The Eye of the Sheep Page 5
‘Hello, little Jimmy,’ she said. I breathed warm mint and vanilla and Impulse; she was still the same ingredients.
Dad stood at the bottom of her bed, tears gathering at the ends of his eye pipes. He wiped them and touched her feet where they were under the sheet. He said, ‘Paula,’ but only his lips made the shape of Paula; the sound was trapped by shame in his workings. Tears came to Mum’s eyes, as if Dad’s were contagious.
Robby stood quietly at her side and Mum took his hand and she said, ‘Robby, I really am alright.’ She squeezed his hand and he started to cry. She said, ‘Really, what’s all this?’ and I held her tighter. ‘Robby, my love, I’m alright, I promise,’ she said, not letting go of his hand. If you linked up the lines between Mum, Dad, Robby and me we’d make a square that nothing could penetrate, like the backyard of Nineteen Emu.
‘Are they looking after you alright, love?’ Dad asked.
‘They’re looking after me fine.’
‘Do you need me to bring you anything?’
‘The food isn’t five star, but I’ll live.’
‘Five star is what you deserve.’
‘I don’t need five star, love. Just you. You and the boys.’
‘You’ve always got us.’
I didn’t want to leave. Mum and Dad’s talk to each other was a lullaby that could have rocked me to sleep.
The nurse came and read a chart in a blue folder on the end of Mum’s bed. She said, One more night I’m afraid and Mum smiled weakly. ‘Sorry, kids,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried to tell them I am fine.’
If we could, Robby and me and Dad would have taken a corner of the bed each and wheeled it out of Sunshine Hospital, down Furlong Road all the way to the Holden. We would have tied the bed to the roof with Mum on it and driven her home and she would have had all the air she needed, plus sunshine. I wanted to. Dad had the strength. But Mum needed the Ventolin. The hospital stored it in giant tanks under the highway outside. She had to be hooked up to the tanks to get her through the night.
I hid my face against her side.
‘Come on, Jimmy. You can do it,’ she said. ‘I want you to be a good boy for your dad and do what he says and do what Robby says too, okay? Jimmy?’ She put her nose against my hair. ‘And make sure you have a bath. Robby, can you give him a bath?’ she asked him.
The nurse asked if there was anyone Mum would like her to call to help with the kids.
‘I can get another day off, love,’ Dad said. ‘Don’t worry about that.’
Mum’s face reached out to him – the mouth, the nose, the eyes, the forehead, the hair, the cheeks, all of it open and soft and reaching for him. She was as white as the sheet over her body. All her colour had been sucked out into the same hospital pipes that connected to the drips. She couldn’t come home with us.
When we got back to Nineteen Emu, Dad spoke on the telephone to his boss at the refinery, Bill Philby. He nodded as he talked and said, ‘Thanks, Bill, thanks, she’ll be out tomorrow . . . She’s fine. I appreciate it.’ When he got off the telephone he said, ‘Prick.’
After Robby had left for school Dad looked at his watch a few times as if it might tell him what to do with me. I put block on top of block and then I knocked them across the floor, then I piled them on top of each other then I knocked them down again, then I piled them up then I knocked them down. Dad stood at the sink wiping his mouth. He looked at the high cupboard then back at me, then at the high cupboard then at me. Then he said, ‘Bugger this. Let’s go, Jim.’
I stopped building. ‘Where, Dad? Where?’
‘The tip.’
‘What for, Dad? What are we going to the tip for?’
‘You never know, Jim,’ said Dad, picking up the keys. ‘It’s the tip. Surprise city.’
‘You never know, Dad. You never know.’
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Grab a hat.’
I took my hat from the low door hook and Dad took his from the high one and I followed him out to the Holden. There was no hesitation. He walked ahead of me, as if he was sure I would follow.
I climbed into the passenger seat and he got into the driver’s and we drove out of Altona along Sunbury Road. It was never just my dad and me. The sun streamed across our knees in a single ray. Dad drove the Holden faster than Mum. He grabbed the gears as if he was showing them who was boss. He was the Bill Philby of the gearbox. He turned the corners more quickly. He leaned back as if he was sure the car knew what to do. Mum drove leaning forward, as if she doubted it.
We drove into a road that said Bulla Tip and Quarry and the smell was sweet and rotten in my olfactory. Dad sniffed the air, grinned and said, ‘That’s how we know we’re in the right place, son.’ He stopped the car and got out so I got out too and he never checked to see if I was following, he just knew I would.
I saw a crater but it wasn’t moon, it was rubbish: plastic bags and pipes and baths and car seats and toilets and paint tins, all in piles under the sun where the pieces melted into each other. Everything was grey and white with bright pieces in between like shining plastic jewels – blue, yellow, orange and red. A man in a towel hat smiled and said, ‘What would you blokes be after?’ and Dad said, ‘I’ll know when I see it, mate,’ and the man said, ‘Right this way, fellers,’ and I followed my dad to the salvageables.
There were stoves and lawnmowers and suitcases and dryers and buckets and tubing and wooden boxes and barbecues and bedframes and gutters and doors and fridges and taps and steering wheels and chairs and windows and radios, all left behind by previous owners. My juices rushed. Dad and the man in the towel hat let me run from part to part. Dad gathered wheels and pipes. I examined an engine. It was full of tiny pinpricks that let the water through. That’s what caused the rust. I scraped at it with a rock, watching as the brown powder fell into the dust like a waterfall. I got down on my hands and knees and put my eye up close to a hole and I saw the light and the air on the other side. The air gave the engine extra power. Anything you attached to the engine would be unstoppable and a mystery to all mechanics, and only I could see that it was coming through the pinpricks in the rust.
‘Son!’ Dad called. ‘Come on. We’re done.’
Dad loaded his materials into the Holden and we exited the Bulla Tip and Quarry and Dad flicked on the radio and the song was heartache tonight heartache tonight. Dad sang along with it and when he looked across at me he smiled and the song kept coming out. It was like a light in the house that you never see switched on. I sang heartache tonight heartache tonight and our voices were the top and the bottom of the same tune and I did love the heartache, I did!
When we got home I helped Dad unload the Holden; the plastic seat of a chair without legs, a small cupboard, wheels and a pole. He never said, ‘Come on, Jim, hurry up, come on, love, please.’ He just got to work – a quick wordless man for me to copy.
Then we went into Dad’s garage and he got out his welder and mask. He put the mask over my head, tightened the strap and said, ‘Stay back, Jimmy.’ From inside my mask I watched the bright and burning light of my dad at work. He joined the two pairs of wheels to the pole. ‘It’s the axle, son,’ he said. Then he took the door from the small cupboard and attached it to the two sets of wheels, then on top of that he fixed the plastic seat of the chair.
‘There she is, Jim,’ he said.
‘There what is, Dad, what?’
‘Your go-cart, son.’
There was my go-cart. Time reverberated like lines around a drum. Breath filled my chest.
‘Shall we paint it, Jim?’
‘Shall we, Dad? Shall we!’
‘All we got is green,’ he said.
‘Green it is, Dad, green it is!’
Dad gave me a brush and we painted together without talking and I didn’t feel the need, not a single one. The brushes moved up and down, up and down as the wooden sides of my go-cart turned green.
‘Okay, son. We’ll go have something to eat and let her dry in the sun, hey?’ said Dad.
‘Dad, it’s got no steering wheel, Dad.’
‘Steering wheel? Steering wheels are for sissies, Jim. Doesn’t need a bloody steering wheel. That’s the element of risk.’
‘Okay, Dad, the element of risk. Okay, Dad, okay. Okay, Dad.’
We went into the kitchen and Dad made cheese sandwiches. The butter tore the bread and Dad said, Nobody does it like your mum. He leaned against the island, his eyes turning red and wet, with the memory of Paula. It was as if he could see her better when she wasn’t here – he had the space. He poured us orange cordials and we took our sandwiches to eat on the step where we could watch the go-cart dry.
‘Ready, Dad, is it ready?’
‘How many times have you asked me that, Jim?’
‘Five, dad. Is it ready, is the go-cart ready?’
He touched his fingers softly to the paint. ‘Ready enough,’ he said.
My core raced. I climbed onto the Jimmy-sized seat.
‘Let’s go,’ said Dad. He pushed me on the go-cart out of the house and onto Emu Street, then up the hill of Cobham – up and up and up. I heard his breath behind me growing louder as we climbed, his outs shorter than his ins, as if the air was hard to let go – the very opposite of Mum.
Once we got to the top he said, ‘I’ll run beside you, okay, Jim? You okay? You ready?’
Dad looked excited, as if he was about to go down Cobham in a green go-cart instead of me.
‘I’m ready, Dad, I’m ready.’
‘Okay then.’ He got behind me and began to push, faster and faster until his hands left the cart and I was speeding down Cobham, the wind in my face, the wheels rattling, the element of risk in full force. Dad ran just behind me, keeping up every step of the way.
‘Wheeeeeee aaaaaaaaaeeeeeeeee!’ I was the same as the wind and the wheels and the speed of the go-cart. I was the same, the very same! ‘Wheeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaeeeeee!’
When we got to the bottom Dad, puffing and out of breath, said, ‘How was that, Jim? Enjoy yourself?’
‘Good, Dad, very good. Again?’
This time when we got to the top of the hill he said, ‘What about going on your own this time, Jim, and I’ll watch from the top?’
I looked at the long slope of Cobham.
‘Come on, Jim. You can do it.’
My core jittered. ‘Yes, Dad, yes, okay.’
He gave me one hard push then let me go and I was on my own but it was as if he was still there, running behind me. ‘Wheeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaa!’ I shouted into the wind as the wheels and the axle vibrated me all the way to the bottom. I looked back and he was standing there, waving at me, and it was as if I had never seen him before. What drove crying? What was crying’s engine?
Dad pushed me up the slope of Cobham eight more times, then he said, ‘Jesus, son. I’m wrecked.’
We walked back to Emu Street, dragging the go-cart, and when we got home Robby was in the kitchen. He looked at our red and sweating faces as if he wasn’t sure, and then I said, ‘Dad and me made a go-cart. A go-cart, Robby!’
‘That we did,’ said Dad, taking a beer from the fridge. ‘Go and show him, Jim. Take him for a ride.’
Robby looked at Dad like he didn’t believe it, then he went outside and saw it for himself. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.
Robby and me went further than Cobham, all the way up Maidstone, then we both got on the seat, him in front, me behind, and we went so fast that when we got to the bottom a wheel fell off.
‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Oh no.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Robby. ‘It was my fault.’
‘Oh no,’ I said.
When we got home Dad was sitting on the back step reading the newspaper.
I held out the wheel. ‘Sorry, Dad,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’
Robby looked at the grass, kicking at a stone.
Dad took the wheel and rolled it across the yard. ‘Boys, if the wheels don’t fall off your go-cart by the end of the day you haven’t ridden her properly,’ he said. Everything expanded, as if Dad’s words had a power to release.
‘And we rode her properly, Dad, we really did!’
Dad bought us a pizza for dinner and it arrived with a man in its own plastic case and it had pineapple. Pineapple! It was dessert and dinner mixed. The flavours filled up every hole in my system.
‘That’s one way to get him to shut up, hey, Rob? A Hawaiian from Pier Street,’ said Dad.
‘We need a fridge full,’ said Robby, and they both laughed as if they knew a joke that I didn’t and it was sweet music like a heartache.
After dinner we watched a movie in the sitting room called The Thing but when the thing went into the snow and came back the same shape as the man he was chasing I jumped and screamed, and Dad said, ‘Jesus, we don’t want the kid to have nightmares. Robby, you want to give your brother that bath your mother was talking about?’
And Robby said, ‘Okay, Dad,’ and took me to the bathroom. ‘Get in the bath,’ he said.
‘I don’t need a bath,’ I told him.
‘Yes you do. You stink.’
‘Not tonight, Robby, not tonight.’
‘You have to. Mum said.’
‘Are you having one?’ I asked him.
‘I’ll have a shower later,’ Robby answered.
‘Dad has showers,’ I said.
‘Not only Dad,’ he said. ‘Get in the bath, Jimmy.’ I took off my shoes but that’s all. ‘You’ve got to take your clothes off, Jimmy.’
‘No,’ I said. I didn’t like to take off my clothes. There was too much skin. There were parts of me I hardly ever saw and didn’t want to see. I didn’t know why they were shaped that way. If you pulled at those roots hard enough what would you see in the hole left behind? When Uncle Rodney shot the rabbit and cut its stomach open I saw a hole full of fibres like worms, black and purple and damp. My mouth filled with water and I vomited. Uncle Rodney laughed and said, ‘Another weak stomach in the family, hey, Gav?’
‘Come on, Jimmy, take off your clothes.’ Robby stood with his hands on his hips beside the bath.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Okay, then, you can keep your clothes on but you’ve got to have a bath.’
‘Okay, then.’ I sat in the bath with my trousers floating around me, my t-shirt rising up, my socks sticking to my feet. Everything filled with water.
Robby and me went to bed after the bath. Robby kept the light on and read Biggles. The cover of his book had a man standing beside a brown plane.
‘Why is he Biggles, Robby? Why is he Biggles?’
Robby turned the page and didn’t answer.
‘Robby? Robby? Why Biggles?’
Dad opened the door. ‘You boys alright in here?’
‘Yes, Dad, yes,’ I said.
He grinned suddenly. ‘Good day?’
‘Good day, Dad. Yes, good day.’
Robby looked over the top of his book and smiled at Dad. It had been a long time since Robby had given him one like that.
‘Okay, well you can read a bit longer then it’s lights out. I’ll leave that up to you, hey, Rob?’
‘Yep,’ Robby answered, eyes back on his page.
‘Night, boys,’ said Dad, pulling the door to almost closed.
A little while later we heard Merle singing ‘Going Where the Lonely Go’ from the sitting room. Robby stopped reading. A shadow passed across his face. ‘Whatever you do, don’t go back in to see Dad tonight,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘It’s Friday night.’
‘So? So?’
‘Just don’t, okay?’
‘Okay, Robby. No going in to Dad, okay.’
Robby put down Biggles and switched off the light.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I heard a smash. I jumped out of my bed and got in with Robby. ‘Robby, did you hear that?’ I asked him. Robby moaned. My cells sped up, like the go-cart at the top of the
hill, gathering speed on its way down. ‘Robby.’ I pushed against him. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘What?’ he mumbled.
‘Listen.’ We lay there, the warmth of his back against my front.
Something fell, as if it had been kicked. Robby got out of bed and closed the door. I wished Biggles was here with his brown plane.
‘It’s Dad,’ said Robby.
‘What will he do without Mum?’ I asked him.
‘Shhh . . .’ said Robby. ‘Don’t say anything.’
There was another smash. Then the whole house began to fall – down down down, faster and faster. I gripped onto Robby as if he was strong enough to stop it.
In the morning Dad only looked at me for a second, when he picked up his coffee cup and took a sip. Then he went back to hammering the cupboard door that had been swinging loose on its hinges. There were vacuum-cleaner tracks over the carpet. I followed them, zigzagging between rooms. The carpet furs stood up as straight as soldiers. The dishes were done and put away. The kitchen floor didn’t have cereal or hairs stuck to it. I could hear the washing machine rumbling from the laundry.
I could see there was a war going on inside Dad’s head as he hammered. That’s what made his neck sweat. Every day there were more men joining the battle. They shot arrows and bullets at each other and threw bombs full of glass and splinters. It hurt him to look at me or Robby because of the shrapnel caught in his eyes.
•
Why was it one thing one day and something different the next?
‘I’m going to the hospital to pick up your mother,’ Dad said, pulling his head out of the cupboard. ‘Robby, you stay here with Jim, okay?’
Robby didn’t answer.
Dad checked the new door screwed tightly to its hinge, then he left. I heard something smash outside, then the lid of the metal bin slamming down.
While Dad was gone Robby and me watched the television. Robby didn’t want to do anything else. He didn’t want to go into the wetlands to see if Lady Free had been flooded. He didn’t want to look for snakes or show me his comics. He didn’t answer a single question I asked him. What makes the television turn on? Where has the electricity come from? Where is the beginning of electricity? Robby sat staring at the screen without moving. I could feel vibrations coming off his skin. He only blinked four times from ad to ad. It made me speed up just being close to him.