The Eye of the Sheep Read online

  I got going, pushing down on the pedals so hard my leg straps burned. I was pedalling, faster and faster, wind whistling in my ears, my flag vibrating. I was beating the cars. I leaned forward and opened my mouth and the wind dried my spit. I rode down the hill and around the block and past the house and around again. Soon I was transparent and there was no sound when the wind passed through me because I had no substance. I was no longer an obstacle. I was unbeatable. Thank you, Dad, thank you.

  ‘What on earth?’ Mum stood at the shed door. ‘Jimmy, how did you get in here?’ She was planted feet apart with her hands on her hips, and her face was flushed; there was no smile or softness. She was puffing. ‘What the hell are you doing running round like an idiot in here?’ She spoke as if she was taking over from Dad. ‘Did you get my keys from my handbag?’ She pulled the keys out of the lock. ‘Bloody hell, Jimmy. You know you’re not allowed in here! Get out!’

  I raced past her and into the house and into Robby’s room and I sat in his cupboard looking at his shoes, channelling messages through the laces. Robby, have you caught enough fish yet?Can you come home? I don’t know where Dad is, Robby. It was the first time Mum let me stay there without coming and checking.

  I stayed and stayed and stayed and Robby’s cupboard grew darker and darker. In the end I came out myself. I didn’t want to, I wanted her to come and get me but she never did. I went into the kitchen and found her boiling frankfurts. She hardly talked. When it was time for dinner she only ate her frankfurts, she didn’t ask me any questions or tell me any news. And then after, her head was hung in her hands and her eyes were down and she didn’t even look at me.

  I woke up in the middle of the night caught in a black circle box. Everything had stopped. There was no next thing, but I was still alive inside the circle box. It held me tightly inside itself. Even if I exploded, my cells were trapped within the walls of the box. There was no escape. I couldn’t move. Mum! Mum! Mum! I called but she couldn’t hear me. Nobody could. I was nothing. I had living organs that beat and pumped and pushed but at the same time I was soundless and nothing. Mum! Mum! Mum!

  Nobody came. I wasn’t joined to the human race by sound or vision. ‘Mum! Mum!’ Time kept passing. I saw more and more of it in front of me, like a trap that didn’t end. ‘Mum! Mum!’

  ‘Jimmy, Jimmy! It’s Mum, it’s Mum. Everything’s going to be alright, Jimmy, Mum’s here.’ She took my bones, and the skin over my bones, and my trembling guts that the skin held inside, and she gathered it all up in the fat of her arms and pressed it close to her so I could I feel her heart beating its message to me from under her nightdress. JimmyJimmy, JimmyJimmy, JimmyJimmy. My mother penetrated the walls of the circle box that trapped me. In all of the world, she was the only person who could.

  I had a wet face, wet sheets and wet legs.

  ‘Oh, my boy,’ she cried. ‘Oh Jimmy, love, my little boy, I’m sorry, my special one, forgive Mum, please forgive me, I am sorry.’

  Her tears added to my wetness. We made a pool.

  ‘Jimmy, you need dry clothes, love. Come on.’ She found clean pyjama pants in the cupboard, then she took me into the bathroom and tried to peel off my pyjama pants. I held the wet band in my fingers and pulled the pants back against me. ‘No, Mum, no, no . . .’

  ‘Come on, love. We’ll be quick.’

  ‘No, no . . .’

  ‘It’ll be over in one, two, three. Come on, love.’

  I let her take off my pants. I didn’t want to, but I did.

  She took me to her bedroom, and into her bed. It enveloped me, as soft as clouds. I smelled Charlie on her pillowcase. My tubes and intestines and apparatus were pressed against her wide soft body. The blankets over us made a warm room with all extra space filled by my mum and by me.

  I was in the place of my father. It was his side in the bed, but I only took up the room of one of his legs. Mum had the night lamp on beside her. I saw the spines of her Agathas lined up one on top of the other: The ABC Murders, And Then There Were None, Death at Midnight – all in a pile beside a box of white tissues, her Charlie bottle, her Intensive Care, her pink nail polish, a glass of water, her pearl necklace, her jubes.

  I half closed my eyes until the water mixed with the polish and the Intensive Care made a puddle and tissues and crimes and blood and Charlie all mixed in together and shimmered. Mum switched off the lamp and pulled the blankets up to our chins. But I didn’t want her to fall asleep without me. ‘Mum, Mum, I can’t sleep.’

  ‘Yes you can, my love. Count sheep, Jimmy, count sheep,’ she said into the back of my hair, her arm around my middle.

  I closed my eyes and saw sheep crossing a small river. Some put their little tongues into the water, folding them up at the sides to make a funnel so they could drink. There were lambs and strong men sheep in a family. They stepped through the river, across stones. The water ran up over their knees. The men sheep helped the lambs and showed them where it wasn’t too deep. They said, ‘Cross over here, lambs, it’s safer.’ But the lambs didn’t listen; they kept playing as the water rose higher. The mother lamb told them to hurry and cross because a wave was coming. ‘Quick, quick, little lambs!’ she said. She had seen the wave with the light in her eye and she knew how big and fast it was. ‘Quick lambs! Quick, my little babies!’ The lambs began to cross the stones but the water was flowing fast and the lambs weren’t used to walking – they’d only been born a few days before – and the stones were unsteady and sharp. The lambs slipped and water flooded over the tops of their woollen coats. It didn’t matter that the mother sheep and the men sheep stood on the banks calling, calling, the lambs were swept away by the wave.

  ‘Mum! Mum! Help! Help!’

  ‘Hush, Jimmy, hush. Big breath in and count with Mum. One . . . two . . . three . . . count with me, Jimmy . . . four . . . five . . . six, that’s it – good boy . . .’

  ‘Seven . . . eight . . . nine.’

  ‘That’s it – good boy.’

  The next night Mum said, ‘How about you sleep in my bed tonight, Jimmy.’

  ‘Yes, Mum, yes!’ I said. ‘Your bed!’ and went into her room. I got into her bed and the shape of me changed the shape of my dad in the mattress, as if I had always been sleeping there. My knee made a dip across where his back had been; my arm made a dent where his shoulder had lain. My head made a new valley in the pillow.

  Before it was time for the light to go out Mum read her book and I read my manuals beside her. I examined diagrams of light bulbs and mower engines and sink pipes. When my eyes were tired I asked Mum to read for me. ‘Please, Mum,’ I begged.

  ‘You can read to yourself, Jimmy. Let me read my own book.’

  ‘But, Mum, you can read your own book out to me; that way you will still know what is happening and you will be reading to me at the same time, Mum. At the same time, Mum. Mum, your own book, Mum –’

  ‘Settle down, Jimmy. Don’t get yourself excited. Alright, I’ll read to you.’

  ‘But your book, Mum, your book.’

  ‘Yes, my book, my book, alright. Shhhh. Settle down.

  ‘And the car drove the roads at top speed. Whenever Jimmy changed gears the car got faster. He was a racer. A champion racer . . . Then he went home and baked himself a pie with apples and he took the cream from the fridge and he put some of the cream on the pie –’

  ‘Not a made-up book, Mum, not a made-up book! Your book, your book. Your book, Mum!’

  ‘Jimmy, shhh. You should be asleep. It’s late.’

  ‘I will settle down, Mum, I will settle down – but, Mum, only if – only if you read your book, your book!’

  ‘Alright, alright. But don’t blame me if you get nightmares.’

  ‘Read, Mum!’

  Mum began to read. ‘. . . The earth was packed tight and dry and it was long work. After a couple of hours he decided the hole was big enough. He took the corpse from the back of the truck, unwrapped it from its now damp and bloody sacking, and placed it in the hole . . .’
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  The tentacles waved slowly between her words as they blew away the dust and particles and hairs. I drifted. The ripples of her voice ran over me, bobbing me up and down, up and down.

  When it was time to turn off the light Mum kissed me on the cheek. ‘Good night, my little man,’ she whispered. ‘I love you.’

  Charlie sent a message to me through my nasal – Your father is never coming back.

  When I went into the kitchen the next morning I saw the back of Mum at the sink. Her apron with corns and tomatoes and onions in a row was tied around her middle. She was doing the dishes and she was crying. Tears dripped into the sink. When she dunked in her hands to scrub a dish, tears and dishwater spilled over the sides and dripped onto her slippers.

  ‘Mum, what is it, what is it, Mum? Are you alright? Mum?’

  She turned around, taking my shoulders in her hands, looking down into my eyes, her face white and scared. ‘Oh, Jimmy, what will become of you if something happens to me?’

  What did she mean? What is become? What will I become? What has to happen to my mother for me to become it?

  She hugged me hard, pulling my questions into a tight bundle. ‘Don’t listen to me, love. Don’t listen to me.’

  I didn’t know what I would become, but I knew I didn’t want to become it without her.

  She stood up, blinking away her tears. ‘Jimmy, why don’t we have a stay-at-home day, just you and me? We could watch a midday movie and if it gets sunny we could make a bed in the yard and have a rest out there. We could read our books. What do you say, my boy?’

  ‘No school?’ I asked her. ‘No school again, Mum?’

  ‘No school, Jimmy. That’s right. How about it, hey?’

  ‘Yes, Mum! Yes, Mum! Yes, Mum!’ I ran around the kitchen, knocking over a chair. No school!

  Mum sniffed and smiled as she picked up the chair. ‘You’re a funny one.’ She took me in her arms as I ran past. Her hands, soaked with dishwater, wrapped around me. I smelled Sunlight Lemon Liquid. She pressed me against her bosom, squashing my ear back as she held me. With my unsquashed ear, I heard messages from her body’s wires. Your father is missing. It’s just me now, little man. Please God don’t let anything happen to me!

  I couldn’t breathe. I was caught in her heat as it came up from under her dress and the pits of her arms and the fat of her chin. I was very small, all bones. The closer she hugged me the smaller I became until I was an insect like a flea or a termite that could hardly help her.

  ‘Mum,’ I said. It came out muffled. ‘Mum!’

  She set me back. ‘My boy, what would I do without you?’

  What would she do without me? What would she do? Where was Robby? How far out to sea? When would it be time for him to come home?

  Day after day after day it was just the two of us – Mum lying across the blue kitchen couch, reading and sleeping, and sometimes making us chips and frankfurts.

  ‘What about Westlake, Mum?’ I asked her. ‘What about Mr Barker and the seniors?’

  ‘Don’t you worry about Westlake, Jimmy. We’re fine. I’ve got my savings. And your father left us with money. It’s high time I had a break, so don’t you worry about a thing.’ She took another bite of her cheesecake and lay back against the couch.

  The more she rested the less she walked. Her stick leaned against the wall by the front door unused; the five finger dents in the handle stayed empty. One morning she said, ‘Love, do you think you can go and get your mother some milk from the shop? Do you think you can do that without getting into any trouble? I’m a bit tired for a walk today.’

  ‘Yes, Mum, yes, I can do that! I can do that!’ I ran around the room. ‘Wheeeeeeeeeee!’

  ‘Don’t talk to anyone on the way, love,’ she said, transmitting messages of urgency. ‘We’re alright on our own, you and me, aren’t we?’ Her face was a pale and shining flower, her breathing loud. ‘Give me a kiss before you go, love, and remember, don’t talk to anyone. You just go and come back, alright? No stopping or detours.’

  ‘Yes, Mum! Yes! Yes! Yes! No detours and no stopping!’ I did three laps around the kitchen, with a detour to the socks and a detour to the shoes. I was warming up for the journey.

  ‘You can pick up some biscuits, too, okay?’ Mum said, passing me my coat.

  ‘What bikkies, Mum? What bikkies?’

  ‘I don’t know. Your choice, my boy.’

  ‘Creamy centres, Mum? Jammy fingers? What about jammy fingers? Buttermilks? Cat heads? Cow chips? Lemon tuties? Mum, you like them, Mum, you like lemon tuties, or fruit pillows. Mum, fruit pillows so you can eat and sleep, ha ha!’

  ‘You funny boy.’ Mum smiled. ‘Whichever bikkies you want, okay? Come here and give me a kiss and hurry back, my funny boy.’ She leaned close and rubbed her hand over my head – I heard the rustle of wings. The moths that used to fly around the globe above Dad’s shed door had found a new place to cluster since he’d left. I could hear their wings brushing the sides of Mum’s tunnels, leaving dust around her valves.

  ‘Pass me my purse, will you, Jimmy?’ she said. She moved slowly, as if her own body was too big for her and the blood had too far to travel, the journey was too long and where would it find the strength?

  I passed Mum her purse so she could stay sitting and she pulled out a fiver. ‘Thanks, Jimmy.’

  The telephone rang. ‘Can I get that, Mum? Can I get that?’ I raced for the telephone.

  ‘Leave it, Jimmy, please. Just leave it.’

  ‘But what if it’s Dad? What if it’s Robby? Robby or Dad? Robby or Dad, Mum!’

  ‘Jimmy, it’s the middle of the working day – it won’t be Robby. And it isn’t your father. It won’t be anyone. Just a wrong number. You pop to the shops and pick up the goodies for your old mum, there’s a good boy. Forget about the telephone.’

  ‘Yes, Mum, alright, Mum,’ I said. ‘Goodies for my old mum. Forget about the telephone. Forget about Dad.’

  ‘Off you go.’ Mum nodded towards the door. ‘The sooner you go the sooner you’re back.’

  I opened the front door and stepped onto Emu Street. I’d done the walk to the shops with Mum a million times but this was my first solo journey.

  I kept my nose down and my eye on the line that joined cracks and bricks and fence posts. I followed it along the road as it wrapped its way around every stone and piece of gravel. If you followed that line you would get to the Indian where Robby was and if you kept following it further you could cross the sea and arrive on the edge of Broken Island where the waves carried the memory.

  The street was very quiet. I didn’t see anyone – nobody driving cars or running with dogs, no postmen or seniors pushing trolleys or mothers pushing prams or boys on bikes. I looked up into the sky and squinted. I saw a spaceship disguised as a cloud. There had been an explosion. The spaceship had dropped a toxic bomb. It fell slowly to its target, the earth, and when it hit it destroyed every living thing, including Mrs Stratham. Only Mum and me survived. There was no school anymore, no Dr Eric, no refinery, no Dad, no Broken Island. All gone. Just Mum and me and the corner shop.

  I followed the line, chanting, ‘Bikkies and milk, bikkies and milk, bikkies and milk!’ in time to my walking feet.

  ‘Anything else?’ Mr Lee Sam asked as I put the milk on the counter. Samantha Billmore’s face smiled from the carton, the wire across her teeth like a fence in miniature. Mr Lee Sam narrowed his eyes. ‘Well?’

  ‘Biscuits,’ I said.

  Mr Lee Sam turned around to the shelf behind him. ‘Which ones?’ he asked me over his shoulder.

  I looked up and down the shelf at Mum’s favourites: angels, easy teas and cow chips. I stopped when I got to jam supremes. Mum never chose jam supremes. ‘Supremes!’ I said to Mr Lee Sam. ‘Supreme surprise for my mum!’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, reaching for the packet. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it!’ I copied. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Four dollars twenty, kid.’

  ‘Four dollars
twenty, kid,’ I repeated, passing him the fiver.

  He put the biscuits and the milk in a plastic bag and handed them over to me.

  I walked out, the bag knocking against my legs. Back out on the street there still wasn’t anyone around. My heart, the most vital of organs, pumped harder as I began to walk faster. The bomb that the spaceship had dropped leaked a poison into the atmosphere so I had to hold my breath. I couldn’t follow the line to see if it joined on the way home as well as the way here. Everything was still except me; I was the only fast and living thing. Everything else was the dead enemy – I had to make it home to my mother the mountain.

  I don’t know how but I took a wrong street, an alien street I had never seen before. Where had the street come from? Who put it there? I stopped still in the middle of it. I thought it was going to be Emu, I thought it was going to be our house at one end but it wasn’t. I didn’t recognise any of the houses or cars or plants or light posts. I was lost. I saw a curtain move behind a window; I was being watched. People with binoculars peered out at me, examining my moves. I spun in a circle, looking down both ends. My vision was shaky. I was going too fast. My hands bounced before me, I couldn’t slow down. The air was all in my top half and filling up higher. The bottom half was vacated.

  A boy rode past on a bicycle. ‘Watch out, idiot! Get off the road!’ he shouted.

  Road? Was I on the road? When had I gone on the road?

  I began to run, there was no time now for counting cracks or bricks or lines. I heard something drop. I turned and saw milk spilling across the road from Samantha Billmore’s head. I ran faster. I couldn’t see one thing that I had ever seen before. The bomb kept ticking. I turned and ran back. If I found the shop Mr Lee Sam would be there – he would know the way home.