Sing Fox to Me (11 page)

‘I didn't do anything.'

Clancy switched his weight from one leg to another, and his face tensed with pain. ‘Poor old girl,' he said. ‘Must have scared the stuffing out of her.'

‘I can help,' said Jonah, standing up. He didn't exactly
want
to find the vicious dog, but he did want his granddad's company. ‘I'm good at finding things, promise.'

When Clancy shook his head, something inside Jonah's chest unbalanced and dropped into his feet. ‘Best go on my own.'

Looking down, Jonah mumbled, ‘Whatever.' Another day all on his own. Big deal. It wasn't as if he'd ever had friends. The boys at school thought he was weird and weak. They said he was too skinny for football and not tall enough for basketball. It didn't matter, though, because Jonah didn't want to play. He'd lasted years on his own. A few more weeks weren't going to kill him. He didn't need Clancy. He didn't need anyone. And besides, he didn't
really
want to be friends with his granddad. There was no one on the mountain he wanted to be friends with.

Then, he thought of Murray's black kookaburra. King had been nice to him.

Jonah took another bite of his toast. It was cold.

Mattie asked Samson what he wanted to be when he grew up, but he didn't have an answer. No one had ever asked him before, and he'd taken that to mean there would only be more of the same. More of his parents, more Special School, more of his friends, and maybe a job at McDonald's or KFC. That was where most of the kids he knew went. Either that, or they faded back into lives with their parents. All of that was hard to explain to Mattie, so he just shrugged.
You?

Police
, signed Mattie.

Samson thought Mattie would look beautiful in blue.

I could find my dad
, she signed.
He's gone
.

Me too
, signed Samson, and Mattie looked confused.
Mine too
, he corrected.

Nodding, Mattie asked,
Where?

Samson shrugged.
Just, gone
.

Without a trace?

Without a trace
, Samson answered, even though his mum said he should never repeat things.

There are always clues
.

Clues?
he asked.

Mattie stopped walking and turned to face him. She nodded, leant in closer as though there was a secret inside her mouth, and signed something clearly very important. Samson watched her fingers.
Things to help us find him
.

But something in Samson's gut told him that his dad didn't want them to find him, or bring him back.
It won't help.

Mattie stared at him as if she couldn't understand. Then, she nodded.
Do you like your name?

Samson nodded vigorously.
It's from a Bible story
.

I share mine. M-A-T-I-L-D-A, same as Mum
, signed Mattie.
Like the song
.

Samson shrugged.

W-A-L-T-Z-I-N-G M-A-T-I-L-D-A?

Samson knew the song. They used to sing it at Special School on Australia Day. The performance always took weeks of practice, but it always sounded messy. The music teacher played the guitar while everyone else clashed tambourines and sang in different pitches. She never told them what to do, and Samson was never sure if he was supposed to be learning something or if he was good enough already.

Tell the story of your name
, signed Mattie.

Samson cleared his throat, though he then told the story of the Other Samson's strong arms and strong legs with his hands.
He fell in love with a girl who cut away his hair. He was arrested and his eyes were plucked out …

Mattie made a face.

… but he had one last bit of strength, and this strength was from God
.

Mattie wrinkled her nose like she'd smelt something bad.

The Other Samson used the gift to push down the whole city
.

As if.

‘Yes,' said Samson with his voice, and he showed her with two nearby trees. ‘One hand like this,' he said, because he was already using his hands and Mattie could lip-read. ‘And the other hand like this. Then he pushed.' Samson shoved with all his strength against the trees on either side of him. Neither moved.

Mattie smiled.

Samson's skin blushed. He let the trees go and wished he could explain the story better, the way his mum and dad used to. He wished he could tell Mattie about being strong and about sacrifice, but the words wouldn't come. His extra chromosome was heavy, and he felt it in his hands. He glanced down. His fingers were dirty. He brushed his hands together, but the dirt from the tree trunk stuck to his skin.

Jonah found King resting on a hot water tank. He opened one eye, then the other.

Jonah smiled. ‘Hi.'

King cocked his head.

‘I have something for you.' Jonah reached into the pocket of his shirt and took out the crusts of his toast from breakfast. He'd made sure to bring pieces with butter and not vegemite. ‘Do you like toast?'

The bird pressed his feathers flat against his body. Jonah saw again the vibrant blue streak hidden beneath his wing.

Jonah stretched out his hand. King turned his body away as if pretending to look at something else, but he shuffled closer.

‘Come on,' Jonah said.

King snatched the crumbs, the end of his beak flicking against Jonah's palm. The touch made his stomach flutter.

When the crusts were gone, King stepped back next to the water tank. His smooth black feathers glowed, but his eyes stared at Jonah like two angry black pearls.

Jonah never found birds scary, not like some of the kids at school. Sometimes during summer he would watch the boys from school being swooped by local nesting magpies. The magpies bombed bikes and dived on heads, but they never went after Jonah. As though they knew he wouldn't harm them, or maybe they even thought he was one of their gulp.

King opened his beak and left it agape. A warning.

‘It's okay,' said Jonah. ‘I'm your friend.' He put his hands on either side of the wooden ledge, trapping King in the middle. ‘I promise.'

King shook his head.

Jonah edged his hands closer. King flicked his head and started to laugh. The sound whirled up between them like a wave and broke in cackling trills and deep guttural chokes. Jonah covered his ears. ‘Shut up.'

The laughing didn't stop.

‘Shut up!'

Up and down the voice went, up and down, up and down. Cackling, cackling at him as if he wasn't even there, laughing at him for wanting just one friend.

Jonah's hands wrapped around the bird's neck. ‘Stop it.' He was shaking. ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it.'

Then, the laughing stopped.

Clancy unlocked the door to River's room. Rainbows danced. He closed the door behind him. The pelt was curled up in the centre of the bed and looked more at home than it had days before. Its head was on top of its paws, and the small black eyes were looking out the window. Clancy lifted the pelt up by the neck. The black and orange body unfurled and hung over the bed. Some days it seemed so alive – and others, like today, it was just a dead thing. Hollow and limp, it needed him to make it live again.

Clancy rubbed his forehead. His headache was still there, right behind his skull. He didn't want to take the pelt out, with the twins roaming free on his mountain, but what choice did he have? He couldn't just let Queenie go. For all he knew, the fuckin' tigers might have her too. Or, maybe, Queenie had found them for him. Maybe she was waiting in the bush, nose pointed towards the opening of a cave or the inside of a burrow. ‘That's my girl,' he said, as though she was there with him.

He decided not to change his clothes inside the house. The twins might come home, and he wasn't ready to open that particular can of worms. They might not understand about the pelt or why he did what he did with it. He bundled the pelt into a ball and shoved it under the arm of his cardigan. Then he locked River's room and left the key in the ditty box on the washstand. He never bothered with shoes before a hunt, because he'd only take them off again once he was in the bush.

As he left through the back door, he decided to walk all the way to the top. It would takes hours but it had been a few weeks since he'd seen Essie, and he could kill two birds with one stone. He was so used to Queenie following him that he told her to stay before he remembered she wasn't there.

‘Queenie!' he shouted as he opened the gate. He waited, hoping to hear her old body crashing through the underbrush. ‘Come on, girl.' But there was nothing. Nothing but the slim whisper of leaves and the gentle clucking of birds far away. A wren alighted on the fence next to him and swung from side to side like a can-can dancer. Essie had loved them. ‘Queenie!' The bird flew away.

Clancy didn't close the gate behind him, in case the old dog wanted back in.

The pelt jostled inside the sleeve of his cardigan, eager to get going.

When he looked up, the sun dazzled his eyes. He tried to peer through the dense bush. Then he lowered his head, held on to his crook leg and started walking.

Climbing his mountain hadn't been easy since the accident, but, he told himself, at least there was a path. Murray, David and River were responsible for it. They had run deep grooves into the earth, chasing each other over the mountain. As they grew, and David opted out of their childhood games, the paths across the mountain changed too. Grass grew up, ferns dropped, rocks tumbled. After Essie died, Clancy and George found the path again. It didn't take long before their feet made it look like a new cut in old flesh. Then Clancy had his accident, and his leg became an anchor tied to the house.

‘Queenie … Queen Elizabeth!' Clancy's voice lifted into the trees but couldn't break free of the canopy, tumbling back around him. When his throat couldn't take any more, he had a coughing fit and had to grab a tree trunk. Afterwards, he straightened up, spat the phlegm from his lungs into the dirt and pushed his hair back from his eyes. ‘Queenie,' he called again, but his voice sounded wet and scratched.

How could he have lost her? She was the one member of his family he'd kept safe all these years. The one thing he had protected, from the moment he hauled her out of that rubbish bag. He remembered, clear as anything, the day they found her.

The town meetings between the loggers and tree huggers had only just started, and Clancy hadn't wanted to go. But George said it was important to know what the town wanted to do about logging. This was back when Clancy was on the grog most nights and woke most mornings with an angry headache. Although that morning hadn't been different, Clancy rarely turned George down.

The meeting was a bunch of idiots from both sides, shouting at one another. The most civil thing anyone said was that they should meet every week. ‘Fuck that!' yelled Clancy, and the row started all over again. A few hippies in see-through white shirts told him he was being aggressive. He told them to fuck off. George stayed silent, watching them argue. He stayed silent on the way home too.

‘Those blokes are just as full of bullshit as they were before the forestry bastards showed up,' said Clancy. ‘A lot of money, though.'

George turned the ute onto the creek road. He didn't like cursing.

Clancy saw the rubbish bag first and asked George to pull over. ‘Bloody campers,' he said. ‘Wait here. I'll grab it.'

The thin, puckered bag was caught on the rocks. Clancy leant across the churning water and pulled it free. The bag bumped against his thigh. Soft, but heavy. He undid the red plastic tie and folded the mouth of the bag back. Dark inside. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust. ‘Looks like cuts of roo,' he called back to George, who was standing by the ute, having a smoke.

Clancy was about to close the bag when something moved. A tiny black pup.

‘Come on, little fella,' he said, reaching into the darkness of the rubbish bag.

Something was wrong. The eyes didn't move. Then Clancy saw the flies and maggots. They were everywhere. Mouth, eyes, inside its nose. He brought his hand back out of the bag so sharply that he stumbled and fell. The small body of the pup flopped to one side and slipped away into the tangle of death.

Water rushed beneath Clancy's fingers and soaked through the seat of his pants.

‘It's full of pups,' he shouted, and his voice sounded like the river, fast and wet and tumbling over itself.

‘Any alive?' called George.

Clancy took a deep breath and looked again. Only one living pup. An exhausted red bitch with a scratch down the left side of her face and a nail missing from a front paw. She stretched towards him. The suffocated bodies of her siblings moved around her, reaching, grasping, falling in over themselves. Clancy lifted the red pup out by the scruff of her neck and pressed her tiny, damp body into his chest. It smelt of death and mildew. She whimpered when he threw the rubbish bag into the ute tray.

‘Oh sorry, little one,' he said, and he held her closer.

‘You right, mate? Take a bit of a fall, did you?'

‘I'm fine,' said Clancy.

‘Found one, aye?' George opened the door. He stubbed his durry out in the ute ashtray. ‘She's a
little
bugger.'

‘Battler, more like,' said Clancy, climbing into the cabin.

The pup whimpered again.

‘How many more?' George started the ute and swung it back onto the road.

‘Not sure. Ten maybe.'

‘Drowned?'

‘Nah, they were dry.'

George scratched the pup's head. ‘Poor little tacker.'

Clancy thought of River and he held the small, shaking body close. ‘I'm alright,' he said, even though no one had asked.