Sing Fox to Me (9 page)

A couple of years back, two blokes had come to Clancy's mountain asking if they could ‘monitor the landscape for evidence of thylacines'.

‘Gunns or council?' Clancy asked.

They said neither, so Clancy asked them in for a cuppa. One of the blokes was a scientist from Hobart, and the other was a second-generation Tassie dairy farmer.

‘You hunters?' he asked, remembering the tiger men from when he was young.

The farmer smiled. He had a nice round face, like most who worked in dairy. Must be something in the milk. ‘Not the killing kind,' he said.

‘We want to protect their habitat,' said the scientist bloke. He reminded Clancy of David. University blokes were all the same. ‘But first, we need to prove –'

Clancy cut in. ‘What does that have to do with my mountain?'

The dairy farmer leant forward. ‘This is one of the last places they were seen.'

‘I know,' said Clancy. ‘I'm the one that seen them.'

‘Really?' The scientist glanced down at the papers in front of him. ‘We were told it was your daughter who saw the tigers?'

The dairy farmer looked at Clancy, ‘sorry' in his eyes. Clancy knew the look, and feel of it well. Feeling sorry was in every real Tasmanian's blood. It was built beneath the skin of the country like plates beneath the earth. Every Tasmanian had heard about River's disappearance. The farmer might have seen it on the news or read about it in the paper. The most famous article published about the Fox family was ‘A Tiger Stole His Baby' – the city bird who wrote it said Clancy should be in jail, alongside Lindy Chamberlain.

Clancy stood. He was done. ‘Feel free to look around,' he told them. He didn't finish his cuppa, but he did ask for a copy of their surveillance tapes.

‘We should be able to,' said the scientist bloke.

‘We'll send you a VCR too,' said the farmer, ‘if you're prepared to foot the bill.'

‘How much?' Clancy asked. Turned out to be more than he'd imagined, but worth it.

Both men shook hands with Clancy before they left his house.

Weeks later, the footage arrived on dozens of videotapes, along with the video player. Clancy couldn't work out how to hook it up, so Murray did it for him.

‘What made you get a VCR?' he asked.

Clancy shrugged.

‘I didn't think you liked movies.' Murray's hands were buried in a web of black and grey cables.

That night, Clancy watched the footage. It showed four different views of his mountain. Inside the throbbing green and silver images, he saw devils, wallabies and possums. Even a few wombats.

‘You'll know a tiger,' the scientist bloke said in a card with the tape package. ‘The eyes of a tiger glow white.'

Clancy never saw any white.

Sometimes, when the veins in his leg pushed up from beneath his skin and his leg was too sore to follow River up his mountain, Clancy would put the tape into the VCR and watch the footage of the empty mountain until he fell asleep.

He hoisted himself up off the coffee table and shuffled around to his armchair, while Queenie settled herself in front of the fireplace. ‘Ready, girl?' he asked. She answered by hogging the front of the fire with her bum.

The tape started.

The dairy farmer's round face appeared on the telly screen. ‘Is it secure?'

‘Good to go,' said the scientist bloke. He was somewhere behind the camera, tying it to the tree.

Clancy wasn't sure what had possessed him to let them onto his mountain for their study. River, probably. Clancy was still desperate for any sign of her. Meanwhile, the scientist and the farmer were desperate for any sign of tigers.

‘Is there enough cover?' asked the farmer.

‘Yes, and it won't obscure anything coming down through those trees.'

The dairy farmer vanished from the screen, and branches shook over the lens. That tree was gone now, struck by lightning. The picture on the screen moved in and out of focus. It was almost dusk. One last wiggle of the camera, and Clancy heard the scientist climb down the tree too. The branches shook again.

‘Don't forget the footprints,' he said.

‘Not much light left,' said the farmer. ‘We'd better get a wriggle on.'

Clancy listened to them packing up and moving away. The bush sounds returned. A scraping of leaves, one against the other, disturbed by a desperate rattling wind that came through like a dying breath from a wet lung. A quarter of an hour to go before the first wallaby came nosing. He never used the fast-forward button. No point. Nothing to move towards.

His attention drifted. Essie's doilies were still on the armrests of both living-room chairs. He hated the doilies, but they'd belonged to his mother-in-law and been part of Essie's trousseau, so he left them. Sometimes, while he watched the telly, his fingers would worry at the edge of the lacy webs. All unravelling, but no one to repair them.

Sure enough, fifteen minutes into the video, a wallaby came nosing. It stayed for a moment, looking, sniffing, on the watch for danger. An owl hooted in the distance. Even though Clancy knew the sound was part of the recording, he still looked out the window, seeking the owl. It hooted again. ‘Masked barn owls', some called them, but the Tytos were never interested in barns. Biggest in the world, George reckoned. Another cry, followed by the beat of wings and a squeak, crack, and then silence. After so many years of watching the same footage over and over, Clancy could easily imagine the ghost face behind those sounds.

A devil came sniffing. It snapped its jaws at the camera, as if it knew Clancy was watching, and then it stumbled away, brash and unafraid. Clancy wondered if that was how he looked when he searched the scrub, especially with his leg.

Clancy changed the tape, sick of it. The next was his favourite view. Just beyond the fence and into the scrub, with the gorge hidden behind mounds of rock. On one side was a giant eucalypt, and on the other a lemon-scented boronia. The Huon pine that broke his leg was still where it fell, half shattered against the rocks. Over the years, the mountain had sprung up around it, and all but covered it over with Tassel Rope-rush and drooping king-ferns.

Another wallaby appeared from behind the Huon. Clancy'd seen that little blighter before, but no matter how many times he watched the tape, he never saw what he was actually searching for. No hint of cage-like stripes or rush of red fur. No barking voice or toothy yawn. No scarper. No laugh or hint of white nightie. No burning night eyes. Just the emptiness of an old man's final hope, caught like rays of light between the ancient tree trunks and sleepy ferns.

He didn't watch for long because the dawn kookas started up on the video. Queenie rolled over, kicking her legs as if trying to push the birds away. She hated their cackling almost as much as he did. He got up, hit the stop button and rewound the tape, ready to play again. Queenie lifted her head and stared at him, then curled back around her front paws and closed her eyes.

‘You've got the right idea,' said Clancy, sitting down again.

At least he'd done one decent thing. He shut his eyes and fell between the folds of sleep. At least he'd kept the tiger pelt from catching another generation of Foxes.

Eventually Jonah stopped running. His breathing was heavy so he bent down, braced himself on his knees and took a few long, deep breaths. The dog hadn't followed him. Not that she
could
follow – Queenie was old and fat, and Jonah spent heaps of time running from kids at school. After he'd caught his breath, Jonah straightened up and looked around. Trees swayed and the sky darkened, making even the tufts of blooming daisies look almost sinister. Jonah took another deep breath and wondered if the scrub was getting closer. Shere Khan wouldn't be afraid of some dumb dog or some old trees. Hunters were never afraid.

It was a good place for an old game.

Jonah pressed his fingers into the shape of a handgun and jumped behind a tree. He rolled between some rocks and squeezed himself beside others. He lay hidden and ready, his hands outstretched, in thick patches of daisies. But, eventually, he got bored. Nothing was actually
happening.
There were no footprints to follow, other than those left by his own runners. No sounds other than the rustle, squawk or laugh of birds. No smells other than the scent of damp, unending undergrowth.

How was he supposed to find anything in a place like this?

Then he heard the steady rush of water. At first, he didn't recognise the noise of the creek – it was more like rain keeping a hard beat across a tin roof. He didn't know the sound of inland water, which wasn't the churning, dumping ocean he was used to. He followed the noise until the creek emerged from between the trees and rocks. Even at a distance he could feel the air change. He tied his scarf tighter around his neck.

The creek burbled and rushed past his feet, spitting flecks of ice-cold water onto his clothes and hands, but Jonah didn't move. He waited with his arms crossed over his chest for a long time. He stared at the surface of the water as though it could somehow pick him up and take him somewhere else.

‘Jonah!' he shouted. His voice skipped across the surface and over the steady rush. ‘Jonah!'
Skip, skip
… ‘JONAH!' This time his voice was like thunder. The sound of the creek hushed and was replaced. Everything was Jonah. The creek was Jonah, and the scrub, the air, sky and trees. Jonah held his arms out wide. It all belonged to him. ‘
JONAH!
' he shouted until he was out of breath.

Everything fell quiet again and stayed quiet for a long time. Jonah thought of his dad, the satchel and the tyre skids in the driveway.

‘Hey!' The silence shattered.

Jonah looked across the creek. His brother was waiting on the other side. Samson waved. He wore pyjama pants tucked into runners.

‘Dad's gone,' yelled Jonah, maybe because he was finally ready to say it, or maybe because it didn't matter anymore.

Samson nodded. ‘He said to say goodbye.'

‘When?'

A shrug. ‘He woke me up.'

Jonah thought of Samson standing in the hallway that morning, asking to play hide-and-seek. ‘Why didn't you tell me?'

Samson shrugged again.

‘What else did he say?'

‘He
did
say something! But I don't remember exactly.'

The anger rose up inside Jonah like a wave about to break. He lifted his face to the sky. Tears burned his eyes. He tried not to feel angry, and it was no good. Why did Samson get everything, even the last word from their dad? Jonah's stomach ached. Why did their dad wake Samson and not him? Why couldn't Samson remember what David said? His last words must have been important.

Jonah pushed his fists into the base of his stomach, trying to force his anger out. It didn't work, so he opened his mouth and said the word he was never supposed to say.

It skipped across the surface of the creek. Samson held his hands out to catch the word before he knew what it was. Jonah knew it was wrong, but he didn't care. He shouted it again and again – and, for the first time, no one was there to stop him.

After his brother was gone, Jonah left the creek and walked deeper into the bush, where he found something large and brown and dead.

He took a closer look. It was a wallaby, or least what was left of a wallaby. One side of the animal's body was caved in, its skin ripped open. He poked it with a stick, and the wallaby rolled towards him. The eyes were still open.

‘Tell me,' he muttered.

The wallaby didn't move.

‘Tell me what he said.'

A fly landed in a streak of blood on its face, and Jonah brought his stick down onto the carcass. He wasn't sure how many times he hit the wallaby, but when he stopped, the other side of its body was caved in as well.

Samson left his brother beside the creek and stomped back up the mountain towards his granddad's house. He swung out at a branch but missed and almost sent himself off-balance. His brother wasn't supposed to call him names. Especially not
that
name. Jonah would never have said the ‘R' word if their dad was still on the mountain. Samson made the sign for
not
, which was the same as
don't
or
stop that
, but it didn't help.

Samson had walked to the very edge of the creek, where the water was sluggish and slow, and made the sign for
brother
,
which was two fists rubbing up against each other but not quite touching.
Brother
was the strongest word Samson knew.
Brother
,
he signed, but Jonah wasn't looking. He was singing his own song, and Samson didn't know the words so he snapped the sign for
brother
in two. One left, one right, neither whole without the middle, and he tucked each piece away in the pockets of his jacket.

The ‘R' word had always followed him, no matter how fast he went or how much he tried to stay ahead. It stalked him through his classes, growling from the fringes like Shere Khan the tiger. Waiting for him just beyond the safety of the Special School fence. That word wasn't the only tiger either. There was ‘special'. The sign for
special
was two fingers up on either side of the face. Samson's teacher said signing
special
and saying ‘special' meant two different things. Kids from Jonah's school knew the difference. They called Samson ‘special' and sometimes ‘mong'. His dad said not to worry, because ‘mong' was a historical word to describe people who looked like Samson.

‘Mongoloid came before Langdon Downs,' his dad said, and Samson imagined two giants fighting like Godzilla and King Kong. ‘People with … people like you, were thought to look like them.'

‘Who's them?' asked Samson, but his dad wouldn't answer.

Later, in their room with the partition half pulled back, Jonah explained.