The Eye of the Sheep (23 page)

She took me to a place at one of the tables. I kept one half of my bottom on the chair and the other almost off. I tipped the chair back and forth. My leg wasn’t strong enough to hold me; I could feel it shaking.

Julie put a plate with chips and peas and steak in a puddle
of sauce on the table in front of me. When she walked away I pushed the plate to the middle.

A girl with sores on her face sitting opposite me said, ‘You got to eat – you’re skinny enough. You want to grow, don’t you?’ Each sore was a mountain with snow on top.

A boy with muscle slung across his shoulders sat down beside her. ‘Eat him yourself, Jennifer. You know you want to.’

‘You know
you
want to,’ Jennifer said back to him. ‘Paedophile.’

‘You have to be over sixteen to be a paedophile, Jennifer. Like your old man.’

‘Like
your
old man,’ Jennifer said. She laughed and I saw milk inside her mouth.

‘Where are you from?’ a boy with a backwards cap asked.

‘He doesn’t talk,’ said another girl. Her teeth were broken and they’d cut her gums the ends were so sharp. There was blood on her lips in the shape of her broken teeth.

‘I tried that for a while,’ said Jennifer. ‘At the end of two days my brother said, “Hey, Jen, you stink like shit,” and I forgot I didn’t talk and I said, “Fuck you!” Dad was listening and he said, “You’ve been faking it, you silly bitch!” But it was good for two days. They thought I was in toxic shock from seeing someone’s leg severed, or their head come off and the brains come out. My brother knew I was faking it.’ Jennifer sucked on a chop, oil around her lips, then turned to me. ‘Are you faking it? Can you talk or what?’

I was falling like dust, slowly, as the old world outside of me went on, not knowing that I’d left. I was in Latitude, where everything fell.

•

‘I asked you a question,’ Jennifer said, putting her chop bone back on her plate. She took a long drink of her milk. ‘Just because you can’t talk doesn’t mean you can’t hear.’ She moved close to my ear and shouted, ‘
Can you hear me?
’ The notes of her shouting tumbled over each other down my canal until they reached little drums beaten by automatic sticks.

I began to shake, as fast as the sticks, arms and legs and head, shake shake shaking, I was a firecracker, spinning across the room.

‘Ha! Look at him go!’

‘You pressed his button, Jennifer!’

‘Go, kid, go!’

‘Ha ha!’

‘
Go go go!
’ I spun to their shouting. ‘Go! Go! Go!’ I was zipping off the walls, sound ripping through me, the flames of the refinery pipes jetting from my heels.

Then suddenly there were arms were around me. ‘Can’t you lot be trusted for one second?’ Julie shouted as she held me. ‘Jennifer, get back to your room! Taylor, that’s enough. Jim, it’s okay. Nothing’s happened. Calm down . . .’

Julie took me back to the sick room. ‘I’ll have to lock you in, Jim. Someone will come to check on you soon.’ The man and the woman in Julie battled each other for territory. ‘It’s the best I can do.’

Then she was gone. I rolled onto my side on the bed as darkness moved over me.

There were no stars or suns or planets or moons or seas – nothing to count or wait for, no light from the eye of the sheep.

Only the dust from the wings of moths remained. It thickened the air; slowed my falling.

When the door opened again I was still on my side; I hadn’t moved. Uncle Rodney walked into the sick room with Julie behind him.

‘Good morning, Jim. Your uncle’s here for you.’ She was smiling like Uncle Rodney had come for her instead.

Uncle Rodney’s face was grey, as if somebody had shaded him in with a lead pencil. There were grey loops under his eyes and grey lines across his forehead, where the pencil had been pressed harder.

‘Jim!’ he said, coming towards me. I heard crying resonating in his engine. He shook his head and kneeled in front of me, putting his arms around me. ‘Are you alright, Jim? Are you okay?’ He looked up at Julie, his voice quick and scared. ‘Is he okay?’

‘Like I said,’ she answered, ‘we’ve only had him for the night. They needed the beds at the hospital. I suppose they wouldn’t have let him out if he wasn’t okay. He hasn’t spoken since they found him. I don’t know what’s normal for him. He hasn’t eaten much either.’

Uncle Rodney looked back at me. ‘We’d better do something about that, huh, Jim? A man’s got to eat, huh? You’ll be okay, Jimmy. It’s going to be okay.’ He stood up. ‘Thanks for looking after him,’ he said to Julie, taking my hand in his. ‘Come on, Jim. Let’s get you out of here.’

As we passed through an open door I saw Jennifer and Taylor and Danny sitting against the fence. There was music playing from a silver box and Danny was moving his hands up
and down as if they were gutters with water flowing through. Taylor was chewing as she watched Danny. Her white piece of gum was tossed around inside her mouth like a fish in a sea storm, the teeth coming down on it, the tongue throwing it from side to side.

Jennifer waved to me. ‘See ya, Speechless. Don’t let ’em trick you into it!’

I turned away as Uncle Rodney led me through the gates and down the steps to a waiting car.

Uncle Rodney opened the door and I climbed in. I rested back on the seat, closing my eyes. Uncle Rodney started the car.

‘Jimmy, we’re going to catch a plane back to the island tomorrow, okay? You can stay with me for a while – until . . . I’ve set up the spare room for you, okay? We need to go to your place first, though. Just to pick up some of your gear. Sort out a couple of things, okay?’

When I looked across at Uncle Rodney it was as if I was seeing him through an unwashed window.

‘When are you going to talk to me, hey, Jimmy?’ He glanced at me, then back at the road. ‘Are you hungry? You look thin, Jim. You need to eat, you know.’ He turned off the radio in his car. ‘I’m sorry about Paula, Jimmy.’ I could see how much each word hurt his mouth when he spoke it.
I’m sorry about Paula.
‘We’re going to track down your old man and everything is going to be alright. Ned will be happy to see you, Jimmy. He’s missed you.’ His small laugh was tired, its little engine weak. He looked ahead and the talking stopped.

When he saw a petrol station he turned into its driveway. ‘You need to go to the toilet, Jimmy?’ he asked. Outside, customers filled their tanks with sauce from the core, sucking it up through pipes then pressing the handle. Uncle Rodney
shook his head and sighed. ‘Okay, you stay there. I’ll get us something for breakfast.’

I watched him walk into the petrol station. I saw him go to the fridge and choose. Soon he came back to the car with sandwiches and chocolate milk. He passed me a sandwich with chicken squeezing out the side. I picked up the chocolate milk.

‘Good on you, Jim.’ Uncle Rodney started the engine.

I sat with the chocolate milk in my lap as Uncle Rodney drove back out onto the highway.

‘Go on, drink it, Jimmy. Stop stuffing round.’ He stuck the straw into the automatic drinking hole and passed it back to me. ‘Drink it,’ he said.

I took the milk, put the straw to my mouth and sucked. Cold chocolate milk flooded the system.

Uncle Rodney breathed out. More road passed. Uncle Rodney twitched, his hands rubbed up and down his leg. He looked at me then at the road then at me then at the road. ‘I didn’t know your dad wasn’t around,’ he said after a while. ‘Nobody told me. I saw you . . . not even five months ago – Jesus it feels like yesterday. Things were alright then, weren’t they? Back in January? I didn’t know he’d left. I didn’t know you and Paula were there alone.’ Uncle Rodney shook his head.

‘The neighbour – what was her name? – Mrs . . . what was it? She said to the cops that he’d been knocking your Mum around . . .’ Uncle Rodney shook his head. ‘Is it true, Jimmy? It’s not true, is it?’

Puffs of white cloud hung in the sky. They were very still, not one part of any cloud moved. No new things formed.

‘Fuck, Gavin . . .’ Uncle Rodney kept shaking his head, then he took in a deep breath and sighed one out. ‘Bloody hell.’ He undid the window and did it up again. ‘Poor Paula.’

The inside of me slid out of my ears like steam, spectating from above. Uncle Rodney put his hand on my shoulder. There was bone underneath the skin that connected the arm to the body. There were tubes wrapped around it transporting chocolate milk to my organs.

Uncle Rodney kept talking. ‘I can’t get hold of your brother. He’s out at bloody sea somewhere. You’ll have to stay with me until we get something sorted. But I have to work. I’ve got Dave minding the shop while I’m here, but he can’t keep that up.’

Uncle Rodney drove the car into Emu Street. It was like looking at a diagram from one of my manuals but the connecting lines were missing; there was nothing joining me to the house or the house to the road or the road to the world.

‘I’m sorry, Jimmy, you’ll have to come in with me. I have to see if I can find something that might tell us where your dad is. Or Robby. And we need your things.’ He reached across me and opened my door. There were tiny black dots of hair over the bottom half of his face. If my eyes were small enough I could have looked straight down the hole at the end of every hair and seen into the memory bank behind Uncle Rodney’s skin. ‘Come on, Jimmy,’ he said.

I followed him up the path; I saw my old footprints in the concrete, I saw Mum’s spade, her bucket, her kneeling pad, her glove. Doris began to sing,
Won’t you tell me that you love me? Won’t you tell me that you do?

‘I’m sorry you have to deal with this, Jim. Jesus.’

He opened the door and we went into Nineteen Emu. I looked around the kitchen at the curtain with roses and sparrows, the Sunlight Lemon, the wallpaper apples, the teacup, the upside-down dish rack, the apron with rows of roosters and suns hanging over the stove, and I felt the pull of sleep
coming up from underground. I saw the window with chips in the frame, the vase without flowers, the magnets holding lists and recipes . . . The force from underground pulled on the bones in my arms and legs . . . The puppy salt and pepper shakers, the kitten poster
We are in this together
with one kitten hanging from a branch about to drop, the other with his eyes wide, reaching out a paw . . . Sleep pulling on my chest cavity, my neck, through my face to my eyes. I couldn’t resist the force. I lay back on the kitchen couch where my mum read her Agathas and I closed my eyes.

‘You just stay there, Jimmy. That’s a good idea, have a rest.’ Uncle Rodney talked as he looked at papers by the telephone. He began to speak to someone. His voice came in and out, like a radio station not tuned, almost catching voices, then missing again.

‘No bloody idea . . . I don’t know . . . It’s a mess . . . Asthma . . . No, she was pretty sick. Nobody knew . . . Oh shit . . . Gavin was knocking her around . . . I know, I know, it wasn’t even five months ago he was on the island with Jim. Shit! Things seemed okay, really okay . . . No, the kid won’t speak, not a bloody word . . . Oh shit, mate, she had nobody here . . . I don’t know . . . oh Jesus . . . I don’t know. Give the dog a drink will you? . . . Yeah, he tips his water out. Bloody idiot dog . . . Yeah, mate, tomorrow afternoon . . . No, he’s asleep . . . Yeah mate, thanks.’

It was dark. Moths beat their wings, multiplying as they flew around my face, their dust in my nose and eyes. I flapped at them with my hands, but they came in closer. The more I coughed the more they multiplied. I couldn’t see through them.

‘Jimmy! Jimmy! Are you okay, kid? Are you okay?’ Uncle Rodney shook me awake. ‘You were dreaming. Were you dreaming? Are you alright?’

I sat up and saw that Uncle Rodney had Mum’s red suitcase beside him.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked me. I nodded my head. ‘I packed some things for you, Jim. I don’t know if I got what you wear, but we can pick up anything else you need on the island.’ Uncle Rodney held up Mum’s numbers and lists book. ‘This is Paula’s diary, right? No numbers in it for your old man. You don’t know where he went, Jim? Did your Mum say anything? You’ve got no idea?’ He looked at me, waiting. ‘Jim, it would help if you could talk to me.’

I knew what he wanted but I didn’t have access; there was nothing I could do for my Uncle Rodney.

‘Oh shit.’ He went to the sink and poured himself a drink of water. Then he opened the cupboards and closed them again. ‘You want a drink, Jim?’ He brought me a glass of water.

I tipped it into my mouth and felt it drip down.

Uncle Rodney put his hand out for the empty glass. ‘We may as well get going. I got us a hotel near the airport, okay? Is there anything you want to take from the house? I don’t know when you’ll be back again.’

My manuals lay strewn across the kitchen table – oven, washing machine, vacuum cleaner. The black and white drawings blurred before me. The diagrams didn’t belong to the instructions. Letters and numbers crossed paths, on was off and off was on. They were mistaken. There was nothing I wanted to take from the house.

I looked down and saw tracks across the floor that ran deep into the tiles. I stared at them, narrowing my eyes for increased
vision. The cracks led to the ground under the house and they kept going until they got to the earth’s core and then they penetrated the core and ended up in space, but lower space. The space underneath goes down and down and spreads. In it you see only the shadows of things. There wasn’t one thing existing without the under-space – it was there all the time, but nobody looked. You had to be empty to see it.

Uncle Rodney sighed and picked up Mum’s red suitcase. ‘Okay then, let’s go. We have to drop the car back on the way, then we’ll get something to eat. Come on, Jimmy.’

I followed him out of the house, my eyes on the case.

Uncle Rodney didn’t speak on the drive to the airport. He watched the road and pulled sharply at the gearstick and ran his hand through his hair and turned the radio on then off. He sighed and shook his head. He looked across at me, then out the window, then back at me, then at the road, then out the window, then at the road again. He rubbed his hand over his face, as if he was trying to clear something away.