Ghost Bird

by Lisa Fuller

  My breath rushes out.

  Into that awful angry space I can’t help but say what’s driving me. Something I’m not even sure of has been pressing harder and harder, the surety of it is grinding its way into my skull. I whisper into the window I am hunching against, so close that the glass fogs with my breath. Tangible evidence of a feeling I’ve been too terrified to give voice to until now.

  ‘We’re running out of time.’

  I tell her everything. And my super-mouthy cousin says not one word in response. Guilt for how I spoke to her tries to fill the quiet, but I won’t let it. My reasons are important. We drive that way for a good bit until I realise a fatal flaw in my plan – I have no idea where the Potters’ place is other than a general sort of direction. I feel like a total idiot asking but there’s nothing else to be done.

  ‘Umm, Sam? Do you know where we’re goin?’

  Rhi’s snort of disgust gets ignored. Sam flicks a glance at me and there might’ve been a slight lip twitch.

  ‘Dad goes out tordonin near there sometimes, but Mum won’t let me. Says she doesn’t want me out there at night. But we’ve been out to drop stuff off and that for im so I know the way. But are you sure …’

  I know what he’s asking. If we really want to go not just to Potters’ but out to the worst part of it. I nod and turn to stare out the window again. Silence descends again as we turn off the paved road and onto dirt.

  The land is like most others around here – calf-high grass that’s so brown it probably will poke through all your clothes and scratch you ten ways to Sunday. The cleared paddocks are mostly empty, just a few groups of cattle here and there, not looking that healthy. Whatever trees there are stand silent and alone, tiny remnants of what once would’ve been pure bush. It didn’t used to be this bare. They cleared it for the cattle, sure, but not like this. Ever since the government said property owners had to stop chopping down trees, then gave them a few years to get used to the idea, the property owners have been going insane. Poisoning whole areas for no other reason than they could before that new law came in. You could drive anywhere around here and see the mass graves of gums and ironbarks, their bodies stretched out into neat piles to be torched later.

  Something inside me hurts every time I see those plumes of smoke rise above the town or drive through a haze on the road. Mum and Dad grew up on separate stations around here and they both talked about the magic of the scrub. The food, the creatures, the hunting. I can picture the little animals that call the scrub home, their bodies lying unmourned and forgotten among all that flame and inside I cry. For them and what we are losing. Every time.

  It makes no sense, this mass slaughter. The scientist in me is equally appalled. I’m only sixteen and I know about soil erosion and habitat loss. White people are supposed to be better educated. So why do they keep doing this?

  I feel the tears building. Shaking my head I pull myself back into the car. I should’ve been freaking out. I don’t know this place and I sure as hell don’t know where I am. A Miller is driving me to God knows where. Instead of looking for escape routes I’m just staring out the window trying not to think of Laney.

  We bump up to a gate. Jumping out I run over and swing it open for the car, pulling it shut and taking extra care to latch it tight. The Potters might be pricks but I’m not, and no decent country kid would leave a gate to swing open. I get back in the car and we continue on, finding our way onto a road that’s a couple of ruts through long grass. I grab the panic handle and hold on tight to keep myself from bouncing around too much. This ‘road’ and the gate is how you know you’ve passed from council land onto private property. Once upon a time the shire had been filled to the brim with rich property owners that would’ve paid for their own roadwork, but that was back in Nan and Pop’s day when it was all dirt anyway. When the money they didn’t have to pay their slaves went in their back pockets.

  Like most places around here this one is hilly. You can’t see much but those open graveyards where trees should stand. We’re headed straight for the base of a mountain. I’ve never seen it before but I don’t need to ask which one it is. At least here the trees aren’t totally decimated, rising up around us like sentries. I’m not sure whether they’re there to protect or to warn, but the closer we get to that hill, the more freaked out I’m feeling. The track comes to a little open area where you can see people have done U-turns. The end of the line for us too, because from here and beyond the trees, the mountain towers before us. Sam pulls over and stops.

  With the engine off the silence feels oppressive.

  ‘I’ve never been out here without Mum and Dad before,’ Sam murmurs.

  ‘I think this is close to where Ty said they parked,’ Rhi’s tiny voice comes over the back seat.

  A sense of dread is building. I have to escape it.

  Stepping out of the car, I fight the urge to hug myself. The foreboding is rolling down from the hills. Part of me wants nothing to do with this, just back out now, cry foul and be the little kid trusting the adults to deal with it. My strong conviction is deserting me. That annoying inner voice keeps asking – what do we even hope to achieve out here? We’ve driven out to a place we’ve been warned never to go on the whim of a woman who’s so psychologically damaged she regularly loses touch with reality. Plus two thieves, who were so bad at it they got caught. And to do what? Stand by a car and look around?

  I hear Sam’s door open and close. Rhi hasn’t moved, other than to wind down her window. All the doubts and questions inside me are diving over her face. The urge to get back in the car is intense.

  ‘Tace.’ Sam’s voice comes from across the top of the car. He’s looking at me with a steady faith. ‘Aunty said we had to be here. So just be here.’

  I used to have that kind of faith in Nan. Unshakeable. Having that disappear had destroyed the bedrock of confidence I’d had inside, the core of who I was went out the window and I had to find something to replace it. Science is logical. If I can hypothesise it, prove its existence through experiments, it is true. My logical mind is telling me clearly that I’ve been operating on instinct and I need to stop this headlong rush forwards and think.

  ‘What if she’s wrong?’ I blurt out.

  ‘If ya didn’t believe her, then what are we doin ere?’ I thought he’d be angry, but he just seems confused. I don’t blame him, I am too. I’d pushed to be here. But now there’s no one to fight with, I have to listen to my own doubts.

  ‘Tace,’ Rhi asks through the window. ‘Let’s just leave, ay? This place don’t feel right.’

  I take a breath and shove it down where the things I can’t deal with go.

  ‘We’re ere now, might as well look around.’

  ‘Tace.’ I hear the fear in her voice and smile reassuringly. I’ve been such a bitch to her and Rhi doesn’t deserve it. Not really … not most of the time … not this time anyway.

  ‘You don’t have to come, Rhi. We won’t be long.’

  Looking at Sam I raise an eyebrow. ‘Which way you reckon?’

  ‘Homestead’s that way.’ He points east. ‘From what Dad says it should be a fair ways.’

  ‘So they’d ave cut that way?’ The mountain leers at us from my left as I face the way he’s pointing. I can feel the relief pouring off me at just the idea of not walking closer to it.

  He shakes his head. ‘She’s your twin. You tell me.’

  God I wish he hadn’t said that.

  My head wants me to walk towards the house, search the ground, anything but what my gut was saying. Somehow even facing the Potters seems less scary.

  I snort at myself in disgust. Science says there isn’t anything out here scarier than a dingo, or emus with chicks … maybe a scrubber if it felt like being a mongrel. Gut feelings don’t count for anything. I need to think this through.

  If I let childhood fears dictate my choices, then I’m b
eing irrational. Possibly to the point of endangering my sister. My feet point towards the hill and I take a step forwards.

  ‘Why that way?’ Sam’s voice has gone up a bit and I smile.

  ‘Not sure, come on.’

  The crunching of my feet through dirt is the only sound until I reach the first tree. All the breath I’m holding rushes out when I hear Sam’s footsteps crunching behind me.

  ‘Wait!’

  A car door opens, slamming as a panicked Rhi rushes up to my side. She really moves. I can see shame all over her face as she blushes.

  ‘Ya not leavin me ere alone!’

  I nod and start walking again. I’m too busy fighting my own nameless dread to make fun of hers.

  ‘We’ve only got a couple-a hours till sundown, better get a move on.’ Sam’s reluctance is clear, but still he turns to that mountain. I’m grateful. I don’t think I can force myself forwards alone.

  Reaching the tree line we all hesitate. The shadows stretch out over us. Trees are comforting and feel like home, except for here. Right now they feel menacing, concealing horrible secrets. I push through. The temperature cools under those trees. A thick canopy branches out above us, one of the only untouched places I’ve seen recently, blocking out the light and making it feel almost twilight. Through the gloom, the conical shape of the mountain sits. Waiting. All the colours are muted, even the bird calls are absent. There’s a stillness that doesn’t feel right. Goosebumps race over me and I remind myself of the science, that the lack of sun will make the temperature drop – nothing else.

  Rhi’s arm finds its way through mine; her whole body presses against me as we walk. I pretend it’s only her doing the holding. We might’ve been tiptoeing for all the noise we make. The world and us – we hold our breaths.

  Two hours later and I am still creeped out by the place, but we haven’t come across anything but more trees and a lot of rocks. At some point you adjust to your fear. I mean, there’s only so long you can hold your breath, right? Climbing uphill for that long leaves me hot and sweaty, and that chill that was so bone-deep before isn’t even on my radar now. I am damn uncomfortable, frustrated and annoyed with everyone.

  Rhi let me go at some point and we’ve even stopped walking so close, spreading out and looking around, but always staying within eyesight. The climb was rough, with jagged rocks scattering the slope, making it impossible to walk normally. We hold on to sharp edges, lever ourselves onto boulders, drag each other over the top sometimes. We see nothing but trees, stone and dirt.

  It’s a difficult climb with dim light, but when the sunlight weakens further, Sam points us back to the car. He takes us around and down a separate slope though. No point covering the same ground twice.

  My heart keeps squeezing, like a bratty kid that wants you to keep ‘playing’. No way am I staying here when it gets dark, so I sure as shit am not spending the night either. I move along in silence. I’m not even trying to look around anymore. Our pace picks up as the sunlight fades faster.

  We finally make it back to where we parked. Stepping out of the tree line, Sam puts on the brakes and Rhi gasps. My head jerks up. There is something to be afraid of alright, and not the illogical, nameless thing I’ve been battling in my imagination. There’s a massive Dodge parked beside us, and Sam’s car now sports three men lounging over it. This is real and far scarier.

  All of us freeze, like we’ve spotted a big Brahman bull between us and the car. Maybe if we’re still it won’t charge. But it’s already too late and we know it.

  None of us are strangers in this odd little tableau. We know each other by name and reputation, one of them has even been at school with my cousins. They said Eric wasn’t a bad bloke back then, most of the girls were after him because he was hot, but instead of leaving town after school he stayed. Maybe he spent too long out here with the others because now he’s a raging racist too. The silence beats at us.

  ‘Now what would a bunch of Abos be doin’ out here on our land?’ Dan Potter snarls from his perch on the roof of the Holden. Nobody says anything good about Eric’s older brother. He’s the type who’ll take shots at black kids with slug guns, although the cops always says there’s no ‘proof’ of that. Never mind we can identify all the local cars in town by the sound of their engines, let alone the make and model. The statement of a bunch of blackfullas isn’t ever proof enough.

  ‘Maybe they’re tryin’ to find a place to sneak around?’ Eric laughs. ‘He’s a Miller and those two are Thomsons; they’re all fuckin’ dead.’ He’s sprawled across Sam’s hood looking bored. The others’ eyes drill into us, but Eric barely seems to be paying attention.

  ‘Or maybe they’re tryin’ to find a way to claim this place for themselves?’ Mick Franks straightens from his spot against the passenger side door.

  He’s old enough to be my father, has the brains of a fifteen-year-old during puberty and is one of the workers out here. Rumour is he’s doing some cattle duffing for them to help pay the bills too.

  If I wasn’t so scared I would scoff at his words. All the property owners are paranoid we’re out to get their land. I feel a sick thrill at the idea of them living in panic that someone could roll in and take it out from under them. Karma.

  Sam steps forwards, drawing all eyes to him. ‘We were just goin for a walk.’

  ‘Bullshit!’ Dan’s face twists and I see something ugly. He isn’t just pissed we’re trespassing, he’s enjoying himself.

  ‘You’re right.’ I stand shoulder to shoulder with Sam. ‘We came out to find my sister.’

  Mick laughs. ‘Why? That little slut’s hitched a ride on someone out of town so she wouldn’t have to face trespassin’ charges.’

  I swallow my fury at their words. We’re trespassing too, and I’d seen for myself the beating that Tyrone and Clinton had copped. We aren’t safe and I’ve put us right in the middle of it.

  ‘There’s way too many boongs out here lately.’ Mick glances over his shoulder at Dan and I hear the smile before I see it. ‘Maybe another example would stop more comin’ here in their dirty bombs?’

  Dan grins and jumps off the roof. The sound it makes as he hops down makes me wince. ‘Yeah, maybe a worse one to put ’em off for good?’ Both men move forwards, relishing the violence.

  Sam shifts subtly in front of me. Rhi slides up to my side and grabs my hand, squeezing it tight. We all know not to run from predators. My eyes flick to the ground searching for a stick or rock, but away from the trees there isn’t much around. I don’t want to turn my back to go looking and leave Sam and Rhi alone.

  Sam’s family are fighters from way back when the boxing tents would come through. They drew all the mob in, not just for the prize money. It was the only time our men could stand toe to toe with the whitefullas and not go to gaol for it. The Millers were legends under those tents (although I’ll never admit that out loud), but there’s no way Sam can take on two full-grown men alone. We all know they won’t fight fair. They’ll double or triple-bank him and then turn on us girls.

  My breath’s coming fast, but I force it to calm. Fear won’t help and it will only encourage them. Mum always meets hate and violence with anger. I’ve seen her use it like a shield and a battery to fuel herself. Fear can’t help me, but fury might.

  ‘Wow, what heroes,’ I scoff, leaning around Sam’s shoulders to look at them. ‘Two big hairy arses against one high school boy and two little girls, bet you feel like real men.’ I curl my lip with disdain, doing my best impression of Mum when she’s forced to interact with someone she considers scum, like the cops.

  Rhi’s hand tightens so much I have to force my expression to stay in place. Sam sends me a frown. Neither of them are happy with me, but I can’t see another way out. Running isn’t an option; all they’d have to do is sit on the car and wait us out. My words have stopped their forward motion. They look like hunting dogs facing prey tha
t has suddenly turned and attacked.

  ‘Is this how you rednecks get your kicks, goin after teenagers? What’s wrong, boys, can’t take on our uncles and cousins without gettin flogged?’ I move around Sam, chest up, mocking face in place. Rhi won’t let go of my hand so she’s forced to come with me. Sam doesn’t move, just keeps staring hard at me like he’s trying to mentally shut my mouth.

  ‘Isn’t it sad? A bunch of grown-arse men stoopin to this level. No wonder yas can’t get a woman between yas.’

  Dan jerks. ‘Fuck you, what would a little gin like you know?’

  I give my best bitchy grin. ‘Guess I hit a nerve. You know it’s not too late to stop being a prick. Maybe then you could keep a woman.’

  It’s a low blow. Dan’s fiancée ran off with a Hogarth fulla last year. The fact he was black hadn’t helped anything, and Dan knew everyone was laughing at him, especially his own mates.

  ‘I’ll kill you!’ He steps menacingly forwards.

  I use my shoulder to keep Sam at bay and push Rhi back so hard she goes over onto her bum.

  ‘Go on then, hit me you coward! No real man would raise his hand to a woman, let alone a little girl.’ Masculine pride wars on his face. He can’t decide if he wants to hit me more than he wants to prove his maleness and disdain. I almost have him, till Mick ruins it.

  ‘You gonna let some little Abo whore tell you what makes a man? Or you gonna show her like that last one?’ Dan starts forwards again and I have to scuffle with Sam to keep him back. I get jack of it and turn on him.

  ‘Stop it!’ we shout. I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’m not going to hide behind anyone and let them take the consequences for my plan. Sam’s fear for me is eroding my bravery, letting my own fear leak back in. I have to shore it up and hold it all in. Fight till the last.

  ‘Tace!’ Rhi’s scream has me turning and I feel the knuckles brush my cheekbone. Dan’s massive fist doesn’t land. I’d turned in time. It’s enough to send me staggering back. Sam swings at Dan. This one lands and Dan wobbles backwards as Mick runs up. He comes in hard. Sam’s already under his fist and landing a gut punch. I can see Dan straightening, ready to join the fight.