, you kids, aren't you freezing your bums off out there? Come in and eat.'

Warmth and brightness and the smell of Ellie's fish curry spilled from the doorway. Sadie didn't exactly elbow Walter out of the way; but she made sure she was the first one inside.

'I
can't be bothered cooking tonight,' Ellie announced on Friday night. ‘Let's treat ourselves for once and have a meal at the pub.'

Sadie looked up suspiciously from her maths homework, wondering if Ellie was trying to soften her up for something.

Ellie pounced on her, and Sadie shook her off. ‘You don't have to
strangle
me.'

Ellie blew a raspberry on Sadie's neck and danced away. Sadie hadn't seen her mum so excited since – well, since she'd decided they were moving to the country. Usually, the only thing that catapulted Ellie into such a good mood was a new project. And this time the new project must be David, Sadie thought sourly. Did he have any idea what he was in for?

Huddled in their parkas, Sadie and Ellie hurried through the frosty night toward the bright lights of the pub. When Ellie pushed open the door, a wave of warmth and noise rolled out to engulf them. It was surprisingly busy for a pub in a speck of a town in the middle of nowhere. Sadie hung back while Ellie pranced in and started chatting away to the old men who propped up the bar, shrugging off her jacket, shaking her long fair hair over her shoulders, laughing and joking with everyone.

Sadie sipped her lemon squash and kept close to her mum's elbow, torn between admiration for her mum's determination to make friends from a roomful of strangers, and a creeping sense of embarrassment. Sometimes, she thought, Ellie tried
too
hard.

Craig Mortlock leaned over and touched Sadie's arm. ‘The kids are all out in the back room,' he said.

Sadie clutched her glass, unwilling to leave the protective force field of her mother's presence. But Ellie gave her a nudge. ‘Go on. I'll yell when our dinner's ready.'

Sadie scowled, plonked her empty glass on the bar, and stalked away, through the quiet back bar with its pair of shabby leather couches and open fire, past the toilets, and into a low-roofed, draughty extension that opened onto a trellised beer garden.

A jukebox was belting out a daggy old Elton John song, and a group of teenagers clustered round a pool table. Sadie recognised some of them from school, though she wasn't sure of their names. Her heart skipped when she noticed Lachie Mortlock leaning on a cue, talking to an older girl with spiky red hair, the only other girl in the room. The girl saw Sadie, but her eyes flicked away.

Sadie slunk into a dark corner and wished she were invisible. These kids were older than she was; they didn't want anything to do with her at school, and they were ignoring her now. They were all normal kids; birds would never talk to
them
. Sadie wished she was normal. She picked at a pockmark in the wall where the paint had chipped, and watched Lachie and the other boys play pool.

No one spoke to her and after a while she drifted into a kind of peaceful trance. She began to work out names: the goofy boy with the freckles was Nank; the skinny, dark-haired one in the green shirt was Troy. Hammer was the square-headed, loud-voiced boy with no neck; he looked more like Craig's son than Lachie did. The sharp-featured boy with the rat's tail and the earring was Fox.

Sadie forgot that she wasn't really invisible; it was a shock to snap out of her trance and see the red-haired girl in front of her, holding out a cue.

Sadie blinked. ‘Sorry?'

‘I said, do you know how to play?' The girl smirked over her shoulder at the others. One of the boys guffawed.

‘A bit,' Sadie muttered.

The red-haired girl tossed her the cue and racked up the balls. She wore a red tartan miniskirt and black tights with ladders in them. Sadie clutched her cue in a sweaty fist, feeling very small and young. The boys lounged back against the walls, nursing Cokes. Lachie was perched on the back of a vinyl-covered chair. He gave her a smile and a wink, and Sadie's heart flip-flopped. She smiled back.

The red-haired girl messed up her first shot and swore. Nank sniggered. ‘Nice one, Jules.'

Sadie lined up her first shot carefully, and potted her ball. She potted the next two before she realised the boys ringed around the walls had fallen silent, watching, and then she got nervous and fluffed the next shot.

‘You're not bad,' said Jules grudgingly, and Sadie glowed. She didn't dare glance at Lachie.

Sadie won the game. Lachie and Troy were waiting to play next.

‘You're Sadie, right?' said Lachie. His fair hair flopped into his eyes. ‘Ellie Hazzard's your mum, yeah?'

Sadie nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

‘Thought so. Seen you around school. You should have a look in the front bar some time, and down at the Sports Centre. There are photos of the footy team and the cricket club. Your grandpa Phil's in just about all of them. There's been a Hazzard in every team for the last hundred years, just about. Sporting family, hey? Where'd you learn to play pool?'

‘Mum taught me.'

‘Yeah, and my dad probably taught
her
.' A knowing laugh ran around the room. Lachie said, ‘Give us a game after this one?'

Sadie swallowed; was he serious? She gestured feebly to the front of the pub. ‘My mum . . . dinner . . .'

‘No sweat,' said Lachie. ‘Next time, hey?'

‘Come on, Lachie, get on with it,' said Troy.

Lachie bent over the table to make his first swift, confident shot. The red ball slammed into the pocket. He winked over his shoulder at Sadie, as if they were two pros together. Sadie's stomach turned inside-out. She didn't even hear Ellie calling her to dinner.

‘Was that Lachie Mortlock?' Ellie's eyes danced.

Sadie picked at her peas. ‘Mm.'

‘It's bizarre seeing Craig and Amanda with a teenage son. I remember when Craig was ten, he had these white-blond curls . . .' Ellie mimed a halo of hair. ‘And now look at him, he's the president of the footy club, head of the progress association . . . We all used to go down to Lake Invergarry together for yabbies, get plastered in mud. Nana would do her block.'

‘I saw the lake the other day,' said Sadie. ‘Your lake, I mean. It's all dried up.'

‘Really?' Ellie looked up. ‘I guess it would be, with the drought. It never was very deep.'

‘I saw some ruins sticking up through the mud. They looked like old buildings.'

Ellie popped a sliver of steak into her mouth. ‘That would have been the Mortlock's old homestead, where they lived when they first moved into the district. Then someone had the bright idea to flood the valley and turn it into a dam. They built the big new house up on the higher ground. The mansion.' Ellie pulled a face. ‘All very grand. I think they had visions of boating parties, picnics, that kind of thing. But the lake was always a dud. It was never much good for anything but yabbies. Just a big, shallow, smelly swamp.'

‘When did they build it?'

‘I don't know. Ages ago. In the 1920s, maybe?'

Sadie hesitated. ‘I thought I saw some – some graves.'

‘Did you?' Ellie shrugged. ‘There could have been some Mortlocks buried there before they opened the cemetery out on the Wycheproof road.'

‘Do you think there are any Hazzards buried at the lake?'

‘No way! The Mortlocks wouldn't let any old corpse into their private graveyard. Snobby family, those Mortlocks.'

‘They're not snobby now.' Sadie was thinking of Lachie, but she said, ‘Craig's very friendly.'

‘Yes, well.' Ellie stabbed a potato. ‘Amanda, not so much.'

‘Do you—' Sadie hesitated again. ‘Do you want to go and look one day? At the lake, I mean?'

‘No,' said Ellie firmly. ‘No thanks.' She propped her cheek on her hand and stared at Sadie. ‘It's a spooky place, that lake. To tell you the truth, I never liked it. Even the yabbies tasted weird.'

Sadie didn't answer. Ellie wasn't a superstitious person. She had no patience with ghost stories or fears of the dark or monsters under beds. It was most unlike her to admit to feeling spooked about anything.

‘Did you feel it, when you were there?' Ellie said. ‘A bad atmosphere?'

‘It did feel – strange,' said Sadie.

‘Might be a good idea to keep away from there, okay?'

‘Mm.' Sadie kept her eyes on her plate.

But she had to know if she'd dreamed the talking crow, if the stones with their mysterious markings were real. Whatever her mother said, she already knew that she had to go back.