The Curlew's Eye

by Karen Manton

  ‘Don’t go far,’ She told him.

  Under the shower, she ran the water hard on her back to shake the picture of Trapper’s cow in that truck.

  When she came out, Rex was at the back door of the shack, whining.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Greta asked.

  He followed her inside. She crossed to the front door, which was wide open. Maria’s voice drifted from the four-wheel drive. It was parked by the pizza oven. The front passenger door was ajar. No one was inside, but the dog rushed out to it, barking.

  She had the sense someone had just been here, even more so when she noticed two melons and the pigging knife on the table.

  Griffin suddenly appeared to reach inside the car and stop the tape.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asked.

  ‘Here and there.’ He sounded vague. His binoculars were around his neck. A bird guide was in his back pocket. He brought the cassette tape to her, brown ribbon trailing.

  ‘I don’t think you should play this so much,’ she said, taking the pencil she was using as a hair pin to wind the tape back on its spool. ‘It might break for good.’

  ‘I wasn’t playing it!’

  ‘Who was then?’

  He shrugged.

  Raffy’s chatter floated over from the banyan tree.

  ‘He’s with his imaginary friends,’ Griffin said.

  In the distance was the buzz of the dirt bike.

  ‘Well, I don’t know who’s picked these melons,’ she sighed.

  He left her to the mystery and wandered into the shack. She sliced one melon in half. Inside the pulp squirmed with caterpillars. Now she saw a hole bored at the end of each fruit and a dusting of black mould across their skins.

  She hurried to inspect the vine by the water tank. Stems had shrivelled, the leaves were leached of colour. When she touched it her hand was instantly covered in orange beetles with black spots. In the vegetable garden she found the same damage, ragged holes in leaves, white mould spots. She tore at the ruined plants, uprooted them and shook each one.

  ‘All this work for nothing, nothing! Nothing!’ she yelled.

  Raffy and Griffin called to her from the banyan tree’s platform. She waved, conscious they were watching her lose it, and crossed to the cabin. From there she looked back to the shack, the surrounds. Everywhere was very still. She felt sure the girl was near, watching her. Like she was creeping around waiting to bump into Joel and say, Here I am! Or coax Griffin on another walk.

  ‘I know it was you,’ she said in a low voice about the melons and the tape. ‘I know you’re there.’

  Greta went inside and sat down at the rickety desk in her bedroom. It had a mirror propped up on it. There was a time when she’d refused to look in one. She braved the truth now. Black hair, tanned skin with a tinge of sunburn, hazel eyes with a rim of green that Joel said bewitched him.

  Who are you in the end? Vivian used to ask. The question wasn’t addressed to anyone in particular, though a bitter note rang through it.

  Vivan’s old sewing scissors were by the mirror. The da-da-dada-da of the sewing machine came back to Greta, her mother’s gritted teeth, the snap of cotton. And her aunt’s pursed lips, ‘If all the money wasn’t going to those cameras you could buy the child clothes.’

  Greta picked up the scissors now. Snip. They sliced a strand of hair stinging her eyes, then dived to the hair at her neck. She found a slender, matted twist. Snip. And another. Snip, snip. She liked the sound of it.

  Half an hour later Raffy bounded in to tell her Brynn had arrived. The casual way he said it made Greta suspect the children had stolen her phone and found reception up the tree. ‘Come quick—Mum’s troppo!’

  He stared in shock at the floor. ‘There’s black feathers,’ he said and crouched to touch them.

  Brynn said nothing of the haircut at first. She looked at the uprooted plants and destroyed melon vine. ‘Yes, well,’ she sighed, ‘it’s the melons that break you.’

  She settled into her favourite chair on the verandah and lit a cigarette. ‘What’s with the sexy hairdo? Was it planned or did one of your kids find shears in the night?’

  ‘Too much of it in this heat. Can’t stand it scratching my neck.’

  ‘Ah, thought it might be the upcoming lunar eclipse, stirring us to our stranger selves.’

  A smile played across Greta’s mouth. ‘When is that? The children might like to see it.’

  ‘A week and one day. Two in the morning. Nice way to start December. Blood moon.’ Brynn exhaled her smoke and regarded the haircut again. ‘I like it. I think it suits you better.’

  ‘I’ve done it before.’ Greta’s hand ran across the new feel of it. ‘Cut it all off, number one on the clippers, when I was twelve. Gave everyone a fright. My teacher persuaded Dad I needed a shrink.’

  Brynn laughed. ‘Adults desperate for diagnoses.’

  ‘Motherless was mine.’

  ‘We’re all orphans in the end.’ Brynn was quiet with her thoughts. ‘What happened to her? She was a photographer, right?’

  ‘She left us for another world, you could say. When I was eleven.’

  ‘Accident?’

  ‘They tried to tell me that. Quicksand. A rip. But I don’t believe she was sleepwalking into the river mouth.’

  ‘That’s tough.’ Brynn drew on the cigarette. ‘Life’s tough. Some learn it sooner than others.’ She looked over to Greta. ‘When’s that husband of yours back?’

  ‘First week of December. There’s a water tank to do, bathroom tiles, painting.’

  ‘No cladding on the outside?’ asked Brynn.

  ‘No, flywire like the shack, though there’s a few fancy louvres, so the tourists know they’re in the tropics.’

  Rex nudged Greta’s leg with his nose. She tickled behind his ears.

  ‘I’m no clairvoyant,’ Brynn said, ‘but I’d say something’s eating you, girl, and it’s not pumpkin beetle.’

  Greta laughed nervously. Her fingers played with a loose twig of cane from the chair.

  ‘I’ve been thinking this for a while now. But it sounds stupid to say it out loud, you know?’

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘I keep wondering if that girl I’ve seen belongs to Joel.’

  Brynn looked at her. ‘It’s quite a question, if you’ve never asked it.’

  The dog found a ball under the chair and dropped it in Greta’s lap. She threw it for him.

  ‘Since when have you had these thoughts?’

  ‘Since the night she visited. The way she looked at Joel as if she wanted to reach out and touch him. And the way she looked at Griffin. That was the more unsettling thing. Like she was jealous of him. I think she is jealous. That Joel has these kids, looks after them, does anything for us.’

  ‘You have been brooding.’

  The dog came back with the ball.

  ‘Why don’t you ask Joel about this girl? Or Tori?’

  Greta went to find a dog bone in the fridge. She didn’t know how to ask, was the answer, or what to do with his reply. As soon as she reappeared Rexie took the bone and slunk away.

  ‘And you know something else? I always thought Joel said his sister died of burns from an accident on the highway. But the other day Trapper told the kids she died in a car fire down near the creek. Went on a joy ride with her brothers, crashed into a tree.’

  ‘Would you believe Trapper?’

  ‘The car’s there, wrapped around a trunk.’

  Brynn shook her head. ‘It’s all before my time. Ask Tori. She’ll know. What she doesn’t know she’ll make up. You’ll get a good story, if not the truth.’

  ‘Fabulous.’ Greta knew what Tori would say. Don’t go there. What you don’t know doesn’t kill you, but what you do sure can.

  A breeze swept down from the hill. The chimes tinkled softly.

  ‘Truth is, I don’t want to ask Tori or anyone else. I feel like a fool. Like I don’t know my own husband.’

  ‘Do you think I knew Henry? Not
likely. None of us ever knows anyone.’ Brynn stubbed out the cigarette with a forceful twist.

  23

  On the night of the eclipse Greta emerged from the dark room close to 1.30 a.m., leaving a new set of prints dripping along the line. The moon had begun its transformation. A reddish smudge blurred the silver light. She wished she had the right camera equipment to capture it.

  The hum of a vehicle distracted her. She listened to the engine accelerate then slow, stop and start. It was near the lake. She walked over to the firebreak to try to see it. Rexie trotted after her, whining. She hushed him so she could hear the engine more clearly. Every now and then she saw the flash of headlights. The driver was looking for something. She could hear music, like one of Joel’s tapes, and that familiar rattle jolting over the sound of the engine. When she heard the fan belt squeal she was sure it must be him, home early. But he didn’t come up the firebreak and after a while she began to wonder if something was wrong.

  She went to check the children were asleep. Rexie followed her inside the bus and curled up on Griffin’s bed. She stuck a note on the door saying she’d be back soon and closed them in together.

  She found her boots and a torch and started down the firebreak. The lake was a dark shadow. The headlights were gone but she could still hear the car further on, near the meatworks. Everywhere else was strangely quiet except for the noise of her boots. She whistled softly to comfort herself.

  At the lake she stopped to listen for the vehicle. She couldn’t hear it. She shone the light into the water. The forty-four-gallon drums, the bones and the drowned car were dark shapes. A curlew wailed. Greta shivered. The bird and the lake knew something. She could feel it in the aftermath of the bird’s cry and in the quiet breathing of the lake, the wavering reflection of the altered moon.

  The vehicle was idling.

  She took a track off to the right from Ronnie’s firebreak, certain it led to the meatworks. The tree with the Keep Out! sign loomed. A new sound penetrated the quiet. Like the distressed moan Joel had made that night he was down at the boulders. She hurried on. The torch blinked out.

  The curlew cried again, urging her forward. She could hear the car engine and the tape playing The Church’s ‘Destination’. She headed towards it and found the red ute parked between boulders near the meatworks, but no sign of Joel. The headlights beamed into the dark. She turned off the tape deck.

  ‘Joel,’ she called.

  There was no answer. The car, the bushland was empty of him. Blood was spattered along the bumper bar. Her fingers came away from it sticky.

  ‘Joel!’ she called again.

  Only the curlew answered.

  She switched off the headlights. Her mind raked through scenarios. He’d been injured. A hitchhiker had attacked him and was lurking nearby. She jostled the torch. It gave a feeble glow.

  Trying not to be heard, she walked around the meatworks, past the cattle ramp and open shed to the gap in the wall. In the torchlight she saw steps up onto the killing floor. She couldn’t see anyone inside, but there was a shuffling behind the knocking box. It could be an animal or it could be him.

  ‘Joel?’ she whispered.

  She heard another sound, a metallic ding near the coldroom. She hid in the shadows. The blood on the car unnerved her, and the state Joel might be in. She wondered if he’d hit an animal, a person even.

  A soft clink came again from the killing floor’s shadows. Greta looked there and saw the girl’s face emerge, lit by Frank’s lantern.

  ‘Elena!’

  The girl was oblivious to Greta. Instead, she approached the back wall and set the lantern on the ground. A soft light beamed across the floor to a shape inching along the wall. It was Joel.

  He didn’t notice Greta but the girl must have been clearly visible to him, illuminated by the lantern. She wore an olive green velvet dress with sleeves to the elbow and four bracelets up each arm. Blood glistened on her skin. She edged closer to Joel, whispering, and then stopped, though her left hand was held out to him. ‘Joel,’ she called softly. ‘Joel.’

  Her strange cooing travelled around the walls. Joel, Joel, Joel, his name multiplied.

  She picked up the lantern and moved forward. Her face was a mask in the soft yellow light.

  ‘Take me with you,’ she pleaded. ‘I’m begging you, Joel.’

  Her hand reached for him, nervous. He wouldn’t touch her.

  She set down the lantern roughly this time. It wobbled from left to right and almost tipped. Her left hand tugged at the bracelets on her other arm. They were stuck, embedded.

  ‘Don’t leave me, Joel,’ she sobbed. ‘Don’t.’

  Her hand worked frenziedly to shift a bracelet. She tore one over her wrist and held it out to him. ‘Take it! Give it to him. Give it!’

  She shook with the words. Her eyes stared at Joel through the O of the bracelet. Behind her the gap was a window onto the trees, the grasses, the shadows of the boiler room, the hide shed, the cattle yard. The moon was a scab in the sky. There was a new hush. On the killing floor the lantern was the only light.

  Greta heard the soft shake of feathers. The girl turned to see who or what was there.

  A piercing cry entered the room. No one moved. The cry sounded again, reverberating around the walls. The building was a dark silence. It was breathing them in.

  Outside a second stone-curlew wailed.

  The bird in the slaughterhouse took flight, long legs trailing behind its tail. Elena ducked as a wing skimmed her hair. The lantern tipped. Glass cracked, the flame was snuffed out.

  The girl was gone, taken in the slipstream of the curlew. Greta peered out to the darkened landscape. She saw no one. All she heard was the swishing of grasses.

  Joel stumbled to the gap in the wall and jumped to the ground. Greta ran after him and caught his arm.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he gasped and staggered backwards. ‘I told you not to come down here.’ He was off, walking back to the car.

  ‘Joel, you’re hurt.’

  His pace quickened. He might try to leave without her. The headlights flicked on. He was inspecting the damaged bumper bar.

  ‘What’s happened, Joel? There’s a cut on your head.’

  He touched his temple and lowered his fingers to the headlights.

  ‘I hit a wallaby.’ He spoke slowly, piecing events together. ‘I tried to find it. I thought …’ He turned to the meatworks. ‘I thought it went in there. I was trying to find it, to kill it, finish it off.’

  Greta scanned the bush for an injured animal. The landscape was turning visible again, the moon was easing out from behind its blood cloud. There was no telling where the wallaby might have dragged itself for an agonising death. She listened for it, and for Elena.

  ‘The car didn’t hit her, did it?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The girl, Joel. Elena. We saw her just now. Her arms are bleeding from those bracelets.’

  ‘There was no one else, Greta—just you!’ He sounded confused. ‘You scared the hell out of me.’

  ‘She was holding a lantern, talking to you.’

  He shook his head, dazed. ‘I saw you. I saw you with a lantern.’

  There was no point arguing. ‘Where’s Gabe?’ she asked.

  ‘At Connor’s. He’s doing another week.’

  She looked again at the bloodied bumper bar, the dent.

  ‘If I’d hit anyone I knew, Greta.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Her thoughts were scrambled.

  He dabbed the side of his head with his sleeve. She might have believed that he hadn’t seen Elena if the girl hadn’t been so close, holding out her bracelet. Give it to him. Who was him? Take me with you.

  ‘What do you want?’ Joel suddenly barked at her.

  She jumped, startled. His eyes were wild. Joel was changed; she didn’t know him. His hand smacked the bumper bar. The beam from the headlights wobbled.

  ‘There’s times I really wonder about you, Joel,’ she said slowly.r />
  ‘What times?’

  ‘I could name a few.’

  He was fully lit by the headlights and yet he was a stranger. She saw the shape of him, and that alone. He’d been drinking, she could smell it on him. But it was the head injury making trouble, she told herself.

  ‘Get in,’ she said. ‘I’ll drive us back.’

  He was silent next to her. She tried to stay calm while her mind replayed the scene in the meatworks, the girl’s desperate face, the smeared blood on her arms, Joel’s disoriented look.

  ‘God, Greta!’ he yelled out. ‘The lake!’

  She skidded to a halt. They were right near the edge of the bank. Just a red patch of earth was between them and the drop to the water. She had no idea how they’d arrived there.

  ‘Look at that,’ breathed Joel.

  Out of the shadows stepped a silver wraith, a feathered mystery. Thin and fragile. An apparition, a ghost in the headlights. Propped high on grey-silver legs, velveteen and long and gangly. And a golden eye, watching. It was poised in perfect stillness, with the lake a dark void behind and the night a vast, black mirror.

  24

  She might have convinced herself the meatworks was a dream, or a return of her fever visions, if the red ute wasn’t parked there the next morning with its dented bumper bar. And if Joel wasn’t crouched in front of it to inspect the damage.

  ‘How is it?’ she asked, frowning at the bruise and cut on his head.

  ‘Not too bad. My ears are ringing.’

  ‘The children are awake, so I can’t talk about this now.’ Her hand tapped the bumper bar.

  ‘Sorry to come back like that. Unannounced.’

  ‘You should go to the clinic after that knock to your head,’ she said, knowing he wouldn’t.

  His hand touched the nape of her neck where her hair had been.

  Raffy squealed from the verandah. Rex bounded after him. All three boys rushed to their father. He let them pummel him.

  ‘This is Rex!’ Griffin crouched by the dog, holding him back from jumping.

  All three boys fixed their eyes on Joel.

  ‘I’ll explain later,’ Greta said.

  The children ushered their father into the shack for the chaos of breakfasts, lunchboxes, a lost shoe and a split school bag.