Saving Abbie

by Allan Baillie

  Abbie pouted at Komo’s retreating back.

  But there was a misty time when you could run around branches like a monkey. And then there was the sinking ship and the leap across the sky and the wind and the hissing sea. You can remember that!

  Abbie stared at the branch Komo had left.

  That leap into space was a crazy, dumb moment. You just swing, right? You swing, grab the other branch but still hold onto the first branch, just in case.

  She opened her left hand and swung. Her hand grabbed a dead twig, snapping, so she snatched again and found a solid branch that creaked. She grabbed at the new branch with a reaching foot but she didn’t want to let go of the first one.

  Komo stopped between trees and waited.

  Abbie hung from her hands and feet like a hammock, and felt a slight tremble in her stretched body. Some old muscles that had been given little use in the cages were complaining.

  She looked at Komo and rippled her lip. All right, all right. She let go of the first branch, giving her enough momentum to carry her to another tree.

  She could feel her muscles quivering as they came to life. She saw the sunlight play on her wind-combed hair, and she accelerated, raced Komo into the jungle, played tag in the trees. But her arms and legs were beginning to ache so she stopped and lodged herself in a fork.

  Komo climbed higher, worked his buttocks into a triple fork and started to wind branches and leaves around him. After a few minutes he had built a nest to support his body and soon after he had fallen asleep.

  Abbie frowned.

  That’s easy. If he can do it, anyone can do it. Just wind some branches and leaves around you, jam them against each other, and lie back.

  She worked at her first nest quickly, pushing branches under her legs, shoving some leaves in between, using more leaves as a pillow.

  Then she heard somebody calling from far below.

  Abbie stopped working on her nest and peered into the emerald forest. She saw Harry and Dad, Mum and Ian picking their way along a narrow track – perhaps looking for her?

  She began to pull herself from her nest, then hesitated. For a second her arms tensed on the branches, then she sagged back. She would see Ian next time.

  So instead she lay back and looked around her. She was adrift in a swelling, dipping green sea under a clear blue sky. As the warm air wafted over the jungle she could hear the leaves murmuring, stroking each other and dancing the sun flecks across her face.

  After a while she began to believe that this drowsy place was all that existed. Nothing before, no cages, no black pitching ships, not even the hairless Ian. All of that was an old dream. She closed her eyes, felt the tree move slowly under her, and began to sleep …

  So she fell.

  Ian bent back to look at the whispering canopy. ‘There’s a nest just up there!’

  Dad squinted. ‘Ah, yes. Not a good one.’

  Mum and Harry wandered on, examining the orange fungus clinging to the fallen logs.

  ‘I think there’s someone in the nest up there. I can see a head or something.’

  ‘Abbie, maybe? She’s only learning.’

  ‘Ab-bie!’ Ian cupped his hands around his mouth and called. There was no movement. ‘Not Abbie,’ he said in disappointment. That’s pathetic, he thought. Your best mate is an ape, a girl ape, and she’s doing the ape-things that she should be doing in the jungle. She doesn’t want to know you now. That’s why we brought her here. To get away from people. Eventually.

  ‘We’d better move on.’ Dad walked slowly along the dappled track.

  But Ian let his memories run: Abbie eating elegantly from a tin of sardines in the sinking ship. And the leap to the helicopter, trusting you for everything. And the sneer she wore as she took the inoculations, and the banana milkshake. Two separate milkshakes to start with, but she poured her glass straight down her throat while you were still sticking a straw into yours. So she looks at you, picks up another straw and shoves it into your milkshake! Lovely, eyeballing each other and sucking for all their worth. Mum started to stop them sharing the glass, but then she shrugged. Maybe because she figured that if a sinking ship can’t get the dumb kid, then ape bugs are nothing at all …

  And Dad didn’t do anything. Just watched.

  Ian looked at Dad in the green shadows of the jungle.

  ‘Yes?’ Dad noticed Ian’s eyes as he stepped over a rotting tree.

  ‘Nothing.’ But you have to say something.

  A large butterfly with purple and blue wings flittered through the bushes.

  ‘Ah, Dad, have you ever done something dumb – really dumb?’

  Dad stopped between steps and looked ahead.

  ‘I mean when you were a kid.’

  ‘Oh.’ Dad completed the step. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just wondered, that’s all.’

  Dad turned and studied Ian’s face. ‘You’re after something.’

  ‘No, really. Forget it.’

  Dad followed a long flow of ants over a tree root, fallen branches, a moss rock … He looked up. ‘There was a time. We were living near Parkes, a gold rush area in the old days. One day I found a disused mine hidden behind a dead tree in some wild bush. So I was going to be a goldminer – a rich goldminer. I went home and next day I took a torch, Mum’s trowel and a few sandwiches and I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing.’

  He shook his head and clicked his teeth, as if he was disgusted.

  Ian waited.

  ‘So I went into the mine. You know the risks you run going into a disused mine, the walls crash, getting lost, right? Well, I knew all that and I was being very careful. But I wasn’t ready for the mouse.’

  ‘A mouse?’

  ‘Wasn’t big at all. Wasn’t a rat. Maybe a field mouse. Anyway, it ran at me out of the dark and I jumped in fright. Again and again to avoid my clodhoppers flattening this mad mouse. So I wasn’t seeing where I was stepping and I just jumped into a black shaft.

  ‘I hit the bottom pretty hard and I reckoned I could see that mouse looking down, giving a squeaky giggle. I thought I was dead. I felt broken bones all over the place and I was stuck at the bottom of a lost mine and nobody knew where I was.’ Dad widened his eyes and shuddered slightly, as if he could see this black pit of his in the green jungle.

  ‘But you’re here.’

  ‘It got a little better. I ached everywhere but I had no broken bones, and the torch and the trowel came down with me. The torch had gone out in the impact but I found it in the dark and after some fiddling it lit up again. So I used the trowel to dig foot and hand holes in the crumbly wall. It took me a long time. Specially when I got up high. The torch was left lying on the bottom, shining up, but I got so tired I’d get the shakes. So I’d have to climb down, turn the torch off and rest. I don’t know how long I was in the pit, but in the end I just raced up the last metre with me quivering like a pile of jelly. I couldn’t go down again for the torch, but it was almost dead anyway.

  ‘I crawled through the length of the mine and when I got out there was moonlight. When I got home it was one o’clock in the morning and the parents took it in turns to tear strips off me.’ Dad angled his head. ‘You think it’s like your ship trip?’

  Ian smiled. ‘A little bit.’ Then he breathed in. ‘Were you angry at your parents?’

  ‘Angry? What on earth for?’

  ‘Aw, I don’t know, for not finding out where you were going. You almost got killed.’

  ‘Come on, that was all me. A stupid kid who was very lucky. There was nothing that they could have done.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose …’ Ian let the words hang in the air.

  Dad shook his head in annoyance. ‘What are you getting at, Ian?’

  ‘Not much. But what if you and Mum and everyone had stayed in Albatross Beach when the cyclone hit?’

  ‘Well, we didn’t, did we? You kids did, on your own. We’d have driven you out.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that have been dangerous?’

  ‘A
nd you had a better plan in that cave, right? We would have kept you from getting into that ship. Definitely.’

  ‘Oh yes, it was a dumb, stupid thing we did. Very, very stupid.’

  ‘We’ll all agree on that.’

  ‘But …’ Ian swallowed.

  ‘But?’

  ‘But we did it, by ourselves. Nobody else is responsible. Nobody.’

  Dad was silent. He rubbed his jaw, stared at Ian’s face, frowned and looked away.

  Ian listened to the slow ticking of insects in the jungle and felt his hands trembling as he waited. In the distance he heard a crack high in the trees, then a chain of small breaks ending in a heavy impact.

  ‘What was that?’ Ian turned sharply.

  Dad shook his head and smiled. ‘The jungle is laughing at us. It’s having a go at me. Any moment some stupid bird is going to giggle …’

  Ian looked at Dad, uncertain. But he smiled back.

  Abbie had been dreaming. She had been feeling a warm body under her hands. She had slid her fingers and long toes under the tawny curtain of hair as she flew like a bird between the trees. But something was wrong. Suddenly Mist, her mother, was not flying – she was falling, the tree was falling, everything was falling …

  A far-flung foot scraped past a branch and grabbed it.

  Abbie swung upside down and a light rain of twigs and leaves fell past her. The dead branch cracked from the trunk and she began to fall again. Her other foot caught another branch, almost by accident, and hung loosely between the canopy of the trees as the dead branch pulled away from her and slid through the leaves. She watched the branch slide down the trunk, spinning free to crash into the dark ground.

  Something terrible had happened.

  Not now. Then. Then you were like Einstein, little and clinging. Einstein has Dafida and you did have something, someone … Mist. Mist was around you, like the leaves of the trees, the moon and the sun, as indestructible as the sun. Mist was the ruler of the jungle, a protector from everything from pigs to rain, wise in all things. And Mist was food, rich food. There was milk – far better than in the yellow basin – and the small fruit she had selected at the top of the trees.

  But all that had stopped. Somehow.

  Komo looked at her from a close branch, tilting his head to relate to her upside-down head. He seemed to be a little worried. Abbie smacked her lips at him and gazed up at the wreckage of her nest. A wide hole was framed by bent and half-broken branches. That fall you could understand.

  She let one foot go and swung like a pendulum so her hand could reach another branch. She upended herself, glanced back at Komo, made a faint shrug of her body, and swung away. Then she found a tree leaning over a still corner of the river, squatted on the trunk and stared down at her reflection. It was as if she might find a lost image in the brown water.

  Ian flopped on the grass outside the guesthouse. His legs were aching all the way from his twitching thighs to his blistered big toe. He was scratched, scraped, sore, and as sticky as tar on a hot day.

  ‘Can I have a swim in the river? Please,’ he pleaded.

  Mum was leaning on Dad, who was propping his arms on his knees and wheezing. She looked at the river. Ki’s assistants were splashing near the landing and for a moment she hesitated. But she slowly shook her head. ‘Remember what Yos said. There’s a goldmine upstream and there’s mercury in the water.’

  ‘But look at the guys!’

  ‘They’re used to it. And they shouldn’t, anyway.’

  Ian looked at Dad.

  ‘Oh no,’ Dad wobbled his fingers at Ian. ‘This is one like the mine disaster. Don’t even try.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Ian shrugged and smiled.

  Mum frowned at Dad and Ian. ‘Mine disaster? What disaster?’

  ‘Oh, something for old guys.’ Dad was actually grinning. ‘Let’s go off and have a mahdi.’

  Mum hobbled with him into the guesthouse, muttering something about ‘a dirty old man,’ and Dad cackled.

  Ian sprawled under the big-leafed tree and closed his eyes. ‘It is getting better, isn’t it?’ he said softly.

  The tree burped at him. He flicked his eyes open and found Abbie between the leaves. ‘How long’ve you been there? How are you?’

  Abbie slithered to the grass and prodded at Ian’s chest with a finger.

  ‘All right, I’m not dead. Not quite. Where’ve you been?’ He took her hand with a furtive glance around him. She looked at Ian’s hand with a grave expression.

  ‘I was worried about you. There was a crash in the jungle, and I thought you might have fallen. Nah, you wouldn’t, would you?’

  She curled her lip.

  ‘Reckon you must be over the moon in the jungle. Better than the needles and the cages, hey? Better than hanging around me.’

  She gave him a gentle raspberry.

  ‘Oh, really? Really, really …’ He discarded Abbie’s hand and tickled her on the ribs. ‘Oh?’ Abbie opened her mouth wide and rocked on her buttocks. But when Ian saw Ki step out of the bungalow and look steadily at him he lifted his hands quickly away from Abbie.

  ‘Just wish you were a dog instead, Abbie. Just like a normal kid’s pet. Okay, you’d be the smartest dog in the neighbourhood, getting the newspaper, and the mail, and Mum’s shopping. Chasing the cats up trees, maybe playing computer games.’

  Abbie shifted her eyes from Ian to Komo who was capering at the edge of the grass. Ian sighed. ‘Okay, you are not dogs. I’m sorry. But …’

  Abbie slid away to Komo.

  Abbie swung around in the treetops with Komo until the evening banana-and-milk session. She freely jostled with Komo and the others, clowning in the sand around the nervous Sadi. But she stopped playing when Dafida arrived with Einstein.

  Abbie stared at them, especially little big-eyed Einstein.

  I was like that, she thought. Watch him and sometimes you can catch an old picture or remember tastes. Mainly tastes. Einstein was sucking Dafida – and you can remember that taste. Abbie caught another memory of Mist: the crease across her forehead, the taste of the bitter berries Mist fed her, the smell of the jungle after rain.

  Dafida finished her bananas, sneered at Sadi and swung off into the trees with Einstein. Abbie hesitated, watching her move away, looking at Komo next to her, at Ian on the sandy path. She left the bananas and followed Dafida into the jungle.

  Dafida glanced at Abbie once as they moved about in the neighbouring trees, but then she just ignored her. She selected a thick tree and began to build a nest.

  She seemed to have more method than Komo, Abbie thought, as she watched. She wove branches together to make a rough basket around her, as Komo had, but she was also knitting twigs and leaves together for strength and comfort. She settled in the nest, pulled more leaves to place at her back, scratched Einstein and went to sleep.

  Abbie tried to weave some branches around her too but some of them snapped or unwove. She managed to finish something that looked like a nest, but it seemed terribly fragile. Especially after the fall this afternoon.

  She looked back at the distant Einstein, saw the huge eyes fixed on her, stretched and slid into her nest. But when she saw Einstein close his eyes, she eased from the nest she’d just built, and in the twilight found another one that had been built by an orang a few days ago. It was brittle, uncomfortable, with sharp sticks prodding at her, but it felt safe.

  Ian stumbled again on the track.

  ‘Getting tired already?’ Mum frowned.

  ‘No, no. I’m right,’ he said, and he shuffled along with his eyes locked on the canopy overhead.

  ‘Be an idea if you were looking where you’re going,’ Mum said.

  ‘Ah, leave him, he’s up there with Abbie.’ Dad grinned.

  For a moment Ian was embarrassed, feeling that Dad was suddenly trampling around his mind. Then he shrugged. ‘I wish I could climb up one of those trees and see how the world looks from Abbie’s view.’

  ‘Up there?’ Harry squinted up a
thin trunk with no branches, not even a knot, until the leaves erupted thirty metres from the ground. ‘There is a way …’

  ‘No,’ said Mum solidly. ‘Absolutely no.’

  ‘Wait a bit, wait on a bit, no tree. There’s a tower.’

  ‘A tower?’

  ‘With steps, even with a roof. It’s safe.’

  ‘Can we, Mum? Please.’

  ‘If it’s not too far.’ Mum was still suffering from that first jungle walk a few days ago.

  But it turned out that the tower was very close. Ian walked rapidly past three trees, a flush of bushes and there it was, a black timber derrick thrusting from the tangled jungle floor. The steps were steep and a long way apart, but he could climb slowly by stretching his foot up to each step as he pulled on the handrail. He passed a thick cloud of young leaves, then he climbed alone, beside the bare columns of older trees. He dragged himself onto the floor of the top level, rolled over and wheezed. He stared at the tower’s shingle roof above.

  ‘Hey, Ian!’ Dad’s voice, muffled and faint from below. ‘Are you all right?’

  Ian pulled himself to his feet hurriedly, leaned on the rail, and waved. The upturned faces of Dad, Mum and Harry were like berries in the shadows of the trees. ‘I’m here! Great view, come up!’

  Mum waved at him as they moved towards the tower.

  He looked around at the softly hissing sea of green and felt he wanted to leap into it. Something creaked further away and a cluster of leaves shook. He could see a lizard slithering along a twig, a stick insect munching a leaf, a small grey bird darting about, as if all the life in the jungle was here in the canopy.

  A breeze turned the leaves away, opening a tunnel through the trees. And Ian saw a ripple of dusty red moving towards the tower. Abbie.

  Ian grinned and slapped his hands together. Abbie swayed on a long branch, looking across at him over on the tower.

  ‘See, I can come up and visit you!’

  Abbie rocked on the branch, making it dip and swing towards the tower. A flare of leaves swept Ian back from the rail as Abbie jumped and clung on. ‘You’re getting pretty good up here. Any time now and we aren’t going to see you for the bananas and milk down below.’