All the Birds, Singing

by Evie Wyld

  Someone tackles me to the ground and the wind is knocked out of me, and there is not enough air in me to say I’m sorry, it was an accident, there is just a cronking sound that comes from my chest, and my T-shirt is being pulled over my head, my arms and legs are pinned by the weight of bodies and there is a sudden scalding-hot pain, the sound of yelling and waves and the steady bleat of my own voice above the sound of a stick whistling through the air and being brought down again and again on my back. I flip like an eel in the sand, and see Andy Carter, his face a red crease of fury, and I see the fish man with his face less certain, but the fish man says, ‘Let him take his turn and then we’ll get you home.’ The bread lady looks away from it all and out to sea with her hands on top of her head, and I am tossed back onto my stomach by the fish man and the other nameless men and the blows come again and each time I feel flesh being torn and I am a wet bag of meat like Denver, torn and open and not human any more. My hand digs into the sand to hide itself, it is like the pink claw of a galah.

  From down the beach, there is someone else’s scream, a burning-hot scream, and the stick stops and there is just enough air in my lungs that I can make the smallest of screeches when I breathe out. My face presses against the ground and through one eye I see four bodies on top of Andy Carter, holding him down and making him stop. A ringing in my ears like the birds, a squalling in my chest.

  27

  I woke up with a jolt and Dog was standing at the foot of my bed, ears pricked. It sounded like a dog fight out in the bottom field. There was nothing to see out the fogged window. I opened it, took the torch from my bedside table and shone it out there. A scream of something and the beam caught the black shape, just for a second, and the sheep, white blurs in the top corner of the field, huddled. The noise was still there, guttural, and the sheep called out.

  ‘Jesus fuck.’ I pulled jeans on over my nightshirt. Dog stayed still, his eyes wide, tail straight out behind him. I grabbed the gun from the cupboard and banged the bedroom door closed behind me so Dog wouldn’t follow, flew down the stairs and smashed my palm flat against Lloyd’s bedroom door twice before I got to the front door and crammed my feet into my boots. I heard Dog scratching and barking upstairs and the sound of Lloyd opening his door, and then I was gone into the dark, running blind.

  I’d put down the torch when I’d picked up the gun, but I would shoot whatever came at me, whatever it was that was snapping and slobbering in the dark. I held my gun out in front of me in case I ran smack into a tree, and by the time I made it to the fence, I could see the shape darting around the huddle of sheep who were crying now and who were far away from me, still, and the shape was taller and wider than a man, but it disappeared when I tried to aim, when I looked too hard at it. The noise kept me on it, kept me following, a panting, a deep mucus sound with a whine at either end of it. For a second, I had it in my sights, and I understood what I was looking at, thought it had turned to look at me too, and then I fired and the sheep scattered. The sound of birds taking flight from the woods. I heard my name being called, and Dog shrilling at my bedroom window – my head throbbed hard enough that I sat right down in the wet grass and pressed it into the ground.

  A torch beam wobbled from far off, and I saw the Christmas colours, the green grass and white wool, a smear of red, the steam rising.

  Lloyd was a hand on my shoulder. ‘Are you hurt?’ he said, and I sat up and wiped my eyes, then covered them over with my hands.

  ‘I shot something,’ I said though there was barely enough air to say it.

  He picked up my gun and took himself up the field. Between the crying of the sheep and the whinnying of Dog in the bedroom came a shot.

  I heard Lloyd tramp back across the field and started to feel the cold dew against the heat of blood. When he shone it at me his torch took away any night vision I had, I couldn’t see his face, but I could tell from his breathing, like something an old dog would make, that he had done something he didn’t like.

  ‘It was a sheep. In the neck. I finished her off.’ He cocked the gun, tipped the cartridges out into his hand and pocketed them like he’d done it before.

  28

  I keep my back to the fire and walk slowly. It races along the edge of town. The door of the post office is open and no one’s inside. At the pub they have thought to close their doors; I can imagine someone getting in there and drinking the barrels dry while the world burns around them. The smell is of barbecue and eucalyptus and the sound is a roar that will crush everything.

  The main street is empty apart from smoke, coddled so thick that I can’t see to the end where the road forks away from the fish shop and up towards home. A pademelon hops out from behind a parked car and we look at each other. Her ears are flat to her head, her eyes beady and bright. She sneezes and whips back underneath the car. There come more and more animals – a wallaby, sheltering from hot ashes in the bakery’s doorway, snakes whip into the road to collect in the gutter. A goanna stands still, watches me go by. Behind the shops at the end of town I can see the fire has made its way round, and looking back down the main street from where I’ve come, a kangaroo jumps, panicked, across the road away from a spot-fire that’s started up there, on the bitumen where nothing should burn. There’s a roar in the air. People talk about the roar a shark makes when it comes for you, the monster noise of it, hungry for your flesh and bones.

  By the time I reach home, my arms are black with soot and my eyes are running. There’s a metal button on my shorts which burns into my thigh, and my plastic wristwatch has become soft. There is no one home. Someone has had the hose on and doused the dead grass at the front of the house, and sprayed the walls. The hose still runs. I sit on the front steps and ash is falling all around. Spot-fires, jumping devils, break away from the central roar. This is my home, I think, this is where nothing can get me. I’m not breathing air any more and so I go inside. Once the fly-screen has banged shut, my pulse starts to race. I feel aware for the first time of what is happening. I try to remember the fire classes at school, and I get the towels and sheets out of the cupboard that Mum folds them into, plug and run the bath and throw them in. Downstairs I turn on the kitchen tap, start to fill up the mop bucket, and then I collect the wet towels from the bath, and stuff them under the front door. The sheets I hang over the windows, and I keep one to wrap myself in. The water has stopped running into the mop bucket, there’s just a soft trickle now, so that’s it, that’s my water. While I’m thinking, a tree falls nearby, and it sounds like something is smashing its way through the bush towards me.

  I open the freezer and there are two bags of ice in there for Mum’s daiquiris, and some block coolers for picnics. I take them out but I’m not sure what to do with them. I move the towel from underneath the front door and open it, thinking I will scatter the ice over the veranda, but outside everything is black, like the dead part of the night. Above me, where there should be sky, I see a redness and the ice in my arms starts to melt, like I’m holding it under a hot tap. My eyes hurt, and I smell burning hair so I close the door and stuff the towel back under it, put the melting ice back in the freezer and go to the triplets’ room with the mop bucket which is only half filled. Their room has a small window that opens onto the roof and has been nailed shut to stop them going out there and falling off. I can already see embers settling and taking hold on the roof and I send Cleve’s Magic 8 Ball through the window and jab away the worst of the shards with a plastic gun. I can feel the air getting sucked out of the room, and I tip the bucket of water onto the roof, which gets the embers I can see, but there’s the other side, and I can’t get to that. It’ll have to fend for itself, because it’s too hot now to do anything about it. Smoke pours in through the broken window, and I close the bedroom door and use the sheet I’d been saving for myself to stuff under it. Downstairs, another window has smashed and I can see the lace curtain starting to catch. I clap it between two ice packs and there’s a hiss like a dying snake. The oil in the deep-fat fryer is
heating up on its own and the place smells more than ever like my home. The house starts to shake, it’s like being dunked under by a big wave, the mugs on the sideboard rattle and a framed photograph of my parents taken in the back yard falls off the wall and the glass breaks. I walk upstairs and get into the bath, which is about a quarter full, and I close my eyes.

  29

  Lloyd gripped me around the waist and helped me up, and just as I was about to complain that I could do it myself, I felt that I couldn’t.

  ‘The body,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll sort it.’

  I sat in the kitchen drinking hot water and listened to the sounds of him with the wheelbarrow, into the field, out again. Dog curled himself around my feet and shook and I fondled his ears.

  ‘Sorry, love,’ I said to him quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Lloyd came back in.

  ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I want to bring the sheep inside.’

  ‘In where?’ he said, sitting carefully down opposite me – I wondered if he had given himself a bad back.

  ‘In here. Just for now, until we find it.’

  ‘In here – in your house?’

  ‘Yes – just until we find the thing. It’s getting bolder.’

  Lloyd looked at me for a long time.

  ‘This is your house,’ he said, ‘and those are your sheep. But I’m not going to let you do that.’

  ‘I’ve got to protect them somehow,’ I said, but even as I said it I felt like I wouldn’t win, that I wouldn’t be able to do it without him. I thought of the sheep I shot in the neck and put my head on the table. Dog rested his chin on my knee and Lloyd poured us both a whisky but I pushed mine away.

  Something nested outside the window, and it sang loudly, Chip, chjjjj, chewk, jaay and jaay-jaay, tool-ool, tweedle-dee, chi-chuwee. It should have been me that finished her, she should have died thinking it was all going to be fine. Tool-ool, tweedle-dee, chi-chuwee. I wondered if the other ewes knew it was me.

  ‘Coffee then?’ Lloyd said.

  He made a pot and took it to the kitchen table and there was a small spillage, just a splash. He got two mugs. He placed the sugar on the table with a spoon and sat down.

  ‘Do you think I’m mad?’ I asked. The question wasn’t answered, instead Lloyd stretched over and put his hand over mine for a moment. Then he put three spoonfuls of sugar in a mug and poured coffee into it, stirred and passed it to me. I had to hold on to it with both hands because of the shake in my arms.

  ‘Where’s the lamb?’ I asked, looking at the empty dog bed by the stove. We both listened but there was no other sound from the house.

  30

  I’m stealing looks at Denver Cobby, the half-Aboriginal kid from the year above. He is outside the gates, smoking and talking with another boy. He doesn’t care that anyone can see him, and because of that the teachers don’t ever hassle him. He’s that cool. I’m pretending to be really into the pebble I’m thumbing, like it’s an interesting one or a fossil or something, when Hannah and Nerrida come up to me and start going on.

  ‘How’s it going, homo?’ Nerrida asks, and I don’t look up. They might go away if I ignore them.

  ‘Hey!’ Hannah barks. ‘We’re talking to you.’ And I pretend that I’ve found something far more interesting than them on my stone. Hannah flicks her hair over to the other side of her head. ‘Rude bitch,’ she says. ‘Your sister’s stuck up too – but at least she’s fuckin’ got a pair of balls.’

  Nerrida shoves my arm, and my stone drops between my knees and bounces onto the floor. Now I have nothing to train my attention to. I’ve seen Nerrida go for girls before, her older sister has a scar on her cheek where Nerrida dug her nails in one time.

  ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you,’ she says and she grabs my face in her claws and yanks it round so I’m looking at her. ‘Fucking dyke,’ she says, and someone shouts, ‘You girls, leave her the fuck alone,’ and they both turn around with looks on their faces like someone’s going to die, but then they see it’s Flora Carter that’s spoken, and Nerrida drops her hand from my face.

  ‘We were just playin’ with her,’ Hannah complains, but Flora points to the other side of the yard and they start to leave without saying anything apart from Nerrida who mumbles ‘Sorry’ as she passes Flora.

  Flora Carter picks up the stone I was holding and passes it back to me. ‘You all right?’ she asks, and I’m bright red in the face. Over her shoulder I can see that Denver is looking.

  After school, I’m supposed to be waiting for Iris, but she hasn’t shown. Bad things always happen when you’re waiting for Iris.

  ‘I fucked your dad last night,’ says Nerrida outside the gates. ‘How’d you like me as a stepmum?’ Hannah is having hysterics behind Nerrida, wiping tears from her eyes. I pull my shoulders into my body, try and become small and I look away from them both. ‘Don’t worry,’ she carries on, ‘I wouldn’t marry him – his dick’s like that.’ She holds up her little finger and wiggles it at me. I’m offended on Dad’s behalf.

  ‘Reckon you’ve got a bigger dick than your dad,’ Hannah pipes up, which sets them both off, but Nerrida recovers quickly, in time to get close enough for me to smell her breath of raspberry Icy Pole.

  ‘Have you got a big dick, Brick Shit House?’ I’ve waited for Iris long enough, and I turn to walk away, but Nerrida grabs my arm and yanks me back round. ‘When will you learn to be respectful to your elders?’ she shrills like a mum, not my mum but one of the ones that comes out of the church.

  ‘Hey. You want me to walk you home?’ Denver Cobby has appeared next to me. I can feel the heat of his blood through his arm, even though it’s not touching mine. Hannah smiles and blushes a little.

  ‘That’d be nice, sure,’ she says. There’s a pause.

  Denver snorts. ‘Not you,’ and Nerrida looks up, a smile just about to form on her lips when Denver puts his hot arm around my waist. I try not to jump. As he walks me away I hear Nerrida say, ‘What the fuck?’ and it is the most triumphant moment of my life, even though I will pay for it tomorrow.

  Denver walks me to the end of our drive – he’s talked the whole way about his favourite footy stars, and I don’t mind because I can’t think of anything to say back, just enjoy that he is talking to me. I wish Iris was here to see, I wish someone had passed us on the road home, to stop and think, That Whyte girl’s making friends in interesting places.

  ‘Anyway,’ he says, a whip of a smile on his lips, like he wants to ask me something but can’t bring himself to. ‘Ignore Nerrida, she’s a skank. I can walk you home tomorrow. If you want.’ And he’s off again, but he treads off the path, goes into the bush and disappears. It’s what Mum would call the Magic of the Abos. I’m still standing there looking at the spot he was in, when he reappears. He sees me watching and waves. ‘Just having a piss!’ he calls, and carries on down the road.

  The next morning, I dress carefully. Iris has a new netball skirt I think about thieving, but I wouldn’t make it out the door with my eyeballs in my head. Instead I pinch a padded bra from her dirty clothes basket, and I roll my cut-offs up a notch. I have a checked shirt and I experiment with tying it at my navel like Nerrida does. In the end I decide it’s better hanging loose – it disguises the strange high shape of the bra. I brush my hair which is not normally something I get round to. With a bit of lipstick I look all right I reckon. There’s nothing to be done about my plimsolls, which stink if you get too close. I wonder for the first time about getting a job like Iris has at the Gladioli Tea Shop so I could buy the sandals and nail polish she gets hold of. I think for a second about taking her sandals in my bag, shudder at what she’d do to me when she found out. The bra is a big enough risk.

  I am proud of my new string bikini from Target. ‘You’ll look like a hooker,’ Mum’d said, but she gave in because at least it was on special. I wonder about wearing it over the top of the padded bra – if it comes to swimming, that bridge will have to be crossed.

  At s
chool, no one comments on the new look, which I take as a sign I have it exactly right. Nerrida gets me in the toilets, just her on her own without Hannah. She gets me by the wrist and digs her nails in. She’s just put more scented lip gloss on, and so her lips are very wet and they smell of plastic oranges. It’s like being in a snake’s mouth, having her claws around my wrist – the more I try and pull away, the deeper into my wrist the nails go.

  ‘Listen, you little bastard,’ she says, and she’s got that church-mum tone to her voice again, and with the other hand she holds up a finger to shake at me. ‘You need to know that you are fucking dead.’ She pulls me closer so that our foreheads are almost touching. ‘Did you hear what I said, were you paying attention, you massive fucking ape? I’m going to kill you.’ She lets go of my wrist and you can hear the sound of her nails unplugging from my skin. She loves him too, I think. But it’s me he picks up after class.

  It’s so hot I have to take my shirt off and tie it round my waist, which ruins the new length of my cut-offs and shows the odd lumps of my bra through my singlet, but it’s not all bad. The route we take through the bush has a narrow pathway and I lead the way, looking back over my shoulder now and again to check he’s still following. I get the feeling he’s more into legs anyway. I hold a whip of wait-a-while out of his way so that it doesn’t spring back and catch him. ‘You’re a good bloke, Jake,’ Denver says with a smile around his voice, in a way that I’m pretty sure says he doesn’t really think I am a bloke at all. And then we go to silence, just the crust of us walking, me tootling around with a stick, looking for things to draw his attention to, and enjoying the feel of his eyes on my legs. Probably he’ll want to take me out, maybe I’ll meet his parents – his younger brother I’ve seen running a stick down the beach at low tide, maybe I’ll become a sort of older-sister figure to him. I have experience of that, I can make Anzacs and the whole lot of them would want me round all the time. Or maybe his parents will disapprove, maybe they’ll think I’m too young, or they don’t want their son going out with a whitey. We’ll ride out of town on his dirt bike, me clutching around his waist, or him hanging on to me like I might slip from his grasp.