The Eye of the Sheep (28 page)

‘Liam, don’t pressure him.’

‘Deirdre, he’s
got
a
dad
.’

‘But even if he has a dad, so what? You got a dad and you’re still here.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Fuck you.’

Liam grabbed Deirdre’s arm near the elbow and squeezed. Deirdre squealed.

I looked at the woman who was my mum. I saw the way the line wrapped around all of her fingers and travelled up along her arms and curled itself around her ears and then ran across to her dress and then spread out from her to the trees and then kept on going out of the frame of the picture. Then I saw that the line entered the picture again and ran back to my dad. The line began with him; he was the starting point. It came out of his hand, the hand closest to the frame, and then it crossed to my mother, and back to him. It went full circle. My dad was at the beginning and the end.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

They both turned to me.

‘He can talk!’ said Liam.

‘Jimmy! You talked!’ Deirdre grabbed my hand.

‘He can bloody talk.’

‘I always knew he could talk,’ said Deirdre.

‘No you didn’t. You’re just saying that now, Deirdre.’

‘I
did
know.’

‘Bullshit.’ Liam turned to me. ‘Say something else, Flick.’

‘He doesn’t have to talk just because you say so.’ Deirdre put her hands on her hips. ‘Just talk when you want to, Jimmy, not because Liam tells you to. He’s not the boss.’

‘I am the boss. I’m fourteen at my next birthday.’

‘Yeah, but nobody knows when that is, so you’ll always be thirteen.’

‘Fuck off, Deirdre.’ Liam pushed her in the chest.

I held the photograph up to Liam and Deirdre. ‘Mum and Dad,’ I said.

Liam looked at me in surprise. ‘You really can talk.’

‘Yes, he really can,’ said Deirdre.

‘Why didn’t he before?’

‘He didn’t have a reason before.’

‘He does now, don’t you, Flick? You got to go find your old man.’

‘Don’t pressure him, Liam.’

‘He’s got an old man. He has to go and find him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s his dad. Jake’s not his dad. The man in the picture is, Dee Dee. He’s got one.’

‘But you’ve got one . . .’

‘Shut up about that, Deirdre. I’m warning you. Shut up.’

‘Okay. But I’m just saying . . .’

‘Jimmy has to go and see his dad. You know he does.’

Deirdre pulled at Liam’s sleeve. ‘What if he can’t find him? What if he can’t find him and he hasn’t lowered his expectations?’

‘Of course he’ll find him. We’ll help him.’

‘How can we help him?’

‘We’ll organise it. We’ll make a plan for him. Now that he can talk.’

‘Jimmy –’ Deirdre took my hand – ‘do you want us to make a plan?’

It was happening so fast. Like the hand beneath the sea that made the waves, something was pushing us.

I nodded.

‘And we won’t tell Anne. We won’t tell anyone, will we, Deirdre?’

‘Not if you don’t want us to, Jimmy, we won’t.’

Liam put his hand on my shoulder. ‘No way will we tell, Flick.’

‘Even if they torture us,’ said Deirdre, her face serious.

‘Even if we were going to die.’

Deirdre looked at Liam as if she didn’t understand his mechanics. ‘You never did anything nice before, Liam. How come you are now?’

‘If his dad’s not dead he needs to see him.’

‘Nothing was different after you saw your old man.’

‘At least I got an old man.’ Liam grabbed Deirdre by the end of the nose and twisted. ‘Yours fucked your mum and ran, she was so ugly.’ He twisted harder.

Deirdre screamed and Anne White came in. Deirdre pressed against her, crying.

‘This is the last time I’m doing this! You kids have worn me out!’ Anne White said.

Anne White and Jake took us on a picnic with other fosters beside a brown river. When we got out of the car I walked across the grass to the edge. Life drifted across the top of the water; birds, boats, plastic, feathers that had fallen from the wing, but under the surface nothing lived. The river was a moat to the floating world. You just had to cross it. I waded in to my ankles and watched as water rose up against the sides of my shoes.

‘Come back from there, Jim!’ Anne White called to me.

I stepped back and squatted on the muddy bank to examine the wet lines left across my sneakers. I put my hand to my chest. My organs pumped against my palm.

There were rugs spread across the grass and there was a picnic table and it was covered in containers of food and some
was on plates – lamingtons and oranges, cut up, sandwiches with Vegemite and biscuits and cakes and frankfurts with sauce. The fosters ran across the grass chasing the ball. Jake was the coach. He kept running and blowing his whistle and shouting, ‘That’s it, Liam, faster, stay down the sides, boy, that’s it, don’t let them get ahead!’

I sat beside Deirdre on the grass not far from the river. She was combing Melanie’s hair. ‘
Dress me up and play with me, touch me softly, be my love, all I want is you, don’t go, don’t go, don’t go
,’ she sang
.
Her words were like water over pebbles. ‘
Oh how I love you, touch me, touch me, don’t leave don’t leave me, don’t leave me
.’ She put her doll in my lap. ‘
Touch me softly, touch me . . .
’

Adults fed the fosters, passing plates of donuts and sausages and cakes. A foster mother brought a plate of sausages and chips to Deirdre and me. The fosters were all different sizes; there were other big ones, like Liam, and other smaller ones, like Deirdre. We were loose from each other and from the adults. We had come from somewhere but that place was gone – our lines had no ending.

I was going to look for my dad. The line began inside him, put there by the refinery, then it moved out from him into my mother, entering her stream and setting her to life. Was I joined by the same line?

I watched the river, my eyes resting on its surface. At first I thought the water was static but as I watched I saw that it
was
moving. The surprise movement was slow but it was there, forward.

‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Deirdre asked.

I shook my head, keeping my eyes on the momentum of brown water.

‘Do you know how far it is from here?’

I shook my head again.

‘Anne has a map book. That’s how she knows where to find her fosters.’ Deirdre stuck a sausage into sauce and took a bite. She picked up her doll, leaving a smear of red across its cheek. She lifted the doll to my ear. Her fingers smelled of sausage. ‘I will wait for you,’ she sang. ‘
Kiss kiss
. I love you, Jimmy,
kiss kiss
.
Touch me, touch me softly
. . .’ She passed me the sausage and I ate it.

That night Liam and me and Deirdre sat on Deirdre’s bed with the lights off. We were looking at a book of maps with a torch Liam took from Jake’s storage shelf.

‘Don’t ask Liam anything because he can’t read,’ said Deirdre, flicking through the pages. The torch lit the bottom half of Liam’s and Deirdre’s faces.

‘I can’t read but I can smoke,’ said Liam, sticking the torch in his mouth and shining it on the ceiling. ‘What’s more fun?’

‘Don’t do that, Liam,’ whispered Deirdre. ‘We can’t see.’

Liam aimed the torch onto the maps, lighting up the black crisscrossing lines over the page. ‘Point Cale, Point Eddington, Point Elsworth, Point Dixon . . .’ Deirdre read out.

‘Point Dick,’ Liam interrupted.

‘Point Crap,’ Deirdre giggled.

‘Point Crack.’

‘Point Arse.’

‘Point Paradise,’ I said.

They both looked at me, their faces shadowy, smiles gone. ‘Point Paradise,’ they said, as if they’d just remembered.

Downstairs Jake and Anne White cleared the table and picked up the toys.
They better be asleep, Jake, I can’t do this again – what were we thinking, taking on Jim? I don’t know how much hope there is for him. . . I always said the day I started thinking like that about any of them would be the day I needed to stop. I don’t know if there’s anyone inside there at all, Jake. How can I think that about a child? It’s not right.

Deirdre ran her finger down a long line of names, her lips moving as she read them out under her breath. She turned page after page. I heard the flutter of paper and Liam’s breath as we waited.

‘When you find him,’ Liam whispered, ‘tell him you can’t come back here or I’ll drown you. Show him your broken finger and tell him I did it. Tell him I’d never give you mouth-to-mouth like Mrs Connelly’s son. I could if I wanted – I know how – but I wouldn’t. I’d let you drown before I did that.’

‘Found it.’ said Deirdre.

Liquid rushed through my tributaries, like the fluid used to make the flames jump high.

‘Bingo,’ said Liam.

‘What’s bingo?’ asked Deirdre.

‘You’re dumb,’ said Liam.

‘You’re dumb. No wonder your dad said fuck off.’

‘No wonder yours topped himself.’

‘He did not.’

‘He did so. Anne told Jake. That’s why you’re here. He overdosed because he couldn’t get a job.’

‘He did not.’

‘Did so.’

‘He topped himself but it wasn’t because he couldn’t get a job.’

‘Then why?’

‘Because if he didn’t top himself the dog men would get him – he owed them money. They’d take the silver cages off the dogs’ mouths and let them at him. That’s why I’m here; the dogs would’ve hurt too much. You’re here because you aren’t old enough for jail.’

‘Point Paradise,’ I reminded them.

‘Yes,’ said Deirdre. ‘Map two hundred and one.’ She flicked through the pages. Point Paradise was on a map. There was a number. I was coming tightly together, beginning to spin, pain behind every rotation. Point Paradise! The wind and the cliffs and the waves coming in one after another behind my mum and dad where they stood, the camera resting on the branch of a tree, set to automatic, my dad running back to her, not wanting to be away for longer than a second, rushing back so he could put his arm around her and feel the warmth of what they would become if they stayed together. He had to be quick before the light and the flash saying it was too late
too late
the picture is already taken.

‘Map two hundred and one. Found it.’ Deirdre held up the book.

Suddenly the door swung open and Jake switched on the light.

‘What the hell?’ I saw the words coming out of Jake’s mouth in a sonar wave. His face was red and as round as a balloon. ‘Leave each other alone and get into bed!’

We scattered like marbles. I went back to my room with Liam. He climbed up onto his top bunk and I climbed into the bottom. I knew the photograph was there on the wall beneath Liam’s; I was linked to it by Map Two Hundred and One.

‘You’re going to need money,’ whispered Liam. ‘You have to catch a train or a bus or a plane.’

‘Where will we get the money?’ I asked.

‘We got to steal it from Jake. I don’t care if I get busted. I’m not staying here anyway.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Morecroft. Juvenile home. Until I’m eighteen. Then I’ll go and live with Dad. He can’t walk, so what can he do about it? He can’t get out of his chair and chase me out with a stick, can he? If he calls the cops I’ll tell them it was him who never locked the gun cupboard, not Gary. Dad said he did lock it and the jury believed him because of the wheelchair, but he never did. I know because when I went there it wasn’t locked. I just went halfway down the stairs and pulled it open. It was easy.’ His bunk creaked beneath his weight. ‘Goodnight, Jimmy.’

‘Goodnight, Liam. Goodnight.’

In the photograph stuck to the wall above mine, a younger Liam stood with his arm around his dad, their heads level. It was the wall of fathers.

Liam and me were at the back of Anne White’s yard behind the shed. Liam dragged his hand along the three big drums,
clink clunk clonk
up and down. He threw a handful of mud into the drum of water then he dragged over an empty wooden milk crate and turned it upside down. ‘Climb up,’ he said to me.

I climbed up and the crate wobbled.

‘There was a man in the city who cut up bodies and put them in a tank like this.’ Liam knocked the side of the drum with his fist. ‘But it wasn’t water in there – it was acid and the acid fried the bodies, only leaving the bones and the teeth, and that’s what gave the man away to the cops. There were five
people in one tank plus a dog. The man could fit them all in because they had no bodies. The acid melted the flesh away in sixty seconds.’ He leaned against the drum. ‘Have a look over the edge, Flick.’

I leaned over, my hands on the rim.

‘See yourself?’ Liam asked. ‘That tank is taller than you.’ He threw in another handful of dirt. It disturbed the surface, leaving holes. ‘The man didn’t do it alone. He had accomplices. He was the ringleader of his family. He did the killing and his brothers and his uncle and his cousins helped him cut up the bodies. They were the ones who bought the acid, poured it into the tank, put in the pieces and stirred. Can you swim, Flick? If you got into that tank the water would go over your head, but if you could swim you’d be alright.’

I looked into the water until it was as if I was under the surface. Everything was slow and soft, at first floating, but then falling. I was going down . . . I stepped back, the breath entering me sharply. The crate almost tipped.

‘Careful, Flick,’ said Liam.

Deirdre came down from the house carrying something in her hand. ‘Map Two Hundred and One,’ she said, passing it to me. ‘I tore it out.’

‘Open it, Flick, let’s have a look.’

Deirdre was on one side and Liam was on the other, the three drums behind us as we leaned towards the map. Deirdre pointed. I followed the line of her chipped yellow nail polish to the end of her finger where it joined the map. Point Paradise.

‘We are here,’ she said, then she drew her finger across slowly. ‘And Point Paradise is . . . here. It’s not that far, Jimmy. If you had money, you could catch a bus.’

‘Then that’s what he’ll do,’ said Liam.

Deirdre dropped her hands from the map. She looked at Liam. ‘What will he do if his dad’s not there?’