WildGame

by Margo Lanagan

Ol laughed and put his arm around her shoulders in one of those quick hugs he always timed so well. ‘Well, what d’you reckon? Should I bother asking her, or should I just get someone through the student employment office at the uni?’

  Phil was noisily organising a bowl of cornflakes for himself. ‘Don’t bother,’ he said with undisguised bitterness. ‘Mum doesn’t want to work. It’s against her religion.’

  Ol regarded him for a minute, then looked at Macka. ‘Lou?’

  You’re the only person who ever seriously asks for my opinion, Macka thought, with a surge of gratitude. She looked away to hide her pleasure, dumped an oily salad bowl into the sink and said, ‘Ask her. You might be right, she might be dying for something to do, even if it is a bit dreary to start with.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ol. ‘I will ask her, I think.’

  When everything was washed and dried and put away, Ol put the kettle on and ducked around to the shop for a litre of milk, a packet of tea and the newspapers. He brewed up a giant pot and settled himself at the kitchen table.

  ‘You’ve got a long wait yet,’ warned Phil.

  ‘That’s okay. I’ve got nothing better to do this morning. Cuppa tea?’ he offered.

  Macka ate some toast and had some tea—black and stewed, the way Ol liked it. Then she ambled upstairs to her room, which was so tidy now it looked empty and unfriendly. For a second Macka thought, with mixed panic and relief, that the animal had gone—but it was casting about on the floor behind her bed. Macka had the feeling it was in the last stages of a careful examination of the room. She lay across the bed and looked down at it.

  ‘It’s okay, you know. Nothing can get you here—it’s all under cover. So unless you’re scared of cockroaches …’

  The animal began loping back and forth between Macka’s desk and her bedside table, its front paws held together like an anxious old lady clutching a handbag. At each end of its run, it swung around without moving its head, just springing from the haunches. Macka tried to read its eyes, but they seemed expressionless. Back and forth it went, making its own kind of rhythm—thump, thump, thump, swing, thump, thump, thump, swing.

  ‘You’re creepy,’ she said. ‘You’re like someone in a prison cell, pacing up and down.’ She pushed a foot out into its path, but the animal merely jumped over it, barely changing its stride.

  The park was filling up with dogs and their walkers, couples bringing rugs and the papers, older people walking very slowly, keeping to the paths. ‘I could take you for a walk out there if there was no one else around, if it’s exercise you want, that is. Or do you just want to go home?’ she said guiltily, hearing Vinnie’s voice: ‘You have to at least try!’

  She picked up the two Polaroid photos on her desk and stood staring at them without seeing them, while a thought formed in her head. Ol. He was really a snake expert, but he knew about other types of animals as well. Macka had a few dim old memories of him taking her and Phil into the bush at the back of his property, when he lived on the south coast. He seemed to flush out creatures from under every rock, out of every hollow log. She’d watched some little fieldmouse-type thing nestle trustingly in his hand as he talked, and wondered whether he had magic powers.

  A little warning voice sounded in her head as she took the photos downstairs, but Macka’s curiosity was too great. She laid the pictures side by side on the newspaper right under Ol’s nose.

  He lowered his mug of tea slowly, then seemed to go very still as he examined them. The warning voice in Macka’s head said ‘I told you so’, and a horrible feeling began to stir up the stewed tea she’d swallowed.

  Ol’s silence went on. He rubbed a hand over his freshly-shaven jaw, scratched the top of his head, tapped his nose a couple of times, then picked up the photos by their very edges and looked them over closely again. Macka pulled out a chair and sat down, feeling as if she were in the principal’s office, waiting for a serious talking-to.

  Ol looked at her in a distracted sort of way, then turned the pictures over and scanned the backs of them, frowning. When he spoke, it was in a funny voice, light and casual. Probably too casual, Macka decided. ‘Who took these?’ he said, without meeting her eye.

  ‘Friend of mine,’ Macka said edgily. In the pause that followed she could hear the faint, regular thumping of the animal as it hopped back and forth across the floorboards overhead.

  ‘This friend, urn, owns this animal?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘Does he have a licence to keep endangered animals?’ Ol’s voice was very quiet.

  ‘Dunno. Prob’ly,’ said Macka. ‘D’you know what it is, then?’

  Ol looked at her steadily. ‘You mean your friend doesn’t know?’

  Macka looked back at him, her mouth slightly open, not knowing what to say.

  ‘Because if he doesn’t,’ said Ol with a spark in his eye, ‘he shouldn’t have the animal in his possession.’

  ‘Why, what is it?’ Macka tried to sound ultra-casual.

  ‘If I’m right,’ Ol said slowly, scrutinising the two photos again closely, ‘it’s a black-faced rat-kangaroo, Caloprymnus coronatus. Not a well-known little number. In fact, the only two specimens known to science happen to be at the laboratory of my old mate Razz Hart at Sydney Uni.’

  ‘Razz? What sort of a name is that?’ said Macka, trying to hide her nervousness.

  ‘A corruption of Roland. We’ve known each other since school. Which is one reason, among many, why I wouldn’t dream of not letting him know about your friend’s little pet here.’ Ol looked at her searchingly, and Macka folded her arms and clutched her elbows, wondering what the heck she was going to do.

  ‘Where does it live, this rat-kangaroo?’ she asked, stalling.

  ‘Spinifex country. Razz got his two in the Pilbara in WA. He went on a field trip specially to find them, ‘cause everyone thought the little buggers were extinct. He’ll be very … interested, shall we say, to know that another specimen’s found its way to Sydney. I assume it’s in Sydney?’

  Macka nodded dumbly. Ol grinned.

  ‘From the looks of you, Lou, this guy shouldn’t have the animal. I think you’d better tell me who he is.’

  ‘I can’t. I said I wouldn’t.’ Thump, thump, thump, thump went the black-faced rat-kangaroo upstairs.

  ‘Well, showing these photos to me isn’t exactly keeping it a secret, is it?’ Ol said gently.

  Macka looked at the table. ‘I just thought you might be able to identify it, that’s all.’

  There was another pause. When Ol looked at her like that, Macka felt as if she’d been chained to the chair with a spotlight glaring into her eyes. She nearly, nearly told him, but when she started rehearsing the lines in her head they sounded too ridiculous. The truth about the animal was too weird to be believed. Jumped out of a video game, Lou? Sure, it happens every day of the week. Pull the other one, why don’t you?

  Ol, watching her face as she struggled, finally turned off the spotlight. He took a last look at the photos and handed them back to her.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I can’t force you to tell me. But you and your friend should think about what you’re doing. This animal could be a female, in which case Razz could start a breeding programme that could save the entire species from going down the tubing. Your friend could be personally responsible for saving a species, or he could singlehandedly wipe out its chances for survival. He doesn’t seem to know what he’s got hold of, so chances are he doesn’t know how to feed or care for the thing. What he’s doing is cruel, probably illegal, and definitely dangerous for the species. If it’s a female, and if he gives it to Razz, he’ll be doing the conservation cause a big favour. Even if he can just tell us where he got it—’ Ol couldn’t keep a pleading note out of his voice ‘—it’d help. Any rackets in endangered wildlife should be bloody well stamped out, for the sake of the animals!’

  Macka looked cowed. Ol drew in a deep breath. ‘Sorry, I’m lecturing you. You just tell whoever’s got this anim
al to have a good think about it.’ He sat back and picked up the newspaper, frowning as he tried to find his place.

  For a moment Macka sat watching him, her mind blank with embarrassment. Then she snatched up the photos and fled up to her room.

  5 SPRUNG!

  For the next couple of hours Macka felt about as rotten as she knew how. She felt like pacing up and down the room with the rat-kangaroo. She was scared to leave the thing and go out, but its thump-thump was getting to her; her room was a cage, a trap, a place where she didn’t belong.

  Below her in the kitchen she could hear the grownups’ voices to-ing and fro-ing, Ol’s matter-of-fact and brisk, her mum’s a bit defensive and doubtful, her dad’s interjecting a joke here and there to break up any awkwardness. Tea mugs clumped on the table, spoons tinkled inside them, and every now and then there was a sharp exclamation from the toaster.

  Macka lay flat on her back on the bed, looking up at the greenish-white ceiling without seeing it. She wished people would stop nagging her. She wished she’d never shown Vinnie the rat-kangaroo. He was like a bull terrier when he got an idea between his teeth; he’d lock his jaws, and die rather than let go. Now he wouldn’t let her rest until she’d done something, preferably taken the animal back to VideoZone and somehow stuffed it back into the machine. He acted as if she’d stolen it, for heaven’s sake, not as if it had thrown itself at her. She’d been trying to protect it, and first Vinnie, and now Ol, were carrying on as if she were trying to harm it on purpose.

  The voices down below grew in number and volume as Ross and Clinton drifted in, groaning about their sore heads. Well, at least no one would hear the rat-kangaroo thumping, Macka thought. She rolled over. It was like watching a looped videotape played over and over again. There was even a point—there, when it turned at the bedside table—where the image glitched, skipped a frame or something, jerked into the next jump.

  ‘Is it hunger that’s doing that to you?’ she asked hopefully. ‘Will you end up just wearing down and fading away if I can’t feed you?’ How long would it take—days? months?

  ‘Chances are he doesn’t know how to feed or care for the thing.’ Ol’s sensible voice echoed in her head. ‘What he’s doing is cruel, probably illegal.’ Could she be hauled into court for cruelty to a video animal? Should she hand the rat-kangaroo over to Ol and Razz Hart? But what would be the point? If it didn’t eat real food then there was no way it’d mate with real rat-kangaroos. And any old scientist would be able to spot it for the fake it was, and then the awkward questions’d start, and they’d pack Macka off to a madhouse before she knew what had happened.

  ‘Oh, god,’ said Macka, covering her face with her hands. ‘What’ll I do?’

  Down in the kitchen there was much scraping of chairs and clattering of plates. Macka listened tensely to Ol’s cheerful farewells. ‘No worries—think it over and give us a call Monday,’ she heard him say to her mum. Then came the sound she dreaded, Ol’s footsteps on the stairs.

  Wildly she grabbed the rat-kangaroo and shoved it under her bed. Its long hindfoot flailed and scratched her inner wrist. ‘Yeow!’ She dropped the edge of the quilt, praying that the darkness under the bed would keep the animal still and silent. Ol rapped on the door, and she jumped up guiltily. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Lou? I’m just going.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll …’ Macka opened the door a crack. Ol gave her a close look. ‘I’ll see you later then, hey?’ she said, trying to crinkle up her face with a smile.

  ‘Sure,’ said Ol, but he didn’t move to go. His eyes fell to the carpet at her feet, and Macka looked down to see three fresh drops of blood soaking into the carpet.

  ‘Oh, I did cut myself, then!’ She clutched her wrist. ‘Just tidying up. Whacked my arm on the bed-end when you knocked.’

  ‘Give us a look, Lou. That looks bad.’ Ol stepped into the room as she stepped back, the blood welling out through her fingers.

  ‘Honestly,’ she said, hearing her voice go shrill, ‘it hardly hurts at all!’

  ‘Come on, don’t panic. Just give me a look.’ Ol took her arm and unlatched her fingers from the wound. Her wrist and hands were slimy with the blood, but Macka, looking closely, could see that it flowed not in fat, round drops, but in a stream of tiny crimson squares that gave the illusion of round drops.

  ‘It’s not my blood,’ she said with a sigh of relief. The pain, too, had something unreal about it—the gash looked deep but the pain was only superficial—the tingle or sting of a tiny scratch, or a shock of static electricity.

  ‘Of course it’s your blood,’ said Ol, with an alarmed look at her face. ‘It’s spurting everywhere. You must have hit an artery. It was no bed-end that did this. What are you up to, Lou?’ He pulled off a pillowcase, folded it into a pad and pressed it onto her wrist. ‘Hold that there,’ he commanded, grabbing her elbow and trying to steer her out the door. Macka resisted.

  ‘No, no, Ol. Listen, it’s not real! It’s just a game—’

  ‘You slash your wrists and you tell me it’s a game?

  What’s the prize—free tickets to the next world?’

  ‘What’s going on up there?’ Macka’s mum called from the bottom of the stairs.

  ‘Nothing!’ Macka called out, dropping the bandage and putting her hand across Ol’s mouth. He shook his head to free it, but Macka hissed ‘Shut up and keep still!’ so fiercely that his anger changed to puzzlement and he stopped fighting. Macka kicked the bedroom door shut.

  ‘Look!’ she said, pointing to the carpet, where the three drops of blood were beginning to shimmer and lose their colour. ‘Look!’ She waved the pillowcase in his face, the pseudo-blood a red blur that sat on the surface like a plastic transfer. The wound on her wrist was already browning and beginning to close, and there was no sign of the spilled blood on her hands.

  Ol looked, and his puzzled expression grew. ‘What is it, some kind of party trick?’ he said.

  Macka nodded. That was as good an explanation as any. ‘Just a game,’ she said heavily.

  Ol looked at her face, which was pale and showed no trace of amusement. ‘A scary kind of game, if you ask me,’ he said. He was still all keyed up for an emergency, his heart pumping fast, his blood full of adrenalin.

  ‘Yeah. Sorry,’ said Macka.

  The door opened and her mum stuck her head in. ‘Excuse me, but what’s—pooh! What’s that awful smell, Lou? Have you been letting off fireworks in here?’

  ‘Experimenting with magic tricks,’ said Ol lightly, though his eyes met Macka’s with a sombre look. ‘I was sucked in myself, for a minute.’

  ‘It’s foul. Smells like you’ve got a tom-cat cooped up in here.’ She stepped into the room and looked around. Her gaze, and Ol’s with it, rested on the outspread newspaper, with its water-bowl, apple and untouched sandwich.

  ‘Game’s up, I think, Lou,’ said Ol softly.

  Macka had once had a cat, a grizzled old tom called Wombat. In his last years she had ferried him to and from the vet’s in a special cage, which since his death had been sitting out in the back shed with Phil’s old BMX bike and a tacky orange lounge suite that had come with the house.

  Macka sat on her bed, the black-faced rat-kangaroo on her lap, while her mum went downstairs to fetch the cage. Ol stood awkwardly by the door, absently rubbing the place where the bloodspots had been with the toe of his boot. Macka didn’t look at him; she couldn’t stand to see the way his face had closed against her, like the doors of a train she’d just missed.

  She stroked the rat-kangaroo from head to tail-tip, dreamily. They’ve got no idea about you, she thought. They think they’re two responsible adults taking control of the situation, when in fact they’re just stuffing things up even more.

  She’d tried to explain. ‘Can’t you see? Look at her! She’s just an illusion! Can’t you see the little squares?’

  Desperation had made her babble—she’d almost laughed to hear herself.

  ‘It is a female, then!’ Ol had said, u
nable to keep the excitement off his face.

  ‘Yes, but she’s not real, just like that blood wasn’t real!’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ her mum had said. ‘That thing’s as real as the nose on your face. And talking of noses, open the window and let some of the stink out. This room needs fumigating, Lou! How long have you had that creature in here?’

  ‘Only overnight.’

  ‘Fleas and ticks and god-knows-what could have come in here with it! Honestly, Lou, I thought you were getting to be a bit more sensible lately.’

  When her mum got back with Wombat’s cage, Ol lined the bottom of it with newspaper. ‘Okay, just pop her in there, Lou,’ he said, without meeting Macka’s eyes. Bastard, she thought. Traitor.

  The rat-kangaroo didn’t struggle as Macka carefully placed her in the cage. She hunched down, looking nervous and vulnerable, as Ol fastened the catch. ‘I think she’d be happier with a cloth over the cage,’ said Macka.

  ‘Well, we haven’t got a cloth,’ said Macka’s mum crossly. She was still getting over the shock of seeing that rat-thing peeping out from under Lou’s bed. She crossed the room, flung open the window and turned to face them. ‘Get it out of here, Ol. I’ll take care of Lou.’

  ‘It’s okay, Trish. The animal’s safe, that’s what matters most.’

  No it isn’t, Macka thought, watching helplessly as he took the cage to the door.

  ‘And she’ll be in good hands, Lou,’ he added, almost apologetically. ‘It’ll be a lot safer for her than being out in the wild, and certainly better than a bedroom in Camperdown.’

  Macka glared at him one last time. What did he know?

  The door closed behind him and Macka sat down on the bed. She turned and met her mother’s eyes, noting the dark hollows of a hangover underneath them and the lips pressed together to keep back a flood of angry words. Macka’s shoulders sagged; so she was going to be blasted again!

  ‘Sorry,’ she said hopelessly. To start explaining would only make things worse; in the end, the presence of the rat-kangaroo was simply inexplicable.