The Eye of the Sheep (2 page)

‘Aaaahhhh!’ he called out, falling back from the mower.

Mum screamed, ‘
Jimmy!
’ and hauled me up.

Dad held his arm against himself, his face white and blue and green and grey, blood bursting across his shirt. Mum dragged me to the back door and pushed me through. She locked it from the outside and ran back down to Dad. I pressed my face to the glass, and watched their mouths moving around and up and down and around. I looked at their eyes and I saw that they
were filled with tiny sharp rocks. I shouted to them, ‘Your eyes! Your eyes!’ but they couldn’t hear me. Mum tried to check Dad’s arm, but he pulled away. He shook his head, then looked back up at me. All of his face was closed, hard as the blade slowing to a stop beneath the dying engine.

I ran into the bathroom where the tiles were white and cool and I leaned my cheek against the wall. I looked at the crisscrossing lines. I traced my finger up and down the grooves where the mould collected, growing thick and black with spores that shot out from strings attached to the main body. Each spore was poison but you would need to lick every crack in the bathroom wall and the guttering at the base of the shower and the circles around the taps before you showed the symptoms.

The cold of the tile against my cheek slowed my cells to a cycle per second. One . . . turn . . . two . . . turn . . . three . . . turn . . . I closed my eyes and made a picture of my dad’s hands.

Mum told me Dad was the first one to hold me. He hadn’t been at the hospital for Robby’s borning, but times had changed –
it was 1980, after all
, said Mum – so he was there for mine. Mum told me I was pre-nup. She was too tired to lift her head; it stayed on the pillow, and Dad held his out hands instead. The nurse said,
No, no, not yet, Mr Flick
, but Dad said,
Pass him to me.
So the nurse, who was young, passed me, the baby, to him and because my skin was so raw and untamed I could feel the imprint of his hands on every part of myself. The nurse said,
Please, Mr Flick
, but my dad took no notice. He raised me to his face and because I was still so new, not yet obstructed by pollution, I had vision,
and with it I could see through his eyes, past his thoughts, to his core. It was shining and there was a Jimmy-sized place for me inside it. My dad kissed my forehead and his lips imprinted on my intelligence. The nurse said,
Mr Flick, please
, and slowly, without wanting to, he passed me back.

I heard the back door open and Dad come inside. I heard him go into the sitting room.

I went out to where Mum was pushing the mower into the toolshed behind Dad’s garage. She couldn’t close the door; the fat black bottom of the mower was in the way. She pushed and pushed, then she leaned against it so the door had no choice and dragged the lock across. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said. She turned around. Her face was damp with sweat from her effort. It evaporated from the hotplates under her pores.

‘Come inside, Jimmy. Come on,’ she said, holding out her hand. It was shaking. Dad’s blood was on her fingers.

‘What about Dad, Mum? What about your other half? Mum? What about Dad?’

‘I know you didn’t mean it, Jimmy,’ she said. ‘So does your dad.’

I followed her into the kitchen where she got out eggs and a saucepan. She dropped the saucepan onto the floor as she reached for the tap. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said. Mum picked up the pot and filled it with water, then she put it on the stove. The tentacles in her air ducts began to wave as they tried to catch the dust. She reached into her apron pocket, took out her puffer, shook it and sucked. I stood next to the stove and listened to the eggs knocking softly against each other when the water started to boil. Steam rose up into the kitchen air. I tried to watch for when the molecules collided so I could catch them
before they escaped, but it was too late. The droplets hovered over the bubbling water.

‘Don’t stand so close, Jimmy. How many times have I told you?’ Mum pushed me back. ‘Go watch the telly for a while, Jim. Just while I do this for Dad.’ She got his tray out, her hands still shaking, and made a pile of sandwiches, one on top of the other, their edges lining up like bricks in a wall, egg with salt and no sauces.

She went down the hall and into the sitting room. I heard her say, ‘Let me drive you to the hospital, Gav.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘But your arm, love . . .’

‘I’ve seen worse done at work.’

‘It must be painful.’

‘It’s fine.’

Merle Haggard began to sing ‘Kern River’ as Mum came out. She looked at me, pulling her bottom lip in with her teeth then biting softly on it. I slid down the kitchen wall then up it then down it then up it then down it again.

‘Give it a rest, Jimmy, love – just give it a rest. I’ll bring you your manuals in a minute,’ Mum said as I followed her into the kitchen. I kept the instructions for new equipment; my latest was for Mum’s clock radio. The manual showed you how to set the timer and tune the stations. A counter told the numbers when to change. Mum reached up above the stove to the high cupboard with the vitamin C and the aspirin. She pulled down a full bottle of Cutty Sark Blended Scotch. Next she took the ice tray from the freezer and one of Dad’s heavy glasses from the bottom shelf.

She bent back the ends of the ice tray so that ices went flying across the island and onto the floor. I got down on my hands
and knees to find one to eat while Mum dropped the rest into Dad’s glass. Then she poured the Cutty Sark over the ices so that the ices were drowning it in. ‘Help! Help!’ I shouted.

Mum swung around, her face pale. ‘What is it, Jimmy?’ she asked in a hurry, tentacles waving faster.

‘I’m an ice,’ I told her.

She frowned and sighed. ‘For God’s sake, Jimmy, give it a rest.’

I followed her skirt to the sitting room and stood outside the door, hidden by the wall. When Merle thought about Kern River he thought of his friend who went under. Merle couldn’t stop the river rushing and swirling and pushing at its banks, breaking rocks and making a waterfall and drowning a dog that had jumped in for the ball. ‘Bloody kid!’ I heard Dad say.

‘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.’