by Sofie Laguna
Dad stopped and looked at me. He put one hand on my shoulder. ‘Sugar Boy didn’t shoot through on you, Jamie. He’s your best mate; he might always be your best mate. He had to go to Broome because of his dad and his brother. His number is near the phone.’ Then he left the kitchen. I knew Dad would’ve liked to stay in the kitchen and make himself a cuppa because he’d said to himself in the car when we were almost home and the Johnny tape had played twice through, ‘Looking forward to a cuppa,’ like he always does when he’s just about home. It’s one of the few things he says on a car trip so it wasn’t something I forgot. I knew Dad was leaving the kitchen so I could have a private talk to Sugar.
‘Sugar Boy didn’t shoot through on you, Jamie.’ That’s what Dad said. I thought about what shooting through meant. Maybe shooting through was when you left someone on purpose, when you knew you didn’t have to, but you did it anyway. You made the choice and you left them behind, whether they wanted you to go or not. My mother shot through. There was no small lie I could tell myself about that. She shot through, but Sugar Boy didn’t. It wasn’t his fault Chris couldn’t get the air in. Sugar had to go with his mum and dad. Sugar’s mum and dad would probably look at Sugar’s face like it was the last and only one in the world if he was trying to jump on a moving train too. He had to go with them. He didn’t have a choice.
I looked at Sugar’s new number by the phone. It had a lot of nines in it. I’d never thought of just being able to call a number with a few extra nines in it and get Sugar on the other end. I never thought that it might be that easy. I still could hardly believe it. So I rang.
‘Hello.’ It was Chris, Sugar’s little brother.
‘Hello, Chris. It’s Bird.’
‘Bird! Sugar! Sugar, it’s for you! It’s for you! It’s Birdy!’ he screamed so loud it hurt my ear. My hand felt hot and sweaty on the phone. ‘Hey, Bird.’ It was still Chris on the phone.
‘Yeah?’
‘Broome sux,’ he said, and then it was Sugar Boy.
‘Bird?’
‘Hi, Sugar.’
‘Your dad said you tried to stop a train with your bare hands.’
‘Yeah. Sort of.’
‘If I’d been there we would’ve stopped it for sure.’
Me and Sugar talked about a few things and then Sugar said, ‘There’s a good river for fishing here, Bird. You’re really going to like it.’
After I got off the phone I sat at the kitchen bench on the stool and thought about what he had said. ‘You’re really going to like it.’ I didn’t think that I could actually ever get to Broome, that I could see where Sugar Boy lived now. As I was sitting there I’d written Sugar Boy’s new number with all the nines in it on my plaster cast.
I walked outside and looked up at the sky. The setting sun made it pink with orange, yellow and grey mixed in. It was like I’d never seen the sky with a setting sun before. Dad was there; he was already looking at it.
I couldn’t look at birds anymore. I didn’t know if they were my friends or not. I didn’t know if they could help me. I didn’t have Birds: A Field Guide by AP Davies and I didn’t have my sketchbook. Whoever found my backpack I hope they liked three-bean mix and birds. Dad said I could take some time off school if I wanted. Without birds I didn’t know really what to do or why I was Bird. Maybe I should tell Sugar Boy to call me James now; I wasn’t sure.
Dad still looked worried a lot and was watching everything I ate at dinner. He kept offering me more corn, more chops, more salad, more noodles. I was pretty hungry too. I wasn’t gone for as long as it takes the short-tailed shearwater to cross the Pacific, but I felt like I’d lost half my body weight. I’d left some of myself at Central-Main Station, and some on the bus to Bayden Street, some at Richmond Station platform four and definitely some at The Grill – Eat In or Takeaway.
‘You sure you’re ready to go back to school today?’ Dad shoved an apple and a ham roll into a new backpack.
‘Yeah, I’m ready.’
‘Well, I’ve got to pick up a fuel pump on the other side of town, so I’ll drive you.’
‘You don’t have to, Dad.’
‘It’s on the way.’
It was Mrs Naylor’s class. She didn’t take any extra notice of me. I was glad about that. Maybe I thought she was going to make a special announcement: ‘Ah! Here is James! He has decided to grace us with his presence!’ Sometimes she says that if you’re late back to class. But she didn’t say anything. She just carried on with talk about climate changes in Iceland and how a graph was an effective way to look at change in a single glance.
Our eyes only met once and those nail eyes said, I’m really glad you made it back, and my behavioural-problem eyes said, Thank you.
Everybody asked about my arm in the plaster cast. I said, ‘Well, maybe I over-calculated. I thought I could stop a moving train with my bare arms.’
Then it was science with Mr Kemp. We’d been looking at all the different parts that make up a plant: from the leaves that soak up the light, to the roots that go deep into the soil for nutrients. I thought about drawing plants. About how some plants would take a long time and others would feel like they were drawing themselves. At the end of the class I walked over to Mr Kemp. He smiled at me. ‘What’s up, James?’
I felt nervous. I always do when I talk to a teacher by myself. I hadn’t practised what I was going to ask and here I was about to ask it.
‘Mr Kemp, have you heard of a book called Birds: A Field Guide?’ I couldn’t say AP’s name out loud. I don’t know why.
‘Well, there’s a few really good birding books in this country that I’ve used. Do you mean the Adam Davies guide? The one with the sunbird on the cover?’
Adam Davies. Was that AP’s name? I never thought of AP being an ordinary person with an ordinary name like Adam. ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘It’s definitely one of the better ones. But there’s been new species of birds discovered since that was published. Even in this area. We’ll go on a field trip, if you like. I love bird watching.’ He began to pack up his things. As he picked up his case I noticed the dry mud from his boots had fallen off on the ground around them. ‘I don’t get to do it nearly enough. Do you have that book, James, the one you mentioned?’
‘No, no I don’t.’
‘Well, I can lend you a much more up-to-date guide, if you’re interested.’
‘Yeah.’ The yeah didn’t really mean anything because I didn’t feel anything about birds right now. I just needed to ask Mr Kemp about the book.
‘Anything else you need to know?’
I smiled at Mr Kemp. It was the biggest smile that had ever come out of me to a teacher. ‘Not right now.’
‘Good to have you back, kiddo. We’ve got a lot of good stuff to get through over the next few weeks. More evolution with Master Darwin. He had plenty to say about birds too. You’re going to love it.’
Mr Kemp and me walked out of the lab together.
It was free reading time in the library class. There was something I needed to do in the reference section and it wasn’t look at Illustrated Birds of the World. I had my first drawings of the magpie that I did when I was eight in my arms. I had a lot of others too – from when I was younger right up to now when the drawings were starting to look more like birds than just messy wing-shaped things.
Jacky Jane was there, sitting on the floor with her legs crossed. My heart beat hard in my chest. I could see Jacky’s socks where her cords were pulling up. The socks were pale orange and one had a tiny hole. She had the frog book by Deborah Dibley Ph.D open in her lap. I saw a picture of a frog with yellow stripes down its feet and black eyes. Jacky looked up at me with a quick breath when I walked in. I took the drawings out of my bag – a magpie, a thrush and a sparrow fell onto the floor, sliding towards Jacky Jane’s crossed legs.
I took a deep breath. ‘I did them,’ I told her.
Jacky looked at the drawings on the floor around her. Then she looked back up at me. She pointed at
the sparrow. ‘I like that one,’ she said. The black-eyed frog watched us from the open book on her lap.
‘What do you put in the bucket?’ I asked her.
Jacky looked down and put her finger over the tiny hole in her pale orange sock. Then she said, not looking up, ‘What bucket?’
‘The red one you carry sometimes.’ She knew which bucket.
Jacky waited a second and then she said, ‘I just … I just … collect things, small things.’ She looked up at me again. ‘I’ve got a special shelf at home.’ I smiled at her and she did one back, and then the lunch song played and we walked off to our groups.
It wasn’t my longest conversation with a girl because that was with Elizabeth in the hospital when we talked about the unicorns, but it was the one I’d think about the most.
Dad was waiting for me in the WB when I walked through the school gates at the end of the day. He was resting his arm against the open window and I could see his live to ride tattoo. Him and Johnny were singing very loudly along with the didgeridoo – Sing out! Cockatoo is flying, Like our dreams across the sky. Sing out! Sing out! No longer held in chains, We have our dreams… When I got in the car, Dad turned down the volume, looked at me and smiled. ‘Jamie,’ he said, ‘I checked our bank accounts,’ (I don’t have one) ‘and I think we can fly you up to Broome in the holidays to see that bad-influence mate of yours.’
A couple of weeks later, Dad, Animal, Animal’s new girlfriend, Michelle, and Carby, Lena, Uncle Garry and me went camping at the point. We sat on the shore in camping chairs and some of the guys fished and Animal, Lena and me played cards and kicked the footy. Uncle Garry caught a salmon.
Back at the campsite, as the sun was going down behind the trees, I saw tiny flickers of bright red moving between the branches. ‘Shhh,’ I said. ‘Everybody stop for a minute.’
Animal and Lena stopped tying up the hammock. Dad stopped building the fire. Carby and Michelle stopped talking, and Uncle Garry stopped measuring the size of his salmon.
‘Come on, beautiful-firetail, come on!’ I whispered. The firetail burst through the branches into the campsite. Her tail shone red above her black belly. Pale blue eye-rings circled her eyes. ‘It’s a beautiful-firetail,’ I said. Everybody watched as the tiny coloured bird flew around us. She whistled to her mate and, from somewhere in the trees, her mate whistled back and their whistling song floated up and out and filled the world.
When she had flown away, I could feel Dad looking at me.
After dinner I went to the ute and found an old Auto Weekly with muddy footprints across the cover, on the passenger-seat floor. ‘Can I have this, Dad?’
‘Sure, James. What for?’
‘You’ll see.’
I picked up some warm coal that had rolled out of the fire, then I sat close to the flames for the light to show me what I was doing, and I drew the pair of beautiful-firetails flying across the open pages of the Auto Weekly.
When we got home, Dad stuck it on the fridge.
THE WAY THINGS ACTUALLY ARE:
Sugar Boy is my best friend
Magpies protect their babies from dogs in the park
Dad can lift a whole car up and make toasted ham sandwiches (not at the same time)
In Denmark advanced bird experts have saved the golden eagle from extinction
Dad’s bought me a ticket to Broome
I am in a plane now, on the way to see my best friend. As the plane lifts off the ground, my wings lift too. This time I’m really flying.
About the Author
Sofie Laguna was born in 1968 in Sydney. She studied to be a lawyer, but after deciding law was not for her, she trained as an actor. Sofie is now an author, actor and playwright.
Her books have been named Honour Books and Notable Books in the Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards and have been shortlisted in the Queensland Premier’s Awards. She has been published in the US and the UK and in translation in Europe and Asia. Her picture book with Andrew McLean, On Our Way to the Beach was included in the White Ravens 2005 annual selection of outstanding international children’s books by the International Youth Library (Associated Project of UNESCO). Her other books include My Yellow Blanky, Too Loud Lily, Surviving Aunt Marsha, Bad Buster and Big Ned’s Bushwalk.
She would like to thank Richard and Sue Walsh, Laura Harris, Michelle Madden, Kim Kane, Trudy White, Tony Wilson, Gail Jones, Joanna Wilkinson and Art Omi International Arts Center, America.
Sofie knows about the importance of best friends, birds and motorbikes.