Bird and Sugar Boy

by Sofie Laguna

  On Saturday, Dad made three piles – keep, throw out and not sure yet. All day we carried old things out of the shed and put them into one of the piles – two mattresses with springs poking out, a rusty fridge, lots of bottles from when Dad brewed beer, mouldy blankets, old toys from when I was little, tyres, pipes, suitcases that didn’t close, outdoor furniture with legs missing, and more. It was hot and lots of the stuff was dirty and wet. I wished there was only one pile – the throw out pile.

  Dad and me didn’t say anything the whole time we cleaned, even though the silent shout between us was getting louder all the time.

  My dad spends whole long bits of the day not talking – that’s normal for him. Sometimes you don’t know what he’s thinking. You don’t know if he’s happy to be so quiet, or if he feels like his words are caught inside him, like insects in a collector’s jar. Today I did know what Dad was thinking. He was angry because he had to go to the garage and work all day and be a single parent while I went to school and destroyed school property with my ruler.

  When I was carting out old stuff I started to think about my mother and if, while Dad was being quiet, was he thinking about her, or was it only me?

  I was carrying old pieces of window to the throw out pile when Dad called out to me. ‘Be bloody careful with that glass, Jamie!’ They were the only words he’d said in a while.

  ‘I am careful, Dad,’ I said, and put the glass slowly onto the throw out pile before going back for the next piece.

  ‘Leave those for me to carry,’ said Dad as I was pulling out the glass.

  ‘I said, I am careful, Dad.’ You just do what my dad says – he can make old bombs drive, he can lift up the back of a car, he has a live to ride tattoo on his arm. You do what he says.

  ‘James, I said to leave the glass alone. Didn’t you hear that?’ I kept pulling the piece of window from the pile and then I dragged it outside. ‘Put down that glass, James!’ Dad shouted.

  ‘I told you, I’m careful!’ I shouted back, but it wasn’t enough. The shout inside me was too loud now, it was making white circles turn in front of my eyes. If I could have I would’ve shouted at Mrs Naylor for peeling back my skin with her eyes, and at Sue Hill for saying I was a bad influence and at Sugar’s grandmother for watching me from the painting and thinking the same thing as Sue Hill, and Sugar for shooting through and Chris because he couldn’t breathe. I would’ve shouted at them all how much I hated them, but there was only my dad. There was only ever my dad. I threw the piece of window as hard as I could into the throw out pile. A bomb of glass sprayed everywhere, covering everything.

  ‘Jamie, I told you to leave the glass alone!’ Dad shouted. ‘Why don’t you listen? That was a stupid stupid thing to do. Didn’t you hear me telling you to be careful? Didn’t you bloody hear me? Now there’s glass everywhere! No wonder you’re driving them mad at school. You’re driving me bloody mad too.’

  ‘You’re stupid!’ I shouted at him. ‘You’re stupid! You should be careful! You wreck everything! I hate you!’ If I could have I would have kicked the whole world so hard it would’ve flown out of the universe, right out of orbit; who cares where it would’ve ended up. But there was only my dad with his long legs in front of me. I kicked my dad in the knee as hard as I could.

  ‘Ah!’ Dad shouted. ‘You little shit!’ He was limping around on the other leg now. He grabbed me by the hood of my jacket and he pushed me down the garden path and into the house. ‘Go to your room and bloody stay there!’ he said, shoving me through my bedroom door.

  I sat on the floor with more of the ball bearings pushing harder and harder up to my throat. I picked up my drawing book and pencil and drew. I didn’t look at Birds: A Field Guide for a new bird. I just started to draw without knowing what sort of bird it was going to be. I drew as fast as I could, my hand scribbling across the page faster than it did when I was digging the wings into the orange lab desk. As I drew, the ball bearings went back down deep inside. When my hand was too stiff and cramping to draw anymore, I looked at the picture that I’d made. It was a bird I’d never seen before. Wings came out of his beak, claws grew from his head, and his body was like an eagle but only the bones. He was flying straight up to the burning sun.

  I didn’t know how long I’d been in my room when Dad called from outside my door. ‘Jamie!’ I thought he was going to say again how mad he was and that I was stupid. Instead he said, ‘Dinner’s ready.’ I wasn’t hungry. Maybe if Dad had made the kind of thing that an eagle made only of bones and with wings growing out of his beak would eat I’d be hungry, but not if it was chops or sausages or spaghetti. I didn’t answer him. I stayed there sitting on the ground looking at my picture. He never made me come out. Soon it was night. I only left my room to go to the bathroom and brush my teeth. Some things you did anyway, even if a train took all your rules.

  That night I lay in bed with night thoughts coming one after another, faster and faster. Dad thought I was stupid, I made him mad, it was my fault he was a single parent in a world that wasn’t made for them. Maybe he secretly wished he could go away for three weeks with Uncle Garry on the motorbikes. Maybe he still wanted to live to ride. His tattoo didn’t say live to look after Bird, I knew that much.

  Mr Kemp said I had a rare gift and natural curiosity, but pretty soon he’d be writing a letter home to my dad saying, Your son is disturbing Mandy Allen and making the desk wobble and no wonder his best friend wants to move to Broome. Have you heard his dumb joke about sweeping in Broome? It’s really bad, Mr Burdell. You have to go to work all day in the garage while your son tells jokes as bad as that.

  And Sugar Boy had said no – he wouldn’t run away with me. Of course he wouldn’t, it was a dumb idea and it didn’t make any sense. Only someone who couldn’t stick with reality and the way things actually are could have an idea like that. I would’ve gone if he’d said yes. I would’ve been happy about it. I didn’t need things to make sense. Sugar Boy was going to Broome – how much sense did that make? Chris couldn’t get his air in – how much sense did that make? Dad’s dad lost his marbles, and cats eat birds, and there were no more Great Auks – how much sense did those things make? Why was Sugar and me getting on our bikes with backpacks full of coke and meat pies and riding to the Blue Mountains any crazier than anything else?

  The Blue Mountains! I wondered if the Blue Mountains really were blue.

  I decided to find out. I’d leave before Sugar Boy. It was my turn to put a bullet-sized hole in something.

  I turned on the light and picked up Mr Kemp’s book. I wasn’t going to do any writing on Why The Theory of Evolution Was Important for Mr Kemp, that’s for sure. Even if I wasn’t going to the Blue Mountains to stay with AP Davies, which I was, I wouldn’t have written about The Theory for Mr Kemp. I just felt like having a look at a book with an ape and a man in a suit carrying a briefcase, on the cover, with them both looking the same.

  I didn’t know Evolution would be about birds too. I saw a picture of the first-known bird. His name was Archaeopteryx. He had a full set of teeth, and claws on his wings to catch his prey or grab onto a tree. I read about the first feathers and how they were for keeping the bird warm, but then it turned out they were really good for flying too. I read how the bird learned to fly – first by leaping, then gliding and then flapping all in the same day. Charles Darwin definitely would have been a good friend of AP if he was still alive. Charles Darwin got his theory of evolution by studying finches when he went on a big boat trip to these islands called the Galápagos. The boat was called The Beagle. They should have called it The Finch. Birds: A Field Guide was full of finches. I wished I could have spent the day on the Galápagos Islands with Charles Darwin and AP looking at finches.

  I wondered what Mr Kemp would do if he knew he gave me a punishment I liked so much. I lay in bed and drew the Archaeopteryx from the Evolution book, over and over. Soon I was gliding through huge forests, catching prey in my three wing-claws and flying through the air looking at volca
noes, cliffs and waterfalls.

  I fell asleep. In my dream the Blue Mountains weren’t blue at all; they were see-through, with black-ink outlines. I watched as the Archaeopteryx flew right through the mountains, which wasn’t hard for him since they were made of nothing.

  On Sunday morning I could hear Dad banging pots round in the kitchen. It was time to make a plan. That’s what the day shows you – that you have to make sense. At nights things make their own kind of sense, but the day asks you to think straight and make a plan. I wondered if my mother had a plan when she was leaving. Did she hear Dad banging pots round in the kitchen too? Or was it my crying that made her do it? Dad said I had the loudest cry on me and that I used to wake the whole district. Maybe she heard me crying one night and said, ‘I can’t stand it another minute!’ And then after that she made her plan. She waited until Dad was at work, then she packed some clothes, some money and then she got on a train and then a plane … I didn’t want to think about that anymore. Some thoughts really got in the way of life. Thoughts like that stopped me packing something to wear on the trip and counting the money in my moneybox. So I thought about the Archaeopteryx and its bony tail and the day it learned about flying, and I thought about my plan.

  I had to get into the city. That would be easy. I could catch the train from Denham. But when? I wanted to go Monday morning, but if I wasn’t at school maybe they’d ring Dad at the garage and he’d say, ‘No, Jamie isn’t sick, Mrs Naylor. He should be there.’ I decided I’d tell Dad that Sugar invited me to stay over since he was going away to Broome soon and we wanted to do some homework together and play on the computer. It didn’t matter what I said to Dad about why I wanted to stay at Sugar’s. Dad would be glad that I was seeing him. He’d even asked me, ‘Where’s Sugar Boy, Jamie? Don’t you want to see him as much as you can before he goes?’

  I decided to catch the 4.40 express to the city via Glengray train from Denham Station on Monday afternoon. From there I’d catch another train to the Blue Mountains. I wasn’t sure where the Blue Mountains were, or even if trains went there, but I felt pretty sure they’d know that in the city. I know I could’ve checked in Dad’s street directory or in the World Atlas. I could’ve gone to the Australia section and looked for a blue mountain range on the map, but maybe I wanted the surprise of finding out as I went where the mountains were and what they looked like.

  A P Davies was going to get a big surprise when Bird turned up at his place. I’d knock on the door and when he answered, I’d say, ‘Hello, A P Davies. My name’s Bird – it really is!’ Then I’d show him my drawing book and maybe we’d start making plans for the sanctuary as soon as I arrived.

  On Sunday Dad hardly spoke to me. He asked me if I wanted to go for a drive to the tip with him, but I said no. Going to the tip with my dad is pretty good. You got to take home stuff that could get turned into something else, like machinery and car parts and piping. We made a go-cart once.

  When I told Dad that I didn’t want to go to the tip with him, he stood there staring hard at me. It was as if he’d lost something, and whatever that lost thing was he thought it might be hiding somewhere in my face.

  At least if I shot through, Dad could stop having to read letters from Denham Public about my behaviour. I know that Dad didn’t like Mr Brooks any more than I did because I’d heard him pretending to be Mr Brooks to Uncle Garry. ‘Your son, Mr Burdell, is a nuisance. Where did he learn such behaviour and could I get a cheap job done on my Lexus, please, Mr Burdell?’

  After I was gone, Dad could use my room for a parts workshop. It would be a perfect place to keep all the really small things like nuts, bolts and Phillips head screwdrivers. He could put my stuff in the back shed. Maybe one day it’d end up on the throw out pile, with the broken glass.

  Sugar wouldn’t notice I was gone because he wouldn’t be here anyway. The more I thought about it the more sense it made to go.

  I went for a bike ride to the ditch to get more of Sunday out of the way. Andrew Ryan and Dave Delluther were there doing wheelies and drinking coke. I stood and watched. I had twenty-two dollars seventy in my moneybox. I wasn’t sure how far that would take me. I’d never caught a train to the Blue Mountains before. If I packed a lot of food, then I could just spend the money on the train fare. But if I took food, it had to be the food from the very back of the cupboard that had been sitting there for ages, the food that Dad wouldn’t notice if it was gone because nobody ever went to eat it. That meant I’d be eating three-bean mix. Hopefully Mrs AP Davies would make me something delicious when I got there. ‘Hello, you must be Bird. You look hungry. Well I am the feminine influence in the home. Please come and eat a huge dinner of roast pork with crackling.’

  ‘Oi, Birdy! Where’s your psycho mate?’ Dave Delluther shouted out to me.

  ‘Dunno.’ I got on my bike and pedalled down to the tunnel to see if there was anything from the collection that I might like to take.

  It was hard not to think about Sugar Boy a lot when I was there. I don’t think I’d ever been to the tunnel without him. ‘I’m never coming back.’ I heard myself say into the quiet of Sunday. I crawled into the tunnel – it seemed darker and smaller than before. I crawled up to the collection. It was still there, as if nothing had changed, as if Sugar and me would be coming to check on it three times this week as we always did. I took the watch and the mobile phone in case AP Davies could help me get them going. I left the squashed-flat nine dollars eighty. It reminded me too much of Sugar Boy.

  I heard a noise outside. Nobody ever came here on a Sunday, or any other day. Maybe it was Jeremy Shadrow’s brother hiding from the police. I sat pressed against the wall of the tunnel. It was cold against my back. A girl was singing. It was a line from a song that the guest music teacher taught us at school. ‘A gypsy rover came over the hill, down through the valley so shady,’ sang the voice. ‘He whistled and he sang till the green woods rang…’ It was Jacky Jane! Why did she keep turning up to places where I was? Was that dumb girl following me? I didn’t want her coming to my places even if it was the last time I was ever coming here. I crawled fast back out of the tunnel to see Jacky Jane holding her red plastic bucket and looking closely at a tree trunk with her back to me while she sang, ‘Ah dee doo ah dee doo da day, ah dee doo ah dee day dee, he whistled and he sang till the green woods rang, and he won the heart of a l – a – a – ady –’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I snapped her song in half. Jacky swung round and stood blinking in the sun with her mouth open. ‘I said what are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m allowed to be here.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

  ‘I don’t have to answer your stupid question. It’s none of your business what I’m doing here. What are you doing here?’

  ‘None of your dumb bloody business!’ I said.

  ‘None of your dumb bloody business!’

  We faced each other without speaking. Jacky Jane had a long brown ponytail and it was up high with a blue bow round it. Suddenly I really wanted to ask her why she was holding the red bucket. Mr Kemp was right about my natural curiosity.

  ‘Well you can have the stupid tunnel. I don’t want it anyway!’ I said, kicking at a stone near my shoe.

  ‘Have it yourself, Bird. I was just leaving.’ She turned round and walked away. I watched her legs in her brown cord trousers as she stomped up the hill with the bucket banging against her knees. I wanted to run after her and tell her my plan. I wanted to say, What’s in the bucket? I’m leaving Denham, Jacky. I’m on my way to the Blue Mountains. I’m going to start a sanctuary. Please can you tell me what’s in the bucket? But she’d probably tell her father, the Mayor, and he’d come to the school and make a big speech about my behavioural problems. I couldn’t wait for this dumb Sunday to be over.

  On Sunday night I lay on my bed thinking about the way eagles make circles in the sky. I wondered what shapes you would make if you could draw those circle paths with a pencil.

  D
ad knocked on my door. ‘Jamie?’

  I got up and opened it. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t want any trouble from you at school tomorrow, is that clear?’

  ‘Sure, Dad.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, and turned round to go.

  ‘Hey, Dad –’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Sugar’s invited me to stay at his place tomorrow night. Is it okay if I go? We want to work on something for school together before he leaves. We’re doing a project on Broome.’

  ‘Did Sue say it was okay?’

  ‘Yeah, I spoke to her on the phone when you were at the tip.’

  ‘Okay then, it’s fine by me. I’ll work late at the garage.’

  I could hear those words that weren’t true coming out of my mouth. The sound of them was new and different, as if my voice was filled with more air. But my dad couldn’t tell. He believed my new voice. He wasn’t saying, ‘You lying little shit. You are not running away to the Blue Mountains – you are staying here with me!’ He just half smiled and said, ‘Okay then, it’s fine by me.’ Maybe it didn’t matter what anybody said. If I could tell lies like this, shooting through would be easy.

  It was Sugar Boy’s last day at school (and mine, but nobody knew that). Mrs Naylor had organised a little party for him at recess. She’d made a sugar-free cake saying Bon Voyage, Craig. The cake had to be sugar-free because of what happens if Sugar Boy eats sugar. He can’t stop running round in circles until he has to lie down with a wet flannel over his eyes and drink water. Mrs Naylor explained that Bon Voyage was French for ‘Good luck on your trip’. She should have made one for me too.