Wildlife

by Fiona Wood

  The second letter.

  You know I’m not particularly a snoop, Fred. I’m just not. But I have some natural curiosity, and when Holly went running obediently out of the unit when Vincent whistled or snapped his fingers, I did just stroll over to where she’d been sitting at the kitchen table and glance down at her (cough) letter.

  It was to Dear Ruby, so a friend, not a parent.

  You know I’m a fast reader, so it’s not even as though I had time to construct the argument for or against. My eyes ripped down that page so quickly they beat my good manners by a mile.

  Mostly it was a rave about how Holly couldn’t get over the coincidence of Dear Ruby knowing (dear) Ben. Turns out they went to elementary school together, yawn, but my interest grew when I read that Ben is Holly’s best friend. They hang together up here all the time, he is soooo funny, in fact she has never met anyone she gets along with so well, who makes her laugh so much, who is such a great guy, who really gets her, etc. etc. Cutesy little heart and (sigh) next to great guy. Definitely verging on implying there is a romantic nature to her feelings. No mention of the person who is ostensibly her best friend, Sibylla. And no mention of this same person also hanging with Ben for significant amounts of time. A slightly skewed account.

  I turned away. More the thought of the evil one’s return than any pricking of my conscience; I know, hardly admirable. Too bad. I was up in my bunk by the time Holly got back.

  Sibylla followed closely, holding an apple, which Holly grabbed and bit into, saying, Halvsies?

  If you can believe it, this was a token effort on Holly’s part to smooth over their recent trials and snitchiness, and Sibylla read it as such, pleasantly accepting the apple grab.

  Some days pass peacefully enough. Uneventfully enough.

  We’re on Vego this week, and it is strangely satisfying. Our vegetable garden up here is beautiful. A generation ago, one of the arty mothers decided we should have a kitchen garden like Sunday Reed’s at Heide. With the assistance of a pile of money, a fashionable landscape designer of the day, and our full-time professional gardener/groundskeeper, we get to play at well-composted self-sufficiency with our sun hats and sharp clippers. Beneath established fruit trees.

  It is fenced and sheltered by a high bougainvillea hedge. The wind sweeps up across the mountains from the south; if unprotected, the trees will all bend in the same direction.

  The beds are built up, twelve symmetrical rectangles, a central path, and at the very middle of the garden is a large oblong pond with water lilies. The beds are spread with flighty pea straw that the currawongs snitch for nests. Right now we have done our pruning of the hedge, our picking of the fresh herbs for Priscilla, a plucking of beans from their tastefully rustic wicker steeples, an eating of sugar snap peas, sun warm, an ill-advised tasting of strawberries only faintly red—that was just Annie—and a wise ignoring of plums and nectarines that are purple and red respectively but hard as rocks.

  We have twenty minutes before which it is too early to return, or we’ll be pounced on for not doing our tasks thoroughly enough, and so we lie inside the shelter of the hedge, in the afternoon sun, on grass half-shaded by the spreading mulberry tree. We pluck at white-rooted stems of grass, nibble them, find cowslips and bite a machine-gun path up their lemonsour stems; we forage for small plum puddings, the little seed pods of one of the mountain grasses, like a miniature sweet green nut. We make chains from yellow buzzing, black-hearted daisies with their drifts of pollen and milk-sap-sticky stems.

  Pippa finishes a circlet and puts it on my head. “Sib, pretty Sibbie, the only one of us likely to be suspended on a billboard for beautifulness, the queen of the Ben fan club, the clever one.” Holly’s face through half-closed eyes looks unfussed; maybe she’s getting used to the silliness. In fact, she seems almost happy these days. The thing with Vincent must be happening.

  Bees murmur and stumble among the daisies; I shut my eyes and let them hum me into a dreamy half sleep.

  Pippa says, “We are lucky, when you come to think of it.”

  “Oh, yes,” says Holly, “if slaving away in the bush is lucky. If eating at chez Cilly’s gourmet prison mess is lucky. If being bossed around by a mini King Kong and living in overcrowded accommodation is lucky, then we are so totally lucky.” Everyone laughs.

  “No,” says Pippa, “lucky we haven’t had a ghost visit yet.”

  Cold slides through my hot dozing peace of mind.

  “Tell us about the ghosts,” says Holly. I don’t need to open my eyes to know that at least part of her pleasure relates to the fact that she knows perfectly well I am ready to run.

  “Well,” says Pippa, “where should I begin? How shall I count the ways in which girls have been terrorized by certain unwanted visitors?”

  Lou pipes up. Very un-Lou. “My mother told me about the charcoal man.”

  “Welcome to the conversation, Lou.” Pippa is pleased to have another member of the church present. “The charcoal man. Ragged clothes, red eyes. He’s searching, always searching for his daughter. The one he let burn to a grisly death in a bushfire because he wasn’t home.”

  “Where was he?” asks Annie.

  “He was off drinking at the loggers’ camp. He used to leave her locked inside so she wouldn’t wander into the bush at night. She was trapped when the wind changed and the fire swept up the mountain, didn’t stop till it got to Long Reach. What was left of his burned-out hut was still here on this site when school first bought the land in 1910—right about where the assembly hall is.”

  “The first sign he’s coming is the low, rasping breathing,” adds Lou.

  Gulp.

  “What about Maisy?” Lou wants to know. “Is she still around?”

  Pippa is very serious. “Maisy is getting stronger and more angry as the years go by. She was only a faint shimmer when my eldest sister came up here, but by the time Helen came through, Maisy was more visible. And very angry. She is about eleven. She wears a pinafore and carries an axe, and she smiles as she walks toward you, but once close, her face changes, ages, and she screams bloody murder and shows you her neck.”

  “Her neck?” Annie’s voice is a whisper.

  “Her mother died in childbirth; her father went mad with grief and knew he couldn’t cope with little children, so…”

  I’m covered in goose bumps. “Stop it!” I open my eyes and sit up too fast, and nearly faint with the sun and the lying down and the scary level that I can’t sustain.

  Holly laughs. “Come on, guys, remember Sib can’t stand to hear things like that.”

  “But it’s fun,” says Pippa. “And you need to be ready if they come for us. Bennett is the house with Maisy’s name on one of the beds. She will visit. One of these nights.”

  “More benefits for people with top bunks,” says Annie bitterly.

  Pippa looks around the group. “Don’t believe it. She levitates.”

  Annie and I scream.

  “Shut up, they’ll come and see us doing nothing,” says Holly.

  “You’re not doing nothing,” I say. “You’re scaring the crap out of me.”

  “If Maisy comes, you just have to shout back. You say, ‘He’s not here anymore, Maisy.’”

  “If the charcoal man comes, what do you do?” asks Eliza. She is doing calf raises on the edge of the half-pipe terra-cotta guttering that runs along the inside of the hedge.

  “Run,” says Lou. “And hope there’s no fire. When the charcoal man comes through, he jams all the doors and windows.”

  “I refuse to believe any of this nonsense,” I say, my blood still running cold at the thought of nighttime visitations when everyone but me is asleep. “And I hate kid ghosts, they’re scarier than anything.”

  “Ooooh, she’s got a doll, too. Maisy has a little doll,” says Pippa, enjoying the horrified looks. “Her doll says, mama, mama, and sometimes it’s the first sign that Maisy is on her way.”

  “I hate dolls in scary stories,” I say. “Especial
ly if they smile.”

  Pippa nods. “You’re not alone there,” she says grimly. “One girl in my sister Alex’s year had to go home because she was totally convinced she heard a soft little mama, mama every night when the lights went out. Turns out she did. It was a rotation of people in her house trying to freak her out for fun. It worked. Full crack up. Came back for the last week a changed girl.”

  Despite feeling freaked out, a small bubble of happy afternoon remains with me. It’s Lou. For this little while she seemed almost relaxed, almost as though she was part of the group.

  wednesday 31 october

  Our mission was apostrophes, but we ended up killing something.

  We followed the trail least taken from the valley, heading northeast about three miles out when we came to Fitzwilliams Paddock, which might once have been a paddock, but is bushland now, and which we renamed Fitzwilliam’s Paddock. There we heard a rasping, panting noise, and a whimpering.

  Not a spooky bone in my body, but after the ghost talk it was a disconcerting sound to hear when you think you are somewhere completely uninhabited.

  Hello? Michael called out. No response. But there was another whimper.

  Anyone there? I added. It came out as a nervous warble.

  We looked at each other, and didn’t need to have the conversation. We bush-bashed toward the noise.

  The smell hit us a beat before we saw the red wallaby. Shit and piss and vomit and the beginning of rotting flesh. The poor creature was still alive.

  There were flies swarming a gaping bloody wound in its neck. Its eyes were rolling back in its head. But it was still trying weakly to get up. All it could do was lift its head a few centimeters off the ground. Which it did, over and over. It was unbearable to see that futility, the reflexive insistence upon survival. The rest of its body wasn’t moving at all.

  All this, we saw at a glance.

  It’s been shot, I said, and a sob came out on top of the words.

  It’s paralyzed. Maybe a broken back, said Michael.

  Now it had seen us, its panic and distress were more extreme. It rasped out a noise from deep inside its throat.

  A rock, said Michael.

  We looked about, and quickly found a heavy chunk of granite.

  If you stay there, said Michael, I’ll approach it from behind and try not to make it any more scared.

  He was completely white, the blood drained even from his lips, but we understood this had to be done.

  Do you want me to…? I wanted to give him an out if he needed it.

  He shook his head. I’d better do it; it’ll need some force, so…

  I nodded.

  I stepped in a bit closer but didn’t make eye contact with the poor thing. I sang. I didn’t know what else to do. I was the distraction.

  Michael found his balance and heaved the rock down as hard as he could with a horrified noise of someone who knows he is inflicting a fatal blow. The wallaby screamed a final shrill, pure note of panic. I heard the cracking thud into bone and mush, and Michael’s guts convulsing until they were empty.

  My face was a hot lather of tears and snot, and still I couldn’t look, but I carried the animal’s final cry inside me as I pushed back through the scratching scrub, my heart pounding with the fear and pity of it, leaving Michael to cry his tears privately.

  tuesday 6 november

  I’ve volunteered for an early solo hike for a couple of reasons. One of them is not that I am keen as mustard on wilderness.

  Mainly, I want to get away from the collective Bennett House hormones and Holly in particular, and second, I want to endure and survive something. Sounds dramatic. But I need it. Pop outside my bubble. Scarify my flesh. I know, Fred, big on the religious imagery for one who does not believe.

  If I were a runner, I’d want to run till I dropped; if I could yell (without risking increased sessions with Merill), I’d yell till I was hoarse. I am looking for some excess, and the solo is pretty much all that’s on the menu.

  I’m preparing. I’ll do it in the purest way.

  Some kids freak out at the idea of isolation. They choose the sites closest to the mothership, and make sure they are within shouting distance in case something happens.

  To me that evades the challenge completely. Why bother doing it at all?

  I’m going as far afield as we are allowed, and I’m staying two nights. You get to skip class if you do a two-nighter, because you’re hiking back on morning three. I’ve asked not to have a teacher food-drop, so I’m carrying everything with me. I know my spot. And I have my central task. I will write to my parents; it’s compulsory. And I will write to you. And I will throw the key somewhere deep or far. Into a pool or a crevice.

  There are not many opportunities for this type of activity anymore. And historically it is more of a boy thing. Test your strength, fight a bear, survive the wilderness, prove your courage.

  So I’m glad to be a candy-arsed little middle-class kid who is getting the experience constructed for her, as though it’s the future and I’m in a virtual GeoDome full of authentic old-world simulacra.

  Which I sort of am. It is certainly the future. Tick tick. And I have a clearer past/present delineation than most kids, I’m guessing. My past is you.

  You, my loss of innocence. We covered the big stuff: sex and death.

  So, I’ve packed the pack. I’ve packed the tent. Weather is still too unpredictable to rely on the biv, the little open shelter, though it would add to the wild-girl experience. Ground mat. No clean clothes. Going grotty. Pad, pens, pencils in case I experience arty compulsions when confronted with the inner depths of my own soul.

  Food. Luxurious food—the solo hike means extra treats and trimmings. Cookies, granola bars, vac-packed cooked meals, juice. Cereals. Fresh fruit. It’s heavy.

  We leave in half an hour, at 8 AM. I’m being driven to the Bluff Trail, then I’ll hike in up to the spur and along Lizard Ridge, and from there across to Mount Desperation.

  (later)

  My pack was digging in, my quads burning up. And all I could think was: bring it on.

  Two hours walking on a marked trail, and I was almost at the point where the final trail across the ridge and finally up Mount Desperation should start.

  No one had been this way for ages. It was about a four-hour hike from here, and I didn’t plan on stopping. I had a bag of trail mix in each pocket, and water in a back carrier.

  The trail is overgrown with bracken fern in parts, and I was glad I had my walking sticks to bash ahead a bit and let the snakes know to get the hell out of the way. It’s reassuring to be wearing heavy boots and gaiters as a backup; I’d have to be the first human some of these slithery critters encountered, so they might not even know to scram.

  Finally, after the toughest part of the climb, a last steep rocky trail through a belt of stumpy snow gums, I got to a grassy clearing not far below the peak, with a view back across to the west side of Mount Fairweather on the far side of the valley. I was as far away as I could get, and I could hear water. There were springs on my map, and with any luck there would be a pond, too.

  I dropped my pack and lay down beside it, panting. I have never felt so physically exhausted. My heart was pounding like a mad thing, the blood beating in my ears.

  It was quiet but for my puffed breathing and a wheeling spray of parrots, bright against the clear sky. I got up, legs trembling, and started looking around. There was a pond, and it was full of fresh water after all the rain. No grazing allowed here these days, so that means minimal animal poo in the water, which is always a comforting thought, although we still boil or use purifying tablets. I was about to strip off and plunge in when I saw a nice fat tiger snake sunning itself on the rocks. I made a ruckus, and the sensible thing headed off in the other direction. I knew there might be others nearby, but I was boiling and my feet were hot and sore, so I couldn’t resist ripping off gaiters, socks, boots, and shirt and walking into the icy water. Heaven to bend over and splash my
face and head till water was trickling down my back and front, soaking my singlet and turning it into a cooling system when the breeze hit the wet fabric. Felt delicious. Black sun spots burned into the red of my closed eyelids when I blinked. I filled my hat with water and put it back on.

  Pitching a tent is easy now with a couple of trips under my belt. I even know where the best place to pitch is: facing east near a stand of young trees. I found a small overgrown fire pit and flicked some wallaby shit balls out of the way with a stick.

  I stretched out on the grass, arms thrown wide open, shoulders saying thank you, looking up into the limitless blue, and realized I was starving. So it’s just me and the infernal journal and my very late lunch: a relatively unscathed salad roll, a huge chocolate chip cookie, an apple, and a cracker-and-dip pack.

  I collected a good pile of dry wood. Mad homemaker skills. We are meant to be all about MIB (minimum impact bushwalking), and we usually are, but fires are a sometimes-necessary comfort.

  I sat and stared into the distance. This is what I’ve been craving. Complete solitude. Merill even agreed I’m ready for the challenge. After maybe an hour I felt more properly rested than after the longest sleep.

  And then I was bored.

  I deliberately have not brought a book, because I wanted to Confront Self, rather than Escape From Self, my more usual objective. So I looked for my own entertainment.

  I imagined I was a resourceful, now-mature Pebbles Flintstone. I constructed a goal with some fallen branches. I gathered some balls (rocks), put myself at a challenging distance, and started taking shots at the goal.

  I felt a bit silly. How did the average Stone Age kid my age fill her days? Ugh. Unwanted pregnancies, no doubt. But even so, the day is long when you have no classes, no book to hand, and no people to creatively avoid interacting with. I threw a few more ground hoops. It was good healthy pointless fun, like all sports.