by Sarak Kanake
Samson nodded and slowly wound the window up.
Jonah stared through his closed window, the book resting in his lap. The air outside was white, almost like smoke, but he hardly noticed. He was imagining what his granddad, Clancy Fox, might be like.
The dirt road snaked out in front of them, sometimes twisting and widening, sometimes narrowing. Twice it disappeared altogether, and his dad had to drive the car over ferns and grass to get to the road on the other side. They went up and up, following the thickening white air as it coiled around the mountain.
‘Didn’t you like it here?’ asked Jonah. ‘Why didn’t you stay?’
His dad didn’t answer.
Samson wriggled down into his seat and shoved his face into a rolled-up blanket he’d wedged against the window.
‘Dad?’ Jonah asked again.
‘I don’t know,’ said David. ‘Your granddad and I don’t see eye to eye. It’s complicated.’
There was a dull thump in front of Jonah, and Samson’s face flopped onto the window. His breath misted the glass.
David turned the steering wheel, and the car swirled around a bend in the road. ‘He thought your mum and I were too young to get married.’ After a long pause he said, ‘We probably were.’
‘Will we have to share a room again?’ asked Jonah, and he pushed his knee into the back of his sleeping brother’s seat.
‘I don’t think so. I’m not sure.’
‘You said the house has three bedrooms?’
Their eyes met briefly in the rear-view mirror, then David looked away. ‘You don’t mind sharing, do you? Samson always makes your bed.’
‘He can’t do hospital corners.’
‘What does Mum always say? If you adjust your expectations, then you won’t be disappointed.’
Jonah looked out the window again. Thin grey trees moved past them slowly, like fence posts in the suburbs. Jonah felt frustrated, itchy even. Ready to get to Clancy’s house and ready to leave it again. Maybe this was how his dad had felt when he was Jonah’s age. Creeping up and down the mountain while he went to school or came home from town. ‘What if Clancy hates us?’ Jonah asked quietly. But what he actually meant was, What if Clancy hates Samson?
‘He’s your granddad. He won’t hate you.’
‘I hate us.’
David glanced at him again, and Jonah wished they were face-to-face instead of looking at each other through a reflection. He wished his dad would smile or reach back between the seats, like his mum sometimes did, and take his hand. But David’s eyes darted back to the road. ‘It won’t be long now.’
People say there’s no pain like the pain of losing a child, and Clancy knew the truth of that more than most. He knew the missing, the aching. He knew the unending, circling misery of letting a child slip through his fingers, but he also knew the sorrow of forgetting, and being forgotten.
On the day his son was due to return to his mountain, Clancy wondered if he’d got it around the wrong way, loving his lost girl and forgetting his living boy. But parents had favourites, and any that said otherwise were pulling their own leg.
From the moment Clancy first held his second child, the quiet, blood-soaked daughter, he knew what he’d been missing with his grasping, noisy son. River Snow Fox was born eyes open, hands already making fists, with a full head of red curly hair, black eyes and rusty brown skin. She didn’t scream, only stared, blinking so loud he could hear it click from across the room. In those quickly passing minutes, Clancy tied himself to River Fox.
River Fox, however, tied herself to something she followed into the trees and sang to her side. Something Clancy hadn’t been able to forget, or let be. Something he’d hung up, like a warning in his house, many, many years ago. Something he now took off his kitchen wall to keep his grandsons safe.
Clancy folded the pelt over. One fold, then another. He smoothed it with his hands. It hadn’t been folded or put away in years. When his da was alive, the pelt lived in the linen cupboard at the end of the hallway. After his da died, Clancy hung it on six nails he’d hammered into the kitchen wall. He could tell Essie didn’t like the pelt. She never said, but Clancy could tell. He never mentioned it, though. Back then, they were still newlyweds and treated each other like horses about to spook.
Now, standing in his empty kitchen, Clancy folded the pelt so the head was on top, but then thought better of it. He shook the pelt, one, two, three, like a wet shirt about to be hung out to dry. Orange and black unfurled over the table. This time he folded the pelt with the head tucked under one of the shoulders, hiding the open mouth and dark black eyes. It looked as though the tiger was sleeping.
His old red mutt, Queenie, was half under the kitchen table. She lifted her head and stared. Clancy couldn’t tell if she was checking on him, or annoyed at being disturbed. ‘Stay,’ he said. Queenie answered by curling her white-tipped tail all the way around her body like a possum.
Behind Clancy was his ma’s old washstand. He used it for storing letters he didn’t want to open, and boxes of odds and ends. He moved a pile of unopened letters from his Huon pine ditty box. A mess inside: bullets, keys, a screwdriver, string, coins, a black-and-white photo of Essie holding David, a few faded receipts, and George’s old Zippo lighter. The key to River’s bedroom was down the bottom. He pulled it out and tucked the pelt under his shoulder like a parcel from the post office. The head jostled. One eye turned, looked out from under the paw and stared. Clancy ignored it. He walked down the hallway to his daughter’s room and unlocked the door.
Inside, the air smelt of dust, caught sunshine and mothballs. Her things were exactly as he’d left them. Dolls she’d stopped playing with years before she went missing were standing along the windowsill above her desk. Clancy remembered taking them out of her toy box and lining them up, a quiet vigil for his lost girl.
Rainbows danced over the dolls. River’s crystals hung from the curtain rod above the window, casting delicate colours across the room. Clancy turned each one gently. The rainbows rushed all over him. He could almost feel them, moth wings on his skin.
Some of the room was still the way River had left it. Cards and pictures were taped to the walls. Most of the cards were scenes of foreign countries and places she’d probably wanted to see. They were all blank and unmarked. No stamps or addresses. Clancy wasn’t sure where they’d come from. Someone at school, probably, or a shop in town. River had never known anyone to leave Tasmania except George’s son, Murray, and he’d never sent her a word.
Clancy opened the wardrobe. River’s clothes were still in there, clean but for a fine layer of dust on the shoulders. He slid the pelt from under his arm and lifted it into the cupboard. Clancy was about to tuck it in between some folded jumpers, but then decided against it. He closed the door.
River’s bed was beside the door, the feet facing the corner. It had been neatly made with her only pair of sheets after she disappeared. Clancy couldn’t remember who’d done that. George, probably. The sheets were patterned with dainty yellow daisies, faded now. Clancy was fairly certain she’d hated them. The pillows on the bed were old and flat, deflated without her sleeping breath to plump them up.
Clancy sat on the edge of her bed and let the pelt tumble into his lap like a tame house cat. The mattress was still soft. He stretched his crook leg out in front of him and warmed the skin on his thigh with his hands.
He should really let one of the twins have her room, but Clancy just couldn’t. He couldn’t live with the idea of finally turning River Fox out of his house, even if it was only the memory of her. And some days she was more than a memory. Some days he could hear her behind the door singing, playing, calling to her mother. On those days he would throw open the door, expecting his daughter to be there. The porcelain dolls would stare at him as though he wasn’t welcome.
Clancy laid his head on her pillows. The bed creaked and the pelt shifted again, this time the entire head coming loose from its folds.
He closed his eyes. Wh
at had River’s last night in her bedroom been like? Had she lain face down in her pillows and wished her mother were still alive, or sat at the window and waited for the tigers to emerge from the darkness? Had she fallen asleep in her bed wishing it was a burrow? Had she listened to Clancy and David bicker on the other side of the door, and wondered how far her legs could carry her?
Clancy rolled onto his side. River, River, River Fox. He never said her name out loud now.
After an hour, or maybe more – he’d forgotten to check the time before he came in – Clancy sat up. His face left an indent in her pillows. He checked his watch. 4.36. David and the twins were due after five.
‘Just enough time to clean up,’ he told the pelt.
It stared back, unblinking.
‘Not you though, mate. You’re living here for a bit.’
Clancy moved his leg. Gone to sleep. He moved his knee from side to side and groaned. The pelt unfurled with the movement of the bed, and a tiger took River’s place on the sheets.
Her bed creaked as Clancy stood. A shot of pain went up the outside of his foot and travelled all the way to his hip. He hobbled across his daughter’s room and through the door like he had many times before.
The tiger watched from the field of printed daisies.
‘Stay,’ said Clancy, as if the tiger followed the same commands as his dog. He locked the door behind him.
Even though Samson Fox was mostly asleep in the front seat of the rental car, he was also partly listening to his brother and dad talk about Clancy, the mountain and what they would all find there. From Jonah, Samson heard words like ‘hate’ and ‘what if’ and ‘are we there yet’, while his dad answered with words like ‘fine’ and ‘fun’ and ‘stop worrying’. In the silence that eventually settled between them, Samson felt his brother give in.
Then everything tilted upwards like the car was travelling into the sky. Someone other than Samson might have woken up, they might even have been afraid, but Samson’s extra chromosome was heavy and fear moved swiftly.
The car swirled. Samson breathed in and out, and his chest went up, up, up with the mountain, but unlike the mountain his breath came back down again and settled in his chest. He nuzzled into the blanket he had folded into a pillow. In the twilight between sleep and waking, bumpy car and dreams of his warm familiar bed, Samson remembered the day he first realised his extra chromosome was heavy.
They had just moved into their house beside the beach in Queensland. He and Jonah weren’t very old, maybe seven or eight, although Samson was bad with numbers. Their dad asked them both to help him get rid of rotten wooden edging around the garden beds. Jonah didn’t like helping, but Samson always said yes to everything. He dug his hands down into the dirt and pulled out a short wooden stake. As it came unstuck, he fell back, and the stake showered dirt all over his legs.
‘Good job,’ said his dad.
Samson held the stake in both hands and stared into the hole. The dirt inside was loose and dark. He shuffled in closer to get a better look. In the middle of the hole was what looked like a grubby rock. The rock opened its eyes and blinked.
‘Look,’ said Samson softly, not wanting to frighten it.
‘A toad!’ screamed their mum.
Jonah pushed him out of the way. ‘What? Oh, gross.’
‘It’s not a toad,’ said Samson. A poster on the back door of his schoolroom identified all the local frogs and reptiles. ‘It’s a frog, mum. A burrowing frog.’
‘Get the shovel.’
The eyes blinked again, just once, before their dad ran the burrowing frog through with the steel shovel-head. ‘Got him!’
‘I didn’t know toads lived like that.’
Crouched beside the hole with the rotten paling still in his hands, Samson started to think. If they could have, his parents would have run his extra chromosome through as well.
‘Look,’ said a voice. It was his dad. ‘See? I killed it.’
Samson opened his eyes. Everything rushed back towards him like a train halting at a station. He blinked and sat up. The rolled-up blanket slumped down into the space between his seat and the car door.
‘Look,’ said his dad again. ‘The house is at the end of this drive.’
It took ages for him to park. He tried three times to pull in alongside the house, but he had to keep reversing.
‘Justpullover,’ said Jonah. ‘Pull. Over.’
‘Don’t take that seatbelt off until I’ve stopped this bloody car,’ said David, in his serious voice. The one he sometimes borrowed from their mum.
Samson glanced into the rear-view mirror and saw his brother put his hand on the seatbelt buckle. He kept it there, ready to unlock it as soon as their dad stopped the car. ‘Just park anywhere.’
‘I can’t. The old man’ll never let me forget it if I can’t park this bastard.’
Samson turned away from the bickering and looked outside. The house was brown brick with small windows, like droopy eyes. The curtains were closed, but the door was open. His mum said he should try and practise his maths skills whenever he got the chance, so he counted the supports holding the roof out. Eight in the front, six down the side facing him and two around the other side, but there were probably more he couldn’t see. Around the house was a white fence, and inside the pickets was a dark green lawn. Just beyond the fence, towards the back of the house, were two water tanks on wooden stilts.
His dad nudged the car into a narrow opening next to Clancy’s ute, and the car grumbled to a stop. ‘Finally. Did he see?’
The house looked empty. ‘No,’ said Samson.
David bent in over the steering wheel and sighed.
Jonah was first out. He slammed the door and took a few steps. ‘Shouldn’t he be waiting?’
Samson clicked the buckle at his side, but nothing happened. He tried again, and the belt sprang free. As he opened the door, his legs uncoiled like wound springs.
‘Dad, hurry up,’ said Jonah, his feet tapping as though he was already moving.
‘Go ahead.’ David gestured towards the house like Adriana on Wheel of Fortune.
Jonah didn’t move. ‘Not by myself, ’ he whined.
Relax, signed Samson, and the sign for relax was two hands spread wide, facing down, shook twice into the chest where sometimes it was tight and couldn’t relax.
‘Shut up,’ mumbled Jonah, even though he didn’t understand sign.
Their dad checked himself in the mirror. He ran his hand over the new stubble on his chin and frowned. ‘I’m starting to look like him,’ he muttered.
Outside, Jonah’s jumpy feet moved to the edge of the fenced lawn and back again, like he needed a wee. ‘Dad! ’
‘Jonah, calm the hell down,’ said their dad, as he got out of the car and closed the door. ‘Unload the car.’
Jonah stomped back to them. Samson got out of his way. David lifted their bags out of the boot and dropped them on the drive, then grabbed his overnight bag but left his own large suitcase. He closed the boot, then smiled at Samson. ‘Jonah, give us a minute? I want to go over a few things with your brother.’
‘What things?’
‘Just wait inside the gate.’
‘Hurry up.’ Jonah stomped back to the fence.
Samson wondered if his brother’s feet ever got sore.
David made the sign for Samson to come closer. ‘Stay around the house, and don’t wander while you’re here. Use full sentences, and keep your tongue inside your mouth.’
Samson clamped his teeth shut and tried to say, ‘I will, Dad’, at the same time, but he nipped his tongue. David looked disappointed. Samson saw disappointment every time he missed something, or heard something different to what had been said. He saw it every time he tried to turn his thoughts into words or tell his favourite stories.
David nodded. ‘Okay, then.’
As his dad walked away to join his other son, Samson thought of the burrowing frog shattering into bloody lumps beneath the shovel-head.
He bit his tongue again, only this time on purpose.
Clancy dropped the key to River’s room back in the Huon ditty box and closed the lid. He slid the box behind an out-of-date phone book and piled the unopened letters up around it. He doubted David or the boys would see it there and, even if they did, it would look like only a box of old junk.
Clancy hobbled to the pot, opposite side of the room, and poured himself a cuppa. The leaves had been sitting for a while, but even though the tea was lukewarm, Clancy didn’t mind. He preferred strong to hot. He carried his cup to the kitchen table and stretched his crook leg out in front of him. It had to be kept straight, otherwise the cobbled veins would aggravate and his leg would swell from groin to ankle.
Queenie left her spot just outside the front door and slunk inside. She headed under the kitchen table, her tail thumping into his crook leg. ‘Oh … Come on now, take it easy, girl,’ he said, lifting his knee out of her way.
He took a sip of lukewarm tea and looked at the shadow of the pelt. Its outline was stained into the wall, probably from years of direct sun. Essie had insisted they put in the skylight over the kitchen island a year or two after they married. Back then, the pelt never came down off the wall. It was only an artwork, a keepsake of bygone years when tiger men still roamed the west, and you could still hear the tigers barking, growling and moving around at night.
Clancy took another sip of tea, thinking of the blokes who’d come looking for tigers on his mountain years before. He clicked his fingers, something dawning on him. Maybe he should hide their videotapes as well. He stood and walked into the living room. Queenie shuffled out from under the table, following him. She settled beside the smouldering fireplace and wrapped herself into a tight ball.
The tapes were in a shemozzle beside the telly and VCR. It was a hell of a job for someone in his state. Should he bother hiding them? They weren’t marked, and he doubted the twins would care about a bunch of unmarked videotapes.
A sound outside. Queenie’s ears pricked and she sniffed the air. She left her spot by the fireplace and focused on the open door, just visible through the archway between the living room and kitchen. Her rumbling deepened to a growl. Clancy reached for her collar, and she let him restrain her.