Sing Fox to Me

by Sarak Kanake

  The kindling beneath River’s feet tumbled into burning embers and vanished into a thick black dust. She took Queenie by the neck and turned away, as though they were going to walk back into the flames.

  ‘River?’

  His daughter couldn’t hear him. That must be it. She wouldn’t ignore him, not after trying to find him for so long. Not after leaving him the cairns to say sorry.

  Clancy followed her, running. His leg pulled behind him, but he ran. Her wavering white body started to fade. He didn’t stop when the fire burned his skin. The heat turned to mist, and it was everywhere.

  He heard George’s voice from inside the flames.

  ‘George?’

  Clancy reached into the fire. He couldn’t see River or George or Queenie, but he knew they were all together and finally leaving him. His daughter was finally with her father, her real father, and George was with their missing child. There was nothing left for Clancy. Even his dog had gone with them.

  When he looked down, he couldn’t see his own skin. The mist turned to fire, and the fire turned towards him and his skin, and he felt himself melting and burning, and he screamed and screamed, and as he screamed, Clancy heard himself and knew that he was dying because the wail of death was inside his mouth. He thought of his daughter. The wail had been inside her mouth too.

  The kookaburras stopped laughing.

  Samson Fox lay like a beached whale in the ebbing tide of the fallen water tanks. His eyes were closed, and his mouth was open in a silent plea. Everything around him froze. The trees froze, and the wind. The fire stopped devouring and crackling to see if the boy had survived the fall. Even the stars seemed to stop glimmering, so they could look down to earth and watch Samson Fox, as they had watched the Other Samson thousands of years before. Can you see? asked the stars. Yes, whispered the flames around the blackened fence posts.

  Is he still breathing?

  Hush.

  Everything waited to see which way Samson Fox would decide to go.

  Hush.

  Samson’s mind chose to go backwards and lay him down on the floor of the cave with Mattie Kelly. Her dark hair smelt of flowers and sunlight.

  ‘Samson?’ His mum’s hands brushed lightly over his forehead, and Samson Fox wondered if the Other Samson had dreamt of Delilah right before his death. Maybe his hero hadn’t fought back. Maybe the Other Samson had let the hole in his heart open wide and swallow him.

  Maybe Samson Fox wasn’t like the Other Samson after all.

  ‘Samson?’

  His shoulders lifted away from the ground, and he heard a voice calling to him. ‘Samson.’ The cave shuddered and crumbled in around him. ‘Samson.’ He opened his eyes. ‘Samson!’

  Murray grabbed Samson by the wrist and dragged him up. Samson coughed, and Murray slapped him on the back. They were both sodden.

  ‘Ripper fall,’ said Murray. ‘You’re one lucky kid.’

  Samson nodded. Mattie threw her arms around his neck, then she pulled away and punched him hard in the shoulder. You scared me, she signed, and the sign for scared was like a beating cage over the heart.

  Samson shrugged. I’m lucky.

  Mattie smiled just as the bush sighed in around him. It may have been happy that the boy was still alive, or it may have just wanted to unfreeze the flames and sky and trees. Either way, it all started back up again. Crackling, shaking, chiming, shrieking.

  ‘Come on, mate,’ said Murray, and he let go of Samson’s hand. ‘It’s not over yet.’

  Samson nodded.

  Someone screamed from behind the house.

  ‘Clancy?’ Murray dropped the axe and ran.

  Mattie grabbed Samson’s hand and helped him to his feet. Hurry, hurry, and the sign for hurry was like an axe chopping wood.

  Clancy, thought Samson. His granddad was in trouble.

  Together, they ran around the side of the house. It was grey and smoky, and the flames were springing higher and darker. Samson stared into the orange dancing flames. Black stripes. He squinted through the smoke. Something edged forward.

  He saw two heads and two bodies. One belonged to Jonah, and the other looked like an orange dog slung over his back. ‘Queenie?’ he yelled, but it wasn’t Queenie. It had arms and was dragging something through the flames with human hands.

  Then Samson saw what it was dragging. His granddad. Clancy was burning like a picket in the fence.

  The creature dropped him and shrugged itself neatly under the black-striped skin. Even from where he was standing, Samson could see that the skin was wet and dripping. The creature stood high like a kangaroo on long hind legs, turned, cocked its head and stared straight at Samson.

  In that one quiet moment, Samson wished he could abandon all fourteen of their years together, like a failed game on an arcade machine, and go back to when they were curled around each other in their mum’s belly. Samson knew he would breathe air into his brother’s mouth rather than take it all for himself.

  The creature bolted, running back into the fire and through the flames to the bush beyond the fence.

  Clancy screamed again, and his voice sounded wet.

  ‘He’s burning,’ shouted Mattie. ‘He’s burning.’

  ‘Out of the way,’ said Murray, and Mattie and Samson stood back. Murray covered Clancy in the still-damp green blanket from around his shoulders, lay on top of him and rolled him across the lawn. The tanks had soaked the lawn, but Samson’s granddad screamed as though the grass was made from knives. The fire glowed in his clothes and then disappeared.

  ‘Mattie,’ said Murray, turning to face her so she could read his lips. ‘Get a bucket of water.’

  She nodded, let go of Samson’s hand and ran around the house to where he’d left the hose.

  ‘I can help,’ said Samson.

  ‘Quiet, mate,’ said Murray, as he turned the body over. Clancy’s eyes were closed, and his face looked like charcoal beneath the last embers of a campfire.

  ‘That was Jonah.’

  ‘Samson, please,’ said Murray.

  ‘We’ll lose him.’

  Lost, missing, run away … forgotten. Each word made a sound inside Samson, and each sound was too loud and made him feel as if he might crack right down the centre if he listened.

  ‘Come on, Clancy,’ said Murray quietly as he moved his hands, not seeming to know where to place them on the burnt body. ‘Come on, mate.’ It started to rain again. Murray lifted his face to the sky and opened his mouth. He laughed as if a lifetime of burning had been put out. ‘Feel that, Clance,’ he said. ‘Feel that.’

  Samson heard sirens. The fire trucks would arrive soon, and everyone would be safe. The rain and the firemen would put out the flames. Murray and Mattie would take care of Clancy, then they would take him to the hospital where the doctors and nurses would make him better. But Jonah would still be lost.

  Samson jumped through the smouldering flames and followed after his brother.

  ‘Clancy?’ said a voice.

  It was dark inside the ute, but Clancy had been sure he was alone. He glanced around. No one. Must be hearing things.

  There were no streetlights. The road changed from gravel to dirt, which meant he was almost home. Around the base of his mountain the bush thinned, and he could see the sky. Gently, he turned the ute onto the mountain road. The headlights darted through the darkness. Trees moved past his car one by one. They looked like bars.

  Something scurried onto the road. Clancy pushed his foot down on the brakes. The ute groaned, and the startled fox gazed up into the headlights. They stared at each other for a second. Then the fox darted into the bush on the other side of the road like a streak of fire. Another flash and then another, and two smaller foxes followed.

  Neither cub looked at the car, and in a few seconds the entire family was gone.

  It started to rain. ‘Clancy? Clancy?’ said the voice again, but this time Clancy decided not to go back. He left the ute running, opened the driver’s side door, stepped down
easily from the cabin and followed the fox and her cubs into the darkness.

  Samson and his brother ran through trees and over sticks. Around caves and rocks. Over hard ground covered in thin green, and earth where the grass was softer and threatened to swallow them both. Jonah was red dust, and Samson was a streak of rainbow fire. They got closer to the creek, and Jonah and the tiger were always just ahead. Samson followed all the way to the water, to where the ground ended, and then he stopped.

  Across the water he could see the pebble creek bed where he and Mattie had spent the day, weeks ago, before everything started to split apart. The creek was full from the rain, and chunks of the mountain floated in the fast-moving water like ice cubes in a drink. The dirt beneath his feet felt soft and unsteady. He looked over the edge. Had his brother jumped? Was he a piece of the mountain debris?

  Dawn gently tipped into day, and Samson watched as white insects danced over the water, catching the light in their wings. He stepped back from the edge. Beneath his feet were holes where the soil had fallen away to expose the roots from huge old trees on either side of the water. Probably the rain was to blame for that too.

  Something moved under him inside one of the holes. A flash of black. There was a scrabbling sound, and Samson saw it move to another hole, nearer to the creek. He walked towards it. Inside the roots, under the leaves and caving soil, tangled up in beetle husks and inky darkness, were two white hands gleaming beneath a tiger skin.

  ‘Jonah?’ Samson asked.

  The tiger lifted its head. A boy’s mouth, a tiger’s nose. Boy ears, but tiger eyes. His brother wasn’t quite a tiger, not yet, but Samson wasn’t sure if Jonah was still a boy either. The creature blinked and slunk back into the gloom.

  Samson made the sign for brother, and the sign for brother was two fists pointed inwards, rubbing together as though the hands were nervous.

  The creature growled. His brother was gone, and wanted to be gone. Samson could reach down into the hollows beneath the tree and drag Jonah out. He could take him, hissing, biting, screaming, all the way back to the house on the mountain. Samson was big enough, and strong too. He could even make his brother live inside and eat off plates. He could dress him in clothes and force him to live as a boy, but Jonah would only break free eventually.

  ‘You can’t force wildness out of an animal, or train it out either,’ their dad had told them once. ‘You can try, but it’ll end up escaping.’

  They couldn’t go back to how it was, Samson knew that, and they couldn’t really go forward either. Jonah was gone, swallowed. His brother had made his choice to be different, and Samson had made his choice to stay the same.

  He made the sign for tiger, and it was almost the same as brother, except the claws didn’t point in towards each other, they pointed out and away.

  I see you there, Tiger, he signed.

  … and the little ones chewed on the

  bones-o, bones-o, bones-o,

  and the little ones chewed on the bones.

  THE FOX CAME OUT ON A CHILLY NIGHT

  (TRADITIONAL FOLK SONG)

  Sometimes the tiger watched the other boy from the highest crest of the mountain. It watched him help the cripple up and down the steps. It watched the other family, the ones from the yurt, move their objects into the house.

  Sometimes the tiger got closer. Sometimes it watched from the bush, near where the fence had been before the fire, concealed in the leaves and branches. It watched the girl come and go in her school uniform. It watched the new baby girl fumble on the lawn, like an infant bird fallen from a nest.

  One day, many weeks after the fire, the tiger watched the man drive up and park his ute just outside the house.

  ‘Hooroo,’ called Murray.

  ‘Say hello to Daddy,’ said Tilda, and the baby, Georgie, frowned.

  Murray smiled. ‘Where’s Mattie?’

  The back door opened, and Mattie came out onto the verandah holding two plates. She walked down the steps to the blanket and handed one to Samson. He smiled and thanked her, and took a huge bite of his sandwich. She laughed.

  Murray stayed by the ute. ‘I have something for you,’ he said, signing along with his voice. ‘All three of you.’ He reached into the ute tray.

  Mattie smiled, and Samson reached out towards the burly black and gold pup. Murray dropped it into his arms. Samson buried his face in its fur.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mattie, and she used her hands and her voice.

  ‘What’s his name?’ asked Tilda.

  Murray lifted Georgie into the air. The baby gurgled. ‘He doesn’t have one yet.’

  Samson carried the squirming pup over to the verandah where Clancy was waiting in his wheelchair. His head was turned sideways, and his mouth and chin were wet, even though his lips were shut. Samson sat the pup in his granddad’s lap. ‘What should we call him, Granddad?’

  Clancy didn’t answer.

  ‘What about King?’ asked Samson.

  Watching them, the tiger felt a pang, a long-forgotten yearning, tug at his gut.

  ‘Well, he’s a pup,’ said Murray, ‘so maybe we should call him “Prince”.’

  Samson raised the dog over his head. It wriggled. ‘Prince,’ he repeated, because there was no one to stop him.

  ‘Looks like we have a winner,’ said Murray, and he cuddled his daughter.

  Samson turned and stared up at the crest. He waved just once, like he did almost every day.

  The tiger receded into the bush to where the boy was waiting. He never came with the tiger, not all the way to the house. The boy beckoned, and the tiger followed him into the bush. They might not come back to the house for many days, or weeks, but the tiger knew without checking that Samson always left the door open.

  After the tiger was gone, and Samson Fox had wheeled his granddad back into the house, followed by Murray and his new wife and baby, the mountain found itself alone. It took a long, deep breath that might’ve lasted for minutes or hours or days, except the mountain had no use for time. It had always been and would always be.

  The skin around the mountain heard the sigh from deep inside the rock and, for the first time since the birth of River Fox, everything felt calm. The trees relaxed and the leaves swayed, almost as if they could finally breathe. The creek rushed, not because it was chasing anything, but because it longed to feel the smooth and stable rocks beneath. The waterfall cascaded like soft summer rain into the still water.

  It was wonderful for a moment, but the trees and waterfall, rocks and creek knew that it wouldn’t last long, because the mountain had seen Mattie Kelly turn and walk to the charcoaled boundary around the house. The mountain saw her walk back and forth, back and forth, blackening the soles of her bare feet inside the boundary line of soot and soil. The mountain heard her song, clear and unending, join with the phantom voice of River Fox, and knew the song would never end.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to all the staff of the Creative Writing and Literature Studies Faculty at QUT. Particularly Ari Van Luyn, Laura Elvery, Penny Holliday, Donna Hancox, Sarah Holland-Batt, Sharyn Pearce, Samuel Finegan and my very good friend Lee McGowan.

  I would never have started writing this novel without the support of Riverbend Books and the staff who sailed within her, particularly Susy Wilson, Kerry Fawdray, Jason Reed, Kate Sunners, Bruce Paterson, Jen Boyle and the amazing Emily Philip.

  Thank you to everyone at Affirm Press, including Martin Hughes, Fiona Henderson, Keiran Rogers, Grace Breen and Ruby Ashby-Orr, and my tireless, brilliant editors Kate Goldsworthy and Aviva Tuffield.

  To Sam Eyles, Sarah Seminutin, Max Kanake, Jann Eyles, Buster Macaulay, Sadie Fox-Whitecoat, Steve Pree, Hayley-Jane Francis, Luke Arnold, Hannah Fry, Sarah-Vivienne Russell, Christopher Spathis, Bronwen Gray, Bessie Holland and Cara Shrimpton. Thank you for your many years of fun, friendship and support.

  This novel owes special thanks to several very important influences in my life: my extraordinary teacher and friend, Lesle
y Hawkes; my partner and the love of my life, Jared Spurr; and my pa, fellow Lost Boy, Charlie Cooper. Without each of you, I would never have heard the song in the mountain or found the courage to follow it.

  But mostly, this novel is for Bel Bel and The Boy. Thank you for sharing in all my stories. I’ll see you both in Burrabingi soon.

  In 1986, fourteen-year-old twins Samson and Jonah travel from the Sunshine Coast to the wild backcountry of Tasmania to live on a mountain with a granddad they’ve never met. Clancy Fox is a beat-up old man obsessed with finding his long-missing daughter, River. He’s convinced that she was taken by a Tasmanian tiger pack.

  The resentful, brooding Jonah and thoughtful, inquisitive Samson become entranced, in different ways, with the mountain. While Samson – who has Down syndrome – finds mystery and delight all around, Jonah develops a dark obsession as persistent as Clancy’s desire to bring River home.

  Sing Fox to Me is a story built from lost and stolen children, Tasmanian tigers, missing animals, Down syndrome and parents who run away. It is the symphony of three howling male voices, each hoping to find the right pack and live comfortably in their own skin.