The Eye of the Sheep (3 page)

‘Let go of my arm. Let go.’

‘No,’ he said, still trying to drag me.

‘Mum!’ I called. ‘Mum!’

Mum came out with a cleaning cloth over her shoulder. There was sweat on her face and the hotplates under her cheeks were up so high I could see the coils. ‘Come away, Jimmy!’ she said in a whisper.

‘Why are you whispering?’ I asked.

‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘Come away.’

‘You are!’ I shouted. ‘
You are!You are!You are!You are!
’ Sing that, Merle Haggard! Sing that!

Robby and Mum were both trying to drag me away when out came Dad, swaying as if there was a small breeze in the room. His face was flushed and he held his arm in a tea towel, patches of blood over the roosters, his conductor stick burning close to his fingers. ‘Can’t you bloody kids give me some fucken peace?’ He spat little white balls with the words. The blood on his shirt had spread to his eyes; there was no white left.

‘Sorry, love, I’ll take them out the back,’ Mum said, her voice smooth as milk.

‘I can still bloody hear them from out there!’ He spat more.

I saw a ball land on the carpet. It balanced on a carpet fur, like the ball on a seal’s nose at the zoo. I pulled away from Robby and lay down beside it. ‘Spit!’ I shouted.
‘Spit! Spit! Spit! Spit!
’

‘Don’t, Jimmy,’ Robby warned.

‘Bloody little idiot!’ Dad pushed Mum.

‘Robby, take him out the back,’ she said quickly, shoving me into Robby’s arms.

‘
Spit! Spit! Spit! Spit!
’ I shouted, all of me fast, my cylinders and cells revolving, my tubes turning, molecules colliding. ‘Spit! Spit! Spit!’ Robby tried as hard as he could to pull me away – my brother Robby who’d just turned twelve, his shoes leaving dots of mud from the field when he had run for the ball, the best on the team, the best and the fastest and the fairest, my brother! I couldn’t feel myself. I was as fast as the helicopter when you pull the string and off it flies, rotors spinning fast enough to cut off a head. I was too fast for my skin to hold. If something spins that fast, speed turns it invisible and all the invisible silent languages come at you in a rush and blow you apart, like a bomb.

Dad pushed Mum into the wall. ‘Hah!’ Her breath bounced from her as she fell back.

‘Not in front of the kids, Gavin!’ she said, fast and low. He couldn’t hear the things she wanted. He was going on, forward.

‘Look at what he did, Paula! See this?’ He pulled back the tea towel from his arm and showed her the long split with the blood turning darker, cutting the ladies in half, blood crusting around their bosoms and thighs. ‘How am I going to go back to work on Monday with this? Bloody little retard!’

I fought in Robby’s arms. ‘Bloody little retard! Bloody little retard!’ I shouted, each word heading for my dad like a rocket.

‘Gav, don’t . . . please don’t . . .’ Mum begged him.

A fire engine raced along my pathways, its siren screaming
Emergency! Emergency!
, its lights f lashing on off on off. ‘Eeeeeooooooooeeeeeooooooooooo, bloody little retard, Paula! See what he did, Paula, bloody little retard!’

Dad looked at me with a backwards light in his eyes.

‘Shush, Jimmy, shush. Robby, can’t you get him out of here?’ Mum was trying to hold my arms still, but they swung out like blades.

‘I’m trying,’ said Robby.

Mum turned to help him but I mowed her down with my arms of metal.

‘Can’t I even cut the bloody grass? Can’t I even do that?’

‘Stop it, Gav. Please . . .’ Mum’s words were broken and breathy as she tried to contain me.

‘It’s always you and the bloody kid.’

‘Let’s just leave the kids out of it. Let’s just keep it between us.’

‘Between us? Ha! That’s a bloody joke, that is.’

‘Eeeeeeeeeeeeoooooooooeeeeeeeooooooooo!’ My siren rang out, its light beaming from my holes, lighting up the room in red. ‘Keep it between us, keep it between us! What a bloody joke!’

‘For Christ’s sake, shut up! Shut up!’ Dad stepped towards Mum and slapped her on the side of her head as if it was her who’d been shouting, her who was the retard, her with blades of steel.

‘Get him out of here, Robby!’ she shouted. ‘Go!’ Then she was quiet. No more begging or pleading, as if she knew what happened next and it was too late to stop it. There was only the sounds of our bodies – skin rubbing skin, our breaths – trying to get away as if the centre was our dad and we were spinning around him but the gravity was him and it dragged us towards
him. Another slap, the same place, the same ear, and down Mum went. She never tried to stop him, she didn’t shield herself. She just let him – there was so much of her for him to choose from. Mum got up slowly, having to balance her weight.

Dad was shaking, as if the pressure was too much and he might explode. That’s why Mum offered herself. She didn’t want him in pieces all over the walls – there’d be too much to clean.

‘Fuck this.’ Dad growled. He smacked her again and then Robby got me out of the room and through the back door. He dragged me down the concrete path between the two squares of grass, under the washing line hung with sheets, past Dad’s shed. One of the boards of the back fence leaned to the side and one next to it was loose. He pushed me down and through the gap and he followed on his hands and knees.

The wetlands were made of mud and water and stiff silver grass, floating plastic and seaweed. Robby pulled me to the edge of the stream and then we sat and he put his arm around my shoulder. I breathed in one out one, and looked at the grass and the clouds and the sun half hidden and the birds on the water and I felt myself joining with the swamp. On the other side of the grass and the stream, way in the distance, the flame leapt from the refinery pipe – like the light in the sheep’s eye, it never died.

We sat there for a long time, Robby’s arm around me drawing speed and fear from my cells. The arm wasn’t too tight or too loose. Its temperature set mine to itself, cooling me from hot to warm.

The stream that ran through the middle of the swamp rose when it rained, and fell in the summer. Spoonbills and black swans, sandpipers and pelicans nested on the banks and on the
tiny islands away from the snakes. Ducks had their babies on the sides, leading them into the deep when foxes came.

‘Okay, Jimmy?’ Robby said.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay, Robby.’

Robby moved his arm, and stood. ‘Come on,’ he said.

I followed him to the trench – half there already and half made by us. We dug it deeper to catch the water. I breathed in then out, keeping both breaths the same length. The wetlands air had a potion that came from the refinery flame and slowed me down. That’s why Mum let me go; when I got home I was quieter.

We cleaned out the dirt from the fridge that lay upside down at the end of the trench, and wiped the sides. We dug and scraped and across the fields the flame blasted from the pipe without ceasing. Smoke rose and turned to cloud until there was no difference.

We built up walls to support the fridge, smoothing them so the enemy couldn’t get a foot-hold. The grass prickled our knees. The end of the sun was warm in my nostrils.

‘What are we making?’ I asked Robby.

‘A boat,’ he answered.

‘Like the
Lady Free
?’

‘Yes.’ When Robby was younger Dad took him on the
Lady Free
and they stayed away for two nights and caught fish as long as Robby. I counted the hours; I got as high as I could then began at one again. In the sitting room, beside Dad’s recliner, there was a photo of him and Robby on the deck of the
Lady Free
. They stood together and the smiles on their faces were matching. I smoothed the mud up the fridge in a boat shape, sharp at the ends and round in the middle. I stuck a shell in the side for a cyst.

Robby fished off the fridge, dangling an invisible line into the mud. I looked up into the sky and counted twenty-six pelicans, their wings outstretched as they rode the currents, their beaks telling them which way to go, storing messages from the sun and the tides. On the other side of the swamp, I saw the tank farm and the tyre factory and the LKA chemical plant where they boiled vitamin pills, and the Quality Endorsed Industrial Park Established 1979 where the steel sheds stood as big as ovals. Trains ran back and forth along the tracks between the swamp and the factories, like moving guards.

I lay on my stomach and put my ear to the ground beside the
Lady Free
so I could listen to the core of planet Earth. The core held planet Earth’s network and made the sound of
shush
-ing.

‘Shhhhhhhh . . .’ I whispered back, the core’s echo.

‘Boys! Dinner!’ Mum called from over the fence.

Robby stood and wiped his muddy hands down the front of his trousers. ‘Come on, Jimmy,’ he said.

The loose board knocked against our shoes on the way through the fence. As soon as we walked into the house through the back door I felt my cells speed up. The potion from the flame couldn’t pass through the plaster.

Later that night, when Robby and me were in bed and the lights were off, Mum came into our room.

I rolled over, eyes open. ‘Mum?’ The light shone in from the hallway. In her long white nightdress she looked like a candle.

She sighed. ‘What are you doing still awake?’ She got in beside me. I had to move over to the far edge, so that I was pressed against the wall, to make room for her. The wall was cool against my cheek and knees. Mum was as wide as my bed. She was so big
there were parts of her I’d never seen. She held on to me and counted sheep. ‘One sheep . . . two sheep . . . three sheep . . . four . . . You count too, Jimmy,’ she said. Her arm was hooked over my body. I could feel her breathing, her warmth. She held me tightly to her as if I was a sponge that could absorb the extra.

‘Five sheep . . . six sheep . . . seven . . .’ we counted together. If you look deep into the eye of a sheep you can see a light. It burns right at the back of the head and it never goes out, no matter what happens to the sheep.

‘Does anything happen to the sheep?’ I asked her.

‘Keep your voice down, you’ll wake Robby.’

‘Does it? Does anything happen to them?’ I whispered.

‘Nothing happens to them.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Jimmy, do you want to keep counting or not?’

‘Yes, keep counting,’ I whispered.

Once we were in the Holden, caught in the traffic beside a truck full of sheep, so close I could hear their hooves clacking against the boards. I could see them shuffling, pushing against each other for room. They were jammed in, one layer over another, their noses pressing against the wooden sides of the truck, tails covered in mud. What happened to those sheep? What happened to the light?

‘. . . Eight sheep . . . nine sheep . . . ten . . .’

I never liked to wake and find her gone. There was too much room, as if the bed had grown to make space for her and not shrunk back to its original. I lay awake and waited and listened. Robby breathed slow and even in his bed on the
other side. I could smell Mum’s Intensive Care left behind on the sheets.

I lined up shadows of bottle, Matchbox car, book, window, shell, bus painting and birthday card while I waited. I was at birthday card when I heard a
thump
coming from down the hall.
Thump
. Like someone falling without power or muscle or fibres, as if the power and muscle and fibres had been lost. There was nothing to hold up the body.

The particles under my skin scratched at the surface. Robby slept on, the smooth air going in then slowly out.
Thump!
again, louder this time as the powerless body tried to stand and couldn’t and fell again.

I jumped from my bed and ran to Robby’s. He moaned and moved over. I pressed as much of myself against him as I could, legs, stomach, knees. I breathed him in, he smelled of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo after it had been heated and cooked with his sweat. I lay there, shaking and listening, my whole body tuned as an ear, but there were no more sounds.

‘Jimmy,’ Robby whispered. ‘You wet the bed.’

‘Sorry, Robby. Sorry. Sorry.’ I felt the spread of wet, warm as the last of Mum’s tea, beneath us. I got out and so did he, and he pulled off the sheet in the dark and threw it under the bed. Then he pulled down my wet pyjama pants and threw them under there too. We slept on the mattress, its buttons sticking into my skin as I held on.

When I went into the kitchen the next morning Mum wasn’t there. Dad was sitting on the high stool at the island drinking his coffee, holding his arm in a bandage against his chest. He didn’t look at me. The morning after my dad drank Cutty Sark
he hung his head, as if it was too heavy for the rest of him. The weight of the Cutty Sark blocked the valves that led to Paula. Dad tried to clear the blockages with his hands and that’s what left Paula with the bruises. But if he didn’t drink the Cutty Sark, the valves inside pressed against his heart and other vitals, carrying the past through his bloodstream. The pressure built like the boiling water in the refinery pipes that led to steam and flame. It wasn’t bearable.

When the phone on the wall rang Dad left the island to answer it. ‘She’s not up yet, Anne,’ Dad said into the tiny holes of the receiver. ‘Yes, I’ll tell her.’ His voice was gruff and sung out from too much time with Merle. He put his coffee cup in the sink and took his work vest off the hook.

I was on my way into Mum’s room when Dad called me back. ‘Stay here, Jimmy, she’ll be out in a minute.’ He looked at something high-up to the side of me that only he could see.

Robby came into the kitchen. He opened the cereal cupboard and took out the cornflakes. He only made contact with the cornflakes; they shared a world that nobody else could enter.

Dad put on his jacket. ‘Righto, I’m off,’ he said to the high-up thing. Robby and me kept quiet.
Click
went the front door, and he was gone.

Mum came slowly out of her room, walking as if her feet were sore. She wore a white dress with little pink baubles on her ears. I liked to press against her blue morning gown while she drank her tea. Where was the gown? Why was she wearing the baubles? There was a coating of pale mud on her face almost the same colour as her skin. It looked as if it had been painted on. It went down her cheeks and stopped at her neck. There was the mark of a wave that had rolled in then rolled out again, leaving a line of froth, dirty and uneven.