The Eye of the Sheep (12 page)

Mum’s scrambled eggs rose higher. I couldn’t make my eyes operate; I saw only falling.

‘Is this your first time?’ asked one of the captains, pushing aside his mouthpiece. ‘Pretty good, hey?’ He leaned forward and pressed one of the buttons on the dashboard.

Tina put her hand on my shoulder. Her touch drew the seed like magnoplasm draws a splinter. My eggs rose unstoppably through the tunnel of my throat, out my mouth, splattering the back of the captain of the cockpit. He turned around to me as the eggs fell from my front. We both looked at them as they hit the floor.

Dad said, ‘Christ, Jimmy.’

Then he said,
Sorry fellas
to the captains and Tina found a cloth and I heard,
Oh no, oh dear, sorry, oh no, oh no.
Dad led me back to the seat. He said, ‘For Christ’s sake.’

As we took our seats I saw the cracks again, like deep black mouths, the same as the cave under Mrs Stratham’s armour. I saw my arms waving as I fell. My body spun round and round on the way down and I knew I would always be falling, the sickness no longer a seed but a network holding me in its grip like a triffid. ‘My eyes!’ I shouted. ‘My eyes!’

‘Quiet, son. Shhh.’

‘Blindfold!’ I shouted. Other passengers turned to look at us. ‘Blindfold, blindfold!’ I called again.

Dad held my knee and looked around us as if he wasn’t sure.

‘Blindfold, Dad!’

His fingers fumbled with the knot as he pulled off his tie – stripes ran sideways red black red black red black, all the way to the tip. He tied it round my head and everything darkened. I breathed in
two three four
out
two three four
, keeping each breath exactly the same distance. I brought the world in to darkness
and breath and at last I began to slow down. In
two three four
out
two three four
. I pulled in deeper breaths than the ones I took at home because I needed the extra to have the same effect. Slower and slower, I was no longer falling but level. I leaned back and there was the chair ready to hold me.

From behind striped bars I saw Robby; he was the captain of the Indian Ocean. The ship was the
Cutty Sark
. Robby climbed the boat’s sails and looked out for pirates and told the men to lower the nets, lower the nets. He was the one who could spot the fish – schools of bright orange carp swimming in circles around the boat.
Haul them up!
he called to the team.
Haul them up, boys!
And the team pulled up the nets and tipped them onto the deck and the fish poured out in a river of gold. When Captain Robby came down from the cockpit everybody cheered.

I heard Dad order a beer.

‘Wake up, Jim.’ Dad was shaking me. The aeroplane had stopped. He pulled the tie from my head. Light burned my eyes. ‘We’re here.’ He got out of his seat and took his bag out of the cupboard above our heads. ‘Come on,’ he said.

I got out of my seat and followed Dad down the middle of the aeroplane. We came to a doorway where Tina was standing. She held out her arm to show me the metal stairs leading to the ground.

‘Careful, son,’ Dad said. He held out his hand.

I took it and we went out of the aeroplane and down the stairs into the glaring light, and then we stepped onto the grey tar of the airport. The sun was bright and hot, everything was shining under it. The lid of the sky holding it all was bright blue. I couldn’t see one cloud.

‘Sunshine,’ said Dad. ‘Makes a nice change.’

We walked with all the other passengers towards a building with two layers of windows. When we were close enough I saw Uncle Rodney waving through one on the top layer. I couldn’t see his face, only his waving hand and his head. Uncle Rodney used to own a marine and tackle shop on the mainland; he sold bait and hooks and lines and anchors. He let me touch the hooks and the frozen prawns even though I was very small then and could have caused a breakage or tried to swallow a float. Then he moved to Broken Island and set up a new shop with less business but more time to fish. It was a lifestyle.

We got through the doors and Uncle Rodney came towards us. ‘G’day, Gav. G’day, Jim. Let me take your bag.’ Dad gave his bag to Uncle Rodney. Uncle Rodney put his hand on my back. ‘You’ve grown, mate. You used to be a little feller. Jeez. Look at you now. Big man, you are!’

‘No I’m not, Uncle Rodney,’ I said. ‘I’m the smallest in my class – and the oldest.’

‘Alright, son, settle down,’ said Dad.

‘Well you look bloody big to me, mate,’ said Uncle Rodney. ‘Don’t know if you’ll fit in the bloody bed.’

Uncle Rodney took us over to his white car waiting in the car park. I climbed into the back seat and Dad and Uncle Rodney got in the front. The window went down without me turning the handle. ‘Can you do that again, Uncle Rodney?’ I asked him.

‘What’s that, Jimmy?’

‘Can you press the window button again?’

He pressed it again and the window went down then up then down then up again. Uncle Rodney was pressing it then not pressing it then pressing it again.

‘Aren’t you a bit old for that, Jimmy?’ Dad said.

‘Never too old for the Statesman, Gav. You can get to know her better over the next few days.’ Uncle Rodney pressed the button again.

‘Never too old! Never too old!’ I repeated.

‘Easy does it, son,’ said Dad.

The Statesman’s internals were wrapped in wires, connecting up to the main control panel. They twisted round each other, just under the surface of the car, in all colours, each wire with a different signal and code. They put them in the metal, in the doors, the tyres, the boot, like the fibres in the rabbit, all connecting up to the control panel in front of Uncle Rodney. ‘Uncle Rodney, how do you like your cock pit?’ I shouted. ‘Cock! Cock!’

‘That’s enough, Jimmy. Sit back and settle down.’ Dad sounded scared.

‘It’s alright, Gav, the boy’s no problem.’ Uncle Rodney’s voice was broader and wider than Dad’s. ‘Cock’s a cock.’

‘He gets a bit excited.’ Dad lit up a fag and gave one to Uncle Rodney. They both smoked and talked about the weather and Uncle Rodney said how it had been a bit tough since Shirley left because there was no one to cook and how he always ate counter meals now and that was a lot of chicken parmies and chips and he patted his stomach where the belt stretched across and then the car went quiet. Outside the Statesman, palm trees with heads like giant pineapples swayed in a line along the sea.

When Uncle Rodney opened his front door a big grey dog with long legs and long hair came out and jumped on him. ‘Ned is the missus’s replacement,’ said Uncle Rodney. Ned licked his face. ‘Only a lot more affectionate. Say g’day, Jim. Ned loves kids.’

I touched Ned’s head with my fingers and a small current entered my hand wires. We couldn’t have a dog at home because its fur would clog Mum’s air ducts. We couldn’t have a cat either, or a guinea pig or a chicken or a mouse or a rabbit. Ned spun in circles, smelling Dad then me then Uncle Rodney.

‘Settle down, Ned, and let Jim say hello.’ Uncle Rodney smoothed his hand across Ned’s head until the big dog was quiet and still. ‘Say hello, Jimmy, he won’t hurt you.’

Ned sat on his back legs and I went closer. Ned didn’t blink as he took in the scent of me and made his decision. I looked into his eyes and I saw myself inside them; I was suspended in the same light as in the sheep. I felt my cells slowing down until they spun at the same speed as Ned’s; there was no difference.

‘Want to go down the beach, Jimmy? Have a swim?’ Uncle Rodney asked.

‘Can Ned come?’

‘
Can Ned come?
Of course he can come! Can you imagine if I didn’t bring Ned? He’d never forgive me!’ Uncle Rodney sounded as though he was speaking through a loudspeaker. I saw grey fillings at the back of his teeth when he spoke. I saw more of Uncle Rodney’s mouth than I’d ever seen of Dad’s.

When Uncle Rodney picked up Ned’s lead Ned ran around us in circles, his back end throwing the front end in a different direction. Uncle Rodney caught him by the collar. ‘Easy does it, Neddy, settle down.’ It was the same thing everyone said to me! The
same thing
!

‘Go put your togs on, son,’ Dad said.

‘Okay, Dad, togs on,’ I said.

Uncle Rodney took me and our suitcase to the room I would be sharing with Dad. I opened the case and took out the togs. I pulled off my shorts and put on the togs over my underpants. I put a t-shirt over the one I was wearing and went back out to Dad and Uncle Rodney.

‘Ready?’ Uncle Rodney asked me.

‘Ready,’ I said.

‘You can take Ned, if you like,’ said Uncle Rodney, handing me Ned’s lead with Ned on the other end. We walked out the front door, Ned pulling me along the hot street. His power travelled through the red cord and into my arm – I could hardly hold him back. Ned was the leader from the animal kingdom. He only knew one language; there was only one world for him.

‘Careful crossing the road, son.’

I waited for Uncle Rodney and Dad to catch up and then the three of us crossed in a line together. Ned pulled me down to the beach.

At home the beach on the other side of the wetlands was flat. Here the waves rose up as if an enormous hand was underneath, pushing the water back and forth. The waves transfixed me; I couldn’t move. They rose up one behind the other, curling over themselves and breaking into white foam as they raced towards the shore. They were fuelled by the earth’s refinery, steaming and boiling at the core, forcing wind and pushing up water through the cracks like a blowhole.

Uncle Rodney unclipped Ned from his lead and he ran down ahead of us. Uncle Rodney went after him. I wanted to follow, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have the powers.

‘Go on, son,’ said Dad. ‘Jimmy, go down to your uncle. Come on, son, he’ll think you’ve never been to the beach before.’

But I hadn’t, not a beach like this.

Ned ran back to me, swinging round and knocking me over. He dropped a wet green ball beside me, his fur dripping water onto my legs. Uncle Rodney came up just behind him. I looked down to the water and saw a line that had been drawn across the sand where the last wave ended, like a boundary.

‘You better throw that thing for him or he’ll make me do it.’ Uncle Rodney stood over me in his red and yellow togs with his chest covered in pictures as if he were the pages of a book.

I picked up Ned’s ball and threw it as hard as I could. Ned raced after it as the waves kept coming and breaking and stopping and rolling back. They were always in the background of everything that happened and would happen. I ran up and down the hot sand throwing the ball to Ned and Uncle Rodney while Dad sat on a towel in his trousers and shirt. I ran faster and faster, big circles getting smaller. Then straight lines, then sideways lines, back and forth, back and forth, up and down, up and down, faster and faster sky sand waves dog sky sand waves dog sky sand waves dog faster and faster and faster.

‘Easy does it, son.’ Dad called out. ‘Easy!’

‘He’s alright, Gav. This is the perfect place for a kid to go nuts. I don’t know who’s worse, him or the dog.’

One of my circles got so small and fast that I dropped onto the sand but I kept my legs turning me on my back, my legs kicking me around, spraying sand into the air. Ned barked. When I stopped I saw flashing rainbow lights. My heart pounded. If it exploded I’d die like Pop Flick. We went to his funeral. They put him through a tunnel and set him on fire. Dad kept some of the ashes in a silver eggcup with a lid and said,
One day I’ll scatter them
, but Mum said,
That day will never come, Jimmy, just between you and me.

I saw my Uncle Rodney laughing. Each puff had wings that carried it out over the ocean. Uncle Rodney brought over a bottle of water and splashed some of it over my face. ‘I think Ned is going to like having you around, you’re as crazy as he is.’

Dad stood up, pulling off his shirt and trousers. His boxers had stripes that went straight across – blue white blue white blue white blue white. I watched those stripes walk down to the water. Dad didn’t stop to test the temperature with his toes, he just kept going and the waves parted, divided by his force, and went rushing past. I didn’t take my eyes off him; the white skin of his inner body, the red of his outer, the green pictures on his muscles – maidens and anchors and birds with hearts in their beaks – the scar from the mower blade, the dark of his head.

‘He’s a good swimmer, your old man,’ said Uncle Rodney.

I didn’t know my old man could swim. I’d never seen it.

Dad held his hands in a high prayer above his head, then hooked his body over and went under.

I ran down to the boundary line. ‘Dad! Dad!’ I knew he couldn’t hear me. The world under the sea had no sound. Whales spoke to each other by sucking the silence around them into the shape of what they wanted to say, then blowing it towards the other whales. My dad would never understand it, no matter how much he prayed.

I held my breath.

A dark circle tore through the froth. It was Dad’s head. His body followed, and his stripes, lower now, as the water tried to take them from him. I could breathe again.

‘Watch him catch a wave, Jimmy,’ said Uncle Rodney. ‘He was always good at it – better than any of us.’

I sat beside Ned and Uncle Rodney and watched a wave building behind Dad. He started swimming in front of it.
The wave grew bigger; Dad’s arms were propellers churning through the water at top speed, carrying him forward just in front of the wave, as if he was trying to beat it. Then the giant wave rolled forward and tipped over onto Dad, but instead of sinking him, the wave carried him towards the shore, all the bubbles of silence bursting up around him with the message of the whales. I had never seen my father’s mouth so wide. He beamed as if the sun was inside him.

‘He’s good, isn’t he?’ Uncle Rodney looked down at me. ‘He always was.’ Uncle Rodney was Dad’s younger brother. Then came Ray the raper. Last came dead Steve.

‘Yes, Uncle Rodney. Yes. Yes, he is good. He is good. Very good. My old man is
good
.’

‘You want a swim?’

I looked out at the waves building and rolling and breaking. ‘No thanks, Uncle Rodney, no thank you, no thank you.’