The Eye of the Sheep (21 page)

‘Jimmy, it’s the middle of the working day – it won’t be Robby. And it isn’t your father. It won’t be anyone. Just a wrong number. You pop to the shops and pick up the goodies for your old mum, there’s a good boy. Forget about the telephone.’

‘Yes, Mum, alright, Mum,’ I said. ‘Goodies for my old mum. Forget about the telephone. Forget about Dad.’

‘Off you go.’ Mum nodded towards the door. ‘The sooner you go the sooner you’re back.’

I opened the front door and stepped onto Emu Street. I’d done the walk to the shops with Mum a million times but this was my first solo journey.

I kept my nose down and my eye on the line that joined cracks and bricks and fence posts. I followed it along the road as it wrapped its way around every stone and piece of gravel. If you followed that line you would get to the Indian where Robby was and if you kept following it further you could cross the sea and arrive on the edge of Broken Island where the waves carried the memory.

The street was very quiet. I didn’t see anyone – nobody driving cars or running with dogs, no postmen or seniors pushing trolleys or mothers pushing prams or boys on bikes. I looked up into the sky and squinted. I saw a spaceship disguised as a cloud. There had been an explosion. The spaceship had dropped a toxic bomb. It fell slowly to its target, the earth, and when
it hit it destroyed every living thing, including Mrs Stratham. Only Mum and me survived. There was no school anymore, no Dr Eric, no refinery, no Dad, no Broken Island. All gone. Just Mum and me and the corner shop.

I followed the line, chanting, ‘
Bikkies and milk, bikkies and milk, bikkies and milk!
’ in time to my walking feet.

‘Anything else?’ Mr Lee Sam asked as I put the milk on the counter. Samantha Billmore’s face smiled from the carton, the wire across her teeth like a fence in miniature. Mr Lee Sam narrowed his eyes. ‘Well?’

‘Biscuits,’ I said.

Mr Lee Sam turned around to the shelf behind him. ‘Which ones?’ he asked me over his shoulder.

I looked up and down the shelf at Mum’s favourites: angels, easy teas and cow chips. I stopped when I got to jam supremes. Mum never chose jam supremes. ‘Supremes!’ I said to Mr Lee Sam. ‘Supreme surprise for my mum!’

‘Okay,’ he said, reaching for the packet. ‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it!’ I copied. ‘That’s it.’

‘Four dollars twenty, kid.’

‘Four dollars twenty, kid,’ I repeated, passing him the fiver.

He put the biscuits and the milk in a plastic bag and handed them over to me.

I walked out, the bag knocking against my legs. Back out on the street there still wasn’t anyone around. My heart, the most vital of organs, pumped harder as I began to walk faster. The bomb that the spaceship had dropped leaked a poison into the atmosphere so I had to hold my breath. I couldn’t follow the line to see if it joined on the way home as well as the way here.
Everything was still except me; I was the only fast and living thing. Everything else was the dead enemy – I had to make it home to my mother the mountain.

I don’t know how but I took a wrong street, an alien street I had never seen before. Where had the street come from? Who put it there? I stopped still in the middle of it. I thought it was going to be Emu, I thought it was going to be our house at one end but it wasn’t. I didn’t recognise any of the houses or cars or plants or light posts. I was lost. I saw a curtain move behind a window; I was being watched. People with binoculars peered out at me, examining my moves. I spun in a circle, looking down both ends. My vision was shaky. I was going too fast. My hands bounced before me, I couldn’t slow down. The air was all in my top half and filling up higher. The bottom half was vacated.

A boy rode past on a bicycle. ‘Watch out, idiot! Get off the road!’ he shouted.

Road? Was I on the road? When had I gone on the road?

I began to run, there was no time now for counting cracks or bricks or lines. I heard something drop. I turned and saw milk spilling across the road from Samantha Billmore’s head. I ran faster. I couldn’t see one thing that I had ever seen before. The bomb kept ticking. I turned and ran back. If I found the shop Mr Lee Sam would be there – he would know the way home.

But when I got to the end of the street there was no shop. The shop was missing, melted away with the toxic acid.

‘Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah!’ My blood moved around me too fast, too fast! ‘Ah ah ah ah ah ah!’ I was going to explode! ‘Ah ah ah ah ah ah!’ I was losing vision, my realities were blurring. ‘Ah ah ah ah!’ Then the bomb exploded, sending me spinning across the earth, my legs rotating faster and faster until there it
was! There it was at last! The house with the brown roof, the slit instead of the box, the cracked driveway of Emu Street! Home!

I ran through the door. Where was crying to release me?

‘Mum! Mum!’ I called. ‘Mum!’ I ran panting and pounding down the hall into the kitchen – oven, sink, cupboard, fridge, table, bench, curtains, but no mother.

‘Mum! Mum!’ Where was she? Bedroom one, sewing room, bathroom, bedroom two and there she was, the white land of her spilling from her violet corner chair, eyes closed, her skirt pulled up and showing her legs, calves dotted with a thousand holes, the ends of tiny pipes in a pattern, all leading down to her network. ‘
Mum! Mum!
’

Her eyes opened. ‘Jimmy,’ she said, in a half-whisper.

I threw myself against her and felt her body, warm as a day on the beach.

‘Careful, love. Your mum’s a bit tired.’ She moved me back and tried to sit up straight in her chair. The telephone rang from the kitchen. Mum shook her head. ‘No, Jimmy, just leave it.’ Her voice was full with wing dust, as if the moths were taking over and speaking through her.
Let us out.

‘Puffer, Mum?’ I asked, going to her dressing table and picking up the puffer. ‘It’s a full one, Mum. Do you want it?’

‘It’s okay, love, got one here.’ She tapped the drawer of her side table.

‘Suck it, Mum,’ I told her.

‘Thank you, Dr Eric,’ she said. ‘But I know when to use the stupid thing.’ She sat up and looked at me. ‘What’s wrong, Jimmy? Why are you out of breath? How were the shops?’

‘Shops were good, Mum.’

‘How long have you been back?’ she asked, checking her watch.

‘I’ve been back ages, Mum! Running around the yard warming up. Warming up and out of breath.’

‘Did you talk to anyone on the way?’

‘No one, Mum.’

‘Oh good, now I can make myself a cup of tea.’ She put her hand over her mouth and coughed – the moths were multiplying. ‘I can’t believe I fell asleep. I just popped in here for a quick sit-down. I was waiting for you to come back. I was worried . . .’

‘Only one problem, Mum.’

‘What’s that, Jimmy?’ she asked.

‘No milk, Mum. No milk for your tea.’

‘But you just went to the shops! What do you mean no milk?’ Her face fell. ‘What did you do with the money?’

‘I did have milk, Mum. I did have. When I left the shop. Mr Lee Sam gave me milk and jam supremes, but Mum! Mum!’

‘Yes, Jimmy, what? What? Where’s the milk?’

I opened my mouth in case there was a stray word for me to say, but none came.

‘Oh God, Jimmy,’ she sighed. ‘I’d kill for that cup of tea!’ She shook her head. ‘What happened to the money?’

Mum, Mum
, I gulped like a fish.

‘Well something must have happened to it, or you can give the money back to me.’

I reached into my pocket. ‘Change, Mum! Change! See! I
had
the milk. I did have it, Mum!’

She huffed loud and breathy. ‘Well that’s great, love, I’m happy for you, but there’s no milk now.’

I looked at the floor. My first solo journey and no milk.

She patted my head. ‘Oh well, love, that’s alright. I’m glad
you’re home safe.’ She came close. ‘Just have to be powdered.’ She coughed again.

I took her hand and led her to the kitchen for tea with instant.

We were two when there used to be four. We were in half and the house was changing. There were little red splats of food up the walls, baked beans hid in the corners, porridge hardened in the cracks, the cups grew rings inside. I counted them to see how many days since Dad left but each time I finished counting more rings came up from the bottom.

After the big clean Mum didn’t clean again. She ran her cloth over the top without rubbing. The dust left behind by the moths in Mum’s tubes piled up around the house. She coughed it onto the statues and photo frames, the chairs and books and lamps and shoes. It made a bed for mites and other living things naked to the invisible eye. The vacuum cleaner leaned against the wall, mouth closed, network empty. The crumbs of lemon softies and fruit pillows and cow chips gathered in the slits of chairs and couches. They cuddled Mum’s stray hairs and reproduced.

Mum let me wear the same thing every day. She said, ‘We’ve stayed indoors, love; no mud, no wash.’ How many days in my green stripes, my tractor socks, my red skivvy? She read and read. She let me lie and trace. I kept my eye on the line between objects. When the telephone rang Mum said, ‘Oh leave it,’ and sometimes I heard her crying. Then the crying would stop, then start again, then it would become the song of Doris.
Oh distant man, Beyond the clouds, Rest your cheek by mine, Dance to me through the falling rain, And be my love in time.
Then it would turn into crying again.

The supermarket delivered. Mum opened cans and tipped beans and spaghetti and peas into pots, then she flicked on the heat and said, ‘Presto, there’s dinner!’ We ate with our feet up in front of the television; me on the recliner, Mum in the brown flower. News, police shows, murders, investigation and crimes. Every two days came another bottle of milk and there was Samantha Billmore, still missing.

Every day I was getting faster. Mum knew, didn’t she?

‘At last, no school. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted, Jimmy?’ she asked. ‘Can’t you find a smile for your old mother today?’

I couldn’t find one. Dirty towels and underpants and dresses and trousers and singlets spilled out of the laundry and piled up around the house – maybe my smile was under one of the piles.

One night I heard Mum talking to Robby on the telephone. ‘No, Rob, love, we’re fine. They changed the medication . . . Oh, it’s getting better all the time . . . Yes, well, you’ll be able to save a bit that way . . . Oh, he’s the same, a bundle of trouble, keeping me busy . . . Oh, that’s nice . . . Yes, he’s well too . . .’

He’s well too?
Wasn’t that Dad? She didn’t mean me; I was the bundle of trouble. She meant Dad and she said he was fine, but how did she know he was fine when he wasn’t here? Why was she telling Robby he was fine? Didn’t she want Robby to know that Dad was gone?

‘Yes, love . . . You just get on with the job . . .’ She laughed. ‘Yes, love. Oh no, never been better – Dr Eric is making sure of it. Goodbye, Robby.’ She hung up the telephone. ‘I love you,’ she said, as if Robby was still there.

I walked into the kitchen. ‘Why did you say Dad was fine, Mum?’

Mum swung around. ‘What?’

‘Why did you say Dad was fine when he isn’t here and we don’t know how he is? We don’t know if he’s fine or not. He could be fine, but where is the evidence? Why did you say that to Robby, that Dad was fine?’

‘Oh God, Jim, I didn’t say anything about Dad,’ she said, sounding cross.

‘You did. You said he was fine, but Dad’s gone so how would you know if he was fine? How would you know, Mum? How, when he isn’t here and you never answer the telephone?’

‘He is gone, Jimmy. He is gone.’

‘Then how would you know? How would you know?’

‘He is gone! He is bloody gone!’ she shouted.

‘But Mum, how –?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, your father is gone! He’s gone!’ She fell to her knees – the mass of her before me, crying. The air grew damp with her sobs. The crumbs and the dust and the mites and me couldn’t escape her crying. It enveloped us. There was nothing I could do.

She stopped and looked up at me. ‘Oh, little Jimmy, my little Jimmy,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, my love.’ The skin of her face was in patches of red and white. Wing dust sprayed from her nose and mouth in tiny dots.

‘Help me, love,’ she said, reaching for me. ‘Oh, Jimmy,’ she said, leaning on me as she pulled herself up. ‘What would I do without my Jimmy?’

‘I don’t know, Mum, what would you do? What would you do without your Jimmy?’

We walked, slow and wheezing, to her room.

‘Just a little rest,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll be up to get your tea ready . . .’

Her hand in mine was cold. She got on her bed and I pulled the covers over her legs. ‘Puffer, Mum?’ I said.

‘No love, no puffer. Just open the window a little. I won’t be long . . . just a bit of a rest . . .’ She closed her eyes.

I opened the window then I went back to her and stood by the bed. Every breath she took in she coughed when she got to the top. I put my ear to her chest and listened to the moths fluttering against her passages. Her eyes stayed closed. I kept watching, as if somebody had said,
Don’ t leave, Jimmy. Stay and keep watching.
Soon I saw a light around the room, like a halo. It circled the walls. Mum kept breathing, her chest rising and falling, the ins quicker than the outs. The light hovered over her, thickest at the head. Outside the sky was grey without sun.

Mum’s eyes opened. For a moment she looked at me as if she didn’t know me. Then the knowing came back, shining specks of it in her visions, and she said, ‘Go into the kitchen, Jimmy. Leave Mum for a bit. Go and get yourself something to eat.’

I went into the sitting room and turned on the television and it gave the house some friends. I took a bag of chicken chips from the cupboard. I sat on the floor in front of the television and ate so many chips my mouth burned. Then I went back into Mum’s room.

Her head was back, but the breath wasn’t going in. She was covered in water.

‘Mum! Mum!’ I called.

Her eyes opened to narrow passes. I couldn’t see the light. I pressed my fingers to the rims.

‘Mum! Mum!’ I called again. She pulled back from me, shaking her head, gulping at the air. Her mouth was wide open but the passage was blocked as the moths flocked to the entrance.