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The sleepout.
It was a treat to stay at Grandma and Poppa’s house.
Up the concrete path, elegant if a concrete path could be so called, lined with geometric edging. Deco thirties rendered brick with impressive roman columns (also concrete) holding up a wide entranceway with stained-glass doors. Garden clipped and manicured. Trimmed forget-me-not beds and a perfect lawn. Standard roses, not because they weren’t special, but because they were grafted onto hardy standing stock so the actual blooms were big, classic, heavily perfumed. Ten-hut soldiers on permanent parade. Velvety red, pink, yellow, mauve, maroon. One thing the boy knew was that old people loved roses.
The sleepout had been called the sleepout for longer than he’d been alive. It was an extra room for disturbance to routine, a single room cottage out the back of the main house with a bright roses-patterned carpet. A hanging pale green glass and chrome light fixture. Giant feather bed like in the silly song. The sleepout was off limits when people stayed, but as good as a cubby or a treehouse when it was just him. Better.
Without doubt the best thing in the sleepout was the entire wall of cupboard doors. He was only allowed to open one, but that one was enough. It was crammed with interesting things from before new stuff, before plastic. Brass binoculars, bullets, badges. Sunglasses, spectacles, even a monocle. Sepia photographs of stern people in brown frumpy clothes. Coins, matchbox cars, strange tools and devices. Buttons, a tin clockwork bird, tattered Donald Duck comics. Marbles, stamps, a tickless pocket watch, costume jewellery, an endless supply of doodads and knickknacks visitors had left behind. Aunties, uncles, aunties and uncles, friends and acquaintances, old war buddies.
Poppa had been in the war but the boy didn’t know much more than that, apart from the fact that war talk was sometimes shushed talk around him. He knew Poppa spoke differently down the pub or after bedtime.
He hoped he could become a man then grow old one day like Poppa. To know all he needed to know about the world, to shape it with his hands and then be allowed to rest and do whatever he wanted.
Poppa was sitting with his walking stick in the chair next to the feather bed. Walking sticks were the coolest things in the world, ‘cept for swords. White old man singlet, white old man hair, groomed and held in place with white old man brill cream. Beige working man’s pants with a sharp crease that Grandma fussed over longer than she should. Huge strong hands big enough to punch out a steer. Ridiculous fingers like sausages.
Poppa was Mum’s dad. It was strange to think.
He’d trapped rabbits to survive in the depression, cleared the land that was now the farm from raw bush. Milked cows before and after the war. Fought bare-knuckled for everything he had.
Pensioned off, retired but always busy at something, he stalked his immaculate lawns with trusty pocket knife at the ready, whipping it out to remove any daisy that might have the temerity to attempt a pitch at camp on his grass. It was a constant battle, a bitter and protracted skirmish with no end. Poppa extracted each weed and its roots from the dirt as quickly and easily as he cored and ate an apple. No daisies were in Poppa’s lawn for long.
The boy had been given the job of looking through gardening magazines for pictures of red roses. It was fun, like finding Easter eggs or doing a connect-the-dots or hunting for mushrooms.
He’d show a rose to Poppa and Poppa would either say yep or nah. If it was nah he kept hunting, if yep he’d rip out the page and pass it up. Then poppa would carefully cut it out using Grandma’s good scissors and his daft but deft sausage fingers and place it in a pile. Together they built a deck of flat roses like spikey playing cards.
The carpet was rough on his bare legs. The flowers looked nice, but weren’t very friendly. Pretty but prickly like real roses. He spent a lot of time sitting or playing on carpets, so he knew a thing or two about them. Carpets were all the same but different. The one in the main house was shaggy and brown. The one at the school was soft and blue like the sky. The one at home was dark green and itchy and had charred black holes in it around the fireplace. It was fairly flat at least, so he could still play cars or do jigsaws.
“What are we doing this for Poppa?” the boy asked.
“You’ll see,” is all Poppa would say.
The boy didn’t really care why they were doing it, it was just the thing they were doing now.
Sometimes the smells in the sleepout brought mind pictures with them, pictures from long ago. Whispered memories of things that maybe never happened to people he’d never met. Spells or smells, smells or spells, but he didn’t actually believe in any of that magic stuff. Space was real. Batman was real. Magic was just tricks. The roses weren’t real, they were just colourful fabric pulled from some bloke’s sleeve.
When seemingly enough paper roses were torn, passed up and scissored Poppa leaned on his stick and lifted himself from the chair. “That will do us.”
He took a rose cut-out carefully between his sausage fingers and used a little brush to paint the back with white glue. Not clag like in school, something with a much stronger chemical smell.
He stuck it into a corner of one of the many cupboard doors in the wall of the sleepout and smoothed it with his thumb.
“Just one on each, in the corner,” he said. He smeared the back of another cut-out rose with the little brush in his sausage fingers. To the boy it resembled some sort of weird fish with a gaping red mouth and green tail. Or a mutant tadpole, something left over after the Yanks or Russians pushed the button.
*
The boy sat on the rose-patterned carpet.
There were faces in the roses, same as the roses on the curtains in Mum and Dad’s room. Roses were mostly all mouth, but he could imagine where the eyes would be.
One time when he was really sick the curtain roses went bouncing through the room on a giant rubber band. He was in Mum and Dad’s bed. It made him feel sicker to look at the bouncing roses and his back hurt and he felt like he was falling. The mouths were fleshy and dripping on Mum and Dad’s clean blankets. Slurping and bouncing, toothless but still trying to bite. It was scary. Now he was better he didn’t like thinking about it, he could still feel the feeling.
Warm yellow sunlight spilled through the window, shoved past the curtains and sprawled across the carpet bouquets.
*
There were only a few cupboard doors left with no roses. The boy was getting bored and the scratchy carpet was becoming unbearable. There was a pink rash of welts on his knees and an imprint of the fibre.
“Can I have a go Poppa?”
Poppa straightened, as straight as his poor back could get.
Poppa had a bad back after a lifetime of hard yakka. A famously bad back. Nothing helped, apart from the bomb as Grandma called it. Up the arse, at night, when the pain was particularly bad. The boy couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’t imagine Poppa putting a bomb up his arse but Grandma said that’s what he did. He guessed they were left over from the war. Poppa was always a lot sweeter to everyone the day after the bomb.
He rubbed his chin. It made a faint scritching sound even though he was cleanly shaved.
“Will you do a good job?”
“Yeah.”
Poppa didn’t look convinced but handed him the brush.
“Just look at how all the others are,” he said.
The boy smeared the back of the cut-out red rose with the white chemical not-clag glue.
He went to dip the brush in the pot but Poppa said “There’s enough on there,” and pointed a sausage finger at the brush in the boy’s hand.
He swirled the back of the rose. The jagged shape was difficult to cover. He didn’t want to rip the wet flower that was starting to stick to his fingers.
He fixed the paper rose into the corner, pushed it flat with the palm of his hand. Glue squished out, cold and slimy. He hid his hand in his shorts pocket and stood back but Poppa saw.
“How’s that Poppa?” he asked.
Poppa didn’t say anything. He took the little brush back with his sausage fingers. It made his huge hand look even bigger. He wore a copper bracelet he’d made from an old hot water service loosely on his wrist. Someone told him copper helped for arthritis but it didn’t.
The boy sat back down on the prickly carpet with the rosesfaces.
Poppa put the last rose into the corner of the cupboard door in the wall of cupboards in the sleepout. There had been the same number of cuttout paper roses as cupboard doors. The boy wondered if Poppa had counted or if he just somehow knew. So many doors, so many roses. A hanging garden, transformed amazingly from the nothing of blank white painted wood.
The boy looked at his particular rose, his single contribution to the decorating task. The other’s had their stems, their green tails pointing into the corner. His rose was swimming away from all the other weird fish, swimming against the other red fleshy-mouthed tadpole-monster flowers.
He imagined it swimming up the creek at home to where it was quiet and calm and the fallen leaves acted like tiny boats, where he would climb willow trees and swing from them and pretend to be Batman.
Poppa didn’t seem all that happy but the boy was happy. Happy to have a different rose.
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A Ride in the Truck.
1.
Waving gums by the track, skeletal limbs, bark peeling. Ti-tree scrub and bracken. The same taste of dusty orange gravel as at home in his spit.
The grownups were loud talking. Then they stopped and looked at him.
He was sitting on the ground. There were no bullants, he’d checked. Dry yellow grass, soldiers of dead dock standing crisp and to attention. Bushflies wanted his eyes, ears, the corners of his mouth.
“All set sport?” Dad.
He got up and nodded, walked back over to the truck.
“Jump in then.”
Dad hoisted him up onto the seat, slammed the door. Walked around to the other side and got in.
“Do I have to put my belt on Dad?”
“Nah.”
Riding in the truck was a special treat. It didn’t get used much, not really roadworthy. Carted hay, helped with certain jobs the tractor didn’t suit. It stood out of place off the farm, like Dad at a wedding or in Melbourne.
Dad stomped the clutch and started the truck like waking a monster gruff and growly. He shoved the gearstick. GROOOONK. The truck made that noise sometimes, it was swearing or something.
Dad’s hairy arms had freckles like a connect-the-dots, but there’d be trouble if he tried to draw on them. One arm was strung round the wheel, the other slung out the window. Faded blue, beaten soft, Dad’s singlet smelled of sweat and Mum’s roses wool wash. It wasn’t a bad smell, it was nice.
The boy crouched grasping the worn but ruddy dash. It was too hot to keep his hands in the same place longer than a few seconds.
Dad let out the clutch and the boy wobbled, the big brown bench seat bucked. It was grouse fun, like jumping on the couch in front of the TV.
Two rough line tyre marks were pressed into the paddock and zigged up the hill. The other grownups pulled in front, in a bashed-up holden ute wheezing and coughing smoke like Pa with his alpine menthol cigarettes from the green pack.
“What’s up there Dad?” He asked.
“Usually they use it for shearin’ sheep, ya know, getting’ the wool off ‘em. We’re using it today ‘cause it’s got pens to separate ‘em.”
“Separate ‘em from what?”
“Each other, us, you know. Can’t have too many of ‘em all runnin’ about at once.”
The truck roared, bellowed and bounced. The boy lost grip and banged into Dad’s arm. It wasn’t his fault.
“You’d better sit back, I don’t want ya to crack ya head open.”
He did as he was told. It was like being kicked off a ride at the show.
*
He could see a few puffy white clouds through the windscreen. Like sheep, flying high up, but with no heads or legs. They were boring. It was fun to stand up and bounce around.
“You want your window open?”
“Nah.”
He looked at the clouds. Headless, legless, high up in the blue sky. Dad swung the wheel and revved the engine. The truck yelled and lurched.
“How come we don’t have sheep at home?”
“We got cows.”
He looked at the clouds. The worn but ruddy dash. The silver button on the glove box. The clocks and dials on Dad’s side. Dad’s connect-the-dots hairy arm that he’d get in trouble for drawing on. The gearstick jutting like a dead Flintstones flower from the floor of the cabin, petals fallen, stem hardened to steel over the long long time. It was a real treat to ride in the truck.
*
Dad stomped the brake. The boy leaned forward, couldn’t help it, hauled by an invisible force, and Dad shushed the truck. Pulled the Riiiik stick. It made the Riiiik sound that meant it was safe to get out. That’s what that sound meant in the car too.
“Righto.”
The boy slid across the seat and grabbed his father’s hand. He was lowered onto the ground, swinging, then feet crunching kikuyu.
Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa. Baaaa Baaaa Baaaa.
He could hear the sheep.
Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa. Baaaa Baaaa Baaaa.
It was funny. They Baaaaed like in cartoons and the nursery rhyme. Easy to make the noise too: “Baaaa.”
“What’s that smell Dad?”
“What smell?”
“Grassy. Like rabbits.”
“That’s them. The sheep. Don’t ya know what sheep smell like?”
He didn’t. If he’d thought about them, he’d thought they’d smell like clouds and clouds wouldn’t have much smell at all. Fairy floss maybe.
*
A stone grey and rust-red looming giant, the shearing shed perched on rough-hewn slab struts ruling the hill. Ancient planks from old trees, greased dark from animals pressing against, painted corrugated tin with chickenwire windows to let the sun and breeze through.
Dad walked over to the grownups getting out of the ute. They were loud talking again. They never stopped.
The shed was fun but frightening. Fun but not fun. Funny Baaaaing but something else. There was a cavernous underside that seemed to stretch further than the daylight paddock on the other side. A little closer, straining to make out, he could see piles and piles of marbles covering the ground. He could hear the hum of a thousand flies. It was weird how the floor above had gaps in it, even wider gaps than the floor boards of the verandah back home. He could see through to shapes moving above, clattering feet and Baaaaing and tossing down more marbles.
The loud talking from the grownups was moving.
“Coming sport?”
They were stomping up steps to a door made of an X. He ran up behind. His dad pulled the bolt to let them all in. The grownups he didn’t know smelled of sweat too, but not nice like Dad. He brushed past into the shed.
*
The pong of the animals just about stood him up straight, like his nose was being attacked and smooshed into his face.
Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa. Baaaa Baaaa Baaaa.
There were armies of flies, crawling on the walls, the rails, the sheep.
Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa. Baaaa Baaaa Baaaa.
A writhing mob with fearful eyes rolling brown and white and pink. Clattering and Baaaaing and jostling to get away. They weren’t clean and puffy like clouds, they were skinny and dirty and not wearing their woolly jumpers. Scared and probably mean. He didn’t know. He didn’t know sheep.
There were about… Twenty? About that. If he counted them would he fall asleep? Nah, not likely.
Dad fiddled with the latch on a gate and held it open for the two other grownups. The loudest grownup clucked and squawked and pointed into the room. “This’ll do. Already set up.”
At the back of the room, an ugly chain was slung over a rafter. Dry black splashes beneath on the weird slat floor with the wide gaps. A short three-legged stool. A clear plastic tarp tied and held in a roll with bind-a-twine. Stainless steel buckets. An upside-down tea chest. And a filthy leather apron sitting on the upside down tea-chest, also coated with the same dry black splashes.
The other man stuck his belly out to wrap the laces’ around the back of his waist, like Mum in the kitchen making a pie or a roast. “Ya got the knives mate?”
“Ah shit, I left ‘em in the truck.”
The boy went to go through the gate, but Dad said “Nah mate, you stay out here I think. Try not to get in any trouble. Don’t go in with the sheep in case they try to butt ya.”
“Butt me?”
“Yeah. Don’t want to get rammed by any rams,” Dad said and winked. The boy didn’t know what he was talking about, but it sounded scary. Not bulls scary, but still.
“Tell ya what, can I get ya to go down to the truck and get the knives out for me? They’re just on the floor, ya know the green puma bag?”
“Yep.”
“Well, can ya just whip down and grab it for me? Just bring the bag up.” The gate had a spring so it shut itself when Dad let go of it.
The sheep were all looking at him. He didn’t like it. “It’s okay,” he said. “I won’t hurt ya. Baaaa. BAAAA!” The grownups through the gate were loud talking again above the mad Baaaa and clatter and jostle.
2.
Animal pong, hot iron, salt and rust and something heavier and thicker carried on gentle summer evening air. He was holding onto the top rail, leaning his forehead on the back of his hand, pins and needles in his legs and feet. Tired and no way to go to bed. No hope of bed, no bed in sight.
The night had crept in like the thing from under his bed at home. The weird floor now had midnight cracks showing through to a great empty pit. No world outside. Floating in space.
Dad came through the gate and stood there with it open. In the killing room the light was dazzling. Blaring. Blazing. A stark bad dream. Dripping. Steaming.
Fresh blood red apron and arms dark syrup glazed, the loudest grownup called out to Dad. “Only need one more and we’re good mate. Just let the other one back out into the paddock.”
The gate swung shut.
The last two sheep were in the far corner, not bothering to push against the rails. The others had been dragged on their backs, one by one, Dad’s strong arm hooked round. Quiet and calm or Baaaaing with kicking legs and marbles pouring out, it didn’t matter. Through the gate and into the light.
“Look at ‘em,” said Dad. “Two left, only one to go. D’ya think they know?”
The boy didn’t say anything but he wanted to. He wanted to say about the headless, legless clouds in the blue sky. Such a shame the blue sky was gone and would never come back.
His father moved toward the last two sheep, arms outstretched. Slowly but as inevitable as the night.
“I dunno which one to choose,” he laughed. The boy laughed too, but a fake laugh to be a man.
The sheep stood heads down, noses touching. Shaking. Animal pong. Blood in the air. Marbles in the black pit. The bright lights crammed needles through the cracks in the gate into the killing room.
3.
Still lots of waiting when the grownups were finished.
It turned out the loudest grownup was the sheep farmer, and mister Sheep Farmer’s wife arrived red faced and huffing in another ute with cups of tea out of the thermos and triangle cucumber sandwiches and boiled eggs.
Then thanks mates. Then see ya next times. Then back in the truck and down the hill.
4.
They were chasing the moon home now, a friendly fat bulb hanging just through the windscreen. Lots and lots of stars. No clouds. Seat and dashboard and cabin and dark highway. Black trees.
The truck rumbled. Rocked and swayed. Warm. High beams illuminated white lines and bluestone. Occasional smears of roadkill.
The boy’s eyes felt like there was sand from the sandpit in them. He tried to play the game where he’d stare out the window and imagine someone running alongside, but he couldn’t keep it going. It was too much effort, the guy kept falling behind.
“So how did ya choose Dad?”
“What?”
“Which sheep got to live?”
Dad looked at him, eyes off the road. Two little mirrors in the cabin dark. He reached over and pretended to grab the boy. ”I just grabbed the one closest to me.“
The boy yelped and pushed him away. “It’s not funny Dad.” And there wasn’t anything funny about it, even if the other grownups had laughed and loud talked and joked through the whole day. The whole blue sky day.
Dad put his hands and eyes back on the steering, grinning pale teeth, chuckling to himself.
The boy looked at his Dad. Then he looked at the moon. He looked at the silver button on the glove box. He closed his eyes and drifted in warm blood and sweat and roses wool wash.
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Kitten Island
1.
First he noticed the noise. Tiny eeks, like squeaky baby birds. Birds were all over, different birds, and they squeaked but not like this.
The veranda was long and low. Jutted out the back of the house like an afterthought. Stubby tree ferns squatted the length.
At the tank-stand end a rabid bouganvillea threw purple and green up onto the corrugated tin wave of the roof. Unsatisfied and still reaching it tried to hook tendrils onto the sky.
There was a bald spot of ground by the back door that was dead and smelled of piss.
Straight from dim indoors, his eyes squinty. The bright was broken glass.
Almost afternoon now, his morning was wasted.
Splat flat on the lawn, he listened. Slim grass tongues licking his toes. Bright yellow dandelions smearing sunny paint onto his face.
Wondering at the sound.
Sunlight stenciled prison bar shadows onto the dirt through the cracks in the boot-worn boardwalk. The noise came from somewhere under.
He crawled closer.
Many indignant insects in his face. Buzzing and clicking and skittish.
He could see movement like the swirling grey on black when he closed his eyes at bedtime. Something moving in the underhouse.
*
A stray thought to be turned and examined like something found. Could he make the same sound?
He had a talent for it. For mimic. He could give the three-bell ‘all’s well’ signal to the rosellas. Match the laconic caw of the greasy black crows.
Maybe this was another he could do. A new one.
He drew his lips across his teeth and squashed his tongue. It was a kind of squeaky-yowling he made in the back of his throat. It was “Yew, Yew…”
Wrong.
Close, but not the same.
He shushed. Listened.
No noise. No movement. No swirling grey, just black.
He pressed his fingers hard into the corners of his eyes. Scrubbed at his eyeballs, a trick to bring the sparkling fairy goldies. Friendly twinkling lights, sometime companions that came when he stood up too fast or sat too long on the toilet.
They didn’t appear.
A cloud blotched the sun, shat dim light over all.
He waited for it to fly by in the sky.
Frogs gronked down by the creek. Blowflies farted and zoomed. Cicadas tore strips off the air.
His heart thudded. Distant marching soldiers, louder the longer the cloud lingered.
He tried again. “Eew, Eww…”
It was closer. Almost there.
He worked the sound around. Chewed on the shape of it.
*
“Ehew. Ehew…” He had it. Spot on like a lyre bird, or near as.
Again. “Ehew. Ehew…”
He waited.
Nothing. Just screaming insects because it was so hot.
He drifted for a while under the warm and blue.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm... The afternoon hummed.
*
“Ehew. Ehew…”
Piercing, the noise stabbed the still.
He was swimming, swimming in the creek with the platyp-.
“Ehew. Ehew…”
Awake now and aware. Under the ferns, with a crook neck and itchy mosquito bites.
He responded.
“Ehew. Ehew.”
Two blue eyes peeked out at him through the gap in the boards. He saw them and they saw him.
“Ehew, Ehew…”
It wanted something. He wasn’t afraid though. It was something good.
“Ehew, Ehew…” He spoke to it.
“Ehew, Ehew…” It answered.
This was great.
It was joined by another. Then another.
They too said “Ehew, Ehew…”
“The bloody heck?”
Grey on black swirling. Blue eyes peering at him through the cracks.
“Ehew, Ehew…” he said.
“Ehew, Ehew…” the underhouse things said, then ventured out into the day.
2.
Raggedy kittens, as many as the fingers on his hand. They blinked flinty eyes. Tried to focus on everything at once, swaying their little heads.
Grey tabbies with stripes like tiny tigers, crooked tails hoisted.
Impossibly cute.
Fragile magic, delicate and exposed.
The boy grinned from happy. “Ehew, Ehew…” he said.
*
They looked at him in unison. It was funny. Then they looked at each other.
They were wary of the stranger who spoke kitten.
He was like nothing they knew.
Tempted to flee, follow instinct and scatter, run, hide.
He made his new sound, rising like a plea. “Ehew?”
The kittens stared at him, afraid to move and afraid to come closer.
*
He could wait.
He would wait.
He could smell the sweet grass, the moist earth slightly cloying.
He thought about all the things that lived and grew and died there.
Slugs, seeds, caterpillars, weeds.
Harlequin beetles, grasshoppers and lizards.
Butterflies, stick-insects, bugs, lots of different bugs.
Bugs in your face, bugs in your eyes, eat a horse manure pie.
Too many things to count.
*
A cold shock dabbed briefly his hand. Silk brushed past his elbow like a whisper.
He lay still as a dead rabbit.
A wet kiss in his ear, startling.
The kittens were there, soft and suddenly all around. Jumping, climbing, scrambling over him. Scratchy claws catching in his t-shirt. Paws poking into his back, trotting down his spine. Whiskers swiping his nose and tickling his legs.
An adorable patchwork menagerie, stuffed toys come wonderfully to life.
“Ehew, Ehew, Ehew, Ehew, Ehew, Ehew, Ehew…”
3.
A head picture flickered, took form, played like a movie. He was the hero, the star, an idea that literally moved him.
Carefully so as not to alarm, he sat up.
The kittens looked up at him wide-eyed.
He slowly stood. They were unsure, but still squirming on the grass.
Then he moved quickly. He didn’t look back lest the magic vanish.
*
The shed was peeling weatherboards on an exposed wood frame and a dark mouth yawning.
Shabby white sheets nailed to an elephant’s skeleton full of spiders.
Hanging waving cobwebs and the strong smell of rats.
Moldering piles of junk almost to the roof and sprawling across the crammed gravel floor. Stuff and more stuff.
There were lead pipes and a bicycle pump.
Gamey horse blankets, horse ropes and leather bridles, horse medicines, horse shoes, horse stuff.
A metal bucket, a selection of birds nests and a big tractor tyre.
An untouched packet of ratsac and a half-full bag of super-phosphate.
A butcher’s knife, a fishing pole, a kerosene lantern.
A bunch of thick maroon books, pages slowly fleeing their bindings.
A stringless tennis racket, a box of nails, a mangy or moth-eaten fox’s tail.
A bunch of empty plastic bags, brittle and disintegrating.
*
It was resting on its side close to the back of one of the smaller piles.
Woven by some deft hand, the cane basket Mum used to haul fruit up from the orchard.
Peaches, pears, apricots, apples. Whatever the coddling moth or possums hadn’t got to first. He was pleased; it would be ideal.
He grasped the handle and hoisted.
It felt good in his hand and smelled faintly of lemons.
It was dusty so he wiped the inside of it with his shirt. Now he was dusty too.
That shirt would be big trouble later with Mum.
Sunlight fingers felt through the cracks in the shed wall. Motes swished in the shards, swirled, slowly fell.
*
The flattened patch of grass by the veranda was empty when he returned.
He sat and called to the kittens. “Ehew, Ehew…” he said. “Ehew, Ehew?” he asked. There was nothing.
“Ehew, Ehew…” he said louder. “Ehew, Ehew?” he asked louder.
The emptiness ached a bit, so did his stomach.
He called until at last they answered, little mouths opening to show little pink tongues.
Little inquisitive faces poking out from the gloom.
4.
“Ehew, Ehew…” Up from inside the basket, a swinging pendulum from the crook of his fingers. Rock-a-bye-babies, his responsibility now.
Panicked blue eyes, they couldn’t get out.
He couldn’t see Mum. That didn’t mean she wasn’t watching, but he didn’t think so.
There was no yell to “Get here right now.”
He wasn’t doing anything wrong, but she wouldn’t understand.
She would take the kittens away. Hurt them, kill them.
Ferals.
This was no place.
He carried the basket like a secret up the garden path.
Grey concrete pavers, fragrant roses along the way.
At the end a wrought iron gate, ornate but exhausted. Old paint flaked off like dandruff.
Its hinges complained bitterly when he shoved through with his hip and into the back paddock.
It was ill, he should show more respect.
*
He wasn’t supposed to be in the back paddock, there were bulls.
He couldn’t see any but Mum said so. He’d never seen any but the fear was there all the same.
Bulls were all big horns and snorting fury.
A lone crow wheeled above and decided on the bony remnants of a gum.
Brooding and dreadful it sat in judgement. Then with a flap and dismissive “Waark…” it was gone.
A cockatoo shrieked and for a second he thought it was Mum.
No, not her.
Just a bird.
The sun baked the side of the hill. The air wavered in the heat.
Thump, thump, thump.
His feet determined thumps in front.
Over short crunchy stubble, summer-scorched pasture parched and beaten. Mainly kikuyu, some dock here and there.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
The kittens wept, their eyes pleaded.
He made the sound to them. “Mhew…” It didn’t help.
*
Reaching the base of the hill, he approached with caution a crowd of scotch thistles, most standing taller than him.
They were menacing, alien things. Huddled in groups, dire needles sharp and glinting.
Vibrant purple crew cuts sprouting from faceless heads held together in nodding conference, watching, whispering.
He picked his way through, feeling an occasional quick sting to his legs. They tried to grab the basket but he wouldn’t let them.
He was relieved when they thinned out and he spotted the creek fence, bedraggled posts struggling to stay upright under the constant duress of standing. Two strands of barbed wire hung red-brown and speckled with bird shit, drooping like a low clothes line.
*
He stooped and lifted the top wire, careful of his fingers, careful of the tet-nus.
Tet-nus meant big needles in his belly Mum said. Doctor’s needles, bigger and sharper than even thistles.
The kittens begged him to stop.
He squatted through into the rudely lush foliage edging the blasted paddock.
It was a riot of green.
Patches of clover, milkweed and waving bracken.
Long grass probably full of snakes.
Bunches of turnip gone wild, a hang-over from earlier days when the farm was still being properly worked.
Sweet yellow wattle. Ragwort, also yellow but sour.
Clumps of slicing razor tussock, innocuous enough but with hidden bastard blades.
He couldn’t see the water, but he could smell it.
The only way down was a steep narrow cow-track scar worn into the slope by generations of hooves. He used his free hand to grasp tufts of whatever; anything to steady.
He dug in his heels and slipped straight onto his arse, still holding the basket but quickly sliding out of control.
A jarring stop at the bottom and he saw the goldies at last.
It felt wet where he was sitting. The kittens were frantic, spitting and trying to climb out.
“Ehew, Ehew…” he said to them.
“We’re here now. Calm down. Don’t cry.”
*
He stood on the edge of the squishy bank and dipped his toes just into the water.
The intrusion stirred the silt.
Brown clouds drifted.
He stepped in up to his ankles.
Brown clouds billowed.
The basket was heavier now than when he’d left the yard. The handle seemed to strain in his hand just from the sheer weight.
Paddling water-clocks tilled the surface and left expanding Vs in their wake.
They paused occasionally to make the crazy ticking circles that gave them their name.
Weeping willows trailed golden strands from above, languid in the drowsy breeze. Tangled limbs embraced, rubbing and knocking, their gnarled bark skins as tough as tonka.
Friendly guardians of the creek, his favourite trees by far. Tall and stooped like Grandad, nicer even than oaks or poplars.
He would sometimes swing on them with a big handfull of their hair, out over the water, feet kicking, before returning safely to shore. Sending haphazard leaves spiralling down. Miniature yellow gondolas that settled to drift untethered, race trills and currents, or float helplessly caught on some piece of jetsam.
The sky, blue like no other colour, reflected up at him from the water.
It was a mirror. In it he looked small and weak.
It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair.
He looked at the wriggling kittens. They were small and weak too.
It was easy to get lost watching the water.
Time flowed gently down the stream. The creek was beautiful, but not to be trusted.
There were deep holes with snags where kids could drown.
Slippery black eels hungrily patrolling the depths, bellies white and fleshy.
Crayfish with snipping claws and beady eyes on stalks in hollow-log lairs, scuttling under shelves of wormy willow roots or flipping their tails and shooting backwards through the murk.
Mesmerising sounds, hypnotic ripples, boggy traps of sucking quickmud, dangerous crossings…
Once in winter he had seen a platypus playing.
The water was brown and fast, right up the sides of the creek and spilling over.
Mum told him falling in meant dead as dead so to stay away.
The platypus was rolling on its back, bobbing and diving, having fun in the speeding flood.
Dead was dead though, so he’d just watched until eventually it bobbed under and didn’t come back up.
5.
The bridge to the island was a half submerged root, like a pale wet bone reaching.
The island itself no more than a bump.
Two slow roads flecked with whitish foam flowed around.
Cress and water-weeds fringed the shore. Baby gudgeons bulleted, flashed, sucked at the waving strands.
Fishbone ferns gave an impression of solidity, alongside blanched drifts of disintegrating leaves.
Piles of wattle baubles - no longer golden but gritty soaked orange.
*
He tried not to think and just did.
He walked the root.
He jumped at the end, planted his feet and landed with a splotch.
He stepped forward. He hadn’t fallen in.
Tawny water seeped shallowly into his left-behind footprints.
*
At last they had arrived. Kitten Island.
A place away from all the bad things in the world.
A place he could visit any time he wanted.
A place where he could watch them grow, his beautiful secrets.
Tenderly he tipped the kittens out of the basket. They toddled onto the ground, lost and frightened. They were not where they thought they belonged.
He was sure they were wrong though.
They would be happy here, safe and privileged and private.
*
The way back was easier without the weight of the kittens in the basket.
It felt so much lighter.
He felt so much lighter.
Epilogue.
After a sweaty night he wakes still tired.
Rags of lucid dreams. Something about his stuffed toys attacking him, circling with bared teeth.
Then he remembers the kittens and leaps from the bed.
*
A hurried bowl of coco-pops and a disapproving scowl from Mum.
He smiles and tells her he’s going outside to play.
“Alright,” she says. “But stay in the yard.”
He steps off the veranda into a scalding wind.
No noise from the underhouse.
The insects scream about the heat. He doesn’t care, lets them scream.
He feels a sort of thrumming anticipation, the twitching tug of a line running to his guts and pulling at his insides.
How happy they will be to see him.
They’ll purr and rub his bare legs with their chins.
Little darlings.
A blowfly buzzes by. Fat and slow, patrolling for a feed or somewhere to lay its eggs.
It diverts to the plum tree, attracted by the soggy bombs that sticky the ground dark red with juice.
He avoids going over there this time of year. Hates the disgusting feel of the plums under his his bare feet. Imagines walking across a field of bloody eyeballs.
Spring is better. Petals cover the ground in pink snow.
He makes his way up the path and through the gate. It’s still sick and lets him know.
*
Mum is wrong, the back paddock has no bulls.
He isn’t afraid. He’s yelping and rushing forward, his feet quick thumps in front.
Thump, thump, thump.
Whacking the thistles with a picked-up stick, laughing.
Through the fence, the green curtain, sliding down the slope easily.
His heart drums fast-marching soldiers. The blood sings sugar in his ears.
Nothing could be better.
The creek is a shiny silver worm, a dark mirror over which iridescent dragonflies skim and linger.
The weeping willows groan and sway in the hot gusts, tossing leaves to the cool water below.
He looks to the island and his smile sinks like a clod thrown into a dam.
It sinks like Mum’s smile when he’s again broken something.
“Ehew, Ehew..?” he asks.
Kitten Island is empty.
The kittens are gone.
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