by Tim Winton
You know from your book an eagle is a raptor, right?
A kind of bird. What hunts.
Pretty much. Well, did you know that when they do hunt, when a raptor grabs something, its talons lock up? Its claws – they kind of go on automatic. Like the osprey. It dives for fish, mostly. Imagine what it’s like when it gets hold of something too heavy to lift out of the water. I saw that once, on a documentary, a film on TV. This great big bird underwater, trying to drag itself up with a huge fish way too big to carry. It couldn’t heave itself out of the water, couldn’t even get to the surface, but couldn’t let go. It was locked on. Fighting up through the water with its wings. Like something you’ve never seen in your life. This great white bird hauling itself up, trying to fly against the ocean.
Kai blinked. Keely sensed, too late, that this was hardly bedtime fare for a child. He’d gotten carried away, florid as a souvenir tea towel.
One day, said the boy. The birds in the world will die.
What? he asked. What did you say?
In the end, said the kid. All of them, the birds. They die.
Well. Yeah. I suppose everything dies eventually.
I saw pictures. All the birds dead. On the beach, in town.
Ah, he said. Right. That. Jesus, he thought, I’m in the weeds here; this is way too close to home.
And then I knew, said the boy. One day all the birds in the world will die.
Kai, he said, trying to keep himself in order. That was lead poisoning. It was an accident. Well, actually a bad mistake. It’s just a terrible thing that happened because people were lazy and stupid.
Keely knew it was so much worse than that. But he shouldn’t be thinking about it right now. Had to let it alone for his own sake. And yet his mind had already run ahead, flashing on it, dragging him in. Esperance. Ten thousand birds killed. An entire town contaminated. Vegetable gardens, water tanks, clothing, food. Kids poisoned. Because of how easy it had become to do business in this state. There was nothing in the way of the diggers and dealers but hot air.
Look, he said too brightly. It’s over, Kai. It’s fixed.
The boy didn’t seem convinced.
This is where it begins, Keely thought, the lying to children. He had to stop thinking about this shit. Right now.
Dinosaur birds went extinct, said Kai.
What’s that? he said, tamping the tremor in his hands.
Bird dinosaurs, they went extinct.
Yes. Yes. That’s right. A long time ago.
The boy yawned.
Now it’s just bones.
Yes.
And birds will just be bones.
Well.
Extinct, he said through another yawn. Like us.
But our birds are okay, Kai. And we’re okay, too.
Keely could not believe what he was saying. He’d never lied like this in his life. And he’d broken into a sweat.
The boy slid down the pillow, pulled the sheet to his neck. Keely felt a little knee brush his hip as the kid rolled on his side and looked up with drooping lids.
Extinct, he whispered, as if tasting the word, trying it on for size.
Everything’s fine, Kai. It’s all going to be okay.
Orright, you two, said Gemma in a billow of steam. Lights out.
Keely felt the urge to ruffle the kid’s hair, to pat him reassuringly, but he didn’t dare. He felt Gemma waiting for him to leave.
Night, mate, he said on his way out.
The light clicked behind him as he went through to the living room; he thought he might slip away while he had the chance. But it felt wrong not to stay and thank Gemma for the meal. The mute TV flickered on – another bit of evening trash masquerading as current affairs. He saw his hands trembling, shoved them in the pockets of his shorts.
Gemma came out in her powder-blue tunic. She dropped a cheap pair of gym shoes on the seagrass matting and while he stood there, trying not to look at the chipped paint on her toenails, she spread a towel across the corner of the kitchen bench and set to ironing a fresh pair of school shorts.
How long’ve you been doing this? he asked, still standing.
Sometimes she dumped him. Other times I took him off her. And now I’ve had him a coupla years.
The iron swished breathily. The old fridge kicked into life.
Tough, he murmured.
Well. What can you do, eh?
You work at the place on the corner? That’s handy.
Did, she said. Now I’m up Canning Highway. They shoved me across a month ago. Bloody buses hardly ever come when I need em. Spend half me pay on taxis. It’s shit, really.
Keely was stuck for a moment. For want of something to fill the gap, he gestured at the travel posters gummed to the raw bricks of the wall. Coconut palms and sunset at Kuta. A smiling child feeding the dolphins at Monkey Mia.
Which did you prefer? he asked.
Prefer?
Which place did you like the most?
I do speak English, Tom.
Sorry.
Never been to either of them, she said dismissively. Kai found the posters at the Vinnies.
Wrongfooted, he made the neutral sound any nitwit makes stalling for time. He stared hopelessly at the clunky old Telstra phone and the notepad beside it.
Gemma turned the shorts over, sighed at a paint stain, and finished ironing them.
Listen, he said at last, surrendering to failure. Thanks for dinner.
Just chops.
It was nice.
Gemma set the iron aside and looked him up and down as if considering something. Keely thought he saw an idea retreat from her face. He took up the pencil beside the pad. It seemed that every page had a different bird on it, sketches and doodles Kai had worked on. Many of them bore no resemblance to any bird he knew, but the kid had given all his creatures wings.
I’m just writing down my number, he murmured.
We know where you are.
Right, he said, steadying himself to remember the digits. But you’re off to work, he’s here on his own. I mean, in case you’re worried.
I’m not worried.
I know it’s none of my business.
But.
I don’t mind looking in on him.
He’s fine, she said. He’s used to it now.
For a fleeting moment Keely thought he could detect a hint of regret, as if she wanted to take him up but daren’t. He wondered if it was last night, the lingering implication of a transaction. Or just pity, having seen how hopeless and awkward he was.
Well, the offer’s there.
Sad. That you didn’t have em.
Kids?
They fuck you up, anyway.
Every good thing does, doesn’t it?
She shrugged and he felt himself gently dismissed.
At the door she patted his arm. He hesitated. Then pecked her on the cheek. And pulling away, saw that it irritated her – the hesitation, or perhaps the kiss itself. She closed the door on him before he’d even turned to go.
With the laundry all done and no dinner dishes to deal with, Keely found himself at a loose end. A stroll perhaps. But he was still tenderfooted from this morning’s fugue-walk around the marina. And he hardly had the funds to entertain himself in town. Not at a pub and certainly not the bottleshop. He couldn’t afford them, not in any sense. So there was no other choice but to stay in. Which left what? Google? While he still had access. Either that or the rich tapestry of network TV. He’d given up on the Norwegian novel – couldn’t concentrate.
He should clean the flat. That’d burn an hour or so. And God knows it needed doing. But just thinking about it made him wilt.
He was tired. His brain felt scorched. Too much sun. Too much happening and too quickly. And he didn’t want to think anymore, not tonight. Being with Gemma. Her strange kid. The Esperance fiasco bringing him back to the boil. He needed to break off, cut the frigging circuit before he shorted out. Needed to calm the fuck down. His bloody heart was pelting. So shower again. Clean t
owel. Brush your teeth. Jesus, that face. Eyes like crushed strawberries.
Just paracetamol. Two. And nothing else.
And lie down. Fucking head. Like there’s sand in it. Just lie there. And go to sleep like a normal person. Sparking.
He tried a few of the relaxation exercises Harriet had gone in for. Lying back on the righteously clean pillowslip, endeavouring to ignore the slightly shrunken feel of his sunburnt face. He was tired enough – wasn’t he always tired? But getting over the edge was the objective. Once you tilted out you were alright. And there was no feeling so sweet as falling. So over half an hour he huffed and cooed himself into a swoon. And for five, maybe ten minutes he was close, giddily close, projecting, wafting out towards the purple New Age precipice, beyond which only sleep awaited. No thinking, no puzzling or raging. Just sleep. Goneness. Paddocks of sleep, forests of sleep, valleys and rivers and churning gorges of sleep.
And he was almost there, right at the cusp, when he heard it. The whimpering wall. Those cries of fear. The noise that made his arse pucker in horror. His neighbour. So clear, so close. She sounded as if someone were in the flat with her, standing over her, slavering, ready to do something unspeakable. But there was nothing he could do. She was alone in there, duking it out with herself, tormented by something that descended on her like the weather. You could feel her cringing, hiding, balling up, quietening a moment until she gathered herself, became defiant, cried out, cursing whatever it was at her shoulder, commanding it to get behind, and then retreating, finding a rhythm, falling into the grunts and chants that saved or ensnared her, poor beggar. It was horrible to hear: and there she went again, off and riffing, on a roll now, louder, more insistent, uglier, more desperate and distressing every second. Oh, Christ!
Keely sat up.
How could someone so troubled be allowed to live ten storeys in the air? How was it she hadn’t hurled herself from her balcony already? And how was it, for that matter, that he hadn’t done so himself in order to be free of her? The poor creature – why couldn’t they help her, why couldn’t they just cart her the hell away and let him sleep?
Get out! she growled. Out! Out-out-out-out-out-out-out-out!
He belted on the wall with a shoe. She fell silent a moment, as if startled by the intrusion, then she muttered darkly, cried out once, plain and shrill, and resumed the chant.
Keely got up, flailed about for the dinky iPod, and shoved the buds in his ears. He tried a bit of Delius to calm himself, but quickly discovered that the first cuckoo in spring was no match for the nutjob next door. Yelping and barking through the wall, she was more cuckoo than anything the London Philharmonic could come up with. What he needed was a fortress of noise, his own sonic Monte Cristo, but Black Sabbath seemed in poor taste in the circumstances. So he chose a bit of Captain Beefheart, despite how perversely it brought Harriet to mind. He shouldn’t be thinking about her like this. She hated Beefheart, the opaque melodies, absurd lyrics, the man’s savage, grating voice. Keely cranked it up, hoping to match madness with madness, and he blasted the poor woman out of range, cast her into a lake of fiery tumult which gave him wild relief, before the guilt set in and his head began to fizz and his thoughts returned unhelpfully to Harriet.
She needn’t have gone. They might have gotten past it eventually, outlived the catastrophe she’d brought down upon them. He could have lived with it, with what had happened; he was convinced of that. Hadn’t he forgiven her? She thought he had to be cracking up, just by saying it, but could simple forgiveness be such a threat? Apparently so. She said it frightened her when he was like this. So weird and jerkadelic, like his stupid Beefheart albums. So florid and manic. As if he thought he were a character in a Russian novel. It was creepy. It wasn’t normal.
It was no good.
He ripped the buds from his ears, lurched up off the bed with a sickening suddenness and weaved out into the living room, tormented afresh by thoughts of Harriet and her baby. The other bloke’s baby. He had to get off this jag, stop thinking about it.
So many half-clear weeks on that front and he was back to flaying himself with something he could never fix. It was unsound, unhelpful; it unhinged him and rendered him pathetic, laughable, immobile. Et cetera.
He stood at the open sliding door to watch the orange lights of container cranes strobing across the north quay. Beyond them, like a fence against the darkness, the channel markers flashed red and green without ceasing.
Gemma was right. They fuck you up. Even the ones you don’t have. Especially them.
But enough of that. He needed to be asleep, to be gone from this.
As he wrenched the knife drawer open all the matt-plastic bottles rolled away as one. He snatched up the first serious-looking container within reach and got it open and pitched a bunch into his palm. The tap water tasted metallic. And he wondered if that was how a horse tasted the bit, whether it tasted anything at all.
The phone.
Phone.
Phone.
That really was the phone ringing. So far away. So close to his head.
Waking was like clawing his way free of something dark and heavy. But he was, in the end, awake. He lay panting. The phone brayed away on the side table. He craned to see the luminous digits of the clock – 2:15. Not good. If he really was awake, then this wasn’t good. Unless it was Faith in London, forgetting the time difference; that was just an accident, that’d be harmless.
He snatched the thing up. There was only breathing.
You’re kidding me, right? You’re fucking kidding me. Who is this?
Tom?
What is this?
Tom?
Tiny, feeble, fearful voice.
This is Kai.
Kai?
Yes.
What – mate, what are you doing up? It’s the middle of the night.
Yes.
Are you okay? Keely asked, gathering himself a little. The building was quiet. Down on the docks a container hit the deck of a ship with a muffled boom.
There’s a dream, said the boy.
You had a nightmare?
It’s a dream.
Did you call your nan?
She’s busy. It’s work.
You want me to give her a call? I don’t have her mobile number.
It has to be important.
She’d want to know you’re alright, Kai. Wouldn’t she?
A dream, said the boy, is not an emergency.
Well. Okay.
It’s the only job she’s got.
I know, mate.
She has to have the job. Or the people take me.
Keely hauled himself up. He pressed his head against the bricks.
Kai, no one’s gonna take you. You want me to call your nan? I think I should.
No. You can’t.
Okay, Kai. Alright. You want to talk for a bit, until you can get back to sleep?
Yes.
That’s fine. We can talk.
Here?
We can’t just do it on the phone?
The boy was silent. Stayed silent. Keely tried to steel himself against it. He couldn’t be doing this. This would not look good. But the kid held out. Diamond drill-bit silence. Boring into him.
Okay, he said at last. Alright, Kai. I’ll be there in a moment.
Keely switched the light on, began casting about for his shorts, maybe a shirt. The wall furred and buckled slightly. He wasn’t right. Not even close.
Up at 1010 the kitchen light was on. Through the Terylene curtain he saw the wiped bench, a mug, a tin of International Roast. The curtain twitched and Kai’s face appeared. Keely gave him a goofy thumbs up and hitched his shorts woozily as the lock clunked and the door sat back. For a moment, the boy was just pale mist in the narrow gap. Keely felt himself being scrutinized, as if the kid needed to make certain it was him. Keely smiled as reassuringly as he could, given the hour. He steadied himself against the gritty wall.
You want me to help you get to sleep?
Th
e boy shook his head.
You want to talk?
Kai scratched his scalp, expressionless. Then he pulled back the door.
Keely hesitated a moment. He was reluctant to cross this threshold but he didn’t fancy standing out here in the walkway in full view at this time of the morning.
He stepped in. The flat still smelt richly of lamb fat. The boy closed the door.
What about a glass of milk?
Kai shook his head.
On the table was the battered library book on raptors. Beside it lay the pad with Keely’s number on it.
Keely sat at the table. Kai stood opposite, hands pressed against the laminated edge at the height of his bare chest. There were tiny purple anchors in the cotton of his shorty pyjamas. Dockers jarmies. And the kid had brand-new football boots. One day, he thought, one day I must take him for a kick. This season I’ll take him to a game.
You had a dream, then?
The boy nodded.
What sort of dream?
Flying, the boy murmured.
I have flying dreams, too, he said scratching his beard. I like them.
The kid looked sceptical.
What happened in your dream?
I crash, said the boy. There’s people there. With only eyes showin. And I can’t talk.
Hang on a sec. What did you crash?
Just me, said the boy.
You crash to the ground?
But there’s people there, with only eyes. All black. And just eyes. Behind them it’s … fire.
Fire. Like a crashed plane?
No.
So … what kind of fire?
Fast. Shooting.
You mean firing? Was this like a movie, Kai?
The boy rocked a moment, considering. He nodded, but without conviction.
You’re flying. You crash to the ground. And there’s people on the ground. And they only have eyes?
They talk, said Kai, eyes clouded with awe. But not proper words.
Like aliens, like space people or something?
Kai shook his head.
Then what happens?
They go away.
Where do they go?
They’re kind, I think.
Wait, Kai – how do they go? How do they leave?
The kid twisted his pyjama bottoms intently.
Everything goes away, he said. Soft.