Saving Abbie

by Allan Baillie

  Abbie angled her head and studied Ian’s face.

  ‘I guess.’

  She leaned forward, grabbed Ian’s shoulder and leapt into his fumbling arms. ‘Hey! We’re not supposed to do this any more.’ Abbie wrinkled her nose and nibbled his ear.

  ‘Get out of it, you rotten cannibal!’ But he didn’t pull his head away.

  Heavy footsteps below were shaking the floorboards. ‘They’re almost here, get off!’

  Abbie leaned her head on Ian’s forehead just as Dad heaved himself out of the hole on the floor. He nodded at Ian, raised an eyebrow at Abbie and reached back to help Harry.

  ‘There’re a few of these towers,’ Harry was saying through his panting. ‘They’re for watching orangutans moving about and maybe for fires in the park … hello.’

  ‘Told you we’d get us in trouble,’ Ian said to Abbie and pushed her gently away.

  Harry staggered to his feet and waved his hands around. ‘Ah, no, I’m not Ki the Ranger.’

  Ian hesitated.

  ‘Oh, go on,’ Harry said. ‘No one will tell. Abbie wants a hug.’ Harry smiled at Ian, swooping his arms in the air to hug himself.

  Ian glanced at Dad, but he was helping Mum up. So Ian squeezed Abbie in a hug and her long arms wrapped around him. ‘What’s up, then?’ Ian said to her.

  Abbie lifted her lip and burped softly. Old milk and fermenting leaves.

  ‘You don’t say?’ Ian rubbed her scalp.

  Harry watched them in silence, with an odd touch of sadness in his face.

  ‘Well …’ Dad said.

  ‘Look, I got to go, things to do.’ Harry stepped back and flicked a quick smile. ‘See you later.’ He clattered down the steep steps as if the tower was falling, and disappeared into the jungle.

  ‘Funny guy,’ said Dad.

  ‘I guess when you have to go, you have to go,’ Mum said, looking at Ian.

  ‘We just got up here,’ Ian said, and then he realised she wasn’t just talking about leaving the tower.

  ‘We’ve been here for over a week. Abbie seems to be getting used to living in the jungle. And we have to think about leaving too.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  Abbie peered at Ian’s face and pushed her lips out.

  ‘Hey, don’t look so tragic. I’ll be back, I promise.’

  ‘Well, I don’t …’

  ‘I don’t think Ian means us,’ Dad said.

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘And I don’t think he means next week, next month, not even next year. Right Ian?’

  Ian nodded. ‘A few years later. I want to see how Abbie has grown, if I can.’

  Mum looked at Dad, then at Ian. ‘Something has happened between you two.’

  Dad laughed, a rich, relaxed sound, as it used to be. No more than that. ‘It’s him. Something has happened to your hopeless kid on that sinking ship and I didn’t see it because I haven’t been seeing anything for a while.’

  Mum watched Ian make faces at Abbie. ‘Hasn’t changed much to me.’

  ‘Not much. Just enough. Growing up a bit.’

  Ian felt his ears burning and blew a raspberry at Abbie. She tugged Ian’s ear.

  ‘Hey Ian, it was still a bloody stupid idea to get onto that wreck!’ Dad said and then murmured, ‘And I won’t forget that I left you in the way of a cyclone. No, but …’

  ‘That’s it?’ Mum watched Dad’s face closely.

  Dad nodded. ‘I think so. Ian’s survived, we’ve survived, let’s get on.’

  ‘At last,’ Mum sighed, as if to release an old knot from her body.

  Abbie disengaged her long arms from Ian and moved to Mum and plucked a twig from her hair. ‘Thank you,’ Mum said. ‘I am going to miss you.’

  ‘We’re all going to miss her,’ Dad said in sudden surprise.

  Abbie flicked the twig in the air and watched as it twisted and shivered in the breeze on its long way down. Mum stood shoulder to shoulder with her, as fascinated as Abbie was with the twig’s dance.

  Ian joined them. ‘Sometimes I used to wonder why you and Dad did all that work to get Abbie here.’

  ‘Because you wanted it.’

  ‘Hah! I don’t even get to see some of the movies on TV!’

  ‘That’s different. No, Abbie is different.’ Mum shook her head slowly. ‘It is so long ago, you wouldn’t believe it. Maybe I’ve even forgotten just how it was. Before the planes, the travel agencies, the officials – all of them, the zoo …’

  ‘It was the morning after,’ Dad said softly. ‘After Ian came wobbling from that Navy chopper with Reene, and he was smelling of thick salt and diesel oil, and something else, like a funny dog smell.’

  Abbie showed her teeth in a long yawn.

  ‘Well, we didn’t know what it was, did we?’ Dad continued. ‘Then, after all the tears he wanted us to take a friend called Abbie home.’

  A smile twitched across Mum’s face. ‘I can remember! And we thought that Abbie was a sailor from the helicopter who needed a lift to town!’

  ‘No worries, get her into the car and we’re off!’

  ‘I didn’t mean to trick you …’

  Mum sobered. ‘We know. Abbie’s journey was our gift to you for your gift to us.’

  ‘Ah, what gift?’ Ian looked puzzled.

  Dad reached out and pulled his ear. ‘You didn’t sink.’

  Early next morning Abbie was woken by a thumping near the sleeping place. She opened one eye and peered down from a partly rebuilt nest and saw Harry coming down the steps of the sleeping place with a light shoulder-bag. He walked past Ki’s house to the landing, waved down a passing boat, jumped aboard and went upriver.

  Abbie yawned and closed her eye.

  In the afternoon she watched Ian playing with pieces of flat wood on a piece of cardboard, playing a game with Dad under the broad-leaved tree, when Harry came back. His arms were covered with bruises and bite marks, but he was grinning at everyone.

  ‘What happened to you?’ said Dad.

  ‘Nothing, nothing at all,’ said Harry, and kept on grinning.

  Abbie was investigating a spider in the jungle canopy when Ian came from the sleeping place and called her name into the trees. She swung and shambled over to him, rubbing the side of her nose. What’s up now?

  He shrugged and kicked at a twig. ‘This is it. We can’t stay any more. Sorry.’ He spread his arms.

  She looked at his face. There was something wrong with his eyes, and he was turning his face away.

  She cocked her head sideways, then leaped into his arms.

  Ian marched out of the jungle, pulling her to him as he approached Ki’s house, like he was showing a touch of defiance. Dad came down the steps with the family suitcase and behind him Mum closed the door. Ian continued to carry Abbie towards the landing and she began to squirm.

  No! The river is the way back, to the cages and the sinking ship. Or it’s the unknown upriver, where Gistok was taken as punishment! You do not want either!

  Ian put her down on the landing as Dad shook hands with Ki and Harry. Komo was hanging from a low tree by the river, watching in silence.

  The slow green boat shouldered across the water and Harry pulled it to the side of the landing. Yos waved at Abbie as he took the suitcase from Dad. Then Mum clambered onto the boat, followed by Dad – and they all waited for Ian.

  Ian took Abbie’s hand, looked at it and suddenly hugged her again. Abbie studied the suitcase inside the boat, with Dad and Mum waiting. Waiting for Ian. No, no, this is not what you want! She grabbed Ian by the back of his neck, jumped up to ride his hip and blinked at the boat. But Ian was shaking his head and he glanced at Harry. ‘Look, stay on this side of the river, on the safe side,’ he said to Abbie, and pulled her arms gently from his neck.

  Abbie flopped back onto the landing, and waited.

  ‘It’s a good place,’ Ian said with a strangely thick voice. ‘Just be careful, okay?’

  She tilted her head.

  ‘I’m coming
back, really. Just watch for the poachers and grow big.’ Ian reached forward and scratched her head. He stepped onto the boat and it puttered away.

  Abbie was left alone on the landing.

  She stared at Ian across the water as they shrank apart, until the boat went round a distant bend. Even then she remained hunched on the landing, an old woman listening for the last whisper of sound. Then she slowly turned from the river and saw the dug-out canoe tied to the end of the landing. She studied it for several minutes.

  Ian went down that river with a boat. You can catch him round the bend with this other boat. You have seen men on these little boats many times …

  She dropped into the canoe and rocked it from side to side, working it loose from the mud, pulling hard on the posts of the landing. The canoe slid free – but it jolted to a stop a moment later.

  Abbie turned around, saw the taut rope and the knot. So she clambered back to it and worked at the knot with both hands, untying it and throwing the rope into the river.

  The canoe slipped from the shadow of the landing, gathering momentum as the current curled round it.

  Wait!

  Suddenly she bounded the length of the canoe and threw herself across the stretching water to clamp two fingers on the top of a post. But she kept a single toehold on the canoe as well. For a time she arched between the landing and the canoe, the hair of her belly touching the water.

  Then she slowly pulled the canoe back to the edge. She sat still and looked down the river.

  Ian. The boy. The banana milkshake, the tin of small fish on the sinking ship, the way his eyes widened when he was frightened. He was always talking at you – like a warm breeze. Making faces, singing and carrying you and rubbing your neck. Not like Mist, but there was something. And now he had gone.

  Abbie looked at her hand on the post and at the brown river.

  Gone, unless you take your hand from the post.

  She moved the canoe up and down the landing, uncertain. She stared at the water eddying, rushing past the canoe, and looked again at the broadness and length of the river.

  The river was not like the sea. It was not a black monster, but it was water and it moved. Let go of the post and where will the water take you?

  Then she saw Komo sitting on the branch. Abbie pushed her lips at him, like a fish.

  Komo tilted his head and stared back.

  She pushed the canoe a bit more, then rolled herself onto the landing. The canoe slid away from the posts and drifted, empty, down the river.

  PART TWO

  Many weeks later Abbie sprawled in her night nest, touching her lips with a wondering finger as she watched Komo. He had stopped working on his nest in a neighbouring tree, and he was throwing small sticks down towards the distant ground. Not just throwing them away either, but tossing them with a deliberate movement and a shifty half-grin. He was tipping the sticks from his fully-stretched arm and he studied them as they fell.

  Abbie peered from her nest and followed a stick through its tumbling. Dripping from Komo’s lazy finger, twisting past a clump of limp leaves, tapping a branch, skidding down the trunk, bouncing off a gnarled knob and spinning towards the ground.

  And towards Ki.

  Ki was peering up into the thick canopy at her. The stick hit the ground immediately behind him, and he took a quick step forward, turned and saw another stick come rattling down. He picked out Komo at the top of the tree. ‘Ho, very funny!’ Ki called softly, before dismissing him with a wave. He was more interested in Abbie and her nest.

  Abbie yawned, plucked a cluster of leaves above her, and waved it before her face. She twitched her nose at Komo. She was settling into her small patch of jungle now. She knew where the small tasty leaves grew on the top of special trees – Komo showed her. She knew how to pull the dead wood from a tree to find the lovely black termites – she saw Dafida doing that. She knew which trees could produce the most comfortable nests, the fattest forks, the more supple branches, the biggest leaves to pad her weaving.

  Now she could build a nest faster, better, than Komo. Her leaf-lined nests would let the breeze waft around her body, but they were very comfortable as well as being solid. More importantly, they stayed that way until she woke up next morning.

  Ian was gone for so long now that she had stopped looking at the boats moving on the river. Sometimes she lay back in her nest and watched the fat moon floating through the leaves and tried to bring back his face, but the image of him in her head was fading.

  She pitched the cluster of leaves she’d picked towards Ki, and blew a smug raspberry. The leaves spread in the air and sprinkled over him.

  Ki snorted. ‘Everybody wants to get into the act!’ He brushed the leaves out of his hair and walked away.

  Ian slouched to the gate at the end of his first day back in high school in Melbourne, thinking: it is too big. The buildings are everywhere, like a small town and you need a map to work out where you go next. With different teachers all over the place. And the kids – big kids – oh, you see a few of them in the street, but this, where you see a thousand of them …

  ‘Hey kid!’

  Ian looked up. Five hefty boys sprawled around the school gate, not quite the walking skyscrapers of Year Twelve, but huge enough. Maybe Year Ten. And they are grinning at you.

  ‘You’re the monkey boy?’ said the biggest of them. Squinty eyes and a thick top lip as if someone had hit him with a plank.

  ‘Ah, I don’t think …’

  ‘Yes, yes, you found a monkey in a wreck or something and you took it back to the jungle. That’s you?’ said Thick Lip.

  ‘Well, it was an orangutan …’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, monkeys, they’re all the same. Must have been fun with the monkeys, hey?’

  A smile crept across Ian’s face. ‘Oh yeah, orangs are fantastic. And smart. When Abbie was taking …’

  ‘Sounds like a bag of oranges. Hey, you learn how they swing in the trees? Like Tarzan.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  ‘And how they scratch themselves.’ Thick Lip jerked his hands to his armpits.

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Show us.’ The face of Thick Lip suddenly hardened and his hands became fists.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Show us!’ The five boys pounded their fists into the wire gate.

  Ian hesitated, looked at the hostile faces, and slowly began to scrape his fingers across his chest.

  ‘Show us!’

  He lurched and scratched his head.

  The five boys snorted at each other. Thick Lip pulled himself from the gate and danced around Ian, exaggerating his movements. He was followed by the others until they peeled away, roaring at each other.

  Ian stood motionless as he watched them go.

  Abbie was swinging towards the sandy path in the morning, before the rangers shouted into the jungle. She knew by the sun in the sky when the bananas and milk were delivered. She was used to Ki and his men and their method, and she knew all the orangs very well.

  She dropped to the sandy path and joined the regular crowd. As usual, Dafida was standing in the middle of the path with one hand still hanging onto a branch and with Einstein clinging to her side. Abbie knew when she could make faces at Einstein without Dafida chasing her across the grass, and that was a relief. As usual Komo was dipping his head into the milk basin but now she knew that he would allow her to join him. Komo could be trouble, like when he raided Ki’s rubbish bin, but nothing serious. As usual Sadi was watching her from under a bush. Sadi would come out when Abbie was between her and Dafida. Just sometimes, when she was alone with Abbie, Sadi would uncoil her right arm from her body.

  Abbie was waiting for Sadi to shuffle a little from the brush when Ki walked up to Abbie with a few bananas. She looked at Ki’s bananas, looked down at the bananas she had picked up from the pile herself, and deliberately ignored Ki’s offer.

  Go away.

  Ki sighed and said some smooth words and lowered himself to a squat. He trie
d his banana again.

  That’s it then? Abbie stared into Ki’s eyes, eventually took the banana and ate it.

  Ki took her hand and stood up. Komo lifted his head from the milk basin, saw Ki holding Abbie’s hand and watched her face. Abbie pushed her lips at Komo. See you later. Maybe.

  Ki took Abbie to the buildings and the landing. Yos’s slow green boat was tied up to the landing. For a moment she looked around as if Ian might be there, but there was nobody except Yos.

  Yos wobbled his fingers at Abbie. ‘Off again, eh?’

  Ki picked Abbie up, put her on the top deck and clambered up next to her. As the slow boat was cast off Abbie felt the throb of the engine on her buttocks and shifted about uncertainly. Ki patted her shoulder and murmured.

  The boat slowly pushed away from the landing. Abbie watched Ian’s sleeping place slide out of sight, then the second landing and behind that the sandy path with the bananas, the milk and the orangs. As the slow boat passed, Dafida and Komo looked up from the basin. Then her brief home had gone.

  The boat chugged patiently past two large landings with several long boats and canoes tied up. Abbie saw wooden bungalows pushing through the trees and pale people with hats and cameras walking about. But this time she didn’t even look for Ian’s face among them.

  After the landings the river became quiet. Damp mists trailed across the water, muffling the motor and the low talk between Ki and Yos. The boat’s intense green faded as the bow nudged into a drifting white wall of fog. The grey gloom of the jungle edged closer to the banks, with tall trees hanging over the water. Abbie pulled her lips back from her teeth in a silent grimace, as if to frighten back the shadows. Her arms were wrapped around her body. Like Sadi.

  The silence was punctured by the calls of several long-nosed monkeys on a branch above the passing boat. They pointed down at Abbie, chattered, and a couple threw twigs. Abbie sneered at them and they skipped down the broad branch into the jungle.