Rain Birds

by Harriet McKnight

  ‘You should know, he was a bit distressed,’ Tracey said, looking pointedly at the young woman. ‘All the commotion.’

  Tracey walked towards her car.

  ‘What’s your name again?’ she asked the girl.

  ‘Arianna Brandt.’

  ‘What is it that you want, Arianna?’

  ‘I want you to consider what we told you last time about the cockatoos. I know that it’s nice having them around, but it’s potentially a matter of life and death. I’m here to ask you again to help us get the cockatoos to return to their nesting site.’

  She said nothing.

  ‘We found two of them dead recently,’ Arianna added.

  She didn’t know how to respond to this crazed, nervy girl in front of her.

  ‘There’s different things you could do. My mother used to hang CD discs in her veggie garden – the reflective surfaces scare birds. Or you could just go out and yell at them, make them feel like this isn’t a safe place to be.’

  She heard Alan around the back of the house begin to wail.

  ‘Please,’ the bald woman said.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Please, it’s important,’ Arianna repeated.

  ‘No.’ She watched the panic rise in the young woman, who was turning her body this way and that, her arms becoming frenzied.

  ‘Are you ok?’ she asked.

  ‘This is an environmental issue. This is bigger than either of us. Globally, we are losing species to extinction at a rate of dozens every day. Forty-five per cent of our bird species are found only here in Australia and these glossy black cockatoos will face extinction pretty soon if we don’t do something about it.’

  Pina pushed open her gate, went through and shut it quickly behind her, wedging her body against it in case the girl tried to follow. ‘You should leave,’ she told her. ‘Perhaps bring that bloke with you next time. I reckon he gets further with people than you do.’

  Alan’s cries were even louder now. ‘Ow, ow, ow, ow,’ he was keening.

  She set off around the side of the house to deal with him, looking once over her shoulder at Arianna. As she reached the back garden, she heard the four-wheel drive start up and leave.

  She found Alan in his armchair, hitting at his legs with weak hands.

  ‘Ow, ow, ow, ow,’ he howled.

  She went to him, tried to calm him. Through the open kitchen window she heard the news interrupt the afternoon talkback program.

  There are warnings across much of South Australia and Victoria today for another devastating bout of extreme heat. People are being urged to stay indoors, to keep their homes cool. The SES have issued an extreme weather warning and are encouraging people to refresh their bushfire plans and stay tuned to their local emergency services radio channel for updates.

  ‘We can see the smoke from our place,’ a talkback caller now said. ‘Should we be worried? We just need to know what we should do.’

  She glanced out into the dry bush beyond the back fence. Alan’s hands were still jumping beneath hers, trying to beat whatever it was from his legs.

  ‘Shh,’ she said, over and over, trying to comfort him.

  The strengthening wind echoed the sound.

  35

  PINA DIDN’T SLEEP well that night, unsettled in part by yesterday’s visit from that strange, bald young woman, but also the unrelenting heat that diminished little overnight. There was a clamminess to her skin that could not be shifted. By eight a.m. the temperature was already in the thirties, with the mercury still rising.

  Alan had an appointment with Doctor Nash that day; the two weeks since their last one had passed in a blur. Too exhausted to attempt to shower him, she bathed him in bed, bringing in a plastic mixing bowl of warm water. She ran the washcloth over his shrunken frame, the loose folds of skin pushing back against her fingertips. He didn’t complain as he did in the shower. Instead, he just lay there and stared at the ceiling.

  She was still half in last night’s dreams: bald heads, rotting feathers, Alan screaming somewhere she couldn’t reach.

  Once she’d got him to the kitchen table, she wedged a plastic spoon into his hand: a child’s spoon; mushed-up food. To avoid damage to his mouth if he bit down too hard.

  I never wanted to be someone’s mother.

  She thought she’d chosen a man who walked out of the darkness like a revelation, who took up all the space in a room. Thirty years. It was too short and too long a time to know how to be without him.

  We’re losing species at a rate of dozens a day.

  What the fuck did any of that matter?

  After breakfast, Alan shuffled around the living room. She left him drifting in circles, returned to the kitchen and switched on the radio in time for the news.

  Overnight, a group had broken into the Sol Petroleum site and set fire to some of the equipment. A dangerous blaze. She listened to the newsreader report that one of the haul trucks had gone up quickly. All that petrol. Embers had drifted over into the desiccated bush and set it alight. Sol Petroleum representatives were yet to comment on the blaze. Currently, firefighters were battling small burns in the forest around the site.

  Authorities are yet to name the suspects involved, the newsreader continued, but have indicated the likelihood that the arson was committed in response to the inaction on the part of Sol Petroleum following recent clashes with the community. Fire officials say they are concerned about the extreme weather forecast and what that might mean for the surrounding communities.

  ‘People in the area may see smoke and some increased activity with aerial firefighting resources,’ a CFA spokesperson was now stating. ‘At this stage we’re saying there’s no cause for concern but just be aware of the situation down there and know where to get information in a hurry.’

  She thought of Harley; he wouldn’t have done anything that stupid, would he? As far as she knew, his family had already come back from the dig site. Bushfire season always put her on edge.

  Untended, the CFA man who stopped by their house had said that day. It’s that kind of build-up around houses that results in loss of property and life.

  From the window, she could see the cockatoos. This morning, there were five of them at the bird feeders, clicking their beaks at each other. They were quieter than usual. Eyeing off the bush with suspicion. She hadn’t put seed out for them this morning. Just go out and yell at them. She felt an urgency engulf her.

  She went into the lounge room, grabbed Alan by the arms and steered him out onto the verandah. The birds cocked their heads, stepped foot over foot along the edges of the bird feeders.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Look.’

  His cheeks crinkled in distress at her raised voice. ‘Let go of me.’

  ‘What are they? Alan, do you know?’

  ‘Let go.’ He was shrill.

  The birds squawked and bobbed up and down with their wings open. Alan shook his arms, tried to get her hands to drop, turned his torso towards the house again. She gripped his arms harder. The birds were chattering nervously.

  ‘Look at them, Alan,’ she yelled. ‘Tell me what they are.’

  But he just wailed and continued trying to pry her fingers from his arms.

  What was she doing? She could see the fear in his face, the anxiety. She released her hands, watched him shuffle away, down the steps into the garden.

  She noticed a smoky haze in the air, and his outline appeared to shimmer. As if he were insubstantial. She sat down on the top step and felt as though she’d never be able to get up again.

  ‘I can’t believe I did that,’ she whispered out loud.

  What are you going to do?

  She was sure he did know what they were – he’d just been overwhelmed by the way she’d handled things. His connection with those cockatoos must mean something.

  Arianna observed a couple of fishermen walk past the Land Cruiser, talking as they headed towards the boat ramp. The ends of their rods bobbed up and down with their footsteps. Th
ere’d be no fish, she thought. They’d missed the early morning tide change and now it was too hot.

  She was stopped in the car park beside the water; had been all night. She hadn’t returned to Murrungowar after visiting the woman at the weatherboard house yesterday. Instead she’d spent the night in the four-wheel drive, in front of the inlet, drifting in and out of sleep. She’d watched the sun rise. Thinking. The dawn had been a strange colour: grey, blue, brown.

  The air was still a bit hazy now. She saw that the fishermen had positioned themselves on the rocks beside the ramp and were casting their lines into the inlet.

  ‘You’ll do everything else outdoors,’ Tim had remarked to her once, ‘but not fishing.’

  How to tell him: the flimsy ends of rods, the way they could be slapped against the backs of small, misbehaving bare legs, the sting of salt. Her father had been a fisherman. That’s how she knew those things.

  No one will want any of you.

  Her stomach rumbled. It was midmorning. She got out of the Land Cruiser and walked across to the supermarket. Inside, the shop was adorned with Happy New Year banners. She mentally calculated how far away that was as she took an iced coffee from the shelf. Three days. The checkout girl seemed even more bored than usual and barely glanced at her as she scanned the coffee through the register.

  Once she was outside again, Arianna saw a delivery truck was parked out the front of the supermarket. The driver was standing beside the cab, smoking a cigarette. She put her cap firmly on her head and started to walk past.

  The driver gestured to the clogged sky. ‘Smoko time. Obviously.’

  She stared at him, confused.

  ‘You’re right, should do some work.’ He made a show of propping a foot on his knee, grinding the butt into the sole of his boot before flicking it onto the ground, where it bounced off into some dry tussock grass. He started opening the sides of his truck, undoing the heavy, silver clamps that had kept the doors shut.

  A rush of cold air hit her as he leant in to lift out a box and placed it on the ground at her feet. She wanted to ask him if she could climb in, cool off for a few moments.

  ‘Bit of a dodgy-looking sky,’ he said. Just above the treetops, a swollen, bruise-coloured cloud. ‘Not great news for bush like this.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  He gestured at the trees close by. ‘Tinderbox,’ he said, giving a little snort and shaking his head like she was mad. He climbed up into the cab of the truck. Grabbed a clipboard and jumped down. ‘Sign this one, love.’

  ‘I don’t work here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t work here,’ she repeated.

  But he’d already whipped the form away from her and bent to pick the box up from the ground. ‘You alright?’ he asked, pausing as he moved off towards the supermarket’s doors.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  She parked the Land Cruiser once again out the front of the blue weatherboard house. When she got out, she sensed the eyes of the bush were on her. The air was acrid and opaque. Smoke. She’d heard snippets of the radio reports. Arson, retaliation.

  The gate to the house was unlocked this time, the chain hanging down beside the post like a useless limb. She pushed it open and walked up onto the verandah. Knocked on the front door. Nothing. There were no cars parked outside today. She walked the length of the front verandah, peering into the windows. The rooms were empty. She could see strips of silver duct tape on the edges of the lounge-room carpet; the furniture was all pushed back against the walls leaving the centre of each room empty. The sofa had a mound of linen on it that looked like bedsheets and pillows. Things seemed out of place, somehow.

  What’s wrong with these people?

  She walked back to the front door, her boots thudding on the wooden boards of the porch. Everything else was quiet. The only sound was the muffled chatter of talkback radio coming from somewhere inside the house. She couldn’t make out the words, just the familiar rhythms of speech and the tinny programmed music.

  Show her, whispered the voices. She closed her eyes. All morning, they’d been in her head. She has to see, she has to know what she’s doing. It’s the only way she’ll understand.

  She walked back to the four-wheel drive, touched the zip-lock bags and tried not to notice the squelching or the softening. The owner of the Boney Point Hotel had gazed at her askew when she’d asked for the corpses, but he’d gone and got them without asking any questions.

  They were starting to warm up now. Once she’d removed them from their frozen tomb, the natural cycle of things was quickly returning them to the earth. She scanned up the empty road towards Boney Point, then cupped the bodies of the pair, one in each hand, and carried them up the stairs to the front door. She put them down on the mat.

  Everyone thinks you’re crazy but this is the only way to make them see, the birds whispered to her.

  Cause and effect, that’s what drove the world. The balance of nature was very tenuous. People were mindless beasts, stuck in search of immediate gratification.

  As she went back to the car the sun was directly overhead, burning into everything beneath. In the casuarina grove, she could see the cockatoos huddled on branches close to the trunk. They knew the horror that would unfold. Birds-eye view. They knew what was coming.

  36

  IT HAD TAKEN Pina a while to coax Alan back into the house after she’d forced him outside to tell her what the birds were. She’d needed to get him ready for his appointment. Finally, she’d managed to get him in the ute, then drove him to see Doctor Nash at the regional health clinic in Orbost.

  ‘The joys of being a rural specialist,’ the doctor said as she welcomed them into her makeshift office. ‘How was your Christmas?’

  ‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘Quiet.’

  ‘Have you given any more thought to what we were talking about a little while ago?’

  When will you know?

  ‘I’ve been thinking but I haven’t decided yet.’

  Alan whistled.

  ‘So, Alan, I’m going to do a few tests with you today.’

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m your doctor. You can call me Ellen.’

  Doctor Nash looped the blood pressure band around his arm while he squirmed and tried to pull away. She checked inside his ears, took his temperature.

  ‘Good, good,’ she said quietly to herself and smiled at Pina and, for a moment, she thought there was going to be good news.

  There was nothing physically the matter with him, apart from his lack of muscle density, Doctor Nash told her. Then she tried to get him to draw some things on a piece of paper. He couldn’t even comprehend when she asked him to draw a clock face. All his memory tests were a disaster.

  ‘I think the time is close, Pina. In my professional opinion, the financial and emotional toll on you having him at home much longer will be considerable.’

  She shouldn’t be saying this in front of him. He’s sitting right there.

  ‘There are a couple of places I can recommend to you. Nothing that’s very near to where you live but some very good facilities. You’ll be able to visit.’

  ‘I don’t want to go on a holiday,’ Alan said, frowning.

  ‘You don’t?’ the doctor said. ‘It could be fun.’

  Alan crossed his arms melodramatically and glared out the window.

  ‘You’re still a young woman, Pina,’ Doctor Nash said.

  She laughed at this and dropped her eyes to the backs of her hands, with their dotted age spots and soft folds.

  ‘Comparatively. This doesn’t have to be a death sentence for you as well.’

  It felt cold inside the health clinic to her then. The air-conditioning that had been so wonderful at first was now raising goosebumps along her arms. Another nurse took Alan aside to undergo some more tests. She watched her husband from across the room.

  He looks so old.

  ‘Do you think it’s possible that his mind is still c
onnected to something in particular?’ she said, lowering her voice.

  ‘What do you mean, exactly?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Well, could certain objects or things in the real world encourage his old self to come out of the dementia?’

  Doctor Nash frowned. ‘There have been incidents of dementia patients responding to the music of their youth or to footage of events they were once participants in. But none of these cases have involved someone working back through the progression of the disease to their “old” self again.’ She made exaggerated quotation marks in the air with her first two fingers of each hand. ‘Are you referring to something in particular?’

  She fought the urge to just laugh it off, to take it back. Stupid.

  ‘Pina, is there something you want to ask?’

  ‘Birds,’ she said, finally. ‘Black cockatoos in our garden. He was always outdoors. They’re such impressive birds, you know? Hard to miss. You notice them when they’re there. Sometimes I think I can uncover something of the old him when they’re around.’

  Doctor Nash considered her answer before she spoke. ‘I want to be able to tell you something different, but what you’re seeing is probably nothing more than some sort of basic recognition. We don’t know enough about the dementia brain to say for sure, but just because his brain is recognising something from his old life doesn’t mean it’s staving off the illness or that you’re glimpsing anything other than that: pattern recognition.’

  She nodded. Once she started, she couldn’t stop moving her head up and down.

  ‘It’s certainly not a reason I would use to put off making bigger decisions,’ Doctor Nash added.

  Nod, nod, nod, nod.

  ‘He only has me. We only have each other.’

  The doctor’s face creased with sadness. It alarmed her, that kind of visible emotion from a medical practitioner.

  Stop it, she wanted to say. You’re supposed to fix this. But Doctor Nash just watched her, the corners of her mouth still turned down.

  ‘Look, Pina, you’ll probably consider this highly unprofessional of me, but I have to be extremely blunt. You think you’ve lived through so much of this disease, but there is a lot more to come.