Burning Eddy

by Scot Gardner

  I grabbed the torch and jogged to the side of the house where the stumps are longest. I peered under and scanned. Nothing. I stood and listened. Something heavy was moving through the grass beside me. I trained the torch on the sound in time to see a long, dark-furred, red-eyed beast hurtling towards me. I froze and it thundered past my leg and under the house. Thump, squeal, squeal. Silence. My heart raced and the skin on the back of my neck crawled as I flashed the torch under the house. I saw two sets of red eyes and I laughed like crazy when I recognised what it was.

  ‘It’s the wombats,’ I shouted.

  Mum laughed.

  As I watched, the bigger, red-coloured wombat, Doug, bolted at the smaller, dark-haired Tilly. She took off and squealed — not loud, but like a fox or like Toby pretending to do skids with a toy car — before running headlong into one of the concrete stumps of the house. It rang like it had been hit with a hammer. She changed course and bolted into the paddock with the panting Doug in hot pursuit. A few minutes later, they were back again, running almost the same path as before. Tooong. Tilly head-butted a stump again. It’s true that wombats aren’t the smartest creatures on earth but they do have hard heads. That must be wombat medicine, I thought; be hard-headed.

  five

  S C O R P I O N

  I’ve always been deadly serious about school. Late but serious. When we lived in Sydney — grade three, maybe even grade two — I couldn’t leave a class if I hadn’t finished my work or understood the idea that was being put forward. Just made sense; we were there to learn. Frank Schott was the first in a long line of troublemaking idiots that I followed from class to class — and in the case of Michael Fisher, from school to school. He did grade six with me at Henning, then ended up in the same year-seven class at Carmine Secondary. Thankfully he was in 8D, I was in 8A, but in year nine he was back with a vengeance. He’s not dumb and he even manages to get decent marks every now and then, but he always has to be the centre of attention. He’s been going out with Amy what’s-her-name since year seven and they can be quite pathetic on the bus — holding hands and kissy kissy as Amy gets off. I grunted once when Wayne the bus driver told her to get a move on. They couldn’t bear to part and when I grunted she shot me daggers. Well, they were more like axes.

  ‘Get a life, Fairy,’ she growled.

  Everyone laughed — including me — but the name stuck. Anyone with any respect calls me Daniel or Dan; everyone else calls me Fairy. Even Mr Reusch the PE teacher calls me Fairy. Chantelle Morrison is best mates with Amy but she calls me Dan.

  I stuck my hand up in SOSE one day and Mrs Griffiths turned away just as I did.

  ‘Mrs G! Fairy’s got a question. Haven’t you, Fairy?’ Michael shouted from the back of the room. ‘Shut up everyone, Fairy’s trying to ask a question.’

  The class went quiet and I looked over my shoulder at twenty-six pairs of eyes. Michael smiled and the gap in his front teeth made him look like a cartoon beaver.

  ‘Yes, Daniel?’

  I almost told her that it didn’t matter but the laughter would have been too loud on my sensitive ears. ‘If we have the technology to create solar power stations, why don’t we make more of them?’

  ‘Good question, Daniel. The sort that only you could ask,’ Mrs Griffith began good-naturedly. ‘It’s to do with infrastructure. The power stations that burn coal — like those around us here — took a long time and a lot of money to complete. They employ a great many people — your father among them, yes? — and they’ll be burning coal until they can’t do it anymore. That is, when they run out of usable coal or it becomes uneconomical to maintain them. Does that answer your question?’

  I nodded but it sounded a bit stupid. Build a solar power station and you don’t have to burn any coal. It’s all for free. Didn’t make much sense.

  ‘Der, Fairy. If we didn’t have the power stations we wouldn’t be here,’ Michael bellowed.

  ‘That’s enough, Michael, sit down please.’

  At recess and lunch for as long as I’ve been at the school, I have played four square with Robert and Aiden and the two Davids. They’re not exactly my friends — Aiden and one of the Davids are in year ten — but playing ball is what we do together. I’d say g’day if I saw them down the street but I wouldn’t know if they’ve got brothers and sisters or anything. Aiden is the best four square player in the school. Sometimes the year elevens will offer a bit of a challenge but they’re short-lived. Aiden’s just too quick. Sometimes I’m number two in the school, other days I rank ninety-seventh. Totally rank.

  I was thinking about solar power stations as I jogged to the old lady’s place after school. I could see the chimneys and cooling towers of Hepworth A and B from near the water treatment plant. Can’t wait till they run out of coal.

  I rapped on the front door.

  ‘Ja, come in Dan-ee-el. Have a sit in the lounge room, I’ll be with you shortly.’

  I opened the door quietly and perched on the edge of the leather lounge where I’d sat a fortnight before. She clunked and banged at the rear of the cottage for a while, humming unashamedly to herself, then she appeared in the doorway and I sucked in a startled breath. She had a towel wrapped around her head and another wrapped around her waist but her heavy breasts hung free. Her large pink-brown nipples pointed to the floor. I looked out the window.

  ‘Ooops. Sorry,’ she said, and chuckled. ‘I am an old woman. My body has been with me for so long that I sometimes forget that I’m wearing it. Where is the cream? Ah!’

  She walked half-naked across the room and squirted cream noisily into her hand from a pink bottle. She put it down and rubbed the cream on her face and neck.

  ‘This morning I dreamt of you, now you are here. To clean my gutters?’

  ‘Yep. I know where the ladder is. Might just get to it,’ I said, and stood up.

  ‘Ja, good boy. Before you go will you put some cream on my back?’ She held the bottle out.

  My face filled with blood and my mind filled with images from stories that I’d read. Stories safely under lock and key in the cubby. ‘Old woman initiates boy into the joys of sex.’ I wanted to run.

  She chuckled. ‘It’s not sex, hoor.’

  My neck prickled.

  ‘Just cream on my back.’

  I took the bottle and squirted cream onto my hand — it wouldn’t stop shaking. I couldn’t decide where to start. My hand moved over her shoulders without touching her. My heart was drumming away in my throat. The old lady sighed and my fingers finally landed between her shoulder blades and spread the cream in an arc over her left shoulder. Her skin was as smooth as Toby’s and lightly freckled. Her shoulders hunched a little and now that my eyes had recovered from the shock, I could see that she had a tattoo on the top of her left arm. A neat woven band that encircled her loose skin. The edges had blurred with time but it still looked fancy.

  ‘My husband, Kasper, had a matching tattoo. We had them done when we were first married.’

  How did she do that? It seemed to me then that no thought was safe from the old woman.

  ‘There you are,’ I said, and headed for the door.

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ she said, and undid the towel on her head. ‘Be careful, hoor.’

  ‘Ja . . . Yes. I mean yes.’ And I’m not a whore.

  I set up the ladder and cleaned the gutters. There were grasses and seedling trees growing above the back door, an apricot and something that looked like a tomato. I found a couple of black plastic pots and filled them with compost and leaf litter from the gutters, then poked the plants into them. An hour passed like a flock of ibis overhead and I whistled to myself as I packed up the ladder. I handed the old woman the potted plants. She wore a dress, an apron and a smile.

  ‘Thank you, darling. Where did you get these?’

  ‘From the gutter.’

  ‘Ja? From the birds? Thank you. There is an apple tree in the backyard. Dead. Next time you come could you dig it out?’

  I nodded. />
  She pulled an envelope from her apron pocket and handed it to me. ‘Come again when you can, huh schat?’

  She called me slut. Spat it like a curse. I couldn’t believe that she’d called me slut. I only rubbed cream on her back.

  ‘In Dutch it means “darling”. Mijn schat, my darling,’ she said, and laughed dryly to herself. I laughed with her.

  ‘Ah, so you can laugh? Life is not so serious, Dan-ee-el. Laugh more. It suits you,’ she said, and closed the door.

  I looked at the envelope and then at the door. ‘Thank you,’ I shouted. ‘Thank you, Eddy.’

  The only reply was a crowd from the TV yelling ‘Top dollar!’

  On my way to Tina’s work I opened the envelope. Fifty dollars. I walked on, whistling to myself and almost bumped into the mirror of a white car parked on the nature strip. ‘For sale’ it said in the window and a phone number. ‘Mitsubishi Scorpion. 1980. One owner. With RWC $850.’

  Mum and Toby were waiting at the front of the EPA building. Mum kissed me and Toby jumped up for a cuddle that turned into a wizzy-dizzy. On the way home, with Toby squirming on my lap, it occurred to me that I didn’t have to limit myself to one day of work per fortnight at Eddy’s place, so I arranged it with Tina.

  ‘It’s like I said to your mum, Dan. If you’re waiting beside my car when I knock off work I’m only too happy to drop you home. For me it takes the edge off the guilt I feel driving all that way with just one person in the car. Any day of the week. You don’t have to ask but I won’t be waiting.’

  I resolved then to go to Eddy’s place the following Monday.

  Dad was leaving for work as we pulled into the driveway. He waved out the window and yelled, ‘See you in the morning.’

  He smiled. Dad actually smiled. Not so I could see his teeth or anything but his lips curled up at the corners.

  Mum looked at me wide-eyed, then thanked Tina for dropping us home.

  Dad had mown the grass. In spring it grows so fast I can hear it getting taller. Well, almost. Kat was howling ‘I do, I do, I do’ along with the tape playing in her room. We dropped the shopping and retreated to the garden — Mum to pick some vegies for tea, and me and Tobe to make a fortress in the fresh-cut grass. Tobe insisted that we needed a log to rest our weapons on so I grabbed the biggest one I could handle off the wood heap and carried it over. The bark broke off when I dropped it and Toby picked it up.

  ‘What’s this, Dan?’ he asked, holding out the piece of bark.

  ‘Wow!’ I said, and let the small dark-brown creature crawl from the bark onto my hand.

  ‘Good find, Tobe.’

  I held it low so he could see it. ‘It’s a scorpion,’ I said.

  ‘Cool. Can I have a hold?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, and let the little beastie crawl from my hand to his. It flexed its tail over its rounded back and crawled across his hand. It tried to hide between his fingers.

  ‘It tickles. Can they hurt you?’ he asked.

  ‘Not unless you accidentally squash them.’

  ‘Then he would get you with his nippers.’

  ‘No, his nippers are for holding food. He stings with his tail.’

  Toby’s eyes widened and he poked his bottom lip out. He encouraged the scorpion to crawl back onto my hand, eight legs moving in perfect time and pincers folded in front of his mouth. I wondered about scorpion medicine: always keep a sting in your tail.

  ‘We’ve got to find a new home for him now, Dan. In the woodshed?’

  ‘Yep, the woodshed.’

  I dropped into bed at ten o’clock. I thought about Dad smiling as he’d left that night. I imagined him sitting at work. He’d be alone, I thought, sipping at the coffee that would keep him awake until his lunch at midnight. The roar of the machinery around him. I listened to the pair of koalas in the bush behind Dad’s shed. I can still remember the first time I heard koalas call. I’d darted outside — must have been ten years old, it wasn’t long after we moved up to Bellan — Kat was on the toilet and I’d desperately needed to wee. I stepped onto the evening-cool grass from the back door and, with a sigh, began to relieve myself. From the darkness came a low growl that grew into the most violent snorting pig sound. I shivered and managed to wee on my pyjama leg. I was frozen to the spot for a second as my mind drew a horror film of pictures. There was a blood-curdling squeal. The gurgling squeal of a child with its throat cut. In my mind, Toby — then not even a year old — was being torn apart by a wild boar. I ran to Mum, my pyjamas soaked and tears wetting my cheeks, screaming that Toby had been eaten by a pig. She bolted to the bedroom and found Toby sleeping peacefully. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Must have been some other kid out there. She grabbed the torch and walked courageously outside.

  ‘Mum! Don’t go!’ I hollered from the doorway.

  She came back a few minutes later, smiling. ‘Koalas, love, nothing to be frightened of.’

  She had wanted to lead me up there and show me, put my mind at rest, but I wasn’t going to step outside the door. She told me that it was a boy and girl koala. She thought they were in love. I wished they would kill each other quietly. It was more than a year later when I saw a big male koala, back arched, snorting through his bulbous nose in the middle of the day. At night, to the uninitiated, they are the sounds of monsters.

  There was once a story going around at Henning Primary that Michael Fisher’s dad saw a black panther in the bush in Bellan somewhere. His dad’s an industrial chemist at one of the power stations. He’s not dumb. Jack who has beef cattle up on the ridge in Bellan South says that he’s had some cattle that have been mauled to death. Jack drinks a bit. I know Bellan better than most people. I’ve been camping on my own around here for nearly four years, every other weekend, and I’ve seen and heard some amazing things, but nothing like a panther. The sinister chuck, chuck, chuck of a brush-tailed possum. The kelpie with asthma that yelps from the tops of old gum trees, which is really a barking owl, and the haunting whoo hoo of the powerful owl — an owl as big as an eagle that eats gliders and possums. They’re all part of the night and there’s nothing out there that would hurt a person. I’m not frightened of the dark.

  But that night, after the koalas stopped calling, I heard sounds that caught me off guard. Through the thin plaster wall I could hear Kat wriggling in her bed like she couldn’t get comfortable. Of bedclothes being pulled aside but no feet across the floor. A throaty sigh, then another. Her bed banged against the wall.

  ‘Unghh,’ she whispered.

  I sat up. I thought she was in pain.

  More wriggling then a series of plips that I wished I’d never heard. I hid my head under the covers. There were pictures in my mind. Pictures that were not welcome. Sex pictures of my sick sister.

  six

  P A N T H E R

  After school that Friday, I watched a group of motorbikes ride past the front gate. The riders carried packs and the five of them travelled in one long line to the bridge on Ammets Creek. I could hear them shouting through their helmets at one another though I only made out a few words. They were talking about the shack.

  The shack was built before we moved to Bellan, probably a long time before. Poles of mountain ash support walls and a roof of corrugated iron. No door to swing open, just a hole in one wall. It has an earth floor and a chimney formed of bent iron that vents most of the smoke from the fireplace into the surrounding bush. The roof above the fire is soot black with initials scraped in it by wet fingers. My initials and others. It’s far enough away from the gurgling Ammets Creek that I don’t have water nightmares when I’m camping there, and about three ks from the bridge below our place. It was an exciting find when I was eleven and I’ve stayed in it quite a few times. One group of boys about my age use it and line the walls with their empty bottles of beer and whiskey. I’ve never been to the shack when they’ve been around, but I found a full can of VB there one Sunday and I thought about drinking it. I knew it would have been illegal and I thought I might have
had trouble walking home afterwards so I didn’t drink it. If I had found it on a Saturday, I might have drunk it.

  They were heading for the shack and I smiled as I looked at the clear evening sky. A perfect night to play ‘terrorise the tourist’.

  I put Toby to bed just after sunset and Mum thanked me. I told her I was going camping and she said that was good. Told me to be careful. I slipped on my heavy cotton ex-army greatcoat and checked the pockets. Cigarette lighter, coil of fishing line, hook and sinker, knife and, in the breast pocket, a stash of muesli bars for emergencies. The moon was an hour or so off setting; a waxing three-quarter that lit up the track like daylight. I could see the shapes of wallabies feeding by the side of the road before they’d hear me and thunder off into the undergrowth. The air was still and high up on the ridge I could hear the mournful call of a boobook owl. Mow poke . . . Mow poke . . .

  I made good time and could smell the smoke of a campfire and hear screeching, drunken laughter as the moon finally set. I guided myself into the clearing by following the rift that the track made in the canopy, stumbling occasionally, and came to rest in the long grass less than ten metres from where light and shadow poured out of the doorway of the shack.

  ‘And the bit where he gets his tongue stuck on that . . . on that . . . chairlift thingy,’ someone shouted.

  They laughed.

  ‘I think that’s my favourite movie of all time.’

  ‘Nah, mine’s The Wiggles.’

  Someone shrieked with laughter.

  ‘Yeah, Wiggly Wiggly Christmas. I love it.’

  ‘You’re a wanker, Jimmy,’ someone said, and punctuated it with an enormous burp.

  Pigs. I knew who it would be, well a couple of them anyway. The burp would have been Michael Fisher and Jimmy the Wanker would be James Sheffield. I ferreted through the grass and found a palm-sized river rock and before I’d thought about it, I’d chucked it at the shack. Maybe I wanted to scare them? Maybe I wanted to sit with them? I didn’t know why I’d done it but I chucked the rock and it thumped into the wall of the shack. The harsh clang was much louder than I’d intended and the sound rattled and echoed off the trees like a shotgun blast.