The Eye of the Sheep

by Sofie Laguna

  ‘No, Mum, no!’ I shouted, but she couldn’t hear me. For a moment there was nothing, then out came Robby and he was dragging my dad. Mum came out behind them. There was blood gushing from my dad’s nose, and my dad was bending further and further down until he hit the ground.

  Mum fell to her knees over him, holding up her arm, calling, ‘No, Rob! No more! No more! Enough! Enough!’

  I saw Robby go down onto the grass and I saw him put his hands around my dad’s throat. I saw the words Robby didn’t say, the things he wished for, coursing through the hollows of his bones, and wrap themselves around my dad’s neck. ‘That’s the last fucking time!’ Robby shouted. And Dad let him, he let him.

  Mum screamed, ‘No Robby!’

  I began to bang on the glass bang bang bang and smash with my fists like wrecking balls smash smash smash. Robby and Mum looked up towards me. I smashed so hard the glass shook. I was going to smash the house of Nineteen Emu until there’d be nothing left but the stumps. I smashed and smashed and then Robby stood and went out of the yard through the back fence and Mum left Dad lying on the grass as she crossed the yard towards me. She opened the door and I screamed and smashed my fists against her.

  She was crying as she crossed the kitchen with me against her, and pulled my coat from the hook. ‘It’s alright, Jimmy love, it’s alright, it’s your mum, settle down.’ Her body was hot and shaking. She wrapped the coat around me, covering my head so the coat made a blindfold. She covered my ears and held me to her. Under the coat it was dark. The coat was over my face, bringing the world in close, muffling me, slowing me down. She held me against her, my ear to her heart, until I tuned myself to its beat. The sound filled up the space until there was nothing but the steady slowing pump of her heart.

  Dad didn’t come into the house at all that night; he stayed in his shed. Robby came home some time after dinner and went straight to his room – I heard guitar music playing through the wall. Mum asked Robby from the other side of his door if he wanted anything to eat but Robby said no. I looked out the kitchen window to see if there were any signs of Dad in the garage, but I couldn’t tell. Later, Mum went out with a piece of sponge cake. I watched through the window as she tapped on his door. Her fist looked small and white under the shed light where the moths gathered and clung. Her body was wider than the whole doorframe, but her knock was soft and timid. Dad never answered the door.

  Mum left the cake on the plate just outside it.

  One night, a week after the last fucking time, I couldn’t sleep. Dad wasn’t home; he’d been taking a lot of extra shifts at the refinery. I lay in bed, closed my eyes and made a picture of him at work. His face was turned away from me, to hide the bruises Robby had left around his eyes, and the cut on his lip. I saw him scraping the refinery pipes with his steel brush, keeping the rust to a minimum. Even when Bill Philby called out, ‘Time to go home, Gavin! Working day’s over!’ through his loudspeaker, my dad kept scraping. Even when the bristles on his brush wore down to nothing, just to stubs, and the last man had gone home to his family, there was my dad still scraping, locked in his battle with the rust.

  I opened my eyes. There wasn’t a sound in the house. I tried to listen for a single rustle or scratch or whisper – but there was only silence and darkness, as if it was the last page in the story. I stumbled out of my room, going slowly up the hall. I was shaking with cold, my heart was racing, my cells beginning to speed. Then I looked towards the front door and I saw one of Dad’s work vests on the coat hook, glowing and luminous. I went towards it like a beacon. I couldn’t see any part of myself – only the glow of the vest in the shape of my dad. I got to the door and I reached for the vest. I took it off the hook and put it on and I was filled with the raw power of the refinery. I sat, my back against the door, feeling Dad’s arms around me. I don’t know how long I sat there, or if I was awake or asleep.

  Mum found me. She bent down to me in her nightdress and I smelled warm Charlie. ‘Oh, love, you funny boy.’ She pulled the vest over my shoulders and hung it back on its hook. ‘Come on, Jimmy, back to bed.’

  On the weekends Dad mowed the lawn, tightened the taps, checked the pilot and watched M*A*S*H. Sometimes he took the Holden out to the TAB but he always came back at a reasonable hour. When she heard the front door open Mum’s breathing grew deeper and she got out of my bed and went into theirs. At least it’s a reasonable hour, she said to nobody on the way out.

  After the last fucking time, Dad left the room whenever Robby came into it, even after his bruises cleared and his lip healed. He grew quiet around my brother; he could tell Robby was watching him with his eyes that missed nothing, storing information in the lands beneath the pools. Even though they seemed further apart, it was as if there was an invisible elastic connected to their ankles, keeping them joined. They always knew where each other was by the pull of the elastic. When it got too tight, which it did by Friday night, digging into the skin, sometimes pulling so hard it touched bone, Dad drank Cutty Sark Blended. It blocked his valves so his receptors didn’t work. It was his only relief. But even after half a bottle, when the liquid had gone below the deck, he didn’t hit Mum.

  He started to spend more and more time in his shed. When I looked through the window I saw a bed resting against the roller door that didn’t roll. ‘When did the bed come?’ I asked Mum.

  Mum frowned. ‘What bed?’

  ‘The bed in the shed. Dad’s new bed.’

  ‘Don’t ask silly questions,’ she snapped. ‘It’s not his bed. Help me bring in the washing.’

  I followed her out to the line. Dad’s record player was in the shed too, set up on the workbench beside a small television. There was a coat hanger that had been untwisted and stuck in the top. During the week Dad lived in the house but then on Friday night he went into the shed, channelled shows through the hanger and listened to Merle sing, ‘Someday When Things Are Good’.

  Mum was lying. She knew it was Dad’s shed bed. She knew he was sleeping in there. One night I saw her standing at the sliding door looking at his window. I saw her from the kitchen, lit up by the moon, hands and forehead pressed to the glass. Even with my developmentals I could see how much she wanted to be in the shed with Dad. She would have stretched out and been the bed for him if he’d let her. She was the same size. As Mum stood there she moved in time with Merle, Memories of you, back through the years, the past my favourite dream. . . The words penetrated the shed window, pushing their way through the atoms of glass in the sliding door to where she stood. She swayed to the song of her longing. Memories of you, the past my favourite dream. She never knew I was standing behind her in the moon room – watching.

  •

  Mum asked Robby to mind me while she did the late shift.

  ‘Can we go into the swamp?’ I asked him.

  ‘Sure,’ he answered. It would be the first visit in a long time. The light was fading as we left Emu Street. Soon it began to rain but we kept walking, the rain only enough to dampen the outside of our coats while the inside stayed warm with the heat transmitted from our solars. We came to the wetlands and Robby pushed open the gate. There were pelicans and swans and ducks on the stream. The grass was stiff and silvery green. Even though the wind blew there was stillness in the land underneath. Beyond the fields flames shot from the pipes of the refinery, gold and warning. Steam jetted into the grey sky, adding to the rain.

  Water seeped through the grass under the pressure of our boots. I skipped to keep up with Robby as we moved deeper into the swamp. Mosquitoes hovered over our heads in busy clouds. Seaweed and froth, plastic bottles and tennis balls cut in half washed up at the sides of the stream. We stood at the edge as swans ran across the top of the water, their feet like Eskimo shoes, beating their wings, showing their hidden white feathers flap flap flap and up into the air.

  Robby bent down and picked up a stick, stirring the water until clouds of mud swirled upwards. He looked across to the road, then back to the water. I could see his words an
d wishes circulating his tributaries. ‘One day I’ll leave this place,’ he said. ‘It’s a hole.’

  We walked around the rabbit warren and checked the burrows and Robby kicked at the sides so dirt tipped in.

  On the way home I looked for the hole that was this place. I checked between clouds and blades of grass, and under rocks and down rabbit burrows and in clumps of reeds and behind patches of shrub, and in the water that ran beneath the bridge and in the plastic bottles that washed up against the banks of the stream and under the viewing bench and even in the far distance where the trains ran back and forth and the flame leapt from the pipe – but I couldn’t see it.

  ‘It’s in you, Robby,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘The hole.’

  ‘Fuck off, Jimmy,’ he said, walking ahead.

  Part Three

  For the next two years Robby grew even faster. Mist seemed to drift over the pools of his eyes so I couldn’t check them for information. He hardly spoke, his long body feeding off his unsaid stores. How could Robby be so tall, his body stretched, his eyes obscured, and yet I still be here? I was eleven years old but at the same time I was not. How can opposite things be true?

  In all that time, twenty-four months, Dad never hit Mum. The fight had gone underground, I could hear it bubbling in the pipes that fuelled the house.

  I was in the sewing room not sleeping when I heard someone come home. It had to be Robby because Dad was on the night shift. I put one arm out from under the blanket and felt the icy air. After counting eleven seconds my epidermis began to freeze. Robby and Mum started talking in the kitchen. I pulled back the blankets and got out of bed. When I pushed open the kitchen door I saw Robby and Mum standing at the island. Mum stepped towards Robby and reached up to him – his body was so high and thin. His head bent towards her shoulder. She held him tight with the spread of her, and he let her, then she stepped back. She lifted the corner of her apron to her eye.

  ‘Mum, I don’t have to go,’ said Robby.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ said Mum. ‘Of course you do.’ Mum’s tears were rising up inside her, looking for the vents.

  ‘I can wait another year.’

  ‘What’s the point of that? Your opportunity is now.’ She swallowed hard.

  ‘But you and Jimmy . . .’ The lump in Robby’s throat was swelling, making it more difficult for him to speak.

  ‘You don’t need to worry about me and Jimmy. That other business is in the past. You go and live your life. I’ll break the news to your dad.’

  If you turned on the taps at the sink tears would rush out. The apples in the wallpaper were damp with them. If you lit a match nothing would light.

  I stepped through the door. ‘Go where?’

  ‘Jimmy.’ Mum turned to me. There were pink dots in both her cheeks.

  ‘Go where?’ I asked Robby again. ‘Where are you going?’

  Mum came towards me. ‘What are you doing up, Jimmy?’

  ‘Where’s Robby going?’

  ‘Nowhere – nowhere at all. What were you doing listening at the door?’

  ‘You said, You go and live your life. Go where?’

  ‘Don’t shout, Jimmy. You shouldn’t eavesdrop.’ Mum came towards me, frowning.

  ‘You said, Go and live your life. Live it where, Robby? Where?’

  ‘Jimmy, calm down,’ said Robby. ‘I . . . I’m thinking about going away for a while. On a boat.’

  ‘Robby, we don’t have to do this now,’ said Mum, putting her hand on his arm.

  ‘Don’t we?’ said Robby.

  ‘What boat?’ I felt my hairs turning in their pores, round and round, getting faster.

  Mum sighed.

  ‘What boat?’ I shouted. ‘What boat? Where?’ Why weren’t they answering me?

  Mum smiled, but it was weak. It was only trying. ‘He’ll be with a team. He’s going to catch more fish than the lot of them . . .’

  Robby turned and looked at me and his eyes went down for miles, deep and brown. I ran to him and grabbed him around his waist and clung to him, feeling his heart beating through his shirt. He put his arms around my back and we held tight. Something was trapped in my particles, making them ache. It twisted in my throat and in my stomach and chest. I held on to Robby as if he had the power to release it, when I knew that he didn’t. All he could do was release himself. ‘No, Robby.’

  ‘Hey, Jimmy, it will be okay,’ he said.

  ‘No, Robby,’ I said. ‘No.’ I gripped him tighter. ‘No!’

  ‘Hey, Jimmy . . .’ He tried to separate us. ‘I’ll come back. I won’t be gone forever.’

  ‘No! No! No!’ I shouted.

  ‘Jimmy, settle down, come on. Your brother has to go.’

  ‘No he doesn’t. He doesn’t have to go. He wants to go but he doesn’t have to go.’

  ‘Sometimes there’s no difference, love.’ She tried to peel me off him.

  ‘No no no!’ I shouted. ‘No! Robby! No!’

  Robby pushed my arms away hard, then he stepped back from me. I hit him with my mower blades as hard as I could. I kicked at his legs. I hit him over and over. I screamed, ‘No! No! No!’

  They tried to stop me, I don’t know what they did, my vision was blurred. I hit him and hit him and hit him. I wanted to hit his face the hardest. I wanted to punch his eyes out. But they held me back.

  ‘No, Robby!’ I shouted. They tried to hold me down. ‘No, Robby, no! Don’t go!’

  I kept kicking and screaming until there was nothing left. The pressure was gone. I was sore everywhere. I looked at Mum; her hair was sticking up, her cheeks were red and her face was sweating. I lay back in her arms and stared at the roof right through the ceiling. My eyes X-rayed the tiles and I could see beyond them into the empty world.

  ‘Mum, is he alright?’ Robby asked.

  ‘He’s fine, Rob. His tank’s empty.’ Rob and Mum pulled me up to sitting. ‘Come on, Jimmy,’ said Mum. ‘You go and get some sleep, Rob, we’ll be right.’ Mum’s breath sounded as though it was being strained through a sieve. The metal cross-wires were in the way of the flow.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Robby asked.

  ‘I’m sure. You go. It’s better that way. Come on, Jimmy, on your feet and let’s get you to bed.’

  I got to my feet. I was as loose as a rag.

  When half of Robby was out the door he stopped and said, ‘I love you, Mum.’ Then he was gone.

  Down she sat again, boom. Propped up by her elbows, she let her head fall into her hands. Even if I shouted she wouldn’t have noticed me. She was with her firstborn, carrying him in his blue blanket, carefully, as if there was no more important thing in the world. I left her there, her tears catching in her fingers.

  I went back to the sewing room on my own.

  I didn’t see Robby for two days; he was at Justin’s or at practice. Then on the third day Mum said, ‘Your brother is coming home early to see you, Jimmy. I want you to apologise to him, okay? You don’t want him to leave without you apologising.’

  When a picture of Robby entered my mental it hurt. Any picture. Just his knee or just his shoe or his mouth. If I saw the picture something in me went in the wrong direction. It was caught and couldn’t find its way out. I couldn’t stop anything. I had no powers. I had no vest and no refinery and no flame. I couldn’t change things. I couldn’t transform them. They were what they were going to be no matter what I did. Something was missing in my chemicals.

  Mum put angel sponge cake on a plate and she made Robby a coffee and she said to me, ‘Well, Jimmy?’

  ‘It’s okay, we’ll be alright, Mum,’ Robby said, smiling at her.

  ‘Call me if he gets out of hand,’ Mum said to Robby, then she left us.

  Robby looked at me.

  ‘I won’t get out of hand,’ I told him.

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Robby. He sat on a chair so our eyes were level. He said, ‘Jimmy, I really need you to be okay. For Mum. You have to be okay about this or I can’
t go. I won’t go. Tell me the truth. Can you do this, Jimmy?’

  I looked into his eyes – his guards were down, we were level, it was my rare opportunity, he wasn’t on the way anywhere or doing anything else. I looked in and I saw the deep and powerful wishes, forces that hurt him to disobey. They were hurting him now. They would hurt him until he surrendered to them. ‘Yes, Robby,’ I said, looking down at his big hand holding mine. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He hugged me. ‘You’re a good brother, Jimmy,’ he whispered. ‘The best.’

  Then Mum came back in. ‘Let’s all eat some cake,’ she said, cutting down into the sponge.

  In the nights after Robby said he was leaving I tried to count sheep but the sun was gone from the field. I could hear the sheep, but I couldn’t see them. They called out over the top of each other without tune or sense, as if they were lost. Bleat bleat bleat, sheep after sheep after sheep.

  I was at school battling the enemy the day Robby left. When I got home I knew he was gone as soon as Mum said, ‘Chocolate crackle, Jimmy?’

  ‘No thanks, Mum, no thanks.’ I went straight to Robby’s room. Mum had taken the sheets off his bed. I could see the mattress, stained with a dark yellow outline from all the times I’d got in beside him. I sat on the edge of the bed, tracing the outline until I met at the point where I started. There was a pressure in my chest, as if someone was pulling on my inners. I got up and looked in the cupboard. Robby’s boots weren’t there and neither was his blue check coat. I sat down inside the cupboard and made a wall around me with the remaining shoes. Most of the shoes Robby never wore; his feet were too long, but Mum kept them anyway.

  Soon Mum came into the room. She bent down to me. ‘Oh, sweetheart, Jimmy. We’re going to miss our Robby, aren’t we?’ She held me to her and I smelled bread and vanilla. Over her shoulder I could see the coats and shirts and pants Robby had left behind, hanging like ghosts.