The Eye of the Sheep

by Sofie Laguna

  ‘Keep your voice down, you’ll wake Robby.’

  ‘Does it? Does anything happen to them?’ I whispered.

  ‘Nothing happens to them.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Jimmy, do you want to keep counting or not?’

  ‘Yes, keep counting,’ I whispered.

  Once we were in the Holden, caught in the traffic beside a truck full of sheep, so close I could hear their hooves clacking against the boards. I could see them shuffling, pushing against each other for room. They were jammed in, one layer over another, their noses pressing against the wooden sides of the truck, tails covered in mud. What happened to those sheep? What happened to the light?

  ‘. . . Eight sheep . . . nine sheep . . . ten . . .’

  I never liked to wake and find her gone. There was too much room, as if the bed had grown to make space for her and not shrunk back to its original. I lay awake and waited and listened. Robby breathed slow and even in his bed on the other side. I could smell Mum’s Intensive Care left behind on the sheets.

  I lined up shadows of bottle, Matchbox car, book, window, shell, bus painting and birthday card while I waited. I was at birthday card when I heard a thump coming from down the hall. Thump. Like someone falling without power or muscle or fibres, as if the power and muscle and fibres had been lost. There was nothing to hold up the body.

  The particles under my skin scratched at the surface. Robby slept on, the smooth air going in then slowly out. Thump! again, louder this time as the powerless body tried to stand and couldn’t and fell again.

  I jumped from my bed and ran to Robby’s. He moaned and moved over. I pressed as much of myself against him as I could, legs, stomach, knees. I breathed him in, he smelled of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo after it had been heated and cooked with his sweat. I lay there, shaking and listening, my whole body tuned as an ear, but there were no more sounds.

  ‘Jimmy,’ Robby whispered. ‘You wet the bed.’

  ‘Sorry, Robby. Sorry. Sorry.’ I felt the spread of wet, warm as the last of Mum’s tea, beneath us. I got out and so did he, and he pulled off the sheet in the dark and threw it under the bed. Then he pulled down my wet pyjama pants and threw them under there too. We slept on the mattress, its buttons sticking into my skin as I held on.

  When I went into the kitchen the next morning Mum wasn’t there. Dad was sitting on the high stool at the island drinking his coffee, holding his arm in a bandage against his chest. He didn’t look at me. The morning after my dad drank Cutty Sark he hung his head, as if it was too heavy for the rest of him. The weight of the Cutty Sark blocked the valves that led to Paula. Dad tried to clear the blockages with his hands and that’s what left Paula with the bruises. But if he didn’t drink the Cutty Sark, the valves inside pressed against his heart and other vitals, carrying the past through his bloodstream. The pressure built like the boiling water in the refinery pipes that led to steam and flame. It wasn’t bearable.

  When the phone on the wall rang Dad left the island to answer it. ‘She’s not up yet, Anne,’ Dad said into the tiny holes of the receiver. ‘Yes, I’ll tell her.’ His voice was gruff and sung out from too much time with Merle. He put his coffee cup in the sink and took his work vest off the hook.

  I was on my way into Mum’s room when Dad called me back. ‘Stay here, Jimmy, she’ll be out in a minute.’ He looked at something high-up to the side of me that only he could see.

  Robby came into the kitchen. He opened the cereal cupboard and took out the cornflakes. He only made contact with the cornflakes; they shared a world that nobody else could enter.

  Dad put on his jacket. ‘Righto, I’m off,’ he said to the high-up thing. Robby and me kept quiet. Click went the front door, and he was gone.

  Mum came slowly out of her room, walking as if her feet were sore. She wore a white dress with little pink baubles on her ears. I liked to press against her blue morning gown while she drank her tea. Where was the gown? Why was she wearing the baubles? There was a coating of pale mud on her face almost the same colour as her skin. It looked as if it had been painted on. It went down her cheeks and stopped at her neck. There was the mark of a wave that had rolled in then rolled out again, leaving a line of froth, dirty and uneven.

  I ran to her, pressing myself against her. What had happened to her face? ‘Mum!’ I cried out.

  Robby didn’t speak. He didn’t seem sure. He stood on the other side, watching, his spoon in his hand above the bowl.

  ‘What is it, love?’ she answered, stroking the top of my head. Then she bent down and came close. ‘What is it, pet? Had your breakfast yet? Had your soldiers?’ She tickled my side and rubbed her nose against mine.

  I peered through the mud and saw the same face – the round pieces and the brown lights, the lines and the tiny wells. Tears trembled and clung in her eyes. Mum! I hugged her tight and her warmth transmitted on to me. Robby stayed where he was, on the other side of the island. He didn’t like to cuddle long; he’d grown out of the need.

  Dad kept away the whole morning. Mum stood at the sink and told the detergent and the hand cream and the cleaning cloths that the bastard was healing his wounds at the TAB. She wiped surfaces, her hands straining against the insides of her pink rubber gloves. She wiped around the stove and up the walls and down the sides of the island and under the fridge. Before the water dried I saw the swirls, and then she went over them again.

  Robby said, ‘Come on, Jimmy,’ and we crawled through the hole in the fence.

  There was a burnt-out car on the other side of the steel bridge. Seagulls sat along the rusted edges. I stopped halfway across and watched the water rushing under my feet through the steel. ‘Jimmy! Come on!’ said Robby. I gripped the rails and followed him across. With every step the bridge shook. Just on the other side was where I’d seen the snake. Robby kept heading for the car. It was the furthest I’d ever gone with him. He picked up a long stick and poked it into the grass to scare the tigers and the browns. ‘Ssssss . . .’ he said.

  When Robby hit the sides of the car with his stick the seagulls flew up, screeching over our heads. There were empty bottles inside the rusted bones, and a pair of black underpants. Robby flicked the underpants out onto the grass. He climbed in and took the steering wheel, the car’s only remaining organ, and changed gears with the invisible gearstick. He leaned forward, closer to the bonnet. I could see he was headed for the ocean. Out to the end of the pier, where he’d wait for an ocean liner to come and take him away.

  Then he climbed out and walked slowly around the car. ‘We got to dig the wheels out,’ he said. He bent down and started scraping the dirt away from around one of the iron wheels.

  ‘But, Robby,’ I said, ‘the car doesn’t have an engine. It doesn’t have tyres, Robby. It can’t go.’

  ‘The wheels are stuck,’ he said again. ‘Help me dig.’

  ‘But, Robby,’ I said.

  ‘Dig.’ His hands moved quickly in the hard dirt. There were small stones mixed in. He had to pull up grass. I got down beside him and started to dig. Neither of us spoke. Our hands made their own talk of scraping and clawing and digging, until our fingernails stung and bled. I kept up with Robby as we made trenches around the wheels. Deeper and deeper, as if we kept on digging we might free the car. What was under there, underneath the wheels? Where would we end up if we didn’t stop digging? After the car was freed, if we kept going and going, where would we be if our hole never ended? Down passageways, under with the worms, to the core, then beyond, to the other side. And if we still didn’t stop, then where?

  •

  Soon Robby’s digging slowed down and the talk of his hands grew quiet. He stood up and kicked the car. Then he climbed inside its bones and put his hands on the steering wheel. I got in the passenger side. I tucked my feet up over the grass beneath and Robby drove. The wind blew back our hair and every traffic light was green and Robby put his foot to the floor and we sped through the wetlands laughing and listening to loud songs on the ra
dio. Gonna get you baby, gonna make you mi-i-ine! Robby shook his head in time to the music and I shook my fist then Robby changed his gear and the car lifted higher. Robby said, ‘Look, Jimmy! Look!’ and we were in line with the twenty-six pelicans. We had freed the car.

  When we got home I could hear hammering as we crossed the yard; Dad was working in the garage.

  Mum lay on her blue kitchen couch reading an Agatha – her head against the Home Sweet Home pillow. The kitchen smelled of bleach, like a swimming pool. She sat up when we came in, The Mystery of the Blue Train falling to the floor. ‘You boys were gone for hours,’ she said.

  Robby went straight through to the bedroom without stopping. If Robby stayed quiet, the distance between him and something he didn’t like or want grew more quickly, but only if he didn’t say a word about it. If he said a word, even one, the word made a space for the thing he didn’t like or want to come crashing in and detonate him. It was the words that made the opening.

  •

  Early on Monday morning Dad went back to work. He wore long sleeves even though it was going to be a scorcher. It was to hide the cut from Bill Philby, his boss. Dad was scared that if Bill Philby saw it he would start asking questions Dad didn’t want to answer.

  Before he walked out the door to meet his lift, I said to him: ‘You could roll one sleeve up, Dad, so the cool won’t have so far to travel. It will go under your shirt, and come out the other side like a breeze through a short tunnel.’

  Dad laughed. Sometimes it happened. Why? Where was the engine of laughter? There was no time to ask him; he was through the door and gone, a full day of rust ahead of him.

  That day Mum took me to Dr Eric’s. Dr Eric had been seeing me since I was born. He was the one to give me my first injection – I felt it enter my sub cuticle. He put a bandaid over the two holes when he was finished and told Mum to press. Dr Eric was as old as some of Mum’s Westlakers. Mum cooked for the seniors at Westlake Nursing. I may not be a women’s libber, Jimmy, but I still like to have a bit of my own. Dr Eric had white hair on his head and on his face that kept him insulated. There were always mints on his desk. It didn’t matter what time of the day it was the bowl was full, as if there was a pipe that ran the length of the table underground to a mint tank and whenever a patient took a mint, the mint tank shot one up and replaced it.

  I looked at the books in the children’s box while Mum talked to Dr Eric.

  ‘Couldn’t you come round to the house?’ Mum asked. ‘Gavin’s so stubborn he’ll never come in by himself. You might just say you were popping round to check on me, the way you have before; my asthma’s been playing up . . .’

  ‘If Gavin makes an appointment I’ll look at his arm, Paula. That one’s up to him,’ said Dr Eric. ‘But it’s not Gavin I’m worried about. Something might have happened to Jimmy. I think it’s time you took the boy to see a specialist.’

  Every time I came it was the same books in Dr Eric’s children’s box. Little Black, a Pony, Hello, Mr Train and How Many Puppy Dogs? There was a wooden crane in the box too, but I’d already lifted everything there was to lift.

  Mum said, ‘Why do I have to go and see a specialist? What do they bloody know? Nothing. I’m the specialist. I’m his mother.’

  Dr Eric wrote a number down on a piece of paper. ‘Just give it a try, Paula. You might be surprised.’

  ‘I would be surprised,’ she said. ‘Very surprised.’

  ‘There are some really good learning programs . . .’

  Mum looked disgusted. ‘I won’t be drugging Jimmy.’

  ‘Nobody said anything about drugs. Just go and talk to him; he’s at the Royal,’ said Dr Eric, passing the paper to Mum. ‘It might make things easier.’

  ‘Easier? Winning the lotto would make things easier. Not a bloody visit to a bloody specialist. I just wanted you to look at Gav’s bloody arm.’

  ‘Take it easy, Mrs F.’ Dr Eric smiled. ‘Have a mint.’ He passed us the bowl and Mrs F took three. ‘If Gavin makes an appointment I’ll look at his arm. Tell me how it goes at the Royal.’

  Mum stood, pushing past Dr Eric’s desk, her legs squeezing against the edges. ‘I’ll be telling you how it goes, alright,’ she said, the mints clacking against her teeth. ‘But I’d be better off with that lottery ticket.’

  ‘Next time you visit I’ll have one ready,’ said Dr Eric.

  Mum shook her head, holding back a smile.

  ‘Why is it called The Royal?’ I asked Mum, as the bus rocked us towards the Westgate Bridge.

  ‘It’s the name of the hospital,’ Mum answered, her hands gripping each other in her lap.

  ‘But is it royal?’

  ‘It’s the name of the hospital, Jimmy.’ She looked away from me and out the window.

  ‘But is there a king in it, or a queen? Is there a castle?’

  My words set Mum’s laughing gear in motion. ‘I reckon there might be a few people who are paid like bloody kings!’ She pulled softly on the end of my ear. ‘My Jimmy,’ she said.

  As we crossed the Westgate Bridge I saw the whole mechanics of the city spread before us; a thousand refineries at work, processing the oil and information, making the crude into usable. Cranes lifted the parts that were falling into the sea, raising them up and pushing sacks of sand underneath for support. Trucks weaved in and out, dodging pipes and tanks, carrying loads of dirt and jerry cans full of petrol to the empty vats. Lights flashed as the engines operated the levers, building walls and jetties and monuments and roofs and rooms and erecting poles and pipes and scaffolding. The sea surrounded it all. I saw sharks circling, looking for waste, biting at the borders, missing nothing. Mum never took me to the city. She said, ‘Why leave Altona when we have everything we need right there? Bloody specialist.’

  •

  The specialist sat opposite Mum and said, ‘You can’t expect too much.’

  I drove a train up over Mum’s chair, crossing the hills of her thighs onto her lap. I said, ‘If you’re a king, where the hell is your crown?’

  Mum gasped. ‘Jimmy!’ She turned back to the specialist, ‘Gosh, he can be silly sometimes. Just having a joke.’ She pushed me away but I didn’t stop, choo-choo-ing choo-choo-ing, right up the slope of her side.

  ‘Choo-choooooo.’ I said, sending the sound deep into the specialist’s ears.

  ‘Some things will change and some things won’t,’ he said. ‘You can’t expect him to be at the same stage as other children his age . . .’ I watched as the redness moved up over Mum, washing her chin and her cheeks pink. It was a mother’s fury coming up from her core. She had tried to cover it with chocolate cake and tea from the hospital cafeteria, but it was linked to a vat of mother’s fury that could power the world and she couldn’t hold it down. She bit back her lips and held her own hands tight and swallowed.

  The more the specialist talked the louder I choo-chooed. I tooted so loud I made the specialist put his hand to his ear.

  ‘Can’t expect too much,’ Mum mumbled on the bus on the way home. ‘I’ll show you too much. Too bloody much. Too right it’s too much. Too much bloody money. Too bloody much. Mind you, Jimmy, you did ham it up in there. What did you have to do that for?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Still. Talk about an arm and a leg. An arm and a bloody leg.’

  ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘you sound like mad Mr Henry from the bench at Myrtle Park.’

  Mum laughed. ‘Jimmy, you’re sharp as a tack, you are. Ha! Mad Mr Henry, ha! The same stage as other children. Ha! Who’d settle for being the same, hey, Jimmy?’

  For weeks Dad wore shirts with long sleeves and then one morning he said, Bugger this, and he wore a short-sleeved shirt. The dark lightning of the cut on his arm rose up between the ladies and severed their heads from their bosoms and one rode it like a surfboard.

  Even though it was a weekday and all the other six-year-olds were in school, I was doing the morning shift at Westlake with Mum. Nurse Gallantinis, who was in charge of the maternals, said I’d be best kept
back another year and what was the hurry. Mum agreed. She said, ‘Oh, I love to have my little man at home, I’ll miss him when he has to go to school.’ Robby had to go to school. But Justin and his other friends were there. The oval was there. The other things he did and learned. He wanted to go.

  ‘Come on, love, get a move on. Get your manuals together, we can’t be late.’ Mr Barker, the manager of Westlake, turned a blind eye when I was there. Mum said Mr Barker was always at the pokies spending his hard-earned, so who was he to say I couldn’t come? She puffed as she moved her bulk around the kitchen; filling bags and moving dishes, picking up empty teacups and looking for keys. There was already a shine on her face even though it was only the very start of morning when it was still cool. ‘Come on, Jimmy. If you want to come to work with me we have to leave now.’ Underneath every word I heard the pull of her breath, as if it was unwilling.

  ‘Okay, Mum, instruction manuals on the ready. Westlake Nursing, here we come.’

  ‘That’s my boy,’ she said.

  I followed Mum out to the Holden parked over the crack in the driveway. The wheel was an obstruction. Insects who used the crack for a river to drink from, or to store food, had to go around the tyre. I stopped to check the distance.

  ‘Come on, Jimmy. Hop in the car – get a move on.’

  When I was slow I should have been fast, and when I was fast I should have been slow.

  At Westlake Mum sent me to Mr Barnes’s in Number Six to read to him while she did breakfast. I didn’t read the words on the page; I made up my own. I told Mr Barnes the story of my dad’s job at the refinery, the way he could get in the corners, where rust grew the thickest. I turned the page and told Mr Barnes the story of the lump in my dad’s throat that jumped up and down when he talked and told him what to say. It tells all men what to say, it’s the control box and it gives the orders; it doesn’t matter that it’s small, the voice box holds the power! I told Mr Barnes the story of the earth’s core. How the core is hot but it doesn’t move. It is the voice box of planet Earth and it gives the orders! Rain! Storm! Hail! Sun! Soon I saw Mr Barnes was asleep.