Sing Fox to Me (3 page)

Some of the room was still the way River had left it. Cards and pictures were taped to the walls. Most of the cards were scenes of foreign countries and places she'd probably wanted to see. They were all blank and unmarked. No stamps or addresses. Clancy wasn't sure where they'd come from. Someone at school, probably, or a shop in town. River had never known anyone to leave Tasmania except George's son, Murray, and he'd never sent her a word.

Clancy opened the wardrobe. River's clothes were still in there, clean but for a fine layer of dust on the shoulders. He slid the pelt from under his arm and lifted it into the cupboard. Clancy was about to tuck it in between some folded jumpers, but then decided against it. He closed the door.

River's bed was beside the door, the feet facing the corner. It had been neatly made with her only pair of sheets after she disappeared. Clancy couldn't remember who'd done that. George, probably. The sheets were patterned with dainty yellow daisies, faded now. Clancy was fairly certain she'd hated them. The pillows on the bed were old and flat, deflated without her sleeping breath to plump them up.

Clancy sat on the edge of her bed and let the pelt tumble into his lap like a tame house cat. The mattress was still soft. He stretched his crook leg out in front of him and warmed the skin on his thigh with his hands.

He should really let one of the twins have her room, but Clancy just couldn't. He couldn't live with the idea of finally turning River Fox out of his house, even if it was only the memory of her. And some days she was more than a memory. Some days he could hear her behind the door singing, playing, calling to her mother. On those days he would throw open the door, expecting his daughter to be there. The porcelain dolls would stare at him as though he wasn't welcome.

Clancy laid his head on her pillows. The bed creaked and the pelt shifted again, this time the entire head coming loose from its folds.

He closed his eyes. What had River's last night in her bedroom been like? Had she lain face down in her pillows and wished her mother were still alive, or sat at the window and waited for the tigers to emerge from the darkness? Had she fallen asleep in her bed wishing it was a burrow? Had she listened to Clancy and David bicker on the other side of the door, and wondered how far her legs could carry her?

Clancy rolled onto his side. River, River, River Fox. He never said her name out loud now.

After an hour, or maybe more – he'd forgotten to check the time before he came in – Clancy sat up. His face left an indent in her pillows. He checked his watch. 4.36. David and the twins were due after five.

‘Just enough time to clean up,' he told the pelt.

It stared back, unblinking.

‘Not you though, mate. You're living here for a bit.'

Clancy moved his leg. Gone to sleep. He moved his knee from side to side and groaned. The pelt unfurled with the movement of the bed, and a tiger took River's place on the sheets.

Her bed creaked as Clancy stood. A shot of pain went up the outside of his foot and travelled all the way to his hip. He hobbled across his daughter's room and through the door like he had many times before.

The tiger watched from the field of printed daisies.

‘Stay,' said Clancy, as if the tiger followed the same commands as his dog. He locked the door behind him.

Even though Samson Fox was
mostly
asleep in the front seat of the rental car, he was also partly
listening to his brother and dad talk about Clancy, the mountain and what they would all find there. From Jonah, Samson heard words like ‘hate' and ‘what if' and ‘are we there yet', while his dad answered with words like ‘fine' and ‘fun' and ‘stop worrying'. In the silence that eventually settled between them, Samson felt his brother give in.

Then everything tilted upwards like the car was travelling into the sky. Someone other than Samson might have woken up, they might even have been afraid, but Samson's extra chromosome was heavy and fear moved swiftly.

The car swirled. Samson breathed in and out, and his chest went up, up, up with the mountain, but unlike the mountain his breath came back down again and settled in his chest. He nuzzled into the blanket he had folded into a pillow. In the twilight between sleep and waking, bumpy car and dreams of his warm familiar bed, Samson remembered the day he first realised his extra chromosome was heavy.

They had just moved into their house beside the beach in Queensland. He and Jonah weren't very old, maybe seven or eight, although Samson was bad with numbers. Their dad asked them both to help him get rid of rotten wooden edging around the garden beds. Jonah didn't like helping, but Samson always said yes to everything. He dug his hands down into the dirt and pulled out a short wooden stake. As it came unstuck, he fell back, and the stake showered dirt all over his legs.

‘Good job,' said his dad.

Samson held the stake in both hands and stared into the hole. The dirt inside was loose and dark. He shuffled in closer to get a better look. In the middle of the hole was what looked like a grubby rock. The rock opened its eyes and blinked.

‘Look,' said Samson softly, not wanting to frighten it.

‘A toad!' screamed their mum.

Jonah pushed him out of the way. ‘What? Oh, gross.'

‘It's not a toad,' said Samson. A poster on the back door of his schoolroom identified all the local frogs and reptiles. ‘It's a frog, mum. A burrowing frog.'

‘Get the shovel.'

The eyes blinked again, just once, before their dad ran the burrowing frog through with the steel shovel-head. ‘Got him!'

‘I didn't know toads lived like that.'

Crouched beside the hole with the rotten paling still in his hands, Samson started to think. If they could have, his parents would have run his extra chromosome through as well.

‘Look,' said a voice. It was his dad. ‘See? I killed it.'

Samson opened his eyes. Everything rushed back towards him like a train halting at a station. He blinked and sat up. The rolled-up blanket slumped down into the space between his seat and the car door.

‘Look,' said his dad again. ‘The house is at the end of this drive.'

It took ages for him to park. He tried three times to pull in alongside the house, but he had to keep reversing.

‘Justpullover,' said Jonah. ‘Pull. Over.'

‘Don't take that seatbelt off until I've stopped this bloody car,' said David, in his serious voice. The one he sometimes borrowed from their mum.

Samson glanced into the rear-view mirror and saw his brother put his hand on the seatbelt buckle. He kept it there, ready to unlock it as soon as their dad stopped the car. ‘Just park anywhere.'

‘I can't. The old man'll never let me forget it if I can't park this bastard.'

Samson turned away from the bickering and looked outside. The house was brown brick with small windows, like droopy eyes. The curtains were closed, but the door was open. His mum said he should try and practise his maths skills whenever he got the chance, so he counted the supports holding the roof out. Eight in the front, six down the side facing him and two around the other side, but there were probably more he couldn't see. Around the house was a white fence, and inside the pickets was a dark green lawn. Just beyond the fence, towards the back of the house, were two water tanks on wooden stilts.

His dad nudged the car into a narrow opening next to Clancy's ute, and the car grumbled to a stop. ‘
Finally
. Did he see?'

The house looked empty. ‘No,' said Samson.

David bent in over the steering wheel and sighed.

Jonah was first out. He slammed the door and took a few steps. ‘Shouldn't he be waiting?'

Samson clicked the buckle at his side, but nothing happened. He tried again, and the belt sprang free. As he opened the door, his legs uncoiled like wound springs.

‘Dad, hurry up,' said Jonah, his feet tapping as though he was already moving.

‘Go ahead.' David gestured towards the house like Adriana on
Wheel of Fortune.

Jonah didn't move. ‘Not by myself, ' he whined.

Relax,
signed Samson, and the sign for
relax
was two hands spread wide, facing down, shook twice into the chest where sometimes it was tight and couldn't relax.

‘Shut up,' mumbled Jonah, even though he didn't understand sign.

Their dad checked himself in the mirror. He ran his hand over the new stubble on his chin and frowned. ‘I'm starting to look like him,' he muttered.

Outside, Jonah's jumpy feet moved to the edge of the fenced lawn and back again, like he needed a wee. ‘
Dad!
'

‘Jonah, calm the hell down,' said their dad, as he got out of the car and closed the door. ‘Unload the car.'

Jonah stomped back to them. Samson got out of his way. David lifted their bags out of the boot and dropped them on the drive, then grabbed his overnight bag but left his own large suitcase. He closed the boot, then smiled at Samson. ‘Jonah, give us a minute? I want to go over a few things with your brother.'

‘What things?'

‘Just wait inside the gate.'

‘Hurry
up
.' Jonah stomped back to the fence.

Samson wondered if his brother's feet ever got sore.

David made the sign for Samson to come closer. ‘Stay around the house, and don't wander while you're here. Use full sentences, and keep your tongue inside your mouth.'

Samson clamped his teeth shut and tried to say, ‘I will, Dad', at the same time, but he nipped his tongue. David looked disappointed. Samson saw disappointment every time he missed something, or heard something different to what had been said. He saw it every time he tried to turn his thoughts into words or tell his favourite stories.

David nodded. ‘Okay, then.'

As his dad walked away to join his other son, Samson thought of the burrowing frog shattering into bloody lumps beneath the shovel-head.

He bit his tongue again, only this time on purpose.

Clancy dropped the key to River's room back in the Huon ditty box and closed the lid. He slid the box behind an out-of-date phone book and piled the unopened letters up around it. He doubted David or the boys would see it there and, even if they did, it would look like only a box of old junk.

Clancy hobbled to the pot, opposite side of the room, and poured himself a cuppa. The leaves had been sitting for a while, but even though the tea was lukewarm, Clancy didn't mind. He preferred strong to hot. He carried his cup to the kitchen table and stretched his crook leg out in front of him. It had to be kept straight, otherwise the cobbled veins would aggravate and his leg would swell from groin to ankle.

Queenie left her spot just outside the front door and slunk inside. She headed under the kitchen table, her tail thumping into his crook leg. ‘
Oh
… Come on now, take it easy, girl,' he said, lifting his knee out of her way.

He took a sip of lukewarm tea and looked at the shadow of the pelt. Its outline was stained into the wall, probably from years of direct sun. Essie had insisted they put in the skylight over the kitchen island a year or two after they married. Back then, the pelt never came down off the wall. It was only an artwork, a keepsake of bygone years when tiger men still roamed the west, and you could still hear the tigers barking, growling and moving around at night.

Clancy took another sip of tea, thinking of the blokes who'd come looking for tigers on his mountain years before. He clicked his fingers, something dawning on him. Maybe he should hide their videotapes as well. He stood and walked into the living room. Queenie shuffled out from under the table, following him. She settled beside the smouldering fireplace and wrapped herself into a tight ball.

The tapes were in a shemozzle beside the telly and VCR. It was a hell of a job for someone in his state. Should he bother hiding them? They weren't marked, and he doubted the twins would care about a bunch of unmarked videotapes.

A sound outside. Queenie's ears pricked and she sniffed the air. She left her spot by the fireplace and focused on the open door, just visible through the archway between the living room and kitchen. Her rumbling deepened to a growl. Clancy reached for her collar, and she let him restrain her.

A gentle knock at the front door. ‘Dad?' David stepped through the doorframe. A sour-looking boy shadowed him, tucking his small body into the narrow space beside his father. Another lad waited behind them.

‘Stay,' Clancy said to Queenie, who growled but didn't move.

‘Hello, Dad,' said David.

Clancy nodded. His son looked much the same, a bit thinner maybe, but still easy on the eye. His hair had remained dark like that of Clancy's da, but David had his mother's complexion, fair and freckled. There were some changes, of course. David wore city clothes, a white button-up shirt, blue jeans as if he still wanted to fit in, and a pale yellow suit jacket with rolled-up sleeves. Reminded Clancy of the blokes he sometimes saw on magazines at the petrol station.

‘These your boys?' said Clancy, made aware of his saggy trackies and old cardigan. He pulled his long, freshly showered hair back from his face and shoulders, and tied it at the nape of his neck with a rubber band from the washstand, being careful not to disturb the phone book or letters hiding the ditty box.

‘Say hello,' said David, but the sour-looking boy beside him wouldn't even glance up. He was like David, with his pale skin and short dark hair, but when he finally did raise his eyes, Clancy saw they were almost black, like River's, or the pelt's.

The other boy smiled from behind his dad. ‘We're here,' he said, as though it was big news. He was larger than his brother and broader. He had long hair the same colour as Clancy's had once been, and despite their strange almond shape, his eyes were like Essie's, blue-green and ready for fun.