Marsh and Me

by Martine Murray

  ‘Hey, Joey.’

  ‘Hi, Dad.’

  He smiles and wipes the wood shavings off the bench. He knows I want something.

  I’m not sure how to put it. I should have figured it out before I went in. ‘I need to find a small metallic sort of object. Do you have something I can use?’ I ask.

  ‘This shed is pretty much overrun with small metallic objects. What do you want it for?’ he says.

  ‘Well, it’s not for any particular use. Not to build something, just for a collection. A project. You know, a school thing.’

  ‘Oh, a science project. Are you looking at metals?’

  ‘No, not science. More like drama. We’re staging a war. We need old-fashioned ammunition.’ I’m terrible at lying. And I don’t like it either. So I have to get it as close as possible to the truth or I’ll trip up for sure.

  Dad nods. I can see he is thinking it over, doing his best to find a solution. He takes down a couple of boxes off the shelves. They are full of screws, nuts, bolts and washers. A goldmine.

  ‘How about these? And what about a shield? You and I could knock one up. You’d need a shield, I reckon. We could make it out of wood with a metal band at the back to put your arm through.’

  It’s typical of Dad to bring natural enthusiasm to my pretend project. All I want is one small nut or bolt and now I’m going to end up with a homemade wooden shield. A shield might be exactly what I do need, in case I’m attacked again, but I’m counting on getting up the hill before the tree-dweller gets there.

  ‘Dad, this is perfect for now. I’ll take this bolt and I’ll talk to the guys and see if a shield would be good.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ he says.

  I can see he’s a little disappointed. Dad is just like a kid. He may be going grey in the hair department, but he loves making things. Even things for playing with, maybe especially things for playing with. Dad built a wooden platform in the elm tree, above the trampoline. Attached to it is a ladder, a basketball hoop, a pole for sliding down and a tyre swing. All made by Dad. It’s the other reason all the kids like hanging out at our place.

  Maybe I will let him make me a shield, but not now. Now, I have to go back up the hill.

  *

  I have the three things in my pocket. The battery, the dog tag and a bolt. Black Betty is trotting alongside me. The sky is blue, cloudless and bright. The air is warm but not stinking hot. It’s a perfect day for encountering.

  Encountering what? A Martian? A spy? An invader of hills? I like to imagine everything is possible, even if it isn’t. Explorers shouldn’t squish down their curiosity with the weight of probability.

  I press on, checking for signs. This time there is no banging, just the twitter of small birds. A couple of woodies fly overhead. The air whooshes in their wings. Old Grey, the lone kangaroo who has been kicked out of the mob by the young bucks, is nowhere to be seen. But the spaceship-treehouse is still there looking dazed and perilous, as if it arrived in the tree with an unexpected jolt and is still slightly alarmed.

  I edge closer. Black Betty stays low. We slide under the hanging peppercorn branches. I stand very still and listen. Black Betty sniffs around. There are no signs of life coming from the treehouse. I call out, ‘Hey! Anybody home?’

  No answer.

  I go right up to the trunk. There are small wooden struts nailed into it. Whoever made this house must know a bit about building, but not nearly as much as my dad. My dad could teach him a thing or two.

  I gaze up. The trunk leads to a gap in the floor, which I figure is the entrance. I begin my climb. Black Betty barks; she is annoyed she can’t come too.

  ‘I won’t be long. Don’t worry,’ I call out.

  Now that I’m on the way up I feel like I’m trespassing. I pop my head through the gap in the floor and look around. I feel like a snoop. I am trespassing. I feel as if I’ve broken into someone else’s home. Only this is not really a home. Or a treehouse. It feels more like a sort of theatre. A place of wonder.

  On the ends of all the thinnest branches there are tags of aluminium foil, which shower flecks of light in the breeze. Three wooden shelves, nailed to the tree trunk, hold an array of things, including an old-fashioned phone with a dial, and there are all sorts of tiny objects on the floor, right at my eye level. They seem to have been placed with some mysterious purpose, as if someone is playing a sort of chess game on the floor. And in the middle of all of them is a wooden stool. It looks like a giant in a world of tiny creatures.

  The tiny things are just normal, everyday things—a thimble, a button, a pencil-sharpener, an acorn, a coin, a bulldog clip, a washer, a stone, an elastic band, a bobby pin, a plug. They look as if they are in the middle of a game. There is a tooth, and next to it, as if in conversation with it, is an acorn. Fanning out around a belt buckle are a periwinkle shell, a bottle lid and a silver button, as if they were children listening to the belt buckle teacher. Directly in front of the sharpener is a dice, as if they are in some sort of confrontation. A duel?

  The more I look around, the more objects I notice. A yoyo hangs from a thin branch, and below it is a jar lid full of water. A key ring is tied to another branch with a hair tie, and next to it a beaded earring dangles as if taunting the key ring with its attractiveness.

  I hoist myself inside and, avoiding the little things on the floor, I examine the other objects on the shelves above the phone. There’s a terracotta pot full of birdseed, a tiny basket full of dried red rose petals and some books: What Bird Is That?, something in another language and Treehouses, Huts and Forts by David Stiles. I pull this one down.

  It’s a large well-thumbed book full of drawings and instructions on how to build structures. There are pages folded over and marks in the margin. It’s a book that is so well used it feels ancient. Inside it there is a design for a lookout tower based on one George Washington used to keep an eye on the redcoats. Someone has taught himself how to build this place. I’m begrudgingly impressed.

  ‘Hey.’

  It’s the voice. That sharp wind of a voice from yesterday. I’ve been caught. I look out over the wall.

  I see the treehouse-builder, the hill-occupier, the collector of small things.

  It’s a girl. She stares at me with eyes of fire. She’s small with a bundle of hair as black as ink, khaki overalls and bare feet. She’s got a wild look, and she narrows her eyes at me as if she wants to kill me. But then she gives a tiny dismissive jerk of her head and ducks out of the tree branches.

  Before I have time for my peace offering, she has disappeared.

  I’ve invaded her space. But she invaded mine, too. So we’re even.

  She didn’t act like we were even. She looked at me as if I was just a piece of rubbish. But before she turned away, I saw a sadness ripple across her face, like a wind across a lake. It made me sorry that I’d invaded her treehouse.

  I’d like to climb down and try to find her. But I don’t do it. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I would say. If I said something like ‘I’m sorry for being in your treehouse, but actually you are on my hill, or your treehouse is,’ then she would say, ‘It’s not your hill.’ And she’d be right. She wouldn’t understand the ways of the hill. There is no point explaining that the hill is Not For Dwelling On. That it’s meant to be roamed over. As I do. As Old Grey does. As Black Betty does. And the rabbits, snakes and woodpigeons do. But who can understand that?

  I jiggle the small metal objects I have in my pocket. I might be in her treehouse, but at least I didn’t throw stuff at her. I even brought back her battery and the dog tag. And I brought her another piece for her collection. The more I think about it, the more I agree with myself, that we are even, or at least that I am not the bad guy.

  Although, maybe it’s not so bad to be the bad guy. It’s better than being the sensitive guy. Bad guys have a brooding, suspenseful allure. I give a heedless bad-guy shrug, a who-cares-about-that-wild-girl-anyway sort of a shrug.

  It’s not right though
. My shoulders aren’t careless shruggers. They’re cautious, seeking-out shoulders, and I can’t help worrying about that wild girl. Apparently if you touch eggs in a nest, the mother bird won’t come back. I feel as if I have ruined the wild girl’s special nest with its tiny creatures and, just like a mother bird, she won’t return.

  I put the book back on the shelf. I take my three offerings—battery, bolt and dog tag—and place them in a row on the floor. But they look useless, misplaced. I sit the battery up on its end. I stand the bolt next to it, and then I balance the dog tag on the top of them. Now they look like they belong. Not everyone could have done this. It required sensitivity.

  I climb down from the tree. Will she be hiding somewhere, waiting for me to leave? I walk down to the pines and I lie on my back in the shade. Black Betty lies down too. I watch her, how she lies, listening, with one ear open to the world, the other sighing forward.

  I close my eyes. Sounds waft over me: bird calls, the cars humming in the distance, shouts from the oval down the hill, the clod of balls on bats—Saturday-morning cricket. I hear my own quiet sigh. Boys from my class will be there. Probably Kip Walker and Amos Reed—those sporty guys. They’ll be down there with their proud dads. My dad isn’t proud of me like that. Not that he has ever said he wishes I played cricket, but he must think it sometimes. How can a dad be proud of a kid who never stands out?

  Who cares about cricket? There is more to life than swiping at hard red balls that come hurtling down a pitch. Life is full of intrigue: planets, mysteries, forests, mythic heroes, music—even the wild girl.

  What does she do in her treehouse with those small objects? I want to know, but how can I find out when she won’t talk to me? I don’t think anyone has ever disliked me before. I’m not popular, but no one actively dislikes me. I don’t make enough of an impression to be disliked. If I was a bump on the road, you wouldn’t even trip over me.

  I do have one friend, Digby. Or two friends—Max is a friend too. Max is friends with anyone, he doesn’t choose friends, he’s just plain friendly. Max and Digby aren’t on the cricket team either. Max probably could be if he wanted, but he doesn’t try very hard at things. He’s funny. He’s here for a laugh. He sticks his hands behind his head and smirks. He reads Mad comics; he remembers jokes. If he sees a horse, he walks up to it and says, ‘Why the long face?’ and then he cacks himself laughing. Digby is lanky and straggly and if he runs he looks like a gorilla, arms swinging, legs lolloping. He makes me look outright athletic. He’s brainy, though, and he’s into insects. He’ll start talking about caterpillars or killer wasps at any moment.

  Then there’s the gang, the other guys. They’re the ones everyone wants to be friends with. That’s Kenny Lopez, who can play the drums, and Raffie Langslow, who is a skater and who all the girls go crazy for, and Harry Jay, who is mad about soccer and has five sisters. There is also Pim Wilder, who isn’t actually in the gang, but just hangs out with whoever is doing something interesting at the time. Who would I be if I was in the gang? I could be the sensitive guy. But gangs don’t need sensitivities. They need grit.

  Something makes me sit up. Maybe it was Black Betty. Her sleeping ear is now angled to attention. I turn around. There, above me on the hill, is the wild girl.

  This time she doesn’t run away.

  I scramble to my feet.

  We lock eyes. Her gaze is curious, but wary. She steps back. Her weight shifts. She seems ready to run.

  I smile. It’s an instinct I have. A big dumb instinct. When I’m lost for what to do or say, I just smile.

  She doesn’t smile back, but her mouth softens. She drops to a squat and holds out her hand. It is clasped shut, but she fans it open and my bolt rolls out and onto the ground. She flings me a stern, contemptuous look and folds her arms, like a proud hunter who just speared her prey. And then she turns and marches back up the hill.

  I have the bolt in my sock drawer. I don’t know what to do with it. Every time I open the drawer it rolls about, dejectedly. Can a bolt be dejected? Maybe it’s just me? Ever since the wild girl rejected it, I have been feeling like an outcast.

  I don’t even know her. She’s not a friend, and she might not have anything interesting to say at all. But when the bolt rolled out of her palm and landed on the dirt, it was as if a piece of me landed in the dirt, the goofy smiling face of friendship that I had offered.

  If I was Max, I would have just laughed when she did that. If I was Digby, I would make sense of it somehow. They wouldn’t mope, like I am. And they didn’t even notice the quandary this has thrown me into. I am the noticer of feelings.

  By the time Monday comes, I’ve pulled myself together. As usual, as soon as the bell for lunch goes, Harry walks straight past me, slouches over the desk towards Kenny Lopez and says, ‘Want a kick?’

  Kenny says, ‘Nuh, I’m going to the music room.’

  Kenny can say this. He can be asked to join in and say no, ’cause it’s no big deal for him. I can’t imagine this. If anyone asked me to have a kick, I’d do it, just to join in. But they never ask me.

  ‘Huh? Music at lunchtime?’ Harry can’t understand it.

  ‘Yeah. I’m practising with Hamish. The Battle of the Bands is coming up.’

  The Battle of the Bands is a big night. It’s like a practice run for the sort of night real bands have, without parents and with beer. At the Battle of the Bands there is no beer and plenty of parents, but, still, it’s dark, it’s loud and it’s rock. Everyone goes along. Everyone tries to look as cool as hell. If I go along, I just try to look like I’m not too interested, since if anyone was ever going to get a hint of my deepest most secret dream, it would be there, when it might float to the surface and I could be caught all misty-eyed and accidentally yearning to be in one of the bands.

  I glance at Kenny Lopez. A small uncool voice in me whispers, But I get it, I like music. I hope he can hear it, but he can’t, no matter how loudly I think it.

  Harry Jay is already rounding up some others. Kenny Lopez is getting his drumsticks out of his locker. He sits for a moment and drums the desk with them.

  I want to tell him that I play guitar.

  I stand up. He doesn’t even look at me. I push my chair back so it squeaks on the floor. He looks up, but you can tell he has a song in his head and he is drumming along to it. He stops suddenly and grins at me, and then he leaves. He’s not bad, Kenny Lopez. I’ll cheer for him at the Battle of the Bands. Maybe if I hadn’t already been rejected by the wild girl, I might have casually mentioned that I play guitar. But probably not. It’s not really worth mentioning, since I’m not good enough to play in front of anyone, other than Black Betty.

  After school Digby and I always walk part of the way home together. We go by the creek.

  I half want to tell him about what happened on the hill, but I’m embarrassed. Being upset about a girl you don’t even know who rejected your present of a small metal bolt would be a big joke, if it got out. There would be high-voltage ridicule.

  So I start like this: ‘What would you do if some sort of magic person put a curse on you?’

  Digby looks at me to check I haven’t gone bonkers. I shouldn’t have said ‘magic person’. Digby believes in science facts—the hexagonal cells of beehives, the silken trails of caterpillars, the toothed forearm of a praying mantis.

  I shrug. ‘Just imagining,’ I say, flippantly.

  ‘Did you eat some cactus or something?’ Digby cranes his head towards me like a giraffe. He looks worried.

  ‘No, I try not to eat cactus at school.’ I say. This wasn’t getting me where I wanted to go. I tried another tack. ‘You know when Captain Cook first arrived in Australia, did he try to give the Aboriginal people something as a peace offering? It was their land, their trees he was cutting down, their fish he was eating.’

  ‘Their turtles, you mean? Cook’s sailors ate all the turtles!’ Digby enthuses. He’s keen on turtles. Then he shakes his head. His voice comes out in a long exasperated si
gh. ‘They didn’t think about breeding seasons—if you eat all the turtles, there won’t be any next year. No wonder the Aborigines got angry.’

  This is the sort of interesting fact that Digby knows, but turtles are not my main concern. I persist with my problem in disguise: ‘If someone invades someone else’s land and then disrespects the ways of the place, or if one person tries to make peace by offering a gift and the other one rejects it, that’s like declaring war, isn’t it?’

  ‘I guess.’ Digby shrugs. ‘Why the sudden interest in history?’

  ‘It’s not history. It’s now, too. Two different sorts of people meet, for instance. One speaks one language and the other speaks a different one. And then bang, misunderstanding all round.’ I’m imagining the letter I will leave at the wild girl’s treehouse.

  If you fell off the planet, I wouldn’t care. In fact, Black Betty and me and everyone else including the woodies, snakes, rabbits and dog walkers who understand the ways of the hill, none of us would care two hoots if you fell off the planet. Or off the hill for that matter. We might even be relieved.

  Digby is completely perplexed. He stares at me as if I am turning primitive. Maybe I am. Maybe I have tapped into the anger of all those who have been invaded before me. Maybe it is my path to fight for the oppressed, the downgraded, the invaded, the rejected…

  It’s hard trying to speak to Digby in code. He thinks in facts. But I like to think in poems, or clouds. He thinks about probabilities; I think about possibilities. But somehow we arrive at a similar place in the end. Usually.

  ‘Hey, you want to go see if we can find that turtle in the creek? Or we could get some tadpoles for Opal,’ I suggest.

  Digby’s face breaks into a smile. ‘Last time we got taddies, your cat ate them.’ Digby is laughing to himself. He is walking faster. He is relieved that our talk has returned to things that wriggle and grow and transform exactly as they are meant to. For Digby, that’s all we need.