by Sarak Kanake
Essie moved past him and sat next to their daughter. Her hair was gone, and she was wearing a soft green scarf like a turban. ‘Do you know what that song is about?’ she asked her daughter.
River nodded. Her long red hair fell in over her face. She refused to let them brush it, and dreadlocks were forming at the nape of her neck.
‘What’s it about?’ Essie asked.
River stopped rocking. ‘Catching slaves trying to get away.’
Clancy reached over and tugged her hair. Some of the dirt crumbled away, and her dreadlocks turned back to soft red ringlets.
‘Please don’t sing that song, darling,’ said Essie.
River nodded.
‘Will you come inside?’ Clancy asked.
She shook her head. ‘Where’s Moonie?’
Neither of them answered her.
After Essie died, River’s wanderings got longer and longer, and she seemed less happy when she was inside with him and David. Once or twice Clancy had even caught her pacing the circumference of her room, as though she was somehow trapped by the feeling of four walls.
Now Clancy shook his head. No point to all that – memories just slowed him down. He pulled the pelt forward by the nose to make sure it was on firmly. Then he lowered his shoulders and moved through the trees.
If the kookaburras and roosting possums had looked down, they might have mistaken the lumbering orange and black pelt for a living tiger, but the wombats and echidnas knew better. They could see Clancy Fox for what he was, and stayed hidden in their burrows and logs.
Sometimes on these long treks, Clancy felt the eyes of something watching him. They followed him up through the dusky evening light on one side of his mountain, and down through the late morning air on the other. It wasn’t the bush. After all these years, it knew him. Several generations of wallaby had watched him shuffle through the trees, starkers but for the pelt, and were not afraid. They didn’t even stop chewing.
From somewhere overhead, the kookas started up. Clancy looked through the canopy. The light danced between the trees. Clancy couldn’t see anything. ‘Bloody mongrel birds,’ he mumbled, but the laughter only got louder, and pretty soon it was as if the entire bush was laughing at him.
Samson and Mattie reached the edge of the scrub surrounding Clancy’s house, but Mattie refused to come in. She wouldn’t walk on the lawn – she wouldn’t even leave the trees. I don’t go inside that house, she signed. It’s too creepy.
Samson peered through the lace of leaves and branches to the house and lawn and the white fence like teeth holding it all in. He’d never had a friend like Mattie and wouldn’t leave her as long as she wanted to stay, but at the end of each day he was happy to break free of the thick canopy and damp ground. This close to the fence, he could almost feel the relief in his lungs.
It is not too creepy, he signed.
Mattie made a face as though she didn’t believe him.
It’s not. Samson wanted her to come inside and have dinner with him and watch TV and sit on his bed and let him introduce her to Clancy and Jonah. Samson wanted to make sure that Mattie Kelly really existed.
She shook her head.
Samson looked back at the house. Rainbows glinted behind a window, and he remembered the room that Jonah had wanted to get into. There’s a locked room next to ours. We’re not allowed inside.
A girl went missing, Mattie signed. She was my age too. It’s probably her room.
What girl?
R-I-V-E-R S-N-O-W F-O-X.
Fox. Samson knew the shape and power of his own surname, but he didn’t know of any River Fox. He’d never heard of any Foxes but his. There was Clancy and his wife when she was alive, his parents, Jonah and him. Who? he asked, and the sign for who was one finger spinning upright in the air.
His daughter. The old man’s.
But Clancy didn’t have a daughter.
Mattie’s eyes were dark and serious. She went missing. A long time ago. Everyone said tigers took her.
‘Tigers?’ asked Samson, with his hands and his voice. Images of Shere Khan stalking the edge of the bush, waiting for children to wander too far from home, filled his insides.
Mattie nodded. T-A-S-M-A-N-I-A-N tigers.
Samson shrugged. His dad had told him about the Tasmanian tigers when he and Jonah were little, but Samson had never seen one, not even at the Brisbane Museum. Would it look like Shere Khan? Was it bigger, meaner?
My mum says there are no more tigers left, signed Mattie. People say it was actually Clancy that got her. The missing girl. But, my mum says that’s a lie.
Samson nodded.
All of a sudden, the bush behind them burst into hysterical laughter.
Samson pointed into the trees. Laughing.
Mattie smiled so wide, it looked as though the laughter was coming out of her mouth. Kookaburras. The sign for kookaburra started with two fingers held up to the mouth like smoking a cigarette, but then the fingers jumped forward, one, two, and became like a gun shooting.
Samson nodded. Loud.
I love kookaburras. Mattie held her arms out like wings. Then she turned on her heel and, with a streak of long brown hair, started running back up the mountain. Branches cracked beneath her feet and leaves whipped against her arms, but she didn’t seem to mind. Mattie had told him that she could run up the mountain faster than anyone. Her legs got restless, she had signed to him, and so sometimes she ran all the way up and all the way back down again, just for fun.
Samson watched her dart between the trees and jump over rocks, and in a matter of seconds she was gone. He wasn’t worried. Mattie always left him like that.
As he walked through the white fence and across the lawn, he told himself to remember what Mattie had told him about River Snow Fox. Jonah would want to know, and Samson’s memory had already failed them once.
‘Queenie!’ shouted Clancy through the terrible laughter of the kookaburras. The muscles inside his leg pounded against the skin, and the bone behind his missing kneecap clicked. He stopped and took several deep breaths, but the pain didn’t ebb. He heard another click, and this time it wasn’t inside him. He turned his head to listen. Not a click, more like lots of clicking. Something was running.
For a moment Clancy didn’t know what to do or where to put his hands. He held them out in front of him.
She burst from the bush about twenty yards ahead. Her dress billowed over her skinny legs and arms. Without stopping or turning to look at him, she leapt over a rock, flung herself forward and disappeared into the trees as if she’d never been there.
Clancy’s balance wavered, and he reached out for the support of his dog’s neck, but Queenie wasn’t there. River, he thought, and his hand stroked the air. River, River, River Snow Fox.
The back door was open, and Samson went inside without removing his shoes. The house was dimly lit and quiet. Even without looking, he knew no one was home. It just felt empty. He went to the fridge and stared inside. Eggs, bacon, sausages, cheese, left-over mashed potato. Everything needed cooking. At home, his mum always made sure there was ready-to-eat food in the fridge. Fruit Roll-Ups, small tubs of flavoured yogurt or pudding, cheese sticks and sometimes even a ham and tomato sandwich.
Samson didn’t know how to cook. No one had ever shown him. His mum didn’t like him in the kitchen. Too dangerous, she said. He closed the door to the fridge. Jonah might be home soon, and he knew how to make all sorts of nice food.
Samson left the kitchen and wandered through the living room to the front verandah. He sat on the steps and tried to ignore the rumbling in his stomach.
After a while, the back door slammed.
Jonah was through the kitchen and down the hall before Samson had even stood all the way up. ‘Hey wait!’ he called, but Jonah didn’t wait. Samson tried not to feel huge and clumsy. His chromosome was heavy, he reminded himself. It was harder for him to get up quickly.
Jonah slammed their bedroom door.
Samson followed. ‘Jon
ah?’ he said, as he opened the door.
His brother was kneeling on the floor with his hands under his bed. Samson wondered if Jonah was praying like the Other Samson. Jonah’s hands darted out. Maybe he didn’t know how to pray. Samson had seen it in pictures. ‘That’s not how you do it,’ he said.
Jonah turned around and stood up. His jacket was unzipped, and his hands were shaking by his sides as if trying to flick something away.
‘I can show you how.’
‘Shut up.’ Jonah was breathless, and a long black feather was stuck to his arm.
Samson stretched towards it, but Jonah pulled himself sharply out of reach. ‘You have a feather,’ said Samson.
Jonah brushed it away. ‘Mind your own business.’
‘You hold your hands like this,’ Samson explained as his hands moved into the shape of a triangular temple in front of his face.
Jonah didn’t respond.
Samson dropped his hands. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said. ‘Can you make me a sandwich?’
Clancy had almost finished cleaning up the pelt when he saw Murray pass by the laundry window on his way to the house. ‘Hooroo,’ called Clancy. He folded the skin and tucked it up into the arm of his cardigan.
Murray stopped and came round to the laundry door. ‘What’re you doing out here?’ he asked, because they both knew it’d been years since Clancy had done any washing. Murray’s face fell as soon as he saw the state of Clancy’s clothes. ‘Shit, mate. You alright?’
‘Yeah, just washing up.’
‘You’re lookin’ pretty rough. Where you been?’
‘Just for a hike,’ said Clancy.
Murray eyed Clancy’s leg suspiciously. ‘You still up to that kind of walking?’
‘What’re you doing here?’
Murray shook his head. ‘King’s missing.’
Clancy’s stomach dropped. He knew how much that bloody kookaburra meant to Murray. They’d saved each other, really, Murray and King. Chosen each other, known what each other wanted, and conjured an almost secret world between them. Just like Clancy had with Queenie. Something deep in Clancy’s gut told him not to tell Murray about his dog being gone too. ‘Bloody rotten luck. Has he shot through before?’
‘I don’t reckon he has shot through.’
‘How you mean?’ asked Clancy. The tiger moved inside his sleeve again.
‘Seems a hell of a coincidence, doesn’t it. Your grandsons arrive … then my bird disappears. The smaller boy –’
‘Jonah?’
‘Yeah, him … he was pretty keen on King the night me and Tilda came round for tea.’
‘Animals go missing all the time in the bush,’ said Clancy. ‘You know that.’
Murray shook his head, as though there was something Clancy just wasn’t getting. ‘Not King. He’s old as the hills, and he can’t bloody fly.’
Clancy wanted to laugh. He wanted to say that he didn’t know how flightless animals got lost, and if he did, he might’ve found his daughter years ago. He thought of the running girl in the bush, and he wanted to tell Murray that something had changed on his mountain. The boys were waking things up, stirring life back into old death. He wanted to tell Murray that anything could be next, and there might be a price to pay. But, mostly, Clancy wanted to tell Murray to grow up and pull his head in. Instead, he said, ‘You look tired.’
‘Not getting much sleep, with Tilda getting close to due.’
Clancy nodded.
‘You know, she’s pretty upset about King. And she’s none too happy about the twins hanging around.’
‘I’ll keep an eye out for King,’ Clancy said, and he patted Murray on the arm as he passed. The tiger moved inside his sleeve.
Murray looked up, right into Clancy’s eye. Neither of them said anything, but they both knew what was hiding in his old cardigan.
Murray turned and walked away from him silently.
Clancy had left a muddy print on the back of his shoulder.
four
Jonah Fox lay in bed staring at the ceiling. His granddad was outside on the lawn, calling for his missing dog like he had every morning for a couple of weeks. Occasionally Jonah would hear his brother, like an echo. ‘QUEENIE!’ Clancy would shout. ‘Queenie,’ Samson would repeat.
Jonah rolled over and tried to ignore both of them, but the morning sun had pushed through the threadbare curtains. It probably wasn’t even breakfast time yet. Jonah wriggled to the edge of his bed and bent over the side. First he pushed his dad’s satchel out of the way, then he slid the shoebox from under his mattress and opened it. King was inside, bent, hard, almost naked in a nest of his own feathers. The smell was gone, and it hadn’t been easy to conceal the scent of rotting flesh. Fortunately the bird was small, and Clancy had plenty of unused pine air fresheners at the bottom of his bathroom cabinet.
Jonah replaced the lid, pushed it under the bed behind his dad’s satchel and rolled onto his back. King wasn’t working anymore. He didn’t get the same thrill from touching the bird’s moulting, hardened body. He wanted something soft, malleable. He wanted something that could bring him comfort, but not decay and disappear over time. Jonah wanted something that could never, ever leave him.
Just like the fox in the Brisbane Museum.
He had seen the fox as soon as they stepped off the escalators. It was in a display decorated to look like the highway at night. There were Pepsi cans, empty bags of McDonald’s, a twisted black car tyre, some used toilet paper and a kangaroo carcass being picked apart by three big black crows. Every now and then, lights flashed and the sound of a truck would seem to rush past.
The fox was towards the back of the display, watching the disfigured body of the kangaroo and the three bickering crows. Jonah put his hands on the glass. The fox bristled and then shuddered, like a dog shaking off after a bath. Jonah pressed himself harder against the glass. The fox straightened up and looked at him.
‘Come on, Jonah,’ said his mum. The fox shrank back into its watchful, frozen pounce. ‘Samson wants to find the koala. Don’t touch the glass, darling.’ She grabbed his arm.
Jonah shook her hand away. He hated it when his mum treated him like a little kid. ‘I’m looking at the fox.’
‘You’ve seen it. We’ve been waiting.’
‘I’m not done.’
‘I’m taking Samson to find the koala, and then we’re going for spiders. Do what you want.’ She walked back over to where Samson was standing by the entrance and took him by the hand. Jonah’s face burned. They both looked like retards.
Samson loved the taxidermy koala because every time they came to the Brisbane Museum with their mum, the koala had moved. Once they found it clinging to the pillar in the front entrance, and another time it was hanging from a guardrail over the dinosaur egg display. Jonah said it ruined the display because koalas didn’t even exist yet, but Samson didn’t seem to care.
That day they found the koala in a room filled with other taxidermy animals. There was a bear, a tiger, mice and even a kangaroo. ‘Look at the bear, Mum,’ said Jonah, as he pointed to a huge, angry grizzly frozen inside a glass case. The bear was up on its hind legs, rearing back, ready to swat some smaller animal with one of its huge paws. The jaws were open, baring its teeth.
Mimicking the shape of the bear, Jonah turned around and growled. He didn’t realise Samson was behind him, also trying to see the bear. When he saw the terrified look on his brother’s face, Jonah froze, his fingers still curled into claws. Samson started to sob.
‘You scared him.’
‘Sorry.’ Jonah dropped his hands. His bear claws recoiled into his fingertips.
‘Jonah,’ said their mum. She hated it when Samson cried. ‘You know how to sign an apology. Do it, please.’
Sorry, he signed. Sorry was the only sign he’d ever needed to learn.
Samson sat at the kitchen table, his hands in his lap, waiting for someone to make him something to eat. He wanted toast, but he still didn’t know where the toaster wa
s kept because most days he ate cereal or waited for Jonah and Clancy to cook. But Clancy was taking forever, and Samson was supposed to meet Mattie. She’d said she had something special to show him.
A noise down the hallway. Jonah slunk out, still wearing his pyjamas, a copy of The Jungle Book tucked under his arm. He sat down opposite Samson but didn’t look at him.
‘I’m hungry.’
Jonah didn’t glance up from his book. ‘Wait for Clancy.’
Samson sighed. ‘I can make it,’ he said.
Jonah shook his head. ‘No, you can’t.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Leave it! It’s Clancy’s turn.’ Jonah turned back to The Jungle Book.
Samson coughed, but Jonah kept ignoring him. ‘What part are you up to?’ asked Samson.
His brother shushed him.
‘Good morning,’ said Clancy to Jonah as he walked into the kitchen.
Samson sat up eagerly. ‘We’re waiting for food.’
Closing his book, Jonah looked over at his granddad calmly. ‘It’s your turn.’
‘Righto,’ said Clancy, and he cracked six eggs into the frypan before he turned on the heat.
‘Eggs,’ said Jonah, ‘again.’
‘I like breakfast,’ said Samson.
‘The Jungle Book, aye?’ Clancy pointed to it.
‘Yep.’
‘That copy belonged to your dad.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I got it for him.’ Clancy turned on the burner under the kettle. ‘He loved to read, your dad.’
‘I know,’ said Jonah.
Clancy nodded. The eggs hissed in the pan.
‘Did you read it?’ asked Jonah, after a pause.
‘I have,’ said Clancy.
‘Who did you like the best?’
‘Can’t say I remember it all that well.’
‘My favourite is Shere Khan.’
‘That’s the tiger, right?’
Jonah nodded.
Clancy stopped. His bent leg propped up against the kitchen bench. ‘You like tigers?’
Jonah shrugged.