Bird and Sugar Boy

by Sofie Laguna

  ‘Next stop is Bayden Street,’ the bus driver said to me. ‘So settle down until we get there.’

  ‘You’ve got to stop now! I left my backpack behind. You’ve got to stop now!’

  ‘I told you. I can’t stop until we get to Bayden Street. Now sit down and shut up.’

  ‘Stop! Stop!’

  ‘I said shut up! No shouting.’

  I didn’t know what he was talking about. I wasn’t shouting – he was shouting.

  ‘Open the door! Open the door! Let me out! Let me out!’ I said. The bus pulled up at some red lights. ‘We’ve stopped! You’ve got to let me out! Let me out!’

  ‘Let him out, for God’s sake,’ a woman in the seat behind the driver said. ‘Give us some peace.’

  The driver shook his head and pulled the open doors lever. ‘Bloody street kids.’ The doors swung open. I jumped out and ran as fast as I could back the way the bus had come – past a lot of shops and more people and cars. Cars were everywhere – it was a car world, not a people world. I ran and I ran, but nothing looked like I’d seen it before. I couldn’t see The Grill – Eat In or Takeaway. I didn’t know where I was. I thought I saw the witch with the trolley. I couldn’t be sure, but I kept running just in case.

  I turned down another side street. I saw a truck parked and I went behind it, and leaned against the wall. I had lost Birds: A Field Guide. I would never see it again. Some things have a never to them – like Great Auks never being on earth again, like Sugar Boy never living in 5 Neals Road again, and like my mother never coming home. Never seeing Birds: A Field Guide right now was even worse than those other nevers put together …

  The ball bearings rushed up and out of me in a hard flood. Rapids of crying rocked my body. I couldn’t stop. I heard the sound of my crying, but it wasn’t like any normal crying like Lena might do in front of the eight-thirty movie, or like the crying you see on television. It sounded like a dog might sound if one could cry. Like a dog who might be feeling sick from being so lost that he wouldn’t even be a black dot from an aerial view.

  When I opened my eyes, through my tears I expected to see ball bearings rolling down the street and into the gutter, but I didn’t. No matter how much crying I’d done they were still there, stuck inside me.

  The bus driver called me a bloody street kid. Was that a kid who liked streets of the city so much that he’d jump off a bus just to get back to one? Was it a kid that made a home in the streets of the city? Was it me?

  I curled up into the smallest ball I could on the concrete, hidden by the parked truck, and closed my eyes. In my dream a city street led to one of the mountains with no colour. The Archaeopteryx was sitting on top. He looked around for his mate, but there was no other Archaeopteryx in the world. He was the only one living.

  I woke up when someone was reversing the truck out of its parking spot. Whoever it was didn’t see me because I’d tried to make myself as small as a bee hummingbird, the smallest bird on earth. It lives in Cuba and people think it’s a bee, not a bird, because it’s so small. I wished I were a bee hummingbird because who would find a bee hummingbird in this big fast city?

  But a bee hummingbird could still get run over by a reversing truck; I pulled myself up and got out of the way. My body felt sore and slow as I walked out of the side street and back into the roar of the city. I felt like I was pulling myself along on a broken trolley with every step.

  As I walked I saw fat grey pigeons everywhere. Why hadn’t I seen those pigeons before? They filled the ledges above shops, they swooped down onto the street, and they perched on parked cars, rooftops and street signs. They weren’t afraid of anything. A P Davies says that the pigeon survives so well in big cities because of its natural adaptability and fearlessness. They sleep in train stations and pick up crumbs, and they don’t mind the roar of cars and street cleaners and shouting. The pigeon prefers to live in a forest, but if it ends up in a big city it does what it has to to stay alive and keep flying and eating and making nests for pigeon babies.

  As I went past, they called to me in their friendly cooing way, Hey there, Bird! Where are you going to so fast through this city of roaring? Come and sit with us. We’ll find food for you. Sandwich crumbs, donuts, hot chips!

  I can’t stop! I sang back to them, as if they could read my bird thoughts. I have a long way to go. I am going to where mountains glow and sparkle blue as jewels.

  Good luck! Good luck! the pigeons cooed. It’s a long way, but we know you’ll get there. Even though I couldn’t stop, it was good to know I had friends. I kept walking. If I kept walking I’d have to end up somewhere, even if it took a bit longer than if I was on a train or a bus.

  Birds know things without having to ask information ladies or read maps. It’s a mystery – even to the experts – the way birds know things. In chapter eight of Birds: A Field Guide, AP Davies says, The more years I study birds the more I am mystified by their powerful instinct. Then he talks about the way birds migrate. That means they fly thousands of kilometres over the sea to get to places where it’s warm, where the food tastes good and where it’s safe to have babies. They know where to go without asking. Nobody is really sure how they do it, not even AP. Maybe they use the stars, maybe the wind or the moon.

  I don’t know how far I walked following my migratory instincts through the city. I kept putting one foot down in front of the other, keeping my eyes on my feet as much of the time as I could. When I looked up the city stretched way above me. The tall buildings leaned in towards me, as if they could tip and come crashing down. It was easier to keep my eyes on my feet and just keep going.

  I heard sounds, but they were coming from far far away. I heard car brakes screeching, car horns honking, and people shouting, ‘Watch where you’re going!’ ‘Get out of the way!’ I heard those things, but they didn’t matter to me now. I was in migration to where A P Davies was waiting.

  My legs ached. I had to stop and rest or I’d never make it. I sat on the concrete ledge in front of a shop window with a sign that said Reject Shop – Nothing Over Two Dollars. As I was leaning my head back against the glass two boys came over. They were much bigger than me and they had tattoos on their arms. One of the tattoos was of a dog like Jeremy Shadrow’s brother has, showing all his teeth.

  ‘You can’t sit there,’ said the boy with the growling dog on his arm. It had been so long since anyone had spoken to me that I’d started to think that I was in one world and these guys were in another world with everybody else. I wasn’t even scared. ‘Did you hear me? I said you can’t sit there! This is our place. Get out of here!’ They really reminded me of Jeremy Shadrow’s brother. ‘Move kid!’ I stayed where I was, perched on the concrete. I was very tired, and I still had a long way to go. ‘If you don’t move, kid, we’re going to make you,’ said Growling Dog. He put his foot up against mine.

  I looked down and saw my own two feet in dirty white-and-black sneakers, one with a knot in the lace. I saw the frayed edge of my jeans and I saw my socks – one black, one dark blue (Dad puts all the socks in together) – and then I looked further across and I saw the big foot of Growling Dog pressed against mine. I looked up to where the big foot led – a leg in a black tracksuit, a pair of wide shoulders, a growling-dog tattoo and a red cap on backwards.

  ‘Do you know Jeremy Shadrow’s brother?’ I asked Growling Dog. My voice was croaky, like it wasn’t used to talking.

  ‘What?’ he kicked at my foot, pushing it across the pavement.

  ‘Jeremy Shadrow’s brother. Do you know him?’

  ‘Who’s Jeremy Shadrow?’ the other guy asked. ‘Is he a faggot?’

  ‘He’s in the juvenile delinquents’ jail.’

  ‘So why would we know him?’

  ‘He’s got a pit bull.’

  ‘So he’s a faggot with a pit bull?’ Growling Dog kicked at my foot harder this time, squashing my toes. He laughed and the other guy joined in.

  ‘I don’t know if he’s a faggot. He’s in the juveniles’
jail. They bash you if you lose at pool.’

  ‘Is that right? How would you know that? Did the faggot tell you?’ Growling Dog kicked me again, on my other foot. I wished I had Jeremy Shadrow’s brother’s pit bull with me. I’d take the muzzle off. I looked back down to my sneakers and the odd socks. I hoped that when I looked back up again those guys and their world would be gone.

  They weren’t.

  Growling Dog pulled spit from the back of his throat with a loud wet scraping sound, and spat it close to my shoe. It was bigger than any spit Sugar Boy could ever do. ‘What do you think you’re doing here?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I’m on my way to the Blue Mountains. I’m moving there. I’ve got a friend waiting.’ I wanted those words to sound as strong as weapons, but they sounded weaker than they used to. Like I was talking about a made-up thing instead of something real.

  ‘Where?’ Growling Dog asked.

  ‘The Blue Mountains,’ I said again.

  ‘Mountains aren’t blue, you little freak. Where’s your friend now?’ Growling Dog gave me a push on my chest. ‘He left you because you don’t know what colour a mountain is, you dumb freak.’ He pushed me again, harder. ‘Nobody’s waiting for you.’

  The other guy came forward. He flicked his fingers hard into my forehead. Flick! Nobody ever did that to me before, and it was a bad surprise. It hurt a lot. Growling Dog laughed. ‘Blue mountains,’ he said, through the laugh, and shoved me again. ‘Now I’ve heard it all.’

  I stood up; white circles turned in front of my eyes. ‘Those mountains are blue and I’m going there so get out of my way!’ I bent down and pushed into Growling Dog with my whole body as hard as I could. I knocked him backwards and he shoved me off him back against the windows of the Reject Shop.

  Two men came past. ‘What’s going on here? Bugger off, you little troublemakers. Go on, get out of here or I’ll call the cops.’ One of the men was wearing overalls and a tool belt. He pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket and started to press the buttons.

  Growling Dog and his friend ran off one way and I turned a corner and went the other.

  I saw tracks, and running along those tracks were the trains. Bird unrivalled like the eagle! I walked up the steps into a station that said Richmond. There was a ticket machine, but no ticket checker so I just slipped under the arms and walked up onto a platform.

  It was a lot quieter and darker now. Everybody must have gone home to eat their dinners. The world was a night world – it had slowed and I was glad. With the world going slower I could think. I hadn’t been thinking.

  I touched my forehead, still hurting from the flick of that guy’s hard fingers. Everyone in this whole city was an enemy predator that I had to be on the lookout for. That was the mistake I’d been making, thinking that anybody could help. I wouldn’t try to get help anymore. I wouldn’t ask any more questions or tell anyone else my plan. A starling doesn’t ask a wedge-tailed eagle, ‘Which way to the sweetest seeds?’

  Where had I been? I wasn’t sure. I remembered some things – pigeons, getting pushed, Sugar Boy in a plane, Worcestershire sauce stains on my drawings, making the tern look like a plover and the plover look like a pelican. I remembered Sugar Boy singing Ooh Mumma, while he rode on his bicycle standing up. I remembered the curling smoke of our fire. I remembered Birds: A Field Guide and I remembered the smell of wool when it’s wet. But there were things I couldn’t remember, like what I was doing at Richmond station on platform four.

  My head was hurting and I was hot but cold too. My mouth was so dry. I don’t know when my mouth had ever felt so dry – like I’d been eating sand. There was nothing to swallow, but I didn’t want to drink anything. If I thought about drinking or eating I felt sick. I knew I was looking for something, but I couldn’t remember what it was. I had a plan – I knew I had a plan – but what was it? Where had it gone? I really couldn’t remember what it was or what I was doing there.

  I looked around. I saw trains and wires running criss-cross. I saw the headlights of three trains running in different directions. I counted six different platforms to take everyone to wherever they were in a hurry to get to. I saw lights that glowed ghost-blue.

  There were people standing on platform four, but they weren’t looking at me. Maybe my get-mad-with-Bird power was finally gone. They were just staring into the ghost-blue light, looking tired. Maybe they’d forgotten what their plans were too. Maybe, like me, they’d started the day with a plan and ended up on platform four at a station called Richmond with nothing at all.

  It was very windy.

  I was lucky for one thing, and that was the trains. They knew where they were going. If I got on one of those maybe some sort of plan would come back to me. I needed a ticket to get on a train, I remembered that. And I remembered that I had no money.

  Most times you have some idea of what to do next. After you come back from the ditch you know to put your bike in the shed and go inside. After you finish one bite of dinner you know to put the next one in your mouth. After you eat dinner you know to take your plate to the kitchen. After you get in bed you know to turn off the light. You don’t have to think – most times you know what to do. You might not know everything you’re going to do in the whole day, but you will know enough to get you through to the next bit. Just then, maybe for the first time ever, I had not one tiny idea of what to do to get me through to the next bit.

  I sat down under the sign that said platform four. I leaned against the legs of the sign and closed my eyes. The short-tailed shearwater migrates in a huge figure eight over the Pacific Ocean. On page 109, AP Davies says the birds fly in a peculiar double loop with the prevailing winds. I thought of the short-tailed shearwater letting the wind blow him wide over the ocean. He was brave enough to fly in a double loop right over the biggest ocean in the world with the wind showing him the way. Tonight I was the shearwater; my brothers and sisters were not here, but a strong prevailing wind was blowing.

  I’d probably pass right over Broome. In fact I was sure of it – my powerful instinct told me. I’d probably fly right past Sugar, sitting in his plane with his life jacket ready and the whistle attached, and people bringing him drinks, and his oxygen supply under the seat. He’d look out the window and see me flying just ahead of him. He’d mouth the words, ‘BIRD! STOP! BIRD! SLOW DOWN!’ and I’d raise one wing at him, wink and keep flying. A P Davies says there is nothing more determined than a bird in migration.

  Determination is when nothing can stop you. In his school speeches, Mr Brooks says ‘determination and hard work result in reaching goals’. A P Davies and the Blue Mountains were my goals and nothing could stop me.

  I heard a train coming. The prevailing winds lifted me up; I spread my dark silvery-grey wings and I flew from platform four onto the train as it pulled into the station and opened its mouth.

  I perched on the back of one of the seats. The carriage was empty, which was good because a short-tailed shearwater is a shy bird that likes to keep its distance. Someone had graffitied eat shit across the wall and there were cigarette burns in the seats. A sign said Security patrols this carriage. In an emergency call 000.

  The train rocked and raced through the night. The short-tailed shearwater watched as lights and tracks and signs flashed by. Soon the robot voice on the loud speaker said, ‘Next stop Central-Main Station.’ Central-Main Station! I was back where I started! I’d flown in a double loop – this was where those winds had taken me. It was a short fly to the double doors of the train and out onto the platform.

  There were a lot more people at Central-Main than at Richmond Station, but nobody’s interested in short-tailed shearwaters – only A P Davies and me – and right now I was glad. It meant I could fly anywhere I wanted without being chased.

  I saw more of my pigeon friends sleeping along the high cross beams close to the station ceiling, their heads tucked into their wings, eyes closed. They were bunched up close to each other – a row of fat feathered pigeons sleeping �
� and I wanted very much to join them. I wanted to fly up to those beams and say, Room up here for me? but I had places to go. I wouldn’t wake them.

  I started to feel dizzy. Maybe it was from the double loop I’d just flown, but I thought I was going to vomit. I swallowed hard. Where does a person vomit in Central-Main? I would have to find the toilets.

  After I swallowed, the vomit feeling went away a bit and I kept walking along the platform. I felt like I was floating. AP Davies says that a bird can lose over half its body weight when in migration. It’s because it doesn’t eat and the lighter it gets the easier it is for the prevailing winds to blow it in the right direction. Maybe that was happening to me too.

  When I got to the escalator that lost feeling came again. What was happening? The short-tailed shearwater doesn’t forget every ten minutes where it has to go or it would never make it across an ocean as big as the Pacific. If it did forget, it would get lost, and end up flying in double loops to nowhere. Then it would get tired, and want to vomit but wouldn’t be able to think where, and then it would just drop right down to the sea with tiredness and that would be risky with the Pacific Ocean so full of grey nurses, hammerheads and white pointers.

  I wanted to vomit again. I had to keep my thinking clear. I had to get hold of my plan and keep hold.

  I knew my friends were somewhere in the sky with me, but I couldn’t see them or hear them. My wings were burning. I’d been flapping and soaring so hard that maybe I’d set my two wings on fire. It wouldn’t have surprised me if I’d looked at my flapping wings and seen flames coming from my feathers. I needed a rest. I knew that once airborne a bird should keep going, but my wings were so tired and hot. I needed a place to land, just to catch my breath, just to peck around for a few crumbs before getting going again. A bird has to do that. Soon I’d be crossing the ocean and I’d need my strength. That was going to be the longest part of the migration.