Saving Abbie

by Allan Baillie

  Ki shook his head slowly.

  ‘Well, I would,’ Harry said. ‘Boot him round Borneo.’

  ‘I would like to catch the poacher.’ Ki had a cold glint in his eye.

  Gistok was carrying the half-empty basin towards a tree, but she was caught by Komo and Abbie. She looked around, then shrugged, and placed the basin down. The three other orangs sat round it, ducking their heads in rhythm.

  ‘Most of the orphans seem to recover from their nightmares,’ said Ki. ‘But some don’t.’

  ‘You think that Sadi won’t.’

  ‘I never think that. I can’t afford to think that. But we did have a worse case than Sadi. Far worse.’

  Ian looked up from Sadi.

  ‘We all have a special orang.’ Ki glanced at Harry and smiled thinly. ‘You have Abbie, Harry has Gistok and I have Cas. I shouldn’t have a favourite; it’s not my job, but it can’t be helped.’ He snapped a twig. ‘I found Cas near here, on her mother’s body. The poacher had chopped down a tree when he saw the mother on the top. He wasn’t interested in the mother but he wanted the baby. There’s still money in selling orangutan babies, a few dollars. The mother hadn’t died in the fall, so the poacher killed her by hitting her with his machete. But Cas hung on to her mother for dear life. Orangs – even baby orangs – are very strong. The poacher couldn’t pull the baby away from the mother.’

  Dafida picked a few bananas and Einstein sucked her nipple, watching.

  ‘So the poacher lost his temper. He chopped Cas’s right arm off and left her on the mother’s body.’

  ‘The baby, Cas? She died?’ Mum had wandered over too, and had been listening. She flattened her voice.

  But Ki suddenly flashed a grin. ‘No! She should have died. Loss of blood, dehydration, shock, any of those should have killed her. But she’s a fighter. Cas hung on and stayed here with the other orphans. I thought she’d hang around like Gistok, but she’s learned how to make nests – she uses one arm, two feet and teeth! When we tried her at Pondok Tanggui, upriver, she stayed for a month, then she just disappeared. Maybe she’s living in the deep jungle, where the poachers can’t get her.’

  ‘The poacher who did that to her … he’s still out there?’ Ian asked softly.

  ‘Oh yes. I know who he is. I’ll get him one day. One day.’

  Ian looked at Abbie and wondered if he should have put her in a zoo.

  Abbie was alone on her first night in the jungle.

  At sunset the orangs began to swing into the shadows of the trees. Dafida, with Einstein, crashed away in the high canopy, Sadi scuttled fearfully the other way, Gistok climbed a scarred tree, and the others scattered. As if to invite her along, Komo looked at Abbie but she was concentrating on Ian instead. So Komo followed the others into the treetops.

  ‘Hey, you’re supposed to hang around your mates now, not with us.’ Ian squatted before Abbie and pointed to the jungle. She reached and grabbed his pointed finger. ‘She doesn’t want to go,’ Ian said to Dad, who had come out to watch.

  ‘Well, she has to.’ Dad walked back into the guesthouse, and Abbie moved to follow him, pulling Ian after her.

  But Harry stood at the foot of the guesthouse steps. He waved his squat fingers at Abbie and shook his head.

  ‘Sorry, Abbie.’ Ian shrugged and took his hand from hers. He patted her on the head, followed Harry, Dad and Mum into the building, and closed the door gently behind him.

  Abbie cocked her head, frowned and pushed at the door. She sucked her teeth, then remembered the open shutters at Ian’s bedroom. So she bounced down the steps, skittered over the grass, leaped for a low branch of the broad-leaved tree and swung to the window ledge.

  Ian opened his bedroom door to see Abbie grinning in the window frame. ‘Oh.’ He crossed the room and pushed Abbie lightly. She pushed back and blew a soft raspberry into his face.

  ‘You are a pest, you know that?’ he backed up to Abbie. She threw her arms over his shoulders and rode him, like a kid having a piggyback, nibbling at his ear.

  Ian just grunted, turned around and closed the shutters. Then he walked quickly out of his bedroom and into the lounge, with Abbie still riding on his back.

  ‘I said she had to stay out! Didn’t I?’ Dad snapped angrily from his cane chair.

  ‘You know Abbie’s got to learn how to behave like an orangutan,’ said Mum more gently.

  ‘I know that. You tell Abbie that! She came in through the window,’ said Ian.

  Harry patted Dad on the shoulder on his way to the kitchen. ‘Take it easy. Maybe Abbie’s got a bit of Gistok in her.’

  Dad scowled, then saw the way Mum was looking at him. ‘What did I say?’ he said, indignant.

  ‘You only sound like Ian is a five-year-old kid. And a dumb one too. Still!’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

  ‘I’m taking Abbie outside, seeya …’ Ian said quickly, hurrying through the door. But in passing Abbie blew another deep raspberry, this time at Dad.

  Ian walked to the edge of the jungle. He stopped, then moved one of Abbie’s hands from his chest to a tree. She blinked at her hand.

  ‘Sorry Abbie, but you got to go,’ Ian said quietly. He put one of her feet on the tree too and began to lever her body from his.

  Abbie blew a breath through her lips, but she moved into the tree. There she hung in silence, watching Ian walk back to the guesthouse. Then she turned and peered into the growing dark of the jungle, listened to the insects clicking at each other, the snap of a distant branch, and something thrusting through the brush.

  She shivered a little.

  This waiting jungle was alien to her. These damp and heavy scents, the soft sigh of trees brushing gently against each other, the stirring night sounds, even the shadowed dark.

  Abbie climbed down the trunk of the tree and wandered round the front of the guesthouse, but everything was shut. Dim lights moved around, filtering around doors and shutters, people were talking, sometimes laughing.

  She moved away to the river landing, and from there she could see lights from the other side, and the moon drifting in the middle of the river. She watched the reflection for a while, then picked up the skin of an old jackfruit, sniffed at it and threw it into the river. The moon shimmered apart in the water. Then Abbie went back to the guesthouse and climbed up the tree near Ian’s bedroom, clambered onto the roof and sprawled. She could hear Ian breathing softly below, and felt better.

  Ian lay in the dark with his eyes open. He could hear the creaking of the building as it released the heat of the day. He could hear Dad snoring through the wall and a muffled movement on the roof above him.

  Gistok trying to break in? No. Abbie, trying to work out why she was suddenly locked out.

  Sorry, Ab, about that. About everything. I thought if we got you back to your jungle that would be it. Just spend a bit of time getting used to the old trees again. But it’s not, is it? There are monsters out there and I don’t know if you can avoid them.

  Except you’ve met them, haven’t you? Here maybe, and for sure in the sinking ship …

  There was a low impact on the roof above Ian’s head.

  Abbie curled her body and whimpered softly.

  She was in a cage in the dark. She seemed to have been in that little rusty cage for all of her life. She knew every detail of the cluttered space outside the cage. Most of the time it had been black dark but when the yellow-toothed man brought her blackening bananas he turned on the light. Then she could see things she had known before, like ropes, drums and crates. Things she had seen from another cage somewhere else. Then there were things she had never seen before, like a great snake coiling around the drum. Sometimes it moved a little and made a scraping clink.

  She was in a rusty cage perched on large crates, where the yellow-toothed man had to climb to give her the bananas. Next to her cage there was a great cliff of cut trees held back with creaking ropes, and there was a mountain of drums too, and dusty walls sloping towards each other and a
red ringing floor a long way below.

  When the light was turned off she could still smell the dead timber, the harsh oil of the drum, the rust from the walls and floor, and the moist rotting of the ropes. And the sound of steadily flowing water passed on the other side of the walls, with the creaking, the slow throbbing, echoing through everything. That last sound was somehow comforting, as if giving her something warm and safe from a long time ago …

  But not now.

  Her cage was being thrown against the ropes that held it; the walls and the floor were pitching wildly in the dark. Everything about her was crashing, shuddering, breaking apart. The water outside had become an immense crazed animal, slamming against the rocking walls. And the water was on this side of the walls too, cascading above her head and sluicing past the stacked drums.

  And the slow throbbing stopped. The cage slowed its pitching but it tilted over more and more until the floor became an angled wall. Abbie could hear men shouting, shrieking. A desperate clatter followed. More shouting from above, a heavy scrape, then a bang outside the wall and … nothing.

  Except for the tilting, the crashing and the monster outside.

  Abbie shivered, opened one frightened eye and saw the frame of the cage above her in the yellow light. She gripped her hands under her, opened her mouth, began a high-pitched scream – and stopped.

  Nothing was moving. That was a moon floating above her and there were a few branches netting across it. She was on a still roof with Ian breathing softly beneath her.

  She shuddered for a moment and then looked back at the moon.

  Ian jerked his head from the pillow.

  What’s wrong, Abbie? What?

  But the cry cut out as suddenly as it had started. Then there was the sound of a body stirring.

  Puppy dreams, Abbie? Sorry, sorry. Dad says that for nightmares.

  Dad …? Yeah, I think I’m beginning to work things out.

  When Mum and Dad were talking out there they were talking about Albatross Beach before the storm. And that makes all the difference. Now I know why Dad is so quiet, and why Mum has become the general.

  In the bright morning of Albatross Beach, there I was standing with my scratchy mate Reene, and there was Mum and Dad in their car, and Reene’s dad and his girlfriend in another car. And Reene and I just wanted them to drive off and pick up the grandpas and grandmas at Mackay Airport and leave us alone in Albatross Beach. Reene’s dad thought it was a great idea – anyway, there’d be no room in the cars when they picked up the oldies – but Mum didn’t like it.

  Dad pushed on though, because he was a mate of Reene’s dad. ‘That storm at sea? It has gone, forget about it. The kids can look after themselves. Come on, let’s go.’ Mum was very, very reluctant but they left.

  So the cyclone came, flattened Albatross Beach and pushed the San Felipe onto the sand, and we got aboard it and the storm came back and took the ship out again. To slowly sink it.

  Dad cannot forget that morning.

  But what can I do?

  The roof creaked over Ian’s head.

  Abbie opened her eyes slowly to a glimmer of dawn. She had been gently tugged awake by a low snuffling at the base of the big-leafed tree.

  She moved to the edge of the roof and saw four ghost-white wild pigs jostling, snorting, butting each other.

  Suddenly Abbie was shaking. She wrapped her long arms around her body and held herself, a cold image of Sadi. But she felt the trembling through her fingers, her hands, and through her bones. Then she pushed her lips out.

  This is being as dumb as a black beetle. They are down there, a tree and a roof away. They could not reach you – even if they know you’re here. You could sit on this roof and throw sticks at these pigs until morning and they can’t do anything about it but squeal.

  But …

  Abbie watched silently as the pigs fought intensely for fragments of roots and vegetation at their feet. Then her shivers began to ease. She uncoiled her arms and cocked her head, frowning at the pigs.

  Frightened of that? Hah! Not now.

  But the sounds and shuffling shadows, you know them. Like the ship, they are not there any more but they come back. Once the pigs had scared you, maybe worse than the monster outside the ship. Once …

  Suddenly the pigs twisted and bolted into the jungle, as abrupt and as witless as a tropic storm. Abbie remained on the roof, staring at the churned earth beneath the tree, as the morning light crept across the sky. The pigs were long gone, but she could still smell their hot stench.

  She was trying to remember.

  A long low boat softly touched the dug-out canoe in the mud as it stopped at the landing. Dim dawn light crept across the jungle. The boat looked a little like yesterday’s wallowing ferry, but this time there was nobody aboard but a yawning man steering it. He stepped from the klotok and Abbie recognised him as Yos, the smiling man who had driven her here on the fast boat. Yos tied the klotok up and crawled back on board for a nap.

  Abbie scratched and tried to go to sleep again, but the sun lifted into the sky almost immediately. The guesthouse under her creaked into life, with splashing and shouting, as if people were trying to put the sun out. When the shutters of Ian’s room opened wide Abbie swung from the roof into the tree, and squinted through the window.

  ‘Abbie!’ Ian waved at her, quickly closed the shutters and ran out to the tree. He held his arms wide. She considered him for a moment – after all, last night he had thrown her out into the jungle and its pigs – before sliding down to clutch at him.

  ‘I heard you on the roof.’ Ian rubbed her head.

  But Ki walked past with bananas and waggled a finger at Ian.

  Ian sighed a little and lifted Abbie’s hands from his shoulders. ‘Sorry, we’re not allowed to do that any more.’ Abbie flopped on the grass and gazed into Ian’s eyes, trying to understand him.

  As before Ki shouted at the jungle as the bananas and the basin of milk were being brought along the sandy track.

  Abbie looked at Ian and then back into the guesthouse. Very rich smells – frying rice and vegetables – are coming from the sleeping place but you can’t get in. Doesn’t make any sense. Like running pigs. Don’t worry about it. All right, follow the bananas and milk instead. So Abbie leaned back from Ian, rippled her upper lip at him and shambled quickly after Ki.

  She was the first of the orangs at the basin and was ducking into the milk when Komo dropped from his tree. Komo patted her on the shoulder. Abbie blew a short raspberry at him but she moved aside so they could drink together.

  Sadi shuffled carefully from the shrubbery and waited behind Komo with her arms wrapped around her body as before. Abbie lifted her head, looked at Sadi and remembered how she herself had felt on the roof last night. For a moment their eyes met, then quivered and slid apart. Abbie moved back from the basin. Fixing her eyes on Abbie once more, Sadi hesitated, then rocked slowly up to the milk.

  Abbie drifted over to the bananas where Gistok and Dafida were eating. There was something different in the air, but nothing she could see. There was Harry watching by himself with a dull face like an old tree, but that was all.

  Except this time Ki walked past Sadi and Komo and the others with a separate bunch of bananas and offered one to Gistok. She looked at Ki with a faint touch of suspicion but she grabbed the banana anyway, took his offered hand and walked with him back along the path.

  Harry, who’d also come out to watch, leaned forward and raised his hand as if to say something to Gistok, but nothing was said.

  The orangs ate the bananas and drank the milk slowly and casually. In the end Komo lifted the yellow plastic basin as if it was a glass and drained it. Then Abbie looked up when she heard a boat’s slow engine. Through the leaves she could see that the green and blue boat, the one that had come to the landing in the early morning, was moving upriver again. In the boat were the yawning man and Ki – and Gistok.

  Komo glanced at Gistok then, and looked at Abbie. He dropped th
e basin, wiped his mouth and touched Abbie’s shoulder, beckoning her to come with him to Ki’s house. Abbie pulled her bottom lip, rocked on her branch uncertainly, and then she understood. She watched Gistok and Ki on the boat as it went downriver and became lost in the tangle of trees.

  Abbie lolloped across the grass after Komo, who climbed onto Ki’s large rubbish bin and reached back to help up Abbie. Komo grinned and began digging cheerfully for treasure. He passed a long yellow jackfruit skin up to her with a touch of elegance.

  Abbie sniffed at the skin and nibbled.

  This is a lovely smelly place. Ki chased Dafida from here before. But Ki is on the boat with Gistok so he can’t chase anybody from here now. Komo is very smart.

  But …

  A boot whirled past Abbie’s cheek and clouted Komo behind the ear. He looked up at Abbie, widening his eyes at her sudden treachery.

  ‘Get out of it!’ roared Harry. ‘Go on, you bunch of hoons!’

  Komo shifted his eyes and leapt out of the bin.

  Ki might be away, but there is always someone else to take over, Abbie thought.

  Harry hefted the other boot, and Komo and Abbie took off. They scurried high into the trees on the edge of the jungle, then stopped and clutched hard at the thin trunks. The top of Abbie’s tree was swaying under her weight and she didn’t like the feeling at all.

  She heard a soft raspberry near by and saw Komo on a neighbouring tree, rubbering his lips at her, shaking the branch he was on. She looked at the chasm between the two trees – at Dafida sitting on the path with the last of the bananas, a long way down – and shook her head.

  Once, you flew like a bird from tree to tree. You have it in your head. The sun slid through the branches, the shadowed ground was almost as distant as the clouds. Then you had never been frightened before. But you’d been smaller then – a lot smaller. All you had to do was hang on.

  But this is different. This time you have to swing. A branch may give way, crack under your weight, with the hard ground waiting below.

  Komo sucked his lip for a moment, gazing at Abbie, then he smacked his lips and slowly swung away. It’s your trouble, not mine.