Burning Eddy

by Scot Gardner

  There was silence from inside. I lay down on my belly in the grass.

  ‘What the bloody hell was that?’

  There was a commotion, then a torch beam scanned the clearing. I froze and my heart made my eardrums boom.

  ‘Down here, Fish,’ someone said, and the torchlight flashed against the wall of the shack.

  ‘It was a bloody rock.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘It was, look.’

  Silence, then Michael Fisher growled, ‘Whoever threw that rock had better piss off now or we’re going to have to kill you.’

  They chuckled and something moved in the grass between the shack and me. They grumbled amongst themselves then went back inside. I heaved a sigh of relief, smiled to myself and hunted for another stone. I wished I had brought a torch.

  The sound of heavy padded footfalls. I froze again. Something big was moving between the shack and me. I could feel the vibrations through the moist loam, rattling my body. It was big. Big and heavy. My skin prickled and I stopped breathing. I fumbled for my cigarette lighter and dropped it in the grass. I went into a panic trying to find it.

  ‘What was that?’ someone whispered from the shack, and the silence that followed made my brain ring.

  Panting, like a huge dog. Panting.

  ‘It’s nothing, Jimmy, you wanker.’

  It was something all right.

  The low rumbling growl made my whole body tighten. Then a snarl echoed around the clearing and I shrieked, still unable to move.

  Someone banged the wall of the shack and yelled. Whatever it was padded to a halt next to my shoulder. I pulled my coat over my head and felt hot breath on my hands, sniffing at me. I tried to scream but my voice wouldn’t work.

  They were outside the shack. I could hear them through my coat.

  ‘There, in the grass. What is it?’

  Silence broken by my heart pounding in my eardrums.

  ‘It’s a bloody koala,’ Fisher sang.

  The beast near my head moved. It wasn’t a bloody koala.

  ‘Shit, what’s that?’

  Silence again and my hand started to shake.

  ‘It’s a friggin cow.’

  It clicked together in my mind and I could see the movie clear as day. It wasn’t a horror film; it was a documentary on koalas and cows. The cow, more likely a runaway steer from old Ted’s, finds the koala moving along the ground between trees and sniffs around the little marsupial. The little marsupial, justifiably threatened by the imposing bovine, sits on its haunches and gives the steer what for. Growl, growl and a claw to the nose. The steer backs off and discovers another interesting thing; a human lying flat on the grass.

  I sighed, but it was more like a moan of relief, and sat up. The cow crashed off towards the creek. Torchlight in my eyes.

  ‘What the . . . it’s Fairy. What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing . . . I just . . .’

  ‘Throwing rocks at the shack, prick.’

  ‘Yeah,’ James said.

  ‘Here, hold the torch. I’ll get him.’

  A new terror rocked my body. All the adrenaline generated in the previous three minutes kicked in and I sprang to my feet and ran up the track. There’d be no way any of them could catch me in the dark.

  ‘Keep the torch on him.’

  I felt like a rabbit in a spotlight, but the real panic didn’t set in until I heard a motorbike start up. I hunted desperately in the fading beam of the torchlight for a way off the track but both sides were head-high walls of blackberries. The bouncing headlight of the motorbike replaced the steady beam of the torch. For a few moments, it lit the track well — blackberries and more blackberries — then the bike was alongside me. I ran as fast as my terror-powered legs would carry me. What now? Run me down? A hand closed in on the hood of my jacket, then whoever was on the back of the bike lunged onto me, sending me careening face-first into the track. My nose and cheek hit the ground and the darkness was lit by the stars behind my eyes. Whoever it was on my back got up. The bike stopped and turned. A boot crashed into my ribs, the blow softened by my coat, and another slammed into my lower back. The heel of a motorbike boot came down on the fingers of my left hand and crunched them into the gravel.

  ‘Get a fucking life, Fairy.’

  The motorbike creaked, then roared off, spraying my coat with little stones and dust.

  I lay there for I don’t know how long, my head spinning and the tearing pain finally filtering through from my hand. I sat up and realised I was crying. Gravel had stuck to my cheek and brushing it off hurt my hand and face. My fingers bent and straightened painfully but on command. Nothing was broken — except my will to live.

  I hobbled along the track for what seemed like hours. The blow to my back had made my legs tingly-weak. In my dazed state I must have wandered onto an access track — one of the unkempt dirt roads that let vehicles into the plantations of pine, blue gum and mountain ash that line the Bellan valley. My boots made no sound on the track and, looking skyward, I could see the heavy angular shadows of mature pine trees. I stepped off the road onto a thick bed of pine needles and curled up into a ball.

  I felt like my world had been cracked apart. I felt shattered, shaken to the core of my being. Destroyed. My hand, my face, my back, my feet, my heart — everything about me ached. I didn’t have a life. No friends, a messed-up family, no hobbies, no sport, no interests. No life. They were right. There was nothing normal about me. I smelt the musty pine carpet below me and my waxy coat. Someone else’s coat. Always someone else’s clothes. I didn’t even dress normal. I wasn’t interested in girls, not real ones anyway. Wasn’t interested in boys. We didn’t have a TV. We didn’t even have a phone. We must have been the only family in the western world that didn’t have a phone. Why would we need one? You’ve got to have friends to make a phone worthwhile. Dad didn’t have any friends, probably never has had. Mum wasn’t allowed to have friends. That’s what it felt like. Ran in the family this not having a life. Locked away from the world in our country home on the hill.

  I dozed. My thoughts turned to mush. My back ached. I couldn’t get comfortable. It started to rain as the sun was chasing the darkness out of the eastern sky. I dragged myself to my feet and walked home.

  seven

  F O X

  We eat all our roosters. Dad can’t handle the crowing so we cut their heads off as soon as they start. We dip the headless bodies in boiling water to make it easier to pull the feathers out. Sometimes the chooks go broody but we don’t have fertile eggs. Mum bought a dozen from Graham and Tina to put under Henrietta and the morning I got back from the shack Toby was zinging. Eight had hatched and old Henny was proudly chuck, chuck, chucking around the yard with a swarm of downy black dots streaming behind her. Peep, peep, peep. I put my coat in my room and wandered into the pen. Toby caught one of the chicks deftly and held it to his face.

  ‘Chickies, Dan. Aren’t they gorgeous?’ he said. A look of panic washed over him and he stepped back. ‘What happened to your face?’

  Mum did a double take. ‘My God, what happened?’

  She jogged the few steps to me and cradled my chin in her hands. ‘Daniel, what happened?’

  I pushed her hands away and spoke to Toby. ‘Had a bit of an accident. Fell down went boom in the dark.’

  Toby chuckled and went back to kissing his chick. Mum grabbed my hand and led me inside. She bathed my cuts and insisted on knowing all the details. I told her I’d fallen down a rock ledge, which put her mind at ease but made me swallow hard. My hand and cheek had swollen during the night and my eye was pushed half closed. My fingers felt as tight as a drum and no longer bent freely. Mum offered to wash and cut my hair while we were in the bathroom. I took her up on the offer. The feel of the clippers on my head was like medicine. Mum cuts my hair to a number three every month or so. Low-maintenance hairstyle. I don’t have to use a brush.

  I sat with Toby in the vegie garden that afternoon. Mum had collected Henny and the
chicks and transferred them into a little cage where we could keep an eye on them. The end of the cage was propped on a brick so they could scratch around in the garden — a rare privilege for our chooks. They make a huge mess in the vegies — digging great holes in the beds and covering the seedlings. We fenced them out years ago. Toby kept both eyes and both hands on the chicks. He gave them all names and tried to remember which one he was cuddling. They’d flap out of his fingers and he’d chase them around the garden squealing, ‘Hey, you cheeky thing. Come back!’

  Dad was still on nights so dinner was a riot. Halfway through our meal Kat froze. She had a huge forkful of noodles between her bowl and her mouth. She looked at me.

  ‘What happened to your face, Dan?’

  Mum guffawed. ‘Oh, Kat, don’t tell me you’ve only just noticed.’

  Toby pulled on her sleeve. ‘Are you blind, Katty? Ha ha. Blind cat! We’ve got a blind cat.’

  Mum had just filled her mouth and Toby’s stupid joke nearly made her cough it out. That got us all going.

  ‘Mum cut me while she was doing my hair,’ I said, straight-faced.

  Kat looked at me and chewed hard. ‘Bull,’ she said.

  I shrugged.

  She put her fork down and squinted at Mum. ‘Did you really?’ she asked.

  Mum laughed. Toby squealed.

  My sister lives in her own little world. A place where Dolly is the newspaper and Abba is the religion.

  After tea, I fought Toby with my good hand and we rolled on my bed until his hair stuck to his forehead and he couldn’t stop laughing. He couldn’t stop and I couldn’t start. I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t get comfortable and in my mind the movie played over and over until I sat up. I wished I’d had the courage to stand there. To fight or talk my way out of it. No, not fight. That would have been senseless, besides there were five of them and one of me. I wished I hadn’t thrown the rock. I wished I could have walked up and knocked on the wall of the shack.

  I lay down and stared at the roof. The moonlight reflected off Dad’s shed window and through the glass behind my head, making Toby’s old mobiles cast creepy shadows across the wall. A fox yelped quite close by. I uncovered my ears and listened until my brain was ringing. Yelp, squeal, yelp. Very close. I heard the dull plunk of wire under strain and my heart began to race. The fox was going for the chicks.

  I grabbed the torch and hurried out the back door and around to the garden, the skin on my back crawling. The moon lit the ground and house like a distant floodlight. I could see colour in the blue plastic that Mum had draped over the end of the little chicken run. She had taken the brick out and let the cage rest safely on the ground. No fox. I scanned the vegie beds with the torch. Nothing.

  I turned to go inside and the night air filled with commotion — yelping and buckling wire. I spun, torch ablaze, to see the little chicken’s cage jumping and rattling. The fox was trapped inside.

  With the hair prickling on my neck and arms, I crept to the cage and lit up the wire with the torch. The young fox was glistening with dew, motionless except for its heaving flanks. Beneath its paw lay the headless body of Henrietta, still twitching. I could see the leg of one the chicks: grey, lifeless and pointing skyward.

  The fox stared at me, mouth open in a quiet pant. God, what was I supposed to do now? I didn’t have a gun. I wished I had a gun. Could get Graham’s gun. Just one crack echoing around the valley. One shot that would make Toby jump in his sleep and it would all be over. Thief. Murderer. Thrill-killer with shining teeth. I thought that I could sharpen a stick. A knife. The axe. With a gun, the bullet does the killing. Quick. Clean. Anything else would be brutal and bloody. The fox was shaking. I sighed.

  When I looked into those golden eyes — really looked — I saw all the knowing of a person. There was feeling in there. All the stories about smart foxes must have been true. It wasn’t a dog in there; it was a person stuck in a dog’s body. A wise person. An old person. The dog’s eyes looked like the eyes of the old woman. They were Eddy’s eyes.

  I thought I’d leave it there until Dad got home. Let him deal with it. Let him work it out. Let him be the man around the house for once. I almost laughed — he wouldn’t know what to do. He’d grunt and vanish into his shed.

  Those eyes. Those golden all-knowing eyes, they stared at me with no fear. I could smell the waxy stink of fox, that heady scent of urine that hangs in the air along so many bush trails. The unmistakable smell that makes me stop in my tracks and look around. Somewhere, not far away, there’d be a scruff of red and blue rosella feathers or a hole in the bottom of a blackberry thicket that’s just the right size, and the barbs around the opening would be tufted with russet hair.

  I lifted the end of the cage and watched the shadow of the fox tear through the vegies and spring over the fence. At the edge of the drive it turned, eyes shining green in the torchlight.

  ‘Go,’ I whispered. Leave me some of your speed and cunning. Leave me some fox medicine. ‘Don’t come back.’

  I heard a solitary peep at my feet and shone the torch. Little eyes fixed me with the part-lidded stare of death. Henny’s body was still. What a waste. I counted the chicks. One, two, three lifeless little bodies. More. It was a massacre. There was another peep, and a black tuft darted from the cage and vanished into the carrots. I scanned with the torch and called gently. The torch beam shook. I couldn’t find it. I doubted it would survive the shock and cold with no mother to hide under. The rest were dead. I left the cage propped on the brick and went shivering to bed wondering how I’d break the news to my little brother.

  eight

  C A T

  Toby was awake when Katrina and I were about to leave for the bus. He’s usually still asleep. I whispered to Mum about the dead chickens and she sighed with both hands on the sink. She apologised. She said she’d forgotten to close their little cage. She hadn’t heard a thing. I took Toby out and showed him the chicks.

  He didn’t cry. He poked at one with his bare toe. ‘That’s a bummer, isn’t it, Dan? Poor chickies.’

  We dug a hole at the edge of the vegie garden and buried the headless body of Henrietta and the stiff corpses of the chicks.

  ‘There were only seven, Dan.’

  He was right. I remembered the one that had torn off into the vegies.

  ‘Did the fox eat one?’

  ‘Mmm. I think so, Tobe.’

  He was still picking around in the vegie garden when Kat and I left for the bus. As we got to the road, I heard him squeal.

  ‘There’s one still alive, Dan! I found a live chickie!’

  I shouted that he should take it inside to Mum and he whooped and called out to her. Lucky chick.

  Dad waved as he drove past us on the road between Tina’s and our place. He waved like he didn’t really know us. He waved with one finger off the steering wheel like everyone who lives in the bush does. I waved back with my bruised hand. It didn’t look like he noticed the gravel rash on my face. The skin on my cheek and nose had gone scabby and dark. My eye was mostly open and the bottom lid had gone the colour of ripe blackberries.

  Tina didn’t ask me about it until we were halfway to the bus stop, and I told her the story I’d told Mum. Fell down a rock ledge. She sucked air through her teeth. Kat said I’d cut myself shaving and Tina laughed. It wasn’t until I was sitting in the bus shelter — with its graffitied walls and stink of piddle — that I realised how stupid it had been making up a story. In about three minutes I was going to get on the bus and Michael Fisher would look at me and howl with laughter so that I could see his gappy teeth and the little punching bag that hangs down at the back of his throat. Then he’d tell everyone what really happened — at the top of his voice — and good old Fairy would be the butt of everyone’s jokes for another month. They wouldn’t miss me if I didn’t show. I got up to walk home and the bus rumbled over Ammets Creek Bridge. I realised that I’d have to run to miss it and that seemed like too much effort. Too much effort and then I’d miss sch
ool. I held my breath and stepped onto the bus as twenty pairs of eyes looked at my face. Some — like Ben, a little year-seven kid — stared, open-mouthed. Some looked on with mild interest, some glanced and looked away again. Michael wasn’t on the bus. I smiled to myself and my face cracked and hurt. Michael wasn’t on the bus.

  Michael wasn’t at school either, and when Aiden, Robert and the Davids caught up with me at the four square court I found myself telling them the truth. Telling them how I‘d thrown the stone at the shack and how the pigs had chased me down on a motorbike.

  ‘Well, Dan, I think that earns you an A-plus for bravery and an A-double-plus for stupidity,’ Robert said.

  We laughed and then played. It hurt my hand to slam so I had to play smart.

  Amy what’s-her-name stopped at my table as she came in for English after lunch.

  ‘What happened to your face, Fairy?’

  I shrugged. ‘Cut myself shaving.’

  She grunted. ‘You’re such a friggin’ loser.’

  I smiled and swallowed hard. I thought she might have been right. I collected my books and walked out. Walked out of the school and into the rain. My heart beat in my neck and my guts ached. I couldn’t breathe properly. My lungs wouldn’t fill. I walked, with rain tickling behind my ears, to Eddy’s place.

  There were two cars parked at No. 4 Concertina Drive. An old blue Holden wagon in showroom condition sat on the nature strip. A neat white Toyota sedan was parked awkwardly in the driveway, water beading on the bonnet. I walked past it and up to the front door. Bursts of laughter leaked through the closed windows and door. I couldn’t knock. I wasn’t there to meet Eddy’s friends. I thought about getting to work on the apple tree but all the life had leaked out of my wet body. I shivered and sat in the old armchair on the small front verandah. I picked at the soggy scabs on my cheek until they hurt. They were still a bit fresh and I managed to draw blood. I heard a cat mew. A tiny, high-pitched meow beside the front step. From under the apricot tree crept a full-grown cat, a ginger tom with teeth flashing as it stared at me and meowed again. It didn’t have a tail. The poor thing was half-drowned and I called it and patted my thigh. It sat down in the rain and meowed its pathetic meow. Someone inside coughed and the cat started. With renewed confidence it jumped onto the verandah and shook itself. It smelled my boot, then sat and licked the back of its paw, ears flicking at the bursts of noise from inside. I spoke to the cat gently and it eventually sniffed at my hand, then climbed onto the arm of the chair. It let me pat it — well, wipe the rain down its back, anyway. It tentatively stepped onto my lap and began purring like a not-so-distant helicopter. It vibrated on my knee for a while, then curled into a ball. My hand was covered in wet cat hair and I wiped it on the side of the old chair. The chair was covered in ginger fluff. It was Eddy’s cat and I was sitting in its chair. It didn’t seem to mind.