Liar Bird

by Lisa Walker

  There was so much more I wanted to ask him — everything, tell me everything about you. I wanted it all right now but I sensed getting to know Mac was going to be like an archaeological dig. I’d have to piece him together from bits and pieces; he wasn’t going to give himself up whole.

  ‘So, the grumpy act?’ I murmured.

  Mac reached out and touched my hair. ‘You’re not going to let it go, are you?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well, I figured you were used to getting your way … with men, particularly. Am I right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I looked at you and what I saw was — a cat set loose in the forest.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Was it a compliment or an insult? Something about his tone implied the latter.

  ‘A cat in the wild learns quickly. We had one we trapped autopsied the other day. It had thirty lizards in its stomach.’

  I couldn’t see the relevance. Just when I thought I knew where I was I’d dropped into Wonderland again. It would be so nice if something made sense for a change. ‘I’m not a cat. I don’t eat lizards.’

  Mac didn’t seem to hear me. ‘I knew if you survived long enough to settle in you’d turn into a killer.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  It’s more about the poetry

  Mac met my eyes. He was serious.

  What did he mean — I’d turn into a killer? My stomach knotted uneasily. ‘This is about the tiger, isn’t it?’

  He tilted his head slightly in acknowledgement. ‘Everything’s about the tiger.’

  Everything? Something about the way he said that made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. What did he mean, everything? I wasn’t sure if I was ready to go there. ‘So, where did you first see it?’ I murmured.

  ‘Near my chicken coop.’

  ‘When?’ It was like twenty questions — I was going to have to drag it out of him.

  ‘Three weeks ago. Seems like forever.’

  That was good; he’d volunteered some information. ‘Did you only see it once?’

  He looked past me. ‘Once there, once somewhere else, and then once with you. I was watching every night but it never came back to the chicken coop. I was starting to wonder if I really saw what I thought I saw.’ The dam had broken.

  ‘So that’s why you were so tired all the time? I thought you had a secret lover.’

  ‘No … I was out there every night in the hammock with my camera. Sometimes I didn’t know if I was awake or asleep. I kept seeing it, raising its head …’ His eyes were distant. ‘That first time … it was only about five seconds but in some ways … it seemed like more than the rest of my life put together.’

  I knew what he meant. ‘It was a defining moment?’

  He nodded.

  What was my defining moment? Maybe I was still waiting for it. ‘What were you going to do with the photo?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know, but I couldn’t think about much else. Until you came along.’ His eyes came back to me. ‘There I was in the hammock, night after night, drinking beer, wanting to think about it — the animal — wanting to sort things out in my head, wanting to have a bloody rest. But instead …’

  ‘Instead?’

  ‘Instead, I was thinking about you.’

  My heart skipped a beat. ‘Why is it so important to you?’

  ‘The tiger?’

  I nodded.

  ‘The thing is, they’re the Australian version of the wolf.’ His eyes lit up. ‘They’re our only truly native top-end predator. Dingoes are just Johnny-come-latelys. And predators, well, anyone who’s studied biology knows how important they are. To be honest, though, it’s not only about the biology.’

  I don’t know what made me say it — a sudden flash of intuition … ‘It’s about the poetry,’ I murmured.

  Mac tensed, he stared at me. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I found your poem.’ I leaned over and picked it up from the bedroom floor where I’d dropped it the night before.

  He laughed uneasily. ‘And you still wanted me, after reading that? Poetry’s not my strong point.’

  ‘I loved it. Can you read it to me?’

  Oh my, I had never realised … poetry is Viagra to the mind. Stimulate the brain and before too long, sigh, it travels south …

  Some time later, with tousled hair and languid steps, we washed up into the kitchen. I’d wrapped a soft rug off Mac’s bed around me like a toga.

  The plaster cast was still on the bench where I’d left it. I ran my finger over it. There was a lump for the heel and four toe prints. ‘Is this …?’

  Mac nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s the tiger.’

  I turned it in my hands, carefully, like a rare artefact or old masterpiece.

  Mac leaned on the bench, his torso bare. ‘It left its prints in the mud beside my chicken pen. If it wasn’t for the footprint I’d have thought I dreamt it — or that it was a wild dog. The footprint, though, four toes and a heel print — nothing else makes prints like that.’

  He gazed at the plaster cast. ‘I pulled out my Mammal Tracks and Signs, took it outside and shone my torch on the mud …’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘That must have been amazing.’

  ‘Amazing?’ He shot me a quizzical look. ‘Yes, I was amazed, but it was more than that.’ His voice was quiet. ‘It was like being in church.’ He looked out the window. ‘Not some pissy little country church either — Hobart bloody cathedral with the full choir singing.’

  ‘A resurrection?’

  He turned to me. ‘Yes, a resurrection. Exactly.’ His smile erupted.

  It had the usual effect. Oh my goodness. Where was the valium when I needed it? I pressed my hands to my burning cheeks.

  ‘It was lucky you weren’t living next door at the time, Cassandra. I was jumping and hollering like an idiot. Anyone who’d seen me would have run a mile.’

  ‘Then you took a cast?’

  He nodded. ‘I always have some plaster handy. You never know what will turn up around here; but not that, I hadn’t expected that.’ He ran his finger lightly over the cast in my hand. ‘It’s like touching a miracle.’ His eyes lingered on it. ‘I suppose it’s kind of my religion — wildlife. And this one — it’s the Holy Grail.’

  I loved the way he said that — it was like he’d flung open the shutters to his heart. Mine, of course, had been wide open from the moment we made love; from the moment I’d read his poem. ‘Did you get any photos in the end?’

  Mac shook his head. ‘That’s another story. I think we’d better have a cup of tea first.’

  ‘Any chance of a coffee?’

  Mac looked in his cupboard. ‘Might have an old tin of Nescafe here.’

  I shuddered. ‘Never mind — tea’s fine.’

  Mac made tea in a pottery teapot. He rooted around in the cupboards and extracted a packet of shortbread biscuits. ‘I hope you like omelettes.’ He gestured at the eggs with his chin. ‘It’s the only way I can keep up with the chooks.’

  ‘I love omelettes.’

  ‘That’s lucky, because there’s not much else.’

  We settled ourselves at the table. He poured the tea into two mugs, pushed one towards me.

  I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms. ‘So, Mac, when do we get to the snake in the toilet?’

  ‘Biscuit?’ He held the packet towards me.

  I took one. ‘You’re really spinning this story out, aren’t you? Maybe I should call you Scheherazade. Do you think I’m going to kill you when you’re finished?’

  Shifting uncomfortably, he took a sip of tea. ‘You know that anyone who hears the whole one thousand and one stories is supposed to go mad?’

  ‘Should I be worried?’

  Mac held my gaze. There was something in his eyes … Discomfort?

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘What, what?’ He smiled and it vanished.

  Perhaps I’d imagined it. ‘So, should I? Be worried?’

  ‘Maybe. Anyway, what
’s the rush, Cassandra? That’s the city in you, let it go. Slow down, enjoy the ride.’ His eyes crinkled.

  ‘Okay. We don’t have one thousand and one nights, but I guess we’ve got all day.’ I sipped my tea slowly. I hadn’t had a cup of real tea like this since I’d left Blacktown. It was gentler than coffee, less of a shot to the heart. I could get to like it. ‘Slow enough for you? Tell on …’ I propped my head on my hands.

  ‘That Sunday, after you went back to Sydney …’ Mac said.

  ‘After the snake incident.’

  Mac nodded. ‘That afternoon I went for a walk up an old fire trail that leads towards the tick fence on the Queensland border. It was slow going — weeds love a break in the canopy — there were blackberries everywhere. If it wasn’t blackberries it was lawyer vine; once that gets hold of you it doesn’t let go without a struggle. If I’d been thinking clearly I’d have worn long pants. I was ripped to shreds by the time I got to the top of Cougan Peak.’

  I nodded — remembering how he’d looked the morning after I’d got back from Sydney. ‘You looked like you’d been on the losing end of a fight with an echidna,’ I said.

  Mac smiled briefly. ‘I was looking for tracks and scats all the way up but hadn’t seen anything.’

  ‘Scats?’

  ‘Poos — thylacine poos.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Once I got to the summit I climbed up onto a rock to rest and a cloud of butterflies surrounded my head. There were all sorts: swordtails, swallowtails, blue triangles, even a Richmond birdwing, which was good to see — they’re endangered. I knew why they were all there, around my head — the butterfly with the highest spot to mate gets the girl. But like I say, sometimes it’s not the biology.’

  I imagined a flock of butterflies around his head. ‘Mmm, it sounds like poetry.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s not rainforest up on top of the peak, the soil’s too thin — there’s just a few grass-trees and some stunted eucalypts. But you’re looking down on rainforest. I’ve worked in lots of different places and they all had their good points, but there’s something special about the country round here, Cassandra. The Bundjalung people talk about a sacred triangle mapped out by three peaks. I’m no expert on that kind of thing, but I’d have to say you can feel it — it’s in the air.’

  I watched him talk, drinking it in. And I’d thought he was the silent type. He had plenty to say when he wanted to.

  ‘Anyway, the sun was setting and it was so peaceful. Some of the butterflies came to rest on my head and the light was streaming through a gap in the clouds. My mind was as clear as it had been for days —’

  ‘Because I’d gone?’

  He smiled. ‘Because you’d gone. Anyway, I kind of had a revelation.’

  ‘All those blokes in the Bible, they always had their epiphanies on top of mountains, didn’t they?’ I said.

  ‘Closer to God, I suppose … whatever. Mine was about the tiger, of course. I was looking out at all that country — we call it a wilderness area. It’s not really wilderness, though — the Aboriginal people called it home. If you want real wilderness, you have to go to Antarctica. But putting that aside, it’s rugged country — no-one goes there. They used to walk the tick fence, but that’s pretty stuffed now. The closest inroad of civilisation is my house … and Frog Hollow, but at the time I thought I’d taken care of that.’ He glanced at me with a wry smile.

  ‘Ze snake in ze toilet, ve meet at last,’ I murmured in a fake German accent.

  ‘Yeah, the snake in the toilet. What can I say — sorry?’

  ‘That would be a start …’

  ‘It was just that, with the tiger, and you … I knew where you’d come from, the type of person you are.’

  ‘Were,’ I interrupted him.

  ‘Were?’

  ‘I’ve changed.’ Even as I said it, I knew it sounded hollow. I’d called Simon, hadn’t I?

  ‘Have you?’ Mac sounded doubtful. ‘Anyway, you were the last person I needed around here.’

  ‘Because of the tiger?’

  ‘Because of the tiger.’

  Outside, the wind was shaking the trees. They lashed against the house, scratching at the tin roof like fingernails. The rain was a sheet of grey; you couldn’t see more than ten metres.

  ‘They say we don’t get cyclones this far south, but this is starting to feel like one,’ Mac said.

  ‘Don’t change the subject.’

  ‘It was only a carpet snake. It’s not like I was trying to kill you.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have been very nice if it had bitten me on the bum.’

  ‘It didn’t, though, did it?’

  ‘What about the snake? Isn’t that against your ranger code of practice or something — putting snakes down toilets?’

  ‘I did feel bad about it. It would have been fine, though.’

  ‘I know, they can hold their breath for up to twenty minutes.’

  Mac cocked his head. ‘You’re an expert now, are you?’

  ‘I learn quickly when I have to. You didn’t fix the hole at all, did you?’

  ‘Of course not. I had to leave a way for the snake to get out again.’

  I nodded, talking through a shortbread biscuit. ‘So, back to Cougan Peak. There you are, you think you’re rid of me, the butterflies are creating poetry around your head …’

  ‘Yeah, there I was … it suddenly occurred to me that no-one needed to know. The only proper way to deal with the tiger was to do nothing. I wouldn’t take a photo; I’d keep my mouth shut and destroy my plaster cast.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Any publicity will destroy it. People might say they want to help preserve it, but they’ll want to trap it, chase it, round it up — “for its own good”.’ He avoided my gaze.

  The remains of my biscuit congealed in my throat. What was going to happen when Simon arrived? I swallowed with difficulty. ‘How do you think it’s survived here for so long without being seen?’

  ‘Two hundred years is not such a long time when you think about it. Not a long time to stay hidden in country like this. There’s no reason it can’t remain hidden a lot longer …’ Mac finished his tea and gazed out at the rain.

  ‘Did you see the tiger up there?’

  Mac started, like he’d been miles away. ‘Didn’t I say? As soon as I’d made up my mind, they appeared. If I believed in God, I’d call it divine intervention.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘There were two of them. Probably a male and a female, I can’t be sure. My camera was right beside me. My hand was on it, but I didn’t move — I’d made a pact. They froze as they saw me. I love the way wild animals do that, just look at you — judging your intentions. There’s something so innocent about it. Maybe they would have run off if I’d tried to take a photo. Maybe they wouldn’t. I’ll never know.

  ‘After five minutes they turned and vanished into the forest. They’re pretty hard to see if they don’t want to be seen. I don’t know how long I sat there for and I don’t remember much about the walk back down. I woke up in my bed feeling like I was five years old and it was Christmas Day.’ Mac’s face was soft as he talked.

  I wanted to keep on listening to him, but he seemed to have finished. ‘So there you were, tucked up in bed, waiting for Santa, but then the big bad wolf came back.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s where my head was, still on top of that mountain, when I saw the note you’d left on my computer. There I was thinking, problem solved, when it was just starting up again.’ He nodded at the cast. ‘As you can see, I haven’t got around to destroying it yet. I don’t know why.’ His eyes lingered on the footprint.

  I turned it in my hands. ‘So, this is the only proof there ever was a tiger?’ This was the proof Simon was after.

  Mac nodded.

  I loosened my hands and let it fall to the ground. The brittle plaster shattered into fragments that skittered across the floor. ‘Oops.’

  Mac winced.

  Chapter Sixteen

&n
bsp; Pre-Headline-Tension

  My God how it rained. It seemed there’d never be an end to it. Was it three days, four? It was frog weather, duck weather, build-yourself-an-ark-and-get-inside-it weather.

  By the second day there was water as far as we could see. It crept closer and closer to the house — a brown tide of ribbets and croaks. It was frog-tastic. Maybe I should have been worried, but I wasn’t. Mac was absorbing all my thoughts.

  I’d never known a man to be so hard to figure out. He was one minute hot, the next minute cold …

  In the hot periods, we spent a lot of time in bed — ribbet, ribbet, kiss, kiss. Frogs everywhere, but here was my prince …

  Crawk.

  Sorry, René, nothing against frogs, it’s just an expression.

  We also talked. It was funny, for two people who’d hated each other, we really got on — some of the time. I found out what the tiger meant to him.

  ‘There was a thylacine skin in the attic of my grandparents’ farm in Tasmania,’ he said as I traced his tattoo with my finger. ‘My great-grandfather shot one — not when they were almost extinct, but still … It was disturbing his sheep. When I was a kid I’d roll that skin out and play games with it, pretend it was alive. I couldn’t believe it when they told me we’d killed every last one.’

  ‘So, you’re trying to make amends?’

  He gave me a funny smile — one that hinted there was more to it than that. ‘I suppose it became kind of a quest for me … protecting animals. But always, there was this hope, that I might find one.’

  ‘And then you did.’

  Mac nodded. ‘And then you turned up.’

  In the cold periods, we argued, often also in bed. He seemed like a different person at these times. It was like he was wearing a mask, and even though I knew the Mac I wanted was underneath, sometimes I couldn’t find him.

  ‘You gave me a pretty hard time, you know,’ I said.

  ‘I needed to get rid of you. You were your own worst enemy too. Anyone could have told you how the feral pig morning was going to turn out if you’d asked. But you’re not the kind of person who asks for advice, are you?’