The Eye of the Sheep (6 page)

We called out, ‘Ready!’ and the green frisbee cut through the grey sky towards us. Back and forth it spun as we ran and threw and ran again. The three lines that joined us shortened and lengthened, the three points stretching and returning, stretching and returning.

Later, back inside the house, red-faced and puffed with sweat dampening our hair, Robby said, ‘Drink, Dad?’ and passed him water, pouring one for himself and me too. Robby’s thin arms moved loosely, his fingers touching Dad’s as the glass of water passed between them. We drank our water and Robby said, ‘Knock, knock. Who’s there?’ I said, ‘Jimmy!’ And Dad said, ‘I am, ya mug.’ Robby said, ‘No, Dad, say
Who’s there?
’ and Dad said, ‘Me, mate, it’s me!’ and messed Robby’s hair. Robby said, ‘No, Dad, not
you
!’ and Dad said, ‘What’s wrong with me, mate? You saying there’s something wrong with me?’ Robby laughed and I saw Dad’s reflection in his face with Mum coming up from underneath and entering the cheeks.

It was as if a spell that we didn’t know had been in the kitchen of Nineteen Emu was broken. We weren’t waiting for anything; we were already there. There was nothing in the invisible world, as if there never had been; it was empty and quiet.

Dad made eggs and bacon. He wore Mum’s pink apron with a frill up the sides and the ties went round him twice. Robby laughed and said, ‘You look pretty, Dad.’ Dad put his hands on his hips and flipped his hand and said, ‘More bacon with your eggs, sir?’ We moved around the island easily, each of us taking a different side, then joining sides, as if the island was a raft, and we were changing places at exactly the right time to keep it afloat.

When Dad rang Mum at the hospital he said, ‘Us fellas have got it under control, love,’ and he winked at Robby. ‘You just take it easy, sweetheart. I’ll make the boys tidy the house top to bottom.’ He turned away from us. ‘I love you, Paula,’ he said, close to the holes, as if it was a secret.

•

That night, in bed without Mum in the house, I counted sheep while Robby slept. I held the sheep’s face steady between my hands and I looked up close at the light in the sheep’s eyes. The night went on and on. I kept counting and counting, sheep after sheep after sheep, until I saw a line of light coming through the crack between the curtains.

The next morning, after boilers on toast, Dad took us to Sunshine Hospital in the Holden. When we were in the car with him we didn’t speak. I shared Robby and Dad’s word-free language. All the windows were open and I watched as dust and crumbs and lost hairs and sand flew out the windows and into the sky where they joined the clouds and contaminants and refinery smoke. The car was clean.

We parked in Furlong Road, not far from the hospital.

When I got inside I looked for the sunshine but it was an absence, shut out by the roof and walls.

Dad walked up to a man behind a desk that said Information. ‘I’m looking for my wife, Paula Flick.’

The man checked a folder and answered, ‘F Ward.’

‘F, F, F, F, F,’ I chanted. ‘F Ward, F Ward, F Ward,
good good good
.’ My cells rotated in my fingertips. I was on end as we passed door after door after door on our way to F Ward. ‘F F F feff feff. Mum! Mum! Mum!’

‘Settle down, son,’ said Dad. But I couldn’t settle. ‘Mum Mum Mum!’

She was there, under the sheet, in the long white bed of F Ward, like a mountain of snow. I ran to her and something fell and knocked behind me and someone said,
Easy does it
. In one jump I was on the bed against my mum, and she was holding me tight.

‘Hello, little Jimmy,’ she said. I breathed warm mint and vanilla and Impulse; she was still the same ingredients.

Dad stood at the bottom of her bed, tears gathering at the ends of his eye pipes. He wiped them and touched her feet where they were under the sheet. He said, ‘Paula,’ but only his lips made the shape of Paula; the sound was trapped by shame in his workings. Tears came to Mum’s eyes, as if Dad’s were contagious.

Robby stood quietly at her side and Mum took his hand and she said, ‘Robby, I really am alright.’ She squeezed his hand and he started to cry. She said, ‘Really, what’s all this?’ and I held her tighter. ‘Robby, my love, I’m alright, I promise,’ she said, not letting go of his hand. If you linked up the lines between Mum, Dad, Robby and me we’d make a square that nothing could penetrate, like the backyard of Nineteen Emu.

‘Are they looking after you alright, love?’ Dad asked.

‘They’re looking after me fine.’

‘Do you need me to bring you anything?’

‘The food isn’t five star, but I’ll live.’

‘Five star is what you deserve.’

‘I don’t need five star, love. Just you. You and the boys.’

‘You’ve always got us.’

I didn’t want to leave. Mum and Dad’s talk to each other was a lullaby that could have rocked me to sleep.

The nurse came and read a chart in a blue folder on the end of Mum’s bed. She said,
One more night I’m afraid
and Mum smiled weakly. ‘Sorry, kids,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried to tell them I am fine.’

If we could, Robby and me and Dad would have taken a corner of the bed each and wheeled it out of Sunshine Hospital, down Furlong Road all the way to the Holden. We would have tied the bed to the roof with Mum on it and driven her home and she
would have had all the air she needed, plus sunshine. I wanted to. Dad had the strength. But Mum needed the Ventolin. The hospital stored it in giant tanks under the highway outside. She had to be hooked up to the tanks to get her through the night.

I hid my face against her side.

‘Come on, Jimmy. You can do it,’ she said. ‘I want you to be a good boy for your dad and do what he says and do what Robby says too, okay? Jimmy?’ She put her nose against my hair. ‘And make sure you have a bath. Robby, can you give him a bath?’ she asked him.

The nurse asked if there was anyone Mum would like her to call to help with the kids.

‘I can get another day off, love,’ Dad said. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

Mum’s face reached out to him – the mouth, the nose, the eyes, the forehead, the hair, the cheeks, all of it open and soft and reaching for him. She was as white as the sheet over her body. All her colour had been sucked out into the same hospital pipes that connected to the drips. She couldn’t come home with us.

When we got back to Nineteen Emu, Dad spoke on the telephone to his boss at the refinery, Bill Philby. He nodded as he talked and said, ‘Thanks, Bill, thanks, she’ll be out tomorrow . . . She’s fine. I appreciate it.’ When he got off the telephone he said, ‘Prick.’

After Robby had left for school Dad looked at his watch a few times as if it might tell him what to do with me. I put block on top of block and then I knocked them across the floor, then I piled them on top of each other then I knocked them down again, then I piled them up then I knocked them down. Dad stood at the sink wiping his mouth. He looked at the high
cupboard then back at me, then at the high cupboard then at me. Then he said, ‘Bugger this. Let’s go, Jim.’

I stopped building. ‘Where, Dad? Where?’

‘The tip.’

‘What for, Dad? What are we going to the tip for?’

‘You never know, Jim,’ said Dad, picking up the keys. ‘It’s the tip. Surprise city.’

‘You never know, Dad. You never know.’

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Grab a hat.’

I took my hat from the low door hook and Dad took his from the high one and I followed him out to the Holden. There was no hesitation. He walked ahead of me, as if he was sure I would follow.

I climbed into the passenger seat and he got into the driver’s and we drove out of Altona along Sunbury Road. It was never just my dad and me. The sun streamed across our knees in a single ray. Dad drove the Holden faster than Mum. He grabbed the gears as if he was showing them who was boss. He was the Bill Philby of the gearbox. He turned the corners more quickly. He leaned back as if he was sure the car knew what to do. Mum drove leaning forward, as if she doubted it.

We drove into a road that said
Bulla Tip and Quarry
and the smell was sweet and rotten in my olfactory. Dad sniffed the air, grinned and said, ‘That’s how we know we’re in the right place, son.’ He stopped the car and got out so I got out too and he never checked to see if I was following, he just knew I would.

I saw a crater but it wasn’t moon, it was rubbish: plastic bags and pipes and baths and car seats and toilets and paint tins, all in piles under the sun where the pieces melted into each other. Everything was grey and white with bright pieces in between like shining plastic jewels – blue, yellow, orange and
red. A man in a towel hat smiled and said, ‘What would you blokes be after?’ and Dad said, ‘I’ll know when I see it, mate,’ and the man said, ‘Right this way, fellers,’ and I followed my dad to the salvageables.

There were stoves and lawnmowers and suitcases and dryers and buckets and tubing and wooden boxes and barbecues and bedframes and gutters and doors and fridges and taps and steering wheels and chairs and windows and radios, all left behind by previous owners. My juices rushed. Dad and the man in the towel hat let me run from part to part. Dad gathered wheels and pipes. I examined an engine. It was full of tiny pinpricks that let the water through. That’s what caused the rust. I scraped at it with a rock, watching as the brown powder fell into the dust like a waterfall. I got down on my hands and knees and put my eye up close to a hole and I saw the light and the air on the other side. The air gave the engine extra power. Anything you attached to the engine would be unstoppable and a mystery to all mechanics, and only I could see that it was coming through the pinpricks in the rust.

‘Son!’ Dad called. ‘Come on. We’re done.’

Dad loaded his materials into the Holden and we exited the Bulla Tip and Quarry and Dad flicked on the radio and the song was
heartache tonight heartache tonight.
Dad sang along with it and when he looked across at me he smiled and the song kept coming out. It was like a light in the house that you never see switched on. I sang
heartache tonight heartache tonight
and our voices were the top and the bottom of the same tune and I did love the heartache, I did!

When we got home I helped Dad unload the Holden; the plastic seat of a chair without legs, a small cupboard, wheels and a pole. He never said, ‘Come on, Jim, hurry up, come on,
love, please.’ He just got to work – a quick wordless man for me to copy.

Then we went into Dad’s garage and he got out his welder and mask. He put the mask over my head, tightened the strap and said, ‘Stay back, Jimmy.’ From inside my mask I watched the bright and burning light of my dad at work. He joined the two pairs of wheels to the pole. ‘It’s the axle, son,’ he said. Then he took the door from the small cupboard and attached it to the two sets of wheels, then on top of that he fixed the plastic seat of the chair.

‘There she is, Jim,’ he said.

‘There what is, Dad, what?’

‘Your go-cart, son.’

There was my go-cart. Time reverberated like lines around a drum. Breath filled my chest.

‘Shall we paint it, Jim?’

‘Shall we, Dad? Shall we!’

‘All we got is green,’ he said.

‘Green it is, Dad, green it is!’

Dad gave me a brush and we painted together without talking and I didn’t feel the need, not a single one. The brushes moved up and down, up and down as the wooden sides of my go-cart turned green.

‘Okay, son. We’ll go have something to eat and let her dry in the sun, hey?’ said Dad.

My go-cart gleamed, four wheels and a door for a body with a seat and no steering wheel.

‘Dad, it’s got no steering wheel, Dad.’

‘Steering wheel? Steering wheels are for sissies, Jim. Doesn’t need a bloody steering wheel. That’s the element of risk.’

‘Okay, Dad, the element of risk. Okay, Dad, okay. Okay, Dad.’

We went into the kitchen and Dad made cheese sandwiches. The butter tore the bread and Dad said,
Nobody does it like your mum
. He leaned against the island, his eyes turning red and wet, with the memory of Paula. It was as if he could see her better when she wasn’t here – he had the space. He poured us orange cordials and we took our sandwiches to eat on the step where we could watch the go-cart dry.

‘Ready, Dad, is it ready?’

‘How many times have you asked me that, Jim?’

‘Five, dad. Is it ready, is the go-cart ready?’

He touched his fingers softly to the paint. ‘Ready enough,’ he said.

My core raced. I climbed onto the Jimmy-sized seat.

‘Let’s go,’ said Dad. He pushed me on the go-cart out of the house and onto Emu Street, then up the hill of Cobham – up and up and up. I heard his breath behind me growing louder as we climbed, his outs shorter than his ins, as if the air was hard to let go – the very opposite of Mum.

Once we got to the top he said, ‘I’ll run beside you, okay, Jim? You okay? You ready?’

Dad looked excited, as if he was about to go down Cobham in a green go-cart instead of me.

‘I’m ready, Dad, I’m ready.’

‘Okay then.’ He got behind me and began to push, faster and faster until his hands left the cart and I was speeding down Cobham, the wind in my face, the wheels rattling, the element of risk in full force. Dad ran just behind me, keeping up every step of the way.

‘Wheeeeeee aaaaaaaaaeeeeeeeee!’ I was the same as the wind and the wheels and the speed of the go-cart. I was the same, the very same! ‘Wheeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaeeeeee!’

When we got to the bottom Dad, puffing and out of breath, said, ‘How was that, Jim? Enjoy yourself?’

‘Good, Dad, very good. Again?’

This time when we got to the top of the hill he said, ‘What about going on your own this time, Jim, and I’ll watch from the top?’

I looked at the long slope of Cobham.

‘Come on, Jim. You can do it.’

My core jittered. ‘Yes, Dad, yes, okay.’

He gave me one hard push then let me go and I was on my own but it was as if he was still there, running behind me. ‘Wheeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaa!’ I shouted into the wind as the wheels and the axle vibrated me all the way to the bottom. I looked back and he was standing there, waving at me, and it was as if I had never seen him before. What drove crying? What was crying’s engine?