The Eye of the Sheep Read online

  I kept my eyes glued. I was the night guard of the photograph. My fingers throbbed a forward pulse beneath the stiff bandage.

  In the morning Liam stood beside the bed looking down at me. He was wearing his pyjamas; row after row of brown anchors leading down to his ankles and a sea of carpet. ‘You look small in that bed, Flick,’ he said. ‘But in the suitcase you look big.’ He picked up the top of my blankets, and waved them up and down. ‘I’m emptying your fart bag,’ he grinned. ‘Did you like having the room to yourself?’

  I shivered, my eyes on the photograph behind him.

  He turned around. ‘Who’s that?’ He leaned in close to the picture. ‘The man looks like you.’ He picked up the photograph. ‘Is that your dad?’ He swung around to me. ‘Is it?’

  I got out of the bed and held out my hand.

  Liam looked back at the photograph. ‘Is that your mother? Come on, Flick. Talk, will you? Is that your mother?’ Liam sat down on the chair still holding the picture. ‘If it’s not your mum, your old man’s a root rat. My old man’s a root rat even though he’s in the chair. The ladies still like it. They climb up on the bars and hang off them with a drink and a smoke and they lift up their skirts so my dad can see the edge of their underpants. The skirts get stuck on the hooks he nails into the armrests before the ladies get there. They come around from the hospital. The hooks are to protect him from his enemies but they’re good for hooking the ladies’ skirts too. Ha ha!’ he laughed. ‘Is your old man a root rat?’

  My arm ached from holding it out as I waited for Liam to give my photograph back. I tried to grab it but Liam held it high.

  ‘She’s nice, your mum. Lucky my dad never met her, or he would have rooted her. Then we’d be brothers. Liam and Jimmy, partners in crime.’ He turned the photograph over and looked at the words. ‘We’d be in the headlines. Gun Crimes Across the Nation. We’d be famous.’ He touched my mum’s writing. ‘What does it say?’ he asked me. ‘Do you know?’

  I stepped towards him.

  ‘Is he still alive, your dad? I know your mum’s dead – Anne told us. But what about him?’ He smoothed his fingers over my dad then at last he gave me back the photograph.

  I looked at it again and the picture led me straight to the cliff where I could watch them together, Mum and Dad.

  ‘Let’s see if Fanny Bite will give you chips for breakfast, Flick,’ he said to me, leaving the room.

  I put the photograph back against the wall under Liam’s dad and followed him out the door.

  As I walked downstairs I could feel the floor beneath my feet and the railing in my hand and the air entering my tubes, as if I had never felt them before. I breathed in deep and the oxygen charged my engine, turning the lights green for go.

  Jake, Liam, Deirdre and Anne White were already sitting at the table. I went to my chair and joined them. I ate toast. It was dry at first but I added more butter, then I took a sip of milk to wash it down.

  Anne White nudged Jake. He smiled at Anne White. ‘You’re a miracle worker, Anne.’

  ‘Can I write on your bandage?’ Deirdre asked. She picked up my arm and lay it on the table, then she got a texta from her pocket and wrote, Deirdre your sister was here.

  ‘Do you think you’re his sister, Deirdre?’ said Liam.

  Jake looked up from his bacon.

  ‘Of course I’m his sister,’ said Deirdre. ‘And you’re his brother, Liam. Didn’t you know that?’

  ‘Okay, Deirdre, just leave it there,’ said Jake.

  ‘Okay, Dad,’ Liam said, putting egg onto his fork. Jake frowned.

  After breakfast Liam said, ‘Deirdre, come up to our room.’

  ‘What for?’ she asked.

  ‘Because I said so.’

  ‘That’s not a reason.’

  Liam looked at me. ‘Because Flick wants you to.’

  ‘Do you, Jimmy?’ Deirdre asked me.

  Something was forming in the core. My sensors were awakening; the wind in the photograph had set my cells in motion. I nodded my head.

  ‘You do!’ she said. She put her small arms around my neck and held tight. She smelled of sugar. When she let go she took my hand and pulled me along the row of bedrooms until we came to mine and Liam’s. She led us in and she looked at Liam and said, ‘Well, what?’

  Liam took the photograph from the desk and showed Deirdre. ‘They’re his mum and dad. His mum’s dead . . .’

  ‘Liam.’ She shook her head and frowned at him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You shouldn’t say that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’ll make Jimmy sad.’

  ‘But his dad’s not dead. Just his mum.’

  ‘Dads don’t count.’

  ‘Yes they do. They count more. Just because you don’t have one.’

  ‘I do have one and he’s not in a wheelchair.’

  ‘Bullshit, Deirdre. You don’t have a dad.’

  She snorted air out of her nostrils, then turned to me. ‘What did you want me to come up here for, Jimmy?’

  ‘Have a look at this.’ Liam turned the picture around and gave it to Deirdre. ‘Read what it says.’

  ‘Point Paradise Caravan Park, Point Paradise,’ Deirdre read out. ‘Gavin and Paula.’ She turned the photograph back around. ‘Is that your mum?’ she asked me.

  ‘Yep,’ said Liam. ‘And the man is his dad. You can tell. Flick looks almost exactly the same as him.’

  ‘Your mum was pretty, Jimmy.’

  ‘Yeah, but she’s dead,’ said Liam. ‘It’s his dad that’s alive.’

  ‘But his dad doesn’t want him or he wouldn’t be here. So his dad may as well be dead,’ said Deirdre.

  ‘But it’s his dad.’ Liam turned to me. ‘I’ve left every foster home to get back to my dad. I hitch or catch a train or a bus. But I don’t get my hopes up. Jan Watts says not to. You’re old enough now to lower your expectations, Liam. I lower them lower and lower but I never lower my expectations enough because when I get there Dad says, Bugger off, you little bastard. When I’m eighteen I’ll go and live with him. I can cook for both of us. I’ll keep his fridge full of tinnies and we’ll get a dog and I’ll train it to pull Dad’s chair round the house so Dad can use his hands for smoking and changing the channel.’

  ‘I like dogs,’ said Deirdre. ‘Maybe I’ll come and visit.’

  ‘Maybe I won’t invite you.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll still be in jail.’ Deirdre stuck her tongue out at Liam and gave the photograph back to me.

  ‘Do you want to find your dad?’ Liam asked me.

  ‘Do you, Jimmy?’ said Deirdre.

  My dad was missing. It was one thing I knew. I didn’t know the other things I should have known; I never did know them. But I knew my dad was missing.

  ‘Do you, Flick? Just nod, that’s all you have to do.’ Liam came close to my face and spoke very slowly. ‘Juuusssstttt noood, thaaatttt’s all youuu haaaavveee tooo do. Do you want to find your dad?’

  ‘He can understand you, Liam. He just doesn’t want to talk.’

  ‘Flick,’ said Liam suddenly, ‘if you can understand me, then answer me. It’s not a hard question. You have a dad. Here he is in the photo. If you want to see him, then nod for a yes.’

  ‘Liam, don’t pressure him.’

  ‘Deirdre, he’s got a dad.’

  ‘But even if he has a dad, so what? You got a dad and you’re still here.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  Liam grabbed Deirdre’s arm near the elbow and squeezed. Deirdre squealed.

  I looked at the woman who was my mum. I saw the way the line wrapped around all of her fingers and travelled up along her arms and curled itself around her ears and then ran across to her dress and then spread out from her to the trees and then kept on going out of the frame of the picture. Then I saw that the line entered the picture again and ran back to my dad. The line began with him; he was the starting point. It came out of his hand, the hand close
st to the frame, and then it crossed to my mother, and back to him. It went full circle. My dad was at the beginning and the end.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

  They both turned to me.

  ‘He can talk!’ said Liam.

  ‘Jimmy! You talked!’ Deirdre grabbed my hand.

  ‘He can bloody talk.’

  ‘I always knew he could talk,’ said Deirdre.

  ‘No you didn’t. You’re just saying that now, Deirdre.’

  ‘I did know.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ Liam turned to me. ‘Say something else, Flick.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to talk just because you say so.’ Deirdre put her hands on her hips. ‘Just talk when you want to, Jimmy, not because Liam tells you to. He’s not the boss.’

  ‘I am the boss. I’m fourteen at my next birthday.’

  ‘Yeah, but nobody knows when that is, so you’ll always be thirteen.’

  ‘Fuck off, Deirdre.’ Liam pushed her in the chest.

  I held the photograph up to Liam and Deirdre. ‘Mum and Dad,’ I said.

  Liam looked at me in surprise. ‘You really can talk.’

  ‘Yes, he really can,’ said Deirdre.

  ‘Why didn’t he before?’

  ‘He didn’t have a reason before.’

  ‘He does now, don’t you, Flick? You got to go find your old man.’

  ‘Don’t pressure him, Liam.’

  ‘He’s got an old man. He has to go and find him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s his dad. Jake’s not his dad. The man in the picture is, Dee Dee. He’s got one.’

  ‘But you’ve got one . . .’

  ‘Shut up about that, Deirdre. I’m warning you. Shut up.’

  ‘Okay. But I’m just saying . . .’

  ‘Jimmy has to go and see his dad. You know he does.’

  Deirdre pulled at Liam’s sleeve. ‘What if he can’t find him? What if he can’t find him and he hasn’t lowered his expectations?’

  ‘Of course he’ll find him. We’ll help him.’

  ‘How can we help him?’

  ‘We’ll organise it. We’ll make a plan for him. Now that he can talk.’

  ‘Jimmy –’ Deirdre took my hand – ‘do you want us to make a plan?’

  It was happening so fast. Like the hand beneath the sea that made the waves, something was pushing us.

  I nodded.

  ‘And we won’t tell Anne. We won’t tell anyone, will we, Deirdre?’

  ‘Not if you don’t want us to, Jimmy, we won’t.’

  Liam put his hand on my shoulder. ‘No way will we tell, Flick.’

  ‘Even if they torture us,’ said Deirdre, her face serious.

  ‘Even if we were going to die.’

  Deirdre looked at Liam as if she didn’t understand his mechanics. ‘You never did anything nice before, Liam. How come you are now?’

  ‘If his dad’s not dead he needs to see him.’

  ‘Nothing was different after you saw your old man.’

  ‘At least I got an old man.’ Liam grabbed Deirdre by the end of the nose and twisted. ‘Yours fucked your mum and ran, she was so ugly.’ He twisted harder.

  Deirdre screamed and Anne White came in. Deirdre pressed against her, crying.

  ‘This is the last time I’m doing this! You kids have worn me out!’ Anne White said.

  Anne White and Jake took us on a picnic with other fosters beside a brown river. When we got out of the car I walked across the grass to the edge. Life drifted across the top of the water; birds, boats, plastic, feathers that had fallen from the wing, but under the surface nothing lived. The river was a moat to the floating world. You just had to cross it. I waded in to my ankles and watched as water rose up against the sides of my shoes.

  ‘Come back from there, Jim!’ Anne White called to me.

  I stepped back and squatted on the muddy bank to examine the wet lines left across my sneakers. I put my hand to my chest. My organs pumped against my palm.

  There were rugs spread across the grass and there was a picnic table and it was covered in containers of food and some was on plates – lamingtons and oranges, cut up, sandwiches with Vegemite and biscuits and cakes and frankfurts with sauce. The fosters ran across the grass chasing the ball. Jake was the coach. He kept running and blowing his whistle and shouting, ‘That’s it, Liam, faster, stay down the sides, boy, that’s it, don’t let them get ahead!’

  I sat beside Deirdre on the grass not far from the river. She was combing Melanie’s hair. ‘Dress me up and play with me, touch me softly, be my love, all I want is you, don’t go, don’t go, don’t go,’ she sang. Her words were like water over pebbles. ‘Oh how I love you, touch me, touch me, don’t leave don’t leave me, don’t leave me.’ She put her doll in my lap. ‘Touch me softly, touch me . . .’

  Adults fed the fosters, passing plates of donuts and sausages and cakes. A foster mother brought a plate of sausages and chips to Deirdre and me. The fosters were all different sizes; there were other big ones, like Liam, and other smaller ones, like Deirdre. We were loose from each other and from the adults. We had come from somewhere but that place was gone – our lines had no ending.

  I was going to look for my dad. The line began inside him, put there by the refinery, then it moved out from him into my mother, entering her stream and setting her to life. Was I joined by the same line?

  I watched the river, my eyes resting on its surface. At first I thought the water was static but as I watched I saw that it was moving. The surprise movement was slow but it was there, forward.

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Deirdre asked.

  I shook my head, keeping my eyes on the momentum of brown water.

  ‘Do you know how far it is from here?’

  I shook my head again.

  ‘Anne has a map book. That’s how she knows where to find her fosters.’ Deirdre stuck a sausage into sauce and took a bite. She picked up her doll, leaving a smear of red across its cheek. She lifted the doll to my ear. Her fingers smelled of sausage. ‘I will wait for you,’ she sang. ‘Kiss kiss. I love you, Jimmy, kiss kiss. Touch me, touch me softly . . .’ She passed me the sausage and I ate it.

  That night Liam and me and Deirdre sat on Deirdre’s bed with the lights off. We were looking at a book of maps with a torch Liam took from Jake’s storage shelf.

  ‘Don’t ask Liam anything because he can’t read,’ said Deirdre, flicking through the pages. The torch lit the bottom half of Liam’s and Deirdre’s faces.

  ‘I can’t read but I can smoke,’ said Liam, sticking the torch in his mouth and shining it on the ceiling. ‘What’s more fun?’

  ‘Don’t do that, Liam,’ whispered Deirdre. ‘We can’t see.’

  Liam aimed the torch onto the maps, lighting up the black crisscrossing lines over the page. ‘Point Cale, Point Eddington, Point Elsworth, Point Dixon . . .’ Deirdre read out.

  ‘Point Dick,’ Liam interrupted.

  ‘Point Crap,’ Deirdre giggled.

  ‘Point Crack.’

  ‘Point Arse.’

  ‘Point Paradise,’ I said.

  They both looked at me, their faces shadowy, smiles gone. ‘Point Paradise,’ they said, as if they’d just remembered.

  Downstairs Jake and Anne White cleared the table and picked up the toys. They better be asleep, Jake, I can’t do this again – what were we thinking, taking on Jim? I don’t know how much hope there is for him. . . I always said the day I started thinking like that about any of them would be the day I needed to stop. I don’t know if there’s anyone inside there at all, Jake. How can I think that about a child? It’s not right.

  Deirdre ran her finger down a long line of names, her lips moving as she read them out under her breath. She turned page after page. I heard the flutter of paper and Liam’s breath as we waited.

  ‘When you find him,’ Liam whispered, ‘tell him you can’t come back here or I’ll drown you. Show him your broken finger and tell him I did it
. Tell him I’d never give you mouth-to-mouth like Mrs Connelly’s son. I could if I wanted – I know how – but I wouldn’t. I’d let you drown before I did that.’

  ‘Found it.’ said Deirdre.

  Liquid rushed through my tributaries, like the fluid used to make the flames jump high.

  ‘Bingo,’ said Liam.

  ‘What’s bingo?’ asked Deirdre.

  ‘You’re dumb,’ said Liam.

  ‘You’re dumb. No wonder your dad said fuck off.’

  ‘No wonder yours topped himself.’

  ‘He did not.’

  ‘He did so. Anne told Jake. That’s why you’re here. He overdosed because he couldn’t get a job.’

  ‘He did not.’

  ‘Did so.’

  ‘He topped himself but it wasn’t because he couldn’t get a job.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘Because if he didn’t top himself the dog men would get him – he owed them money. They’d take the silver cages off the dogs’ mouths and let them at him. That’s why I’m here; the dogs would’ve hurt too much. You’re here because you aren’t old enough for jail.’

  ‘Point Paradise,’ I reminded them.

  ‘Yes,’ said Deirdre. ‘Map two hundred and one.’ She flicked through the pages. Point Paradise was on a map. There was a number. I was coming tightly together, beginning to spin, pain behind every rotation. Point Paradise! The wind and the cliffs and the waves coming in one after another behind my mum and dad where they stood, the camera resting on the branch of a tree, set to automatic, my dad running back to her, not wanting to be away for longer than a second, rushing back so he could put his arm around her and feel the warmth of what they would become if they stayed together. He had to be quick before the light and the flash saying it was too late too late the picture is already taken.

  ‘Map two hundred and one. Found it.’ Deirdre held up the book.

  Suddenly the door swung open and Jake switched on the light.