Bird and Sugar Boy

by Sofie Laguna

  ‘You can’t sleep here, mate! You’ll have to find somewhere else to sleep.’ I opened my eyes, and a man in a green uniform wearing a hat was standing over me. He was chewing gum. When he spoke his breath made a warm minty wind in my face. What was he talking about? Had I been sleeping? Wasn’t I on an escalator on the way to follow my plan? What was this man standing over me with a hat on his head talking about?

  ‘I’m not sleeping,’ I said back to him. I was lying down, though, that was true. I don’t know how that happened. Last time I remembered, I was on my way out over the Pacific keeping away from the sharks. Something was wrong.

  ‘Get up. You can’t stay here,’ the man said. I pulled myself up. I was sore all over. The man looked worried then. ‘How old are you? Haven’t you got a home to go to?’

  Some questions – you don’t really know if they’re meant to be answered. Like when Mrs Naylor says, ‘Who do you think you’re talking to?’ Or when Mr Rogers shouts, ‘What do you think you’re doing, lad?’ I wasn’t sure if this man’s questions were that kind, or whether he really wanted answers. Maybe you needed to be a certain age to be here at nights, and if you weren’t that age you should be at home. There are a lot of places you have to be a certain age to be in, and most of these were night places, like The Hideout in Denham, or The Angel Bar and Bistro in Denham West. Maybe Central-Main was like one of those places at night. I didn’t know. I was knowing less and less ever since I left Denham, which was a long time ago.

  I decided not to answer that hat-wearing man at all. I decided to run.

  I ran along the platform and up the escalator. I heard the man shouting behind me. ‘Stop!’ That was another thing I was getting used to since I left Denham. ‘Stop!’ I wondered if a lot of people said that to my mother when she was on her way. If they did she never heard them, or I’d have more than the smell of wool when it’s wet.

  Someone was running behind me. I turned round and it was the man in the green uniform chasing after me. He wasn’t going to catch me. The whole world could try, but not one of them could catch me. I was Bird, unrivalled like the eagle. I had determination as well as natural curiosity. If my mother could do it, I could too.

  I ran down a long road with walls all round it, past signs with numbers and names, then I ran under a big sign saying Country and Interstate Trains. I thought about A P Davies and I knew somehow that the prevailing winds had blown me to the right place. I couldn’t run much more. When I turned round, the man who was chasing me was gone.

  I saw a small box like the one that Doctor Who travels through time in, only it wasn’t blue and it had windows. The door was open and I swung inside. There was a chair and a computer screen and a magazine. I crouched down and hid behind the door to get my breath back and review. Like Mr Kemp says, ‘Always review your plan before you proceed.’ I heard the robot voice saying, ‘The train to Blue Springs, leaving platform eighteen in nine minutes.’

  Blue Springs! It all came back to me – my Blue Mountains–A P Davies plan! I knew where I was going. And here was a train to Blue Springs. Springs weren’t mountains, but you could find a spring in a mountain. I’ve seen pictures of mountain springs in the Himalayas on the back page of Illustrated Birds of the World. The ibisbill flock to drink there. And these springs that this train was going to in nine minutes were blue and that was enough for me. Nine minutes and I’d be on my way! Sometimes things were too perfect.

  I would just hide for a couple of minutes until I wasn’t puffing or nearly vomiting so much, and then platform eighteen, Blue Springs, here I come! I closed my eyes and I thought about the ibisbill drinking at the spring in the Himalayan Mountains. The ibisbill has a long hooked beak and it flies at night. It lays its eggs in a nest surrounded by stones and it feeds on small grubs it finds in those Himalayan hills. I leaned up against the wall of the booth and soon I was flying through the night sky, the moon was out and I could see blue springs beneath me. I was on my way down to take a drink …

  ‘What are you doing? You’re not allowed in here!’ It was another ticket checker in another green uniform. This one could have been the same man chasing me along the tunnel or the one checking tickets when I first got to Central-Main. They all looked at me the same way. They all told me to get out, to run, to stop sleeping when I wasn’t sleeping. That’s why I was so tired. What was wrong with taking a little rest anyway? Why did all the rules have to say don’t go here and don’t go there and don’t lean up against the wall of an empty booth even though you’re not stealing anything or trying to use the computer or even read the magazine.

  The man leaned down. He was going to grab me and put me in the juvenile delinquents’ jail where you couldn’t ever see a bird because there were no windows, only wire. I blinked and I was the white-bellied sea eagle. AP Davies says that birds-of-prey need strongly hooked powerful bills for tearing the flesh of their victim. This ticket checker’s hand was the flesh of my victim. As he reached for me, I tore the flesh off his hand with my strongly hooked and powerful bill.

  He shouted and pulled his hand away. That was my chance! I flew from his booth towards the train on platform eighteen, with the man following close behind. I saw a sign that said platform sixteen, another one that said seventeen so the next one would be eighteen. I raced up the stairs in the direction of the arrow. When I got to the top, there was no train! I didn’t know how long I’d been in the booth or how long there was to go until the next Blue Springs train came, but there was no train waiting for me now and that ticket checker was behind me. He was shouting something I couldn’t hear properly, but as he got closer I could understand him. ‘Hey! You’re the kid! You’re the kid they’re looking for. You’re him!’ Was I the kid they were looking for? Was I the criminal they were going to lock up in wire?

  The train on platform eighteen was gone, but the tracks were still there. I’d be the only one brave enough to swoop down onto those tracks and cross over to another train. No ticket checker with a rule book would dare to follow me. I was Bird, unrivalled like the eagle.

  Did my mother run this fast? Did she have to swoop onto tracks this way with the whole world saying, You’re that lady! You’re her!

  I spread my wings. I saw the words BEWARE GAP WHEN BOARDING, then I flew off the platform and onto the criss-crossing tracks. I heard a whistle blowing and then as I crossed the different sets of tracks I was changing into bird after bird. I was an owl, then a hawk, then a pelican. All these birds fly at different speeds and heights. I was stumbling and tripping. How could I be stumbling when I was flying?

  I had to keep going. Isn’t that what a short-tailed shearwater said to himself when he was above the ocean and he could see those sharks snapping and swishing in hungry circles beneath him? When he could see their grey fins and the water foaming up as they circled, waiting for him to drop because he was too tired, too lost, too upset and missing his best friend so much and wondering all the time what had he done to make his mother shoot through? No matter how tired he was, didn’t he have to say to himself over and over, ‘I have to keep going. I just have to keep going and I will get there.’?

  I saw two trains. They were going in different directions – which one was going to Blue Springs? I didn’t know. I heard men behind me. I heard whistles blowing, and people coming from all directions, some in blue uniforms, some in green uniforms and other men too, with beards. Those men with beards were calling to me, ‘Jamie, stop! Get off the tracks. Get off the tracks! Jamie! No! No!’

  Did I know those big bearded men? They knew me: they were calling my name. I did know them, but from a million years ago, when the Archaeopteryx was the only bird. Now I was living a different life where I could hardly recognise them. I was flying through a new world in fast motion, where I was changing every minute.

  The prevailing winds blew me towards one of the trains and I flew beside it calling screech screech screech, the call of the eagle, caw caw caw, the song of the raven, hoot hoot hoot, the cry of the owl. I was a b
ird now – all of my boy self gone. I was every bird that ever was: the Archaeopteryx, the sparrow, the sunbird and the albatross. I was all feathers – no human bone or blood or mind.

  The people were coming, but at last I was shooting through! I spread my wings and I flew, and as I flew, I fell, and one of my wings snapped. The pain was like a bullet going through me. I opened my eyes and I’d shot through into the arms of a man. I could see his beard, his belly, his face covered in thick grey beard hair. It was my Uncle Garry. I saw my father running towards me, looking at my face as though it was the one important face in the world. Another train raced past, coming between me and my father and then the pain in my wing went through my whole body. I heard Sugar Boy shout, Goodbye, Bird! I smelled the smell of wool when it’s wet, and then the world turned black.

  When I woke up I was lying in a bed in a white room. The curtains were white, the walls were white, my sheets, blankets and bed were all white. I didn’t know where I was. I looked through a window beside my bed and I saw rain falling and grey tree branches. I wriggled around a bit and felt my stiff arm. It was white too. It was in plaster. I felt slow and sleepy, and even just a small wriggle in the white bed hurt me. My head was thumping like it had a heart inside it.

  I looked around me and saw other beds. In one of them was a girl, reading. She had a long red plait, and her book had a unicorn on the cover. Two of the other beds were empty, but one looked like someone might be coming back because the sheets and blankets were pulled down and there was an orange juice on a tray beside the bed. The girl with the plait looked up from her book, at me. ‘You were lost,’ she said, ‘but you got found. You could’ve been run over by a train. You’re in Denham North Hospital. You came in last night with a bump on your head and a broken arm.’ Then she went back to her book like she’d given me all the news I’d needed and her book was more interesting.

  My dad walked in to the room. He was wet, maybe from that rain falling so heavily outside. His eyes looked red and sore. His face was as white as the sheets and walls of this room, and under his eyes were dark half-moon shapes. As soon as I saw him all the ball bearings that I hoped might have rolled away down the gutter in that lane in the city were back in my throat.

  My dad looked down at me. I thought he was going to say, Jamie, I told you to stick with reality. I told you it’s the way things actually are. I warned you about those big dreams.

  He came down, he sat on the bed and he leaned forward. It made the heart in my head thump harder. Again Dad was looking at me like my face was the one important thing – more important than Burdell’s Auto Repairs, than cricket, than Uncle Garry, than getting Mr Renley’s car fixed by Tuesday, than making a crust. The sleeves of his jumper were pushed up and I saw the faded live to ride tattoo with the hairs of his arm around it. I saw the back of his hands with the grease marks from fixing all the cars that nobody else could fix. He put his arms around me and squeezed the tightest anyone ever has. I smelled petrol and wet hair. ‘James,’ Dad said.

  The ball bearings came out then, rolling up from my guts, past my throat and into the white room, one after another across the hospital floor. I think some rolled up and out of Dad too. ‘James,’ he said again. My head was pressed into where his shoulder and his neck made a curve; the wet wool from his jumper prickled my eyes, and I breathed in and I smelled the smell of wool when it’s wet.

  The night my mother left she was walking with me, holding me in the rain and rocking me. I was wrapped up in her jumper – we were both getting wet. I was very small. She was crying and saying, ‘How could you have come to me? I’m not ready! He’s readier than I am. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

  That was it – that was the smell of wool when it’s wet and I remembered with my nose, eyes and mouth squashed into where the neck and shoulder of my father made a curve.

  Then I remembered my mother’s face. Her eyes were blue and they had very small lines at the edges, like the lines between the petals of a flower. The lines were there from a smile that she was making. She had a big mouth and a dark ponytail and her nose was small. It was only the flash of a face – my mother’s face – but I wouldn’t forget.

  I pulled back from Dad. ‘Mum shot through,’ I said. I could speak. There were no more ball bearings left in me and I could speak.

  He looked at me, then he shook his head and said, ‘She made the biggest mistake of her life leaving you, James. You’re the best thing …’ They didn’t look like easy things for Dad to say. He’s not a big talker and he doesn’t cry in movies or tell you his thoughts. But he kept going. ‘You – you saved my life. You’re why I’m here, James. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I wish I could be both for you. I wish I could do it better.’

  I felt important – as if I’d thrown my drowning dad a life-buoy in a stormy ocean, as if I’d been flying the helicopter that air-lifted him up out of a sea full of sharks. And I’m glad that I remembered about the wool when it’s wet. It wasn’t fun to remember – like remembering fishing at the point or jumping through waves on Uncle Garry’s back – but a hole that was there inside me suddenly filled with a picture, and words and a face with blue eyes and flower lines.

  Uncle Garry, Lena, Carby and Animal came into the room. The empty bed with the orange juice beside it was filled by another girl now. She was very little and she had just woken up. A man and a lady came in to visit the girl with the red plait and the unicorn book. The room was very full now. Lena grabbed me and started hugging me. She was crying.

  ‘Jeez, you gave us a fright, mate! What happened?’ Uncle Garry asked me.

  ‘He was trying to shoot through on me,’ my dad turned and said to him.

  ‘Mate, we know too many big ugly hairy blokes to let you get away with a thing like that.’ Uncle Garry smiled. Between them there was a lot of hair, but I’d never thought of them as ugly. ‘We got the whole gang out looking for you,’ he said. ‘We know blokes from one end of the country to the other!’

  ‘And the city,’ said Animal.

  ‘Where were you going, Jamie? Do you mind me asking?’ Uncle Garry asked.

  ‘He was trying to get to Broome so he could be there when Sugar got off the plane. Didn’t you figure that out? It was a mark of his friendship.’ Lena looked at me and wiped at her eyes. A mark of my friendship. Did friendship make marks? Could the mark of a friendship be wiped away or was it there to stay like a scar, and did that mean it hurt when you got it?

  I didn’t feel like telling Lena that I was trying to get to mountains that glowed blue, where AP Davies lived. That made about as much sense as trying to fly to Broome up the tracks from Central-Main. It made more sense just to lie here and feel her hand on my arm and see Dad sitting close, looking into my face like I’d just saved his life all over again, and to have Uncle Garry, Animal and Carby standing round the bed, so big and hairy but not like giants, not like giants at all.

  The girl with the plait’s name was Elizabeth. I knew because we talked a bit that day and she told me her name and a bit about the unicorn on the cover of her book. She said she liked unicorns, even though she knew they weren’t real. They were mythical. She read out the back cover of her book – This mythical tale of adventure where a unicorn saves a world threatened by the dark side of technology. She was older than me and she said she started reading earlier than any kid in her class. That conversation was longer, maybe, than any conversation I’d had with a girl so far. I didn’t mind it, either. It wasn’t like Sugar Boy conversations, but I didn’t mind it.

  I could go home with Dad that same afternoon. I only had mild concussion from where I’d fallen when I thought I could fly right onto a moving train. They kept me in overnight to make sure I made a rapid recovery. My arm was broken, though. It would have to be in a plaster cast for six weeks. But it wasn’t my drawing arm.

  In the ute on the way home, Dad played his Johnny Murra tape. Dad saw Johnny Murra playing when he went on a motorbike ride with Uncle Garry round Tassie, before
I was even born. Johnny’s been one of his favourites since then because there’s didgeridoo in his music. Our ute’s a done-up WB, which means it’s very old and was around before CD players were invented, and Dad likes it better that way. The problem is it means we listen to the same music over and over because nobody makes tapes anymore.

  Today it was Johnny singing Promise. Dad played this tape a lot. Since I was a little kid. Dad and I sang along together. When you made your promise to me, Wind blew through the blue gums shining, The river ran high, The golden wattle was in full bloom. I’d never sung it before so I was surprised that I knew every word and I could sing along with Johnny. I’d never heard Dad sing along before, either, and he knew every word too. My plaster-cast wrist rested on the open window of the door and the wind blew in and a bit of light rain. You have kept your promise to me, And the golden wattle blooms again, It blooms again, it blooms again…

  When we were getting out of the car, Dad said, ‘Jamie, Sugar Boy called.’ He said it the same way he might say, Jamie, there’s apple juice in the fridge. He was trying to make me think that he didn’t know how big those words were. He was trying to be careful with me, because he knew talking about Sugar Boy hurt. Some things are like that – you never want anyone else to talk about them because as soon as they do you get a sore feeling. Like when anybody might say, for example, Where’s your mother, James? Or like now, talking about Sugar Boy – the words get in and hurt.

  ‘The Hills have arrived in Broome. Why don’t you give Sugar a call.’

  ‘Maybe later,’ I said.

  ‘Jamie, I reckon you should call him now. He’ll be waiting.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe later,’ I said again.