Liar Bird

by Lisa Walker

  You must get that feeling all the time, René.

  Putting the computer aside, Mac dug an MP3 player and speakers out of his backpack. As he pressed the power button, a noise like a telephone dialling tone filled the car. Brrr, brrr, brrr …

  ‘Is that the cane toad’s call?’ My voice came out croaky. I coughed.

  He nodded. ‘The male — calling for a mate. If you play the sound and there are other toads in the area, they usually respond.’

  Encouraged by his two-sentence answer, I pushed my advantage. ‘Where do they come from?’

  ‘Cane toads?’

  I nodded.

  ‘South America.’

  ‘And what’s the main problem with them here?’

  He looked past me into the rainforest. ‘Other animals eat them and die, because of their poison. They also eat native frogs and their tadpoles eat frog tadpoles. They’re basically a hopping biodiversity muncher.’

  Three sentences. I could have listened to his voice all night. ‘That sounds bad.’

  ‘They’re right through this area and it’s amazing frog habitat.’ He paused. ‘The Aboriginal name for this area means “a great place for frogs”. Not such a great place now the cane toad’s here, though.’

  ‘A great place for frogs. I like that. How far south do the cane toads go?’

  ‘The front is further down the coast — moving south about five k a year.’

  ‘The front? You make it sound like a war.’

  ‘It is a bit like that. Right now we’re in enemy territory. We’re dealing with a colonising movement that could sweep right across Australia.’

  He’d forgotten to be grumpy — we were actually having a conversation. Could I have been right that the way to his heart was through his wildlife? I smiled. ‘We will fight them in the trenches?’

  ‘Yeah — we will never surrender.’ His eyes met mine and — like a ray of sun breaking through clouds — he smiled back.

  He smiled back!

  It was a minor miracle, like taming a wild creature. He had a beautiful smile. It hit me right in the heart — bang. I turned my head, so he couldn’t see the way my cheeks were burning. Goodness — that was a powerful smile. No wonder he saved it for special occasions.

  He turned the engine on again and kept driving up the road. The mist settled in around us as we got higher. The headlights picked out clumps of hanging moss, dripping with moisture.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said. My head was still spinning from his smile. ‘Very … atmospheric.’ Very sexy.

  ‘It is.’ Mac’s voice was calm, tranquil.

  I liked that new voice. It wasn’t one I’d heard from him before — I wanted more. ‘What do you call those things sticking out the sides of the trees?’

  Mac followed my gaze. ‘Buttresses.’

  ‘Mmm, I like them — very Lord of the Rings.’

  On the road in front of us a hunchbacked creature hopped slowly along. Mac stopped the car and jumped out.

  ‘Toad?’ I jumped out too, camera in hand.

  He nodded, pulled a bucket and net from the back of the car and draped a raincoat over his shoulders. It wasn’t coming down hard, but hard enough.

  My first-ever cane toad was squat, with unblinking black eyes and a disdainful expression. It wasn’t the monster I was expecting.

  Mac pointed to the lumps on its back. ‘Poison glands, need to watch out for those.’

  I took a few pictures as he scooped it up, shielding the camera from the rain with my hand. I didn’t have a jacket, of course. Did Lara Croft ever wear a raincoat? I didn’t think so.

  Mac’s eyes flickered to me and his hand went to his raincoat. I thought he was going to give it to me, but he just pulled it further over his shoulders. So much for chivalry.

  ‘Why didn’t you just run it over?’ I shivered.

  ‘Needed to double-check it’s a cane toad — don’t want to make any mistakes. Besides, humane euthanasia’s the go.’

  ‘According to the Geneva Convention for prisoners of war?’

  ‘Yeah — that enough pictures for you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a few more — if that’s all right with you?’

  ‘You’re the boss.’ His voice was sharp again, like he’d just remembered he was here under duress.

  ‘Sorry,’ I murmured.

  ‘What?’ He climbed back in the car and I followed him.

  ‘Sorry. I’m sorry I made you take me out. Seemed like the only way I was ever going to get you to talk to me.’

  He started the car up again, frowning.

  ‘You hate me, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s not a matter of hating.’

  ‘What is it a matter of then? Ever since I arrived you’ve done your best to make things difficult for me.’

  ‘There’s a campground up ahead — might see if there’s some cane toads there.’ He watched the windscreen wipers brush away the rain.

  I wasn’t going to let it drop. ‘Snake in the toilet?’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He stared out at the night, fingers tightening on the wheel.

  I reached over and touched his arm. ‘Why?’ His arm was warm. My fingers must have felt like ice against it, but he didn’t flinch. I was soaked.

  He glanced down at my hand where it rested on his forearm. Something passed over his face: annoyance and — if I wasn’t mistaken, which I don’t think I was — the ‘d’ word: desire. I know that look. It made my stomach jump. It was so quick, but I was sure …

  On the other hand, perhaps not …

  He pulled over at the campground. There were no tents, which was lucky considering the conditions. My hand fell off his arm as he reached into the back seat for a spotlight. ‘You stay in the car. I’ll have a look around.’ He jumped out like the car was on fire.

  I watched him walk away across the grass. In the beam of his spotlight the rain looked like snow. He liked it out there — I could tell from his face he was relieved to get away from me. Back into his natural habitat …

  A toad was calling through the rain. In a way, it was a nice call — if you didn’t know the creature that was making it. It was just an animal trying to find a mate. It wasn’t its fault it was so far from home.

  ‘Mac.’ I jumped out of the car and ran towards him. In a moment I was wet through — my hair was sticking to my face, but I wasn’t going to let him get away that easily. Not when I was just getting somewhere.

  He turned, his spotlight shining in my eyes, blinding me. ‘Don’t run off like that,’ I said.

  ‘Get back in the car, you’re soaked.’

  I shrugged. ‘Why do you hate me?’

  He hesitated, then stepped towards me. He was so close — I thought he was going to wrap his arms around me. That’s what it looked like. And when he spoke, his voice was low — almost tender. ‘We don’t need liars around here — I read the Herald, you know.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  High time to go

  Neither of us spoke a word the whole way back. He picked up a couple of toads at the campground, added them to the bucket, then climbed back in the car. I was already there, shivering.

  He turned the heater on as we headed down the mountain. That was considerate, I suppose. I was too miserable to bother trying to talk, but he opened his mouth a couple of times as if he was going to say something, then closed it again. In the back seat the toads jumped around in the bucket, banging against the plastic lid.

  It was funny; I’d actually thought he was warming to me. We’d had a conversation — our first ever. Not much of a conversation maybe — no-one could call a discussion about cane toads romantic, but words had been exchanged. He’d even smiled. What if he never smiled at me like that again? I’d only had one hit, but already I craved it like an addict.

  I’d felt something between us, I know I had — I’ve had experience at these things. I thought he was going to make a move. And then — that.

  Now th
at I thought about it, I didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before. It was the obvious reason for him to want to get rid of me. I’d thought he was hiding something. Really, he just hated me because I was a sneaky astroturfing spin-meister who had it in for the long-footed potoroo.

  I watched the rainforest outside the window and, the thing was, I kind of got it. The way the mist hung among all those twisted branches — it stirred something in me. It was like that feeling you get now and then when you see a dress in a shop. You’re just walking past, not even thinking about dresses … But then, there it is — the perfect frock — and suddenly it fills this hole you hadn’t known was there.

  I think I now knew how those people felt about the potoroo, about the rainforest, about turning trees into houses. I’m not saying I’d turned into a tree-hugging greenie. It would take more than that, but — I saw their point. It would be like someone taking a razor to my favourite dress — the whole wardrobe even.

  I was just turning to Mac to try to tell him that, when I saw him stiffen. His eyes were fixed on the side of the road. I followed his gaze. Two dogs stood in the mist, beneath the dripping trees. As the car came closer they ran into the bushes. Across the back of their rumps were black stripes. I’d never seen dogs with markings like that before.

  Still, I might not have thought much more about it if it hadn’t been for the way Mac looked. His face was rigid and his hands gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white.

  I looked from his hands to the rainforest and back to his face. He wasn’t giving anything away. His blue eyes were cold. I suddenly remembered the tattoo of the tiger I’d seen on his shoulder that first afternoon.

  I knew what he was hiding.

  I wouldn’t have done what I did if he’d said something — if he’d just asked me to keep it quiet. If he’d acknowledged what we’d seen. But he said nothing.

  Even when he pulled up at my house and I got out, he didn’t wave or say goodbye. I stood on the verandah, watching his lights disappear. I wanted to run after him, shake him out of that silence — why wouldn’t he talk to me? I didn’t, though.

  Why are man–woman things so complicated? Why won’t men talk? What goes on in their minds? Not much, possibly. But was this a man–woman thing? To me it was. To him, well … I thought of those animals with their striped rumps. To him, it was probably something else. Were those animals really what I’d thought they were? Was that even possible? Weren’t they extinct?

  I pulled out my laptop, plugged the modem into the phone line and Googled Tasmanian tiger. The more I read, the more excited I got. It was astonishing. Since the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, became ‘extinct’ in 1936 there had been 3,800 sightings in mainland Australia. Some of these seemed credible, others not so credible. None had provided any hard evidence, such as tracks or photographs.

  But it was the location of many of these reports that really got my pulse racing. The wilderness area on either side of the Queensland and New South Wales border was a hotspot. Here. In my backyard. Since 1964 there had been fifty sightings of a striped animal like a cross between a dog and a kangaroo.

  I thought about what I’d seen … A Tasmanian tiger — now that was something. Two Tasmanian tigers — that was beyond something. It was spectacular. I was no animal expert, obviously, but you didn’t need to be one to know that finding a Tassie tiger was like winning the lottery. I paced up and down in my kitchen as I thought about it. Long-footed potoroos and Hastings River mice were one thing, but Tasmanian tigers … Now that was news — big news. I knew someone who’d be very happy to hear from me with this story.

  And it would distract him from running that other story he’d mentioned … PR queen goes feral was not a story I wanted to read in the Sydney papers.

  I bit my lip. But Mac, it seemed, was trying to keep the tigers quiet. I reckoned he’d seen them before. That explained a lot, when I thought about it. Now why would he want to keep them quiet? Maybe he didn’t want a media circus? Or … he was lining up a big media deal? Yeah, that could be it. Maybe he didn’t want me to crash his party.

  Something about that idea didn’t square with the Mac I knew, but what did I know about him really? Stripping off my soaking clothes, I dropped them on the bathroom floor.

  I looked towards the toilet, but of course you weren’t there, René. I really did miss you then. A bit of philosophical wisdom was just what I needed.

  As the shower ran over me, I considered my options. I knew what I had here was an entrée back into society of the highest kind. If I played my cards right I could be the woman who returned the Tasmanian tiger to Australia. Maybe there’d be an Order of Australia in it for me. That would be nice.

  It was a pretty intoxicating feeling: finding an animal thought to be extinct. The idea of this tawny creature stepping out of the rainforest, out of the past … Yes, it was big news all right. But, should I be the one to break the story?

  Towelling my hair dry, I sat at the kitchen table, listening to the rain. A drop seeped through the tin roof and landed at my feet, then another. I leaned down to fetch a saucepan to put under the leak and a cockroach the size of a matchbox scuttled out, across my wrist.

  I screamed. I’d seen cockroaches before, but this one was a monster. Suddenly the room came into sharp focus: the crappy kitchen, the dirty stove, the cobwebbed windows … Not to mention the animals in the toilet, on my roof and in my garden. Had these creatures never heard of boundaries? I didn’t know how I’d put up with it so long. I wasn’t meant for this kind of life. Wildlife and me just did not mix.

  I needed that entrée back into society. This story would catapult me right back to the top of the A-list where I belonged. But, before I took any decision, I had to consult Alice. The book was on the floor beside my bed. I closed my eyes, opened the page and pressed my finger to it. When I opened my eyes, this is what I saw.

  It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded with the birds and animals that had fallen into it …

  I read the words several times. It was high time to go. It was one of the clearest messages I’d ever had from Alice. I closed the book, nodding. There were too many birds and animals. That was it then, the universe had spoken. Time to go.

  Simon McKechnie’s number was on my phone. I pressed the buttons and waited. Maybe he wouldn’t pick up. That would be a sign I wasn’t meant to do this. Yes, I was still a bit conflicted, even with the clear advice from Alice.

  I can’t pretend I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d had the epiphany in the rainforest — such as it was. I wasn’t totally the ignorant city slicker anymore — I didn’t have that excuse. Maybe Mac’s reasons for keeping the tigers secret weren’t selfish. Maybe there was more to it I hadn’t considered …

  The phone rang and rang; I was about to hang up when he answered.

  ‘McKechnie here.’

  ‘Simon?’ I coughed to clear my throat. ‘It’s Cassandra Daley. I’ve got a story you’ll be interested in …’

  It wasn’t until we’d finished talking that I saw the fat black sausages dangling off my ankles. Leeches! They must have been there the whole time. I screamed and dropped the phone. I’d been right about rainforests — muddy and leech-infested pretty much covered it.

  When I saw Mac’s lights go off I knew this was my chance. Simon had suggested I search his house for photos or anything else that might count as proof. He’d been excited, but trying to hide it.

  ‘I’ll have to talk to my editor,’ he’d said. ‘See if he’s interested.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll try the opposition instead …’

  ‘Give me half an hour …’

  ‘Gee, I don’t know …’

  ‘Twenty minutes then. I’ll call you back ASAP.’

  I looked out into the darkness towards Mac’s house. Having come this far, it seemed stupid to baulk at breaking and entering. Hell, if Mac was going to treat me like a cross between Hitler and Judas, I may as well act the part. I should be
able to duck over, case the joint and get back again in twenty minutes. The main problem was, it was wet out there — and I didn’t have a raincoat.

  My Tomb Raider outfit was lying in a sodden clump in the laundry. It seemed a shame to wet more clothes — the way this rain was going, who knew when I’d be able to dry them? Frog Hollow was sadly lacking in standard laundry facilities, like a dryer. Even the washing machine was one of those twin-tub models.

  I took the only sensible option and pulled out my swimsuit. I’m not a bikini girl — less on show is always sexier. This season’s strapless black retro fifties one-piece had turned heads at Manly Beach every time I’d worn it. I pulled my velvet dressing gown on top for warmth; no heads would be turning tonight.

  Goosebumps popped up all over me as I stepped into the rain, my dressing gown flapping behind me in the breeze. I had a sudden vision of how I must look: like a cut-price Wonder Woman, minus the tiara.

  I knew I’d have to walk — he’d wake up if I drove — but the bush route was out of the question. I’d end up in Brisbane if I didn’t die in the jungle first. Not to mention the leeches. I’d just had an hysterical half-hour getting them all off. You could still see the lumps where they’d bitten me. A dribble of blood ran down the side of my foot and the theme music from Jaws ran through my mind as I leaned down to scratch my ankle. I imagined a pack of leeches circling, the scent of blood in their noses. Did leeches have noses?

  My bare feet dug into the muddy track as I set off up the road, hand curled around my key ring torch.

  I’d never experienced rain like it — not so much rain drops as rain container-loads. Croaks and ribbets followed me the whole way. Those frogs must have been yelling their guts out to be heard over the downpour. It was a great place for frogs all right.

  Were you out there, René? I suppose you must have been, but I didn’t hear you. You were being the strong, silent type for a change.

  I listened for the call of the cane toad, but didn’t hear it. There was something nice about being able to identify noises. It made you feel at home. I used to know the sound of the rubbish collectors, the neighbour’s car and the Manly ferry, but now … I smiled to myself — toad identification was my specialty.