by Sarak Kanake
‘We’ll all be out of your hair as soon as I find something more permanent,’ said David, as he cleared the table of newspapers, unwashed plates and Clancy’s half-finished cuppa.
‘Not likely to find much in your line down here,’ Clancy replied, even though he wasn’t exactly sure what David’s line was these days.
David shrugged. ‘I haven’t had much luck with university teaching. I’m looking into TAFE now.’
Transferring the weight from his crook leg, Clancy pushed his body against the frame of the door like a bear scratching against a tree.
David reached around the back of his neck with both hands, laced his fingers together and squeezed. ‘I just can’t manage,’ he said uneasily. ‘Not without Alice. She had the boys most of the time. She was good with them, I think. Now the entire world is bearing down on me, and I can’t breathe.’
Clancy wanted to remind his son that they’d both seen someone really stop breathing, but he didn’t.
David kept on. ‘Jonah’s a good reader. And Samson’s teacher says his sign language is pretty advanced … We’re still working on keeping his tongue in his mouth, but the speech pathologist says it’s just a matter of strengthening the muscles.’ He laughed nervously. ‘Nothing just happens with Samson. Everything takes practice.’ Finally, David stopped talking and gazed out the window to the bush beyond the fence. ‘They’re good boys, Dad. You’ll see. No matter how they look from the outside.’
‘I can’t do much with them.’ Clancy tapped his leg.
David nodded. ‘Anything is fine. I just need a break –’
David’s old bedroom exploded with an almighty racket. A creaking and yelling, screaming and thumping. Something hit the ground. ‘Tiger! Tiger!’ the boys screamed together. ‘Tiger!’
Clancy pushed himself off the doorframe.
‘I will not, I will not!’ shouted the twins.
David held both hands out for Clancy to stop. ‘It’s not what you think,’ he said, but Clancy pushed past him.
‘Tiger! Tiger!’
‘Dad, don’t.’
Clancy was already halfway down the hall.
‘They do this sort of thing all the time –’
Jonah jumped up and down on the bed like Mowgli dancing on the newly skinned Shere Khan. ‘Tiger, tiger,’ he shouted, and the jungle island danced with him.
Samson dropped the book and leapt into the middle of the island with his brother. ‘Tiger!’ he bellowed as he beat his chest like Tarzan.
The flung door and Clancy’s angry, bearish voice filled the room. ‘Where?’ he yelled. ‘Where are they?’
Their dad was behind him, red-faced and shaking his head.
They both stopped jumping. Jonah fell back into the bed, and Samson sat down as fast as he could. It wasn’t easy with his long legs and knobby knees. He held his hands to his ears to soften the storm of Clancy’s voice.
‘Where are they?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Samson, mostly because he didn’t know what else to say.
Instead of apologising, Jonah pointed into Samson’s face. ‘It was him. He started it.’
The island broke apart from Samson, like a boat slipping its mooring. He uncovered his ears and turned around. Out the window, and over the mountain, he saw the story island in a vast sea of blue. Floating far, far away. He waved.
‘Who is he waving at?’ Clancy asked their dad, his voice still booming. ‘Who’d he see?’
The mountains toppled back into bedsheets again. The stepping stones softened into pillows, and the sounds of the jungle birds dissolved back into the coiled creaks of the mattress. One last roar from the Shere Khan, and the island was gone.
Jonah sat on the edge of his bed and crossed his arms. Less than a day in their new home, and already his brother had got them both in trouble.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Samson.
‘Dad said no talking for twenty minutes.’
Samson mimed zipping his lips and throwing away the key, but then opened his mouth slightly to smile.
‘They didn’t know,’ their dad told their granddad loudly, probably in the kitchen. Jonah’s parents always argued in the kitchen. The twins weren’t allowed to close the door until after their punishment, so Jonah could hear almost everything.
‘There’s nothing to know,’ said Clancy.
Jonah left his bed and darted across the room to the door.
‘What’s wr–?’ started Samson, but Jonah shushed him.
Their dad was talking. ‘I’m not going to freak them out with your stories, Dad.’
‘My stories,’ said Clancy.
David sighed. ‘They haven’t even seen my book. So don’t start.’
‘What’s your bloody book got to do with it –?’
‘Hooroo,’ called a woman’s voice from somewhere outside. ‘Clancy?’
Jonah darted back across the room and sat on his bed. Samson signed something, but Jonah ignored him.
‘Clancy?’ called the woman again.
‘Yeah …’ said Clancy, his voice going back to normal. ‘Murray. Tilda. Come in.’
‘Boys,’ called David, sounding sour and tense. ‘Come out here, please.’
Jonah was out the door before his brother had even moved off his bed. He heard the springs creak as he reached the kitchen. The table was already set. That was usually his job.
A man came through the back door first. He was about Jonah’s dad’s age, but different-looking to his dad. David always wore jackets with tight shirts and loafers with no socks, but Murray was dressed in loose dark blue jeans and a t-shirt with a picture of a black man and the name Jimi Hendrix. Murray’s hair was matted into long, thick tendrils that hung over his shoulders and was covered by a hat like the ones Jonah had seen in photos of swagmen – except this one was turned up at the sides and had a black feather stuck into a colourful woven band. Jonah had seen those colours before. At school, the teachers taught them about Mabo and corroborees and native title, but Jonah had never seen an actual Aborigine before. The man was carrying a big orange casserole dish with a tea towel over the top.
‘This is Murray Bishop,’ said Clancy, and Murray nodded. Jonah felt his cheeks blush. Something about the Aboriginal man made him feel nervous. He nodded back, and Murray smiled like he was enjoying a joke Jonah didn’t mean to make.
‘Hello,’ said David awkwardly, holding his hand out for Murray to shake. ‘Good to see you again.’
Murray shook his hand, almost reluctantly. ‘You too, mate.’
Jonah’s dad had told him a bit about Murray. They’d grown up together on the mountain, only Murray had lived with his own dad in a shack, and David had lived with his mum and Clancy in the main house.
Next through the door was the woman Jonah had heard from his bedroom. She had a pregnant belly. Jonah looked away, embarrassed.
‘This is Tilda,’ said Murray.
Samson copied their dad and held out his hand to shake. Murray smiled. ‘What’s your name, mate?’
‘Samson, and this is Jonah,’ said Samson, putting his arm around Jonah’s shoulders.
‘These are my twin sons,’ interrupted David.
Jonah shrugged his brother off.
Tilda took the casserole dish out of Murray’s hands and squeezed past him into the kitchen. Murray tipped his hat from his forehead and wiped a slick of sweat away with the back of his hand, moving his hair just enough to reveal a black ball sitting on his right shoulder. The ball lifted its head from inside the fold of its dark feathers, ruffled itself and stared right at Jonah. It was all black like a crow, but its beak was long and sharp.
‘What’s that?’ Jonah asked.
‘He’s a kookaburra,’ said Murray.
‘Better bloody not be,’ said Clancy. ‘Not in this house, Murray.’
‘I thought kookaburras were brown,’ said Jonah.
‘Most of them are.’
‘Is it safe?’
Tilda laughed as she closed the oven door. ‘Kin
g’s gentle as a baby.’
Murray turned his shoulder until the kookaburra was within Jonah’s reach. ‘You can give him a scratch if you like.’
Jonah stretched his hand out towards the fluffy body of the bird. King’s feathers were soft and warm. He shuffled back behind Murray’s neck, lifted his wing and started cleaning the feathers down his left-hand side. A shiny blue stripe was hidden in among the black.
‘King loves everyone,’ said Murray. ‘Don’t ya, old boy?’
The bird ruffled his feathers as if to say ‘thanks’, and tucked his head away again.
‘You know the rules,’ said Clancy. ‘No kookas in this house.’
Murray walked back outside to the edge of the verandah. He lifted King down from his shoulder and placed him on the rail. The bird opened his beak in protest, but Murray left him there and came back inside.
‘Why’s he black?’ Jonah asked.
Murray smiled slowly. ‘Reckon for the same reason I am.’
Clancy laughed, but Jonah didn’t understand.
‘It’s a joke, son,’ said David, in his most patronising voice.
Jonah’s cheeks went hot.
‘Dinner won’t be long,’ said Tilda.
It couldn’t have been easy cooking anything complicated in Murray’s tiny yurt kitchen, let alone at seven months pregnant, which was why Clancy thanked Tilda so much for her vegetable lasagne. He would have preferred a meal with meat, but he didn’t say so. He’d fry up a few chops after they were gone if he was still hungry.
‘How’s everything with the baby?’ he asked, as Tilda slid a second piece of lasagna onto his plate.
‘Heavy,’ she said.
‘My wife, Alice,’ said David, ‘used to say it was like having a soccer team playing finals on her bladder.’ He laughed. No one joined him.
‘He’s gonna be a Christmas baby,’ said Murray.
‘So, it’s a boy?’ asked David.
Clancy dug into the lasagna with the side of his splade. He wished his son would just dry up.
‘Murray has decided it is,’ said Tilda.
Samson was saying something with his mouth full, and his hands wove through the air with a strange sort of delicacy. Jonah prodded his brother in the arm. ‘What?’ Some lasagna fell from Samson’s mouth and landed back on his plate.
‘It’s okay,’ said Tilda, and she answered him in sign while translating for the rest of them, ‘We like “George”.’ There must have been a sign for each letter, because her voice was finished long before her hands.
‘What about girls’ names?’ asked David, looking back and forth between the prospective parents.
Clancy could hear the coiled snake buried deep within his son’s voice.
Murray didn’t answer.
‘If you like family names,’ David continued, ‘River, maybe …?’
Clancy brought his fist down onto the table, water sloshing over the side of his glass. David raised both hands in the air like Clancy had pulled a gun.
Samson plunged his hands into the soapy dishwater. It was probably pretty hot, but his skin didn’t feel it. He never felt heat or cold right away. His dad said it was a symptom of his Down’s Syndrome.
‘You don’t have to do that, sweetheart,’ said Tilda. She took him by the wrists, lifted his hands from the water and wiped them dry with a tea towel.
I do it at home, he signed.
‘Why don’t you take a seat?’ she answered with her voice.
Samson sat at the kitchen table and played with a smear of tomato sauce beside one of the plates. ‘How come you sign?’
‘It’s just something I picked up,’ she said, as she sorted the dishes for washing.
‘Does Murray sign?’
‘He will.’
A story was tucked inside her words, but Samson couldn’t reach it. Sometimes his extra chromosome was so heavy, it weighed his arms down like a bucket of rocks. The casserole dish was still in the centre of the table. Samson peeled a piece of hard cheese off one of the lasagna slices.
‘Hey,’ said Tilda, swatting his hand away. ‘No picking. It spoils the leftovers.’ She took the dish and put it away in the fridge.
Samson frowned. His mum always let him eat whatever he wanted. ‘My mum’s coming here soon,’ he said.
Tilda closed the fridge. ‘Is she?’ she asked, without looking at him.
‘She’s finding us a house in Brisbane right now.’
‘That sounds really great.’ Tilda’s hands dived back into the soapy water. She started with the cutlery and didn’t talk while she washed.
After a while, Samson stood up and walked over to the back door. It was open. Murray and his granddad were outside, talking. Samson wasn’t sure where Jonah was. He’d stood up from the table as soon as Clancy and their dad started yelling. Jonah didn’t like yelling. Neither did Samson, but sometimes his legs weren’t fast enough to carry him away in time.
He turned and looked through the archway between the kitchen and living room to the front door and verandah beyond. David was sitting alone on the front steps, his back towards the house. Even though Samson wanted to join him, his dad was sulking, and when his dad sulked that meant he wanted to be alone.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ Samson told Tilda, because at home he was supposed to tell his mum whenever he went outside.
Tilda pulled the plug in the sink and turned to face him. ‘Are you allowed out by yourself yet?’ she asked, wiping her hands with the tea towel.
Samson shrugged.
‘Didn’t your mum teach you it’s rude to shrug?’
‘A shrug is like a sign,’ he said, with his voice and his hands. ‘It’s like saying I’m not sure, and it’s not rude not to be sure.’
‘I suppose that’s right.’ Tilda folded the towel over the side of the bench and, for once, Samson felt he’d won. He thought about the leftover lasagna in the fridge and decided he would pick off all the cheese and eat it as soon as Tilda had gone home.
Jonah lay in the long grass on the other side of the fence surrounding the house. He stared into the slowly inking sky. The stars were all new. Each one burned hot white and more brightly than any he’d ever seen in Queensland. It was way past his usual bedtime, but still light enough to see. Time moved differently in Tasmania.
The back door of the house opened.
Jonah rolled onto his stomach and peered back through the long grass. He closed an eye. The grass looked like bars. Clancy, Murray and Tilda walked out together, followed by the red dog. Jonah hunkered down further in the grass. The last thing he wanted was for Queen Elizabeth to see or smell him. He’d sat all through dinner with his feet crossed uncomfortably under his bum. Just to avoid her.
Jonah watched as Clancy thanked Murray and Tilda for the dinner. Tilda hugged him, but her belly stuck out between them. Clancy seemed awkward, as though he didn’t actually want to hug her back. Jonah understood that – he didn’t like being touched by anybody, either.
Murray put his hat on, gathered his black kookaburra from the verandah rail and nudged him back onto his shoulder. Jonah raised himself up on his forearms for a better look at King. Murray took Tilda’s hand, and the two of them walked away from the house. Jonah ducked down. They’d have to pass right by him.
Clancy stayed on the verandah, Queen Elizabeth silent and still behind him, until Murray and Tilda were out of sight. Then he went back inside.
Jonah waited. After a few minutes, he followed the two of them.
It didn’t take long for him to catch up. Murray and Tilda were slow, probably because Tilda was waddling like a goose. Jonah kept to the edge of the dirt road, ducking behind trees and around rocks. He was careful not to step on sticks or unsettle stones that might roll towards them or clack together.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to tell her, bub?’ asked Murray. ‘She’ll find out eventually.’
‘You can’t force kids to be friends,’ said Tilda. ‘Mattie’s only deaf. It’s not the same.’
<
br /> ‘Not different, you mean.’
Tilda moved her hands to the base of her stomach as if she was already carrying the baby outside her body. ‘Did you like being forced into playing with David when you were a kid?’
‘No,’ said Murray.
The air around them faded to grey, and Jonah could feel the night coming. He didn’t want to be out after dark. What if he couldn’t find his way back?
‘How’s it any different?’
‘Cause David was a dickhead.’
Tilda laughed.
‘Samson’s not like that. He seems alright to me.’
Jonah’s ears turned hot at the mention of his brother’s name.
‘He’s not a good friend for Mattie,’ said Tilda, frustration in her voice.
‘Come on, bub, I’m not asking for them to spend every waking moment together, but it might be nice for her to have someone to sign with.’
‘Sign’s not a magic wand. Samson can only sign what he can say – and that doesn’t seem like much to me.’
‘I understood him,’ said Murray. ‘It’s not good for kids to be alone up here.’
‘Oh yeah? From what you’ve told me, it’s not good for kids to get too close up here.’ Tilda’s voice crackled with sarcasm like a newly lit campfire in the dusk light.
Murray was silent for a few moments. ‘I didn’t tell you about River so you could have a go whenever we disagree.’
Tilda flung her hands out, and Murray reached towards her as if she might fall, but Jonah knew better. He’d seen his mum make gestures like that. Bids for attention, his dad called them.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tilda said. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I wasn’t trying to have a go. I don’t want Mattie getting stuck with disabled kids just because she’s deaf.’ The trees stirred overhead. Jonah felt like shushing them. ‘She’s not … disabled,’ finished Tilda. ‘She’s a smart girl.’
‘Alright, alright.’ Murray wrapped a long arm around her small shoulders. ‘Just an idea. Don’t get worked up.’
Tilda stopped, and so did Murray. Jonah darted behind a tree trunk on the side of the drive. Murray turned to face her. ‘What’s up, bub?’