The Eye of the Sheep Read online

  ‘We’ve just got to keep him inside when you get that thing started.’

  ‘It’s not bloody normal, Paula. Who has to keep their kid inside when the lawnmower starts?’

  ‘We don’t know what goes on behind closed doors, Gav. Could be anything. Could be things that make our Jimmy look like a saint.’

  ‘Bloody idiot kid. You keep him like that. It’s the bloody Paula and Jimmy show.’

  There was a gap then, without words or moves. The bloody Paula and Jimmy show was a show without a part for my dad. He was in the audience, watching.

  ‘Can I get you anything else, love?’ said Mum, finally closing the gap. In her question I heard the top world and the invisible world simultaneously. There was more in the invisible world. When Merle finished his song I heard the ices trembling in Dad’s glass. I wondered if Dad had drunk enough Cutty Sark to lower the level and save their lives.

  ‘Some bloody peace,’ he answered.

  Dad thought I’d taken over the part of Paula’s other half in the show. But he was wrong. Why couldn’t Paula tell him? Without each other’s halves their vitals fell out. Didn’t she know?

  Dad stayed in the sitting room all day. He only came out to get the Cutty Sark, which he took back with him. I sat outside his door and listened to him sing along with Merle to ‘I Had a Beautiful Time’. I closed my eyes to see him dance as he sang, swinging in circles, his quick feet stepping, his thin tight legs moving with the music. He wore a black suit with a white tie in a bow, and he held a microphone, and when my mum stepped onto the stage wearing a long red dress that kicked out, he looked across at her as if he had never seen a woman so lovely, so big, so much all at once. He went to her, circling her, then he swung her and sang and danced and Mum threw back her head and laughed and it was a beautiful time.

  ‘What are you doing out here, Jimmy?’ Mum frowned, looking down at me. ‘Please leave your father alone. Come and help me outside.’ Mum pulled at my arm and we went out into the garden together.

  ‘Come and dig with me,’ Mum said, giving me the spade. She set down her kneeling pad and pulled at grasses that grew beside the trees and in between the flat purple flowers. I dug beside her. Crunch, crunch, crunch, the dirt tipped into my spade. I tipped it out again, digging deep holes, seeing worms and tiny flies and rocks. ‘Won’t you tell me that you love me?’ sang Mum. ‘Won’t you tell me that you do?’

  ‘If I could ever come back again it would be as Doris Day,’ she said. ‘Doris is perfection.’

  Birds in the trees swooped down low and lined the branches to listen to Mum. ‘So won’t you tell me that you love me? Won’t you tell me that you do?’ they sang together.

  Digging slowed me down, my cells like bicycle wheels coming to a stop. I could hear the movement of my own air, each in an equal to each out. The same sun that shone behind Dad’s arm when he pulled the cord now shone over us. The dirt we were digging used to be big things like rocks and cliffs and cars, but the worms sucked it with their lips through the tube of their bodies until it was in smaller and smaller pieces and then it was dirt. It packed the space behind my fingernails tight.

  ‘What about Dad, Mum?’ I asked.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Will his arm fall off?’

  ‘No, love, it won’t fall off,’ she said, stopping her work and turning to me. ‘It will be alright. You just do your gardening and don’t worry about it.’

  I saw a red smear underneath her eye, like a finger pointing.

  After a while she went in for snacks. Soon she came back out with lamingtons and chocolate fingers and glasses of Passiona. She was chewing on her lip, trying to hold back messages she’d received on her trip to the kitchen: Dad is drinking Scotch, Dad is in the sitting room, Dad has a bad cut.

  Robby came through the back door, his football socks loose around his ankles, mud on his knees. He looked around and saw the lawn not mowed and he heard Merle singing ‘I’m a Lonesome Fugitive’. ‘Where’s Dad?’ he asked.

  ‘Your father had an accident,’ Mum answered, passing him a glass of Passiona. ‘Best just to leave him alone for a while.’

  Robby frowned. ‘What happened?’ He looked at me.

  ‘I did it,’ I said.

  ‘No you didn’t, Jimmy. Your dad’ll be okay. Have your drink,’ said Mum.

  Robby looked up at the sky and then he walked to the fence, stood on his tiptoes and tried to see over it, as though he was searching for something in the distance beyond the houses and the streets, something far away like a speck of light.

  ‘Are you seeing Justin this afternoon?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ Robby drank his drink and looked up to the house then back at me. All his thoughts and words and wishes were growing thick inside him. There was a world beyond the fence. There was the sea. When Robby won the Best Player trophy for 1984 two years ago he forgot to bring it home from the awards night in the school hall. He didn’t care if it was on the mantelpiece or if I dug a hole for it in the sandpit. A part of him had left already. I tried to get it back sometimes but it was no use. It was out there in front of him, waiting.

  It was almost the end of the day and Mum stood at the fryer. I sat at the kitchen table with my manuals opened around me like a fort – heater, stovetop, hairdryer, toaster, clock radio. When I looked over the fort wall I saw Mum, her apron strings, her legs, her bottom moving as she turned the sausages. I read about how to connect the hairdryer nose to the body, and then I checked that she was still there, still frying. I kept looking up and checking, then reading, then checking. Was she there, was she staying? What came after? What was next? What would it be? What would it feel like? When would it happen? When? When? Now? Now? Next? Next? What next? After the frying, then what?

  Dad never left the sitting room; he didn’t even go to the TAB or the newsagency to pick up the paper. I knew because when Mum couldn’t see I went and checked. I saw the back of his head over the top of his recliner that was tipped back and rocking to Merle singing ‘Someday When Things Are Good’. Dad was smoking a cigarette and the hand with the glass was making small dance moves to Merle, the cigarette a conductor’s stick telling the music which way to go. All the ice was gone from his glass. I looked at the Cutty Sark bottle and the level was past the sails, almost touching the sea. Dad said some things I didn’t understand, noises but no language.

  Robby came home from Justin’s and I followed him to our room. ‘What makes the aeroplane stay in the air, Robby?’ I asked him.

  He lay on his bed and picked up a comic. There was hardly any light. I looked over the top of his comic; all the superheroes were in shadow. He pulled it back.

  ‘What, Robby? What makes it?’ I asked him again. He rolled away from me. I pushed his shoulder. ‘Is it the fuel? Is it the propellers? Is it the wings?’ He didn’t answer. He was inside the square frames with the superheroes, scaling buildings and putting out fires. ‘Is it the engine, Robby?’

  He rolled onto his back. ‘Mum!’ he called out. ‘Can you get Jimmy?’

  I gave the back of his comic a flick and left the room. I went back down the hall. I saw the sitting room door open and heard Merle sing ‘If Anyone Ought to Know’. I walked up the hall. One of my hands was on the wall and I drew wings and a propeller and I hummed to the music coming from the sitting room. But I did it with an aeroplane engine. Anyone anyone anyone anyone Rrrrrmmmmmmmrrrrrmmmmmm, louder and louder.

  Suddenly the chair swung round and Dad shouted, ‘Get out of here, you little shit!’ His words ran into each other like liquid.

  Robby ran into the hall. ‘Jimmy!’ he hissed.

  ‘Get out of here, you little shit!’ I hissed back. Robby tried to pull me away from the doorway. ‘No!’ I shouted.

  ‘Leave Dad alone,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s drunk.’

  ‘Let go of my arm. Let go.’

  ‘No,’ he said, still trying to drag me.

  ‘Mum!’ I called.
‘Mum!’

  Mum came out with a cleaning cloth over her shoulder. There was sweat on her face and the hotplates under her cheeks were up so high I could see the coils. ‘Come away, Jimmy!’ she said in a whisper.

  ‘Why are you whispering?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘Come away.’

  ‘You are!’ I shouted. ‘You are!You are!You are!You are!’ Sing that, Merle Haggard! Sing that!

  Robby and Mum were both trying to drag me away when out came Dad, swaying as if there was a small breeze in the room. His face was flushed and he held his arm in a tea towel, patches of blood over the roosters, his conductor stick burning close to his fingers. ‘Can’t you bloody kids give me some fucken peace?’ He spat little white balls with the words. The blood on his shirt had spread to his eyes; there was no white left.

  ‘Sorry, love, I’ll take them out the back,’ Mum said, her voice smooth as milk.

  ‘I can still bloody hear them from out there!’ He spat more.

  I saw a ball land on the carpet. It balanced on a carpet fur, like the ball on a seal’s nose at the zoo. I pulled away from Robby and lay down beside it. ‘Spit!’ I shouted. ‘Spit! Spit! Spit! Spit!’

  ‘Don’t, Jimmy,’ Robby warned.

  ‘Bloody little idiot!’ Dad pushed Mum.

  ‘Robby, take him out the back,’ she said quickly, shoving me into Robby’s arms.

  ‘Spit! Spit! Spit! Spit!’ I shouted, all of me fast, my cylinders and cells revolving, my tubes turning, molecules colliding. ‘Spit! Spit! Spit!’ Robby tried as hard as he could to pull me away – my brother Robby who’d just turned twelve, his shoes leaving dots of mud from the field when he had run for the ball, the best on the team, the best and the fastest and the fairest, my brother! I couldn’t feel myself. I was as fast as the helicopter when you pull the string and off it flies, rotors spinning fast enough to cut off a head. I was too fast for my skin to hold. If something spins that fast, speed turns it invisible and all the invisible silent languages come at you in a rush and blow you apart, like a bomb.

  Dad pushed Mum into the wall. ‘Hah!’ Her breath bounced from her as she fell back.

  ‘Not in front of the kids, Gavin!’ she said, fast and low. He couldn’t hear the things she wanted. He was going on, forward.

  ‘Look at what he did, Paula! See this?’ He pulled back the tea towel from his arm and showed her the long split with the blood turning darker, cutting the ladies in half, blood crusting around their bosoms and thighs. ‘How am I going to go back to work on Monday with this? Bloody little retard!’

  I fought in Robby’s arms. ‘Bloody little retard! Bloody little retard!’ I shouted, each word heading for my dad like a rocket.

  ‘Gav, don’t . . . please don’t . . .’ Mum begged him.

  A fire engine raced along my pathways, its siren screaming Emergency! Emergency!, its lights f lashing on off on off. ‘Eeeeeooooooooeeeeeooooooooooo, bloody little retard, Paula! See what he did, Paula, bloody little retard!’

  Dad looked at me with a backwards light in his eyes.

  ‘Shush, Jimmy, shush. Robby, can’t you get him out of here?’ Mum was trying to hold my arms still, but they swung out like blades.

  ‘I’m trying,’ said Robby.

  Mum turned to help him but I mowed her down with my arms of metal.

  ‘Can’t I even cut the bloody grass? Can’t I even do that?’

  ‘Stop it, Gav. Please . . .’ Mum’s words were broken and breathy as she tried to contain me.

  ‘It’s always you and the bloody kid.’

  ‘Let’s just leave the kids out of it. Let’s just keep it between us.’

  ‘Between us? Ha! That’s a bloody joke, that is.’

  ‘Eeeeeeeeeeeeoooooooooeeeeeeeooooooooo!’ My siren rang out, its light beaming from my holes, lighting up the room in red. ‘Keep it between us, keep it between us! What a bloody joke!’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, shut up! Shut up!’ Dad stepped towards Mum and slapped her on the side of her head as if it was her who’d been shouting, her who was the retard, her with blades of steel.

  ‘Get him out of here, Robby!’ she shouted. ‘Go!’ Then she was quiet. No more begging or pleading, as if she knew what happened next and it was too late to stop it. There was only the sounds of our bodies – skin rubbing skin, our breaths – trying to get away as if the centre was our dad and we were spinning around him but the gravity was him and it dragged us towards him. Another slap, the same place, the same ear, and down Mum went. She never tried to stop him, she didn’t shield herself. She just let him – there was so much of her for him to choose from. Mum got up slowly, having to balance her weight.

  Dad was shaking, as if the pressure was too much and he might explode. That’s why Mum offered herself. She didn’t want him in pieces all over the walls – there’d be too much to clean.

  ‘Fuck this.’ Dad growled. He smacked her again and then Robby got me out of the room and through the back door. He dragged me down the concrete path between the two squares of grass, under the washing line hung with sheets, past Dad’s shed. One of the boards of the back fence leaned to the side and one next to it was loose. He pushed me down and through the gap and he followed on his hands and knees.

  The wetlands were made of mud and water and stiff silver grass, floating plastic and seaweed. Robby pulled me to the edge of the stream and then we sat and he put his arm around my shoulder. I breathed in one out one, and looked at the grass and the clouds and the sun half hidden and the birds on the water and I felt myself joining with the swamp. On the other side of the grass and the stream, way in the distance, the flame leapt from the refinery pipe – like the light in the sheep’s eye, it never died.

  We sat there for a long time, Robby’s arm around me drawing speed and fear from my cells. The arm wasn’t too tight or too loose. Its temperature set mine to itself, cooling me from hot to warm.

  The stream that ran through the middle of the swamp rose when it rained, and fell in the summer. Spoonbills and black swans, sandpipers and pelicans nested on the banks and on the tiny islands away from the snakes. Ducks had their babies on the sides, leading them into the deep when foxes came.

  ‘Okay, Jimmy?’ Robby said.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay, Robby.’

  Robby moved his arm, and stood. ‘Come on,’ he said.

  I followed him to the trench – half there already and half made by us. We dug it deeper to catch the water. I breathed in then out, keeping both breaths the same length. The wetlands air had a potion that came from the refinery flame and slowed me down. That’s why Mum let me go; when I got home I was quieter.

  We cleaned out the dirt from the fridge that lay upside down at the end of the trench, and wiped the sides. We dug and scraped and across the fields the flame blasted from the pipe without ceasing. Smoke rose and turned to cloud until there was no difference.

  We built up walls to support the fridge, smoothing them so the enemy couldn’t get a foot-hold. The grass prickled our knees. The end of the sun was warm in my nostrils.

  ‘What are we making?’ I asked Robby.

  ‘A boat,’ he answered.

  ‘Like the Lady Free?’

  ‘Yes.’ When Robby was younger Dad took him on the Lady Free and they stayed away for two nights and caught fish as long as Robby. I counted the hours; I got as high as I could then began at one again. In the sitting room, beside Dad’s recliner, there was a photo of him and Robby on the deck of the Lady Free. They stood together and the smiles on their faces were matching. I smoothed the mud up the fridge in a boat shape, sharp at the ends and round in the middle. I stuck a shell in the side for a cyst.

  Robby fished off the fridge, dangling an invisible line into the mud. I looked up into the sky and counted twenty-six pelicans, their wings outstretched as they rode the currents, their beaks telling them which way to go, storing messages from the sun and the tides. On the other side of the swamp, I saw the tank farm and the tyre factory and the
LKA chemical plant where they boiled vitamin pills, and the Quality Endorsed Industrial Park Established 1979 where the steel sheds stood as big as ovals. Trains ran back and forth along the tracks between the swamp and the factories, like moving guards.

  I lay on my stomach and put my ear to the ground beside the Lady Free so I could listen to the core of planet Earth. The core held planet Earth’s network and made the sound of shush-ing.

  ‘Shhhhhhhh . . .’ I whispered back, the core’s echo.

  ‘Boys! Dinner!’ Mum called from over the fence.

  Robby stood and wiped his muddy hands down the front of his trousers. ‘Come on, Jimmy,’ he said.

  The loose board knocked against our shoes on the way through the fence. As soon as we walked into the house through the back door I felt my cells speed up. The potion from the flame couldn’t pass through the plaster.

  Later that night, when Robby and me were in bed and the lights were off, Mum came into our room.

  I rolled over, eyes open. ‘Mum?’ The light shone in from the hallway. In her long white nightdress she looked like a candle.

  She sighed. ‘What are you doing still awake?’ She got in beside me. I had to move over to the far edge, so that I was pressed against the wall, to make room for her. The wall was cool against my cheek and knees. Mum was as wide as my bed. She was so big there were parts of her I’d never seen. She held on to me and counted sheep. ‘One sheep . . . two sheep . . . three sheep . . . four . . . You count too, Jimmy,’ she said. Her arm was hooked over my body. I could feel her breathing, her warmth. She held me tightly to her as if I was a sponge that could absorb the extra.

  ‘Five sheep . . . six sheep . . . seven . . .’ we counted together. If you look deep into the eye of a sheep you can see a light. It burns right at the back of the head and it never goes out, no matter what happens to the sheep.

  ‘Does anything happen to the sheep?’ I asked her.