WildGame

by Margo Lanagan

  ‘How come you haven’t bled to death? That’s what I’d like to know.’ Macka couldn’t see any cuts or scratches on the animal’s body, and neither the blanket nor her school jumper was stained. The jumper still held the smell of the animal’s fear, though—a piercing, salty, wild smell, not particularly pleasant. Macka sniffed her hands, and they smelt of it too.

  ‘’Scuse me while I change out of these ugly old things.’ She stripped off her uniform, tossing it onto a big heap of dirty clothes in a corner, and put on jeans, a black skivvy and an old white sloppy joe. The animal watched. It lifted its head attentively when she started brushing her hair and the static crackled under the brush, but apart from that it didn’t move.

  ‘You’re pretty cool, aren’t you?’ Macka said, looking at it in the mirror. On an impulse she crossed the room and turned off the light, and the animal’s body shed a red-brown glow, almost bright enough to read by, that flickered like a television screen. It moved its head to look at her, and its edges glittered. ‘Pretty nice to look at, too,’ she added grudgingly. ‘Better than a cat, or a hamster or something. You hungry?’

  She felt in her schoolbag and brought out a day-old sandwich, which she laid under the animal’s nose. In the white light from its chest the bread looked tired and dry, and the escaping shreds of lettuce definitely were past their best. The animal sniffed at it but made no move to try it.

  ‘Still full of nut, hey? I’ll get you a drink of water later. Right now I’ll have to go. If Dad knows I’m here they’ll want me to go downstairs and rage.’ She rolled her eyes.

  ‘Will you be okay, d’you think?’ She stood up and waited indecisively by the bed. ‘Don’t make a mess on my bed or anything, will you? And don’t get out—I don’t think you’d fit under the door, but …’ She stopped, feeling a bit dumb for standing in the dark talking to an animal, especially one she wasn’t sure was even real. ‘Well,’ she said with a sigh, ‘if you can walk through walls, there’s not much I can do about it.’

  She scooped up the laundry pile, kicked away the sandshoe and levered the door open with the toe of her Doc Marten. She stood for a minute watching the curled-up animal, its head now lying on its front paws, its dark-bright eyes drifting closed. She shook her head, muttered ‘Unreal’, and went out, pulling the door closed behind her.

  3 IN HIDING

  ‘Can I believe my eyes?’ Phil goggled at her from the foot of the stairs as she came down.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ said Macka, peering round the pile of washing.

  ‘You, Louise Mackenzie Rudge, are actually bringing your dirty clothes downstairs? What have we done to deserve this?’

  ‘Oh shut up, rat-face. I’m allowed to have an end-of-term clean-out, aren’t I?’

  ‘Ah, so that’s it,’ said Phil with a smug smile. ‘Wouldn’t have anything to do with distracting attention from one of these, would it?’ He pulled a white card out of his pocket, with the school crest printed on one side, and flapped it in her face as she pushed past him and headed for the laundry.

  ‘Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know,’ said Macka loudly, disliking intensely that gleeful over-achiever’s look in his eyes.

  ‘You don’t want to know about my seven As?’ he bellowed joyfully after her, hanging over the stair rail. ‘You don’t want to know about Sourpuss Sanchez calling me “a promising and mature student of history”? You don’t want to—’

  ‘No, I don’t!’ Macka yelled back, a horrible feeling of helpless jealousy rising in her throat. How could the little jerk be so insensitive? She supposed he’d come straight home and blathered on about how wonderful he was, and that all the kerfuffle in the front room was a kind of celebration of his genius. Didn’t he see how that would make her look, sloping in the back door with a report card stacked with Cs, and teachers’ comments that ranged from lukewarm to downright dismissive? ‘I fail to see why Louise is pursuing the Social Consciousness elective, as she appears to have none to speak of.’ Poor old Mrs Farrow—everyone knew S.C. was a soft option. All you had to do was keep a scrap-book on a ‘significant issue’, and even if you didn’t, all you got was a serious talking-to from doddery old Mrs F.

  And that Macka could handle—her whole life, it sometimes seemed, had been a succession of serious talking-tos. She spent a lot of time at school looking sorry for herself while a well-meaning teacher ear-blasted her about pulling up her socks, keeping her options open, thinking of the future, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The words swept past without touching her, like those diagrams of air flowing over and under an aeroplane wing. The less she responded, she always figured, the sooner it would be over.

  Macka dumped the washing into the already overflowing laundry basket and went to the kitchen to make herself a sandwich. She tried not to think, as she generously slathered on peanut butter and some of the cherry jam her grandma had sent down from the farm, of the nuts her animal-self had recently eaten—beside them, human food seemed crude and bland. She rinsed the butter knife in the sink when she’d finished, tied up the bread-bag, wiped the counter clean of crumbs and gave a contemptuous sniff at the sight of the dirty dishes from last night’s dinner piled up on the table.

  ‘Pigs,’ she said, and stumped up the hall to the front room.

  ‘And here she is—the lady of the house!’ Propped up against the mantelpiece, a man with a black beard and a red-and-black checked woollen shirt raised a can of beer at her.

  ‘Well, thanks very much, Ross. I thought I might have some claim to that title,’ Macka’s mother said mildly from her corner of the tumbledown couch. ‘How are you, Lou?’

  ‘Okay. Hi, Ross, hullo Clinton—’ Macka nodded at the other Canadian, who was crouched in front of the fire smoking a clove cigarette. The air in the room was soupy with its smoke, as well as fumes from the ineffectual fire and from Ross’s sweet-smelling pipe tobacco. Macka’s eyes stung and her breath caught in her throat.

  She bent over and kissed her mother at the parting of her glossy red-brown hair, and sat on the floor by the couch, where her mother might reach across and scratch her head if she felt inclined.

  ‘Have a good day?’ her mum said, doing just that.

  ‘Mmm, no,’ said Macka, suddenly not caring about anything but the feel of warm fingers moving about on her scalp.

  Her father was lying along the couch with his head in her mother’s lap. His voice rumbled just behind Macka’s head. ‘I presume that means you didn’t get almost-straight As, as your genius brother did.’

  ‘Something like that,’ Macka said. School seemed very distant and unimportant all of a sudden—heavens, she didn’t even have to think about it for the next two weeks. Bliss.

  ‘Oh, well—’ Her father turned his head and kissed the back of Macka’s neck. He hadn’t shaved for a few days, and the kiss was positively painful with bristles. ‘We love you anyway.’

  ‘That’s nice. So you don’t mind if I turn out to be a total loser like you two?’ Macka looked up at gigantic Ross, who went suddenly still, obviously thinking she’d gone too far. She grinned as her father said drowsily, ‘Not at all, not at all. Feel free to join us in our sloth and indolence.’

  ‘Sure, whatever that means.’

  Ross relaxed, but he still looked a bit troubled. He shifted position against the mantelpiece and glanced out the windows, which were chilly and black with the early-descended evening.

  ‘What were you all talking about before? I heard you whooping it up when I came in a while ago.’ Macka wanted to get the conversation going again so that she could eat her sandwich.

  ‘Oh, basically Phil and Ross were being dreary about how we’re all going to be dead in ten years from starvation and lack of oxygen and your dad and I were representing the “eat, drink and be merry” school of thought,’ said her mother, leaning her head back on a cushion and looking drily up at Ross.

  Macka took a bite of sandwich and said through it, ‘You a greenie, Ross?’ in a rather insolent tone.
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  ‘You’re not keen on “greenies”, Louise?’ Ross said carefully.

  ‘Oh, they’re okay, I s’pose,’ said Macka, backing down immediately in the face of the slight challenge in his voice. He looked down at her politely, his gaze indicating that he expected her to continue. ‘Just—oh, they never seem to do anything really, just publicity stunts.’

  He scratched his beard, searching for words, but Macka continued, once she’d swallowed her mouthful of sandwich. ‘I mean, like, when those warships come into the harbour and that, you see them in their kayaks in front of the ships and waving their banners and getting arrested, but it’s too late then for everyone to be saying “Hey, let’s keep out nuclear warships!” The ship’s there, and getting some greenie drowned isn’t going to stop other ships coming in.’

  ‘So you’re saying that they should act earlier, that they should, say, get into government and make the rules in the first place?’ said Ross, in an eager, interested way that made Macka feel as if she were about to be pounced on.

  ‘Sure. Well, I guess so. I guess they’re already starting to do that a bit, aren’t they? Like in Tasmania they’re in.’ Macka was bored with the conversation—she hoped her dad would chip in and take over while she finished her sandwich in peace.

  Ross persisted. ‘But while they’re making their way up the ladder to the places where the real power is—well, some of it, anyway; I’m sure big business has a greater say ultimately than politicians and governments—don’t you think it makes sense for environmentalists to try to win support for their cause, to show the public where the mistakes are being made? Don’t you think that’s a legitimate pursuit?’

  Macka shrugged, rather dismissively. ‘I suppose so.’ It made her nervous when people used words like ‘legitimate’ on her, which she only half-understood. And when people gave her that sharp, questioning look Ross was giving her now, that seemed to say, ‘Come on, you can do better than that.’

  ‘It’s no good, Ross, you won’t get at us through our kids,’ said Macka’s mum genially. ‘Phil’s too young and Macka’s just not interested in that kind of thing.’

  ‘I’ve never met a teenager yet who wasn’t interested in her own survival,’ retorted Ross. There was a little silence. ‘And that’s what it boils down to in the end. If not her survival, then her children’s, or their children’s.’

  Macka could tell by her father’s faraway voice that he had shut his eyes. ‘God forbid,’ he said.

  ‘There isn’t something Ross knows that we should, is there Lou?’ said her mother teasingly.

  ‘Don’t be disgusting,’ Macka said in annoyance, and her mum giggled.

  Macka was a bit embarrassed for Ross, being all serious-minded around her parents. Didn’t he know how they just drifted through life, living and letting live, vaguely on the lookout for fun? Conversations about the state of the world made them bored and uncomfortable; Macka had seen it millions of times, their polite listening and then their trying to throw in comments that would end what they called the ‘heavy’ talk, preferably with a joke so that the perpetrators wouldn’t feel put down.

  Ross should know, Macka thought with a bitter little grin to herself, that as a visitor from their past his role was to regale her mum and dad with stories about people they knew and places they’d been, leaving them room to chip in with their own reminiscences. Macka’s parents weren’t all that old—her mum was thirty-five and her dad a bit older—but they were like some dozy old couple in a geriatrics’ home. Their favourite occupation was chewing over things that had happened in the past, one memory setting off the next.

  And to Macka most of the memories had a familiar ring. Someone always drank too much or smoked too much and did some outrageously funny thing like going to the shops without any clothes on, or driving into a farm dam. Hilarious. Her parents and their visitors could pass night after night helpless with laughter over such adventures, while Macka tossed angrily in her bed, muttering about how stupid they all were.

  ‘Gotta call Vinnie,’ said Macka, scrambling up and escaping into the hall, which was cold and dark after the stuffy, firelit room. She knew her hair and clothes would already stink of smoke, and she breathed deeply and shook her head to clear it from her lungs and brain. Then she unplugged the phone and sprinted upstairs with it. After quietly peeking around her bedroom door to check that the animal was still there, a glowing red circle on her bed, she ducked into her parents’ room, where there was a second outlet for the telephone, and closed the door behind her.

  Vinnie himself answered, as he usually did. His mother’s English wasn’t all that marvellous, and she didn’t like the idea of having to talk to strangers in her own home.

  ‘Oh hi, Macka,’ he said in a doleful voice. ‘How are things at your place?’

  ‘Oh, okay. Little Brother came home with umpteen As, so everyone’s feeling pretty pleased with themselves.’

  ‘What did your folks say about your marks, then?’

  ‘They haven’t seen them yet. But they’ve sort of already told me they don’t give a stuff.’

  Vinnie groaned. ‘Geez, you’re so lucky, Macka. My mum was halfway down the street meeting me, busting to know what I got. My cousin got home early and was bragging about how good he’d gone and of course my auntie had to call up everyone in the family and let them know, so Mum needed some ammunition to get back at her.’

  ‘Oops!’ Macka said sympathetically.

  ‘I know; she didn’t get much from me. She got really mad at me, said I was letting her family down and all that garbage. You know, because my cousin’s already decided he’s going to go to uni and do law, can you believe it, she reckons I’m just useless for not wanting to rush out and be a doctor or Prime Minister or something.’

  ‘Geez, what a bore.’

  ‘You’re telling me! So anyway, the bottom line is, next term I have to come straight home from school every afternoon and do my homework—and if I haven’t got homework I’ve got to sit around reading to catch up on whatever I’ve missed out on this year.’

  ‘You poor thing! So no more VideoZone.’

  ‘Only on weekends and holidays. Doesn’t it stink?’

  ‘It sure does.’ But the mention of VideoZone made Macka want to hurry through the condolences. ‘Hey, Vinnie, something happened at VideoZone today. I’ve got to tell you.’

  ‘What, you killed the Jeeper-Creeper?’

  ‘Nothing that boring, mate. But you’ve got to promise not to tell anyone about it, ‘cause they’ll think you’re completely crazy.’

  ‘Okay. Hey,’ Vinnie’s voice went quiet and fearful. ‘You didn’t buy anything off the Head Boys, did you?’

  ‘No!’ Macka growled with great scorn. ‘What do you think I am, suicidal? Anyway, what happened was, I played that new game.’

  ‘Wasn’t it busted?’

  ‘Yep, and what’s more, I don’t think it was even plugged in. But it must run on some kind of battery, because I got a game, no problems.’

  ‘So what does it do?’ Vinnie already sounded faintly bored.

  ‘It gave me an animal.’

  ‘What, like a prize?’

  Macka could tell Vinnie was thinking of the stuffed animals you won on Skill-tester. ‘No, a real live animal. Like, living, breathing. A kind of little kangaroo-thing—well, quite big, actually. Quite heavy. I had to carry it under my jumper to keep it quiet. I think it was pretty terrified.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it was,’ Vinnie said with phony sympathy.

  ‘Vinnie, I’m serious! This really happened! Tell me, why would I bother to make it up?’

  ‘I don’t know, to cheer yourself up or something, take your mind off how terrible your marks are.’

  ‘Crikey, who cares about that? It’s the start of the holidays; I couldn’t care less about my marks!’

  ‘Lucky you,’ Vinnie said dully.

  ‘Look, if you don’t believe me, come round and have a look for yourself.’

  ‘This i
s some kind of trick, isn’t it? You’ll jump me somewhere along the way or something—you and your brother’ve cooked up some horrible joke.’

  ‘Geez, talk about paranoid!’ Macka flopped back on her parents’ bed, then sat up again. ‘Okay, I’ll bring it over and show you, then.’

  ‘Oh, don’t do that. This place doesn’t, um, feel very nice right now.’

  ‘Is your mum still mad?’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t come here if you didn’t like being glared at like you were some kind of criminal …’ Macka could hear Vinnie glance over his shoulder to check whether his mother was listening in.

  ‘Look, you’ve got to see this creature. I don’t know what to do with it. Can’t we go to your room and get away from her?’

  ‘I guess so … hey, is this for real? You’re not kidding me, are you?’

  ‘No, honest. Cross my heart, and … I don’t know what else to say to convince you! You have to see this thing.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll come straight after tea.’ His voice dropped. ‘Can you hear my tea being made?’

  Macka made out a lot of metallic crashing in the background. ‘Boy, she does sound mad,’ she said, awestruck.

  ‘She is,’ answered Vinnie with a slightly hysterical giggle. ‘See you around seven, okay?’

  Vinnie arrived pink-faced and breathless, having run all the way from Erskineville. The party in the front room was in full swing, a few more of Macka’s parents’ friends having dropped by. They were all generating enough heat to warrant opening a window, and smoke, light, music and high-volume talk poured out into the cemented-over front garden. Vinnie couldn’t make his knocking heard above the din, so he pushed the door open and went in uninvited.

  ‘Is Louise in?’ he yelled across the room to Macka’s mother, Macka’s real name feeling weird and unfamiliar to say.

  ‘Hi, Vinnie. Yeah, she’s upstairs, I think. Go on up. But knock first,’ she added, ‘she’s pretty territorial these days.’