The birdman had appeared again after his long shower, looking dangerously refreshed. The water was cold, pumped straight from the river. Even his cheek looked a little less red.
“Who wants to go for a canoe ride?”
“Me. Me.”
“We won’t ever hear the end of it otherwise, will we?” Todd replied, without even looking at Holly. Powell didn’t seem to see her either, although she could tell both men were acutely aware of her presence even before Todd turned.
“You don’t need to bother to come,” he said. “We can manage.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she replied.
Olga bustled out with children’s life jackets, more talkative than usual as she told Holly how she’d made sure Clovis got them for their grandchildren’s visits. The boy who had left his soccer ball behind was exactly Evan’s size, though older, so Olga knew precisely which jacket he needed. As Holly watched, Olga got the boys tied in correctly, kneeling to test the straps, making sure they gave comfortably, but not too much, and admitting shyly as she tugged and fussed at Conor’s slightly over-sized jacket that she couldn’t swim.
Olga lived on the river and couldn’t swim. Holly was astonished — not least at herself, for having thought in terms of scientific method at a place like this. Nothing was logical here. Olga feared she was going to drown, so she bought life-jackets for her grandchildren. And Holly? Holly knew what was going through Powell’s mind because of what she’d started to think about Jay Larkin’s invitation to give him a call. She understood Powell because she was beginning to understand the way you manufactured excuses for what you could not quite consciously admit to yourself you were probably going to do. You knew it was wrong, but you were probably going to do it, so you made it somebody else’s fault. Powell was doing that by turning Holly into the villain. He hated her for seeing through him, so he was going to punish her by doing what he wanted to do with her children. It hadn’t escaped Holly that he’d said the spider that bit him was female. He probably had reason to believe it was a female. Weren’t female spiders twice the size of males? But how many other people would have said she and not it?
This was all her fault.
No, it wasn’t, it was his. Todd’s, Larkin’s, Powell’s; she couldn’t remember which. As they drifted downriver, the forest leaned in on her, and the animals were jeering. A small bird flying ahead of them dipped into the overhanging bushes and emerged, dipped and emerged; a flashing tease, taunting them as they ploughed a course back to the camp.
“Pygmy kingfisher,” Todd called out.
Conor pointed to the opposite shore. “And who’s that little bird?”
Holly shook her head to try to clear it, then followed Conor’s pointing finger to see a small, grey-headed bird hopping along a log at the river’s edge. Powell, with his binoculars, couldn’t seem to find it.
“A little bird,” Conor told him.
It had reached the end of the log before Powell finally spotted it. As they drifted past the log, it bobbed its tail, and Powell swivelled slowly to watch it.
“I don’t know what that is,” he said, in a tone of wonder.
Then Powell let his binoculars drop, grabbed his paddle, and whispered fiercely, “Get me over there.”
Todd turned the canoe, and the two men paddled hard against the current to try to head upstream. Despite their frantic efforts, they could barely hold their own against the swiftly flowing water. Holly told herself to memorize the bird’s markings, although they seemed undistinguished. It had a silver-grey head, a round white breast and black tail feathers edged with white, which it cocked up like a folded fan. The boys were excited but managed to keep quiet, sensing the importance of whatever was happening. What was happening?
The bird seemed like such an insignificant piece of importance. Holly realized that she had been picturing a new species as some sort of missing link, an evolutionary proof both dramatic and useful. This was a tiny, fragile, helpless thing that could surely have no impact on the wider world. Powell’s search now struck her as ridiculous. Powell himself looked absurd, and Holly felt a sudden, mean flash of hope that everyone else would think so, too. Not just the boys, but the whole scientific establishment would laugh at his transcendent claims for the tiny, hopping bird.
Holly watched maliciously as the bird man paddled against the current. She hated Powell and wanted him to die. It was good to see him straining so hard that the back of his neck turned into a damp, pink crescent that appeared and vanished beneath his crumpled white hat. A well-timed heart attack, perhaps? He stroked and pulled, stroked and pulled, intent on gaining a beach she hoped would flicker out of existence when they got too close, like a lost mirage.
Yet Holly could see that Todd had a plan. He was aiming for a point upstream from the log so that when he turned, he could use the force of the current to throw them towards land. It seemed like an impossible task — impossibly slow — and Holly almost laughed out loud when the bird hopped up the fallen log and disappeared into the forest. But Powell only grunted and kept paddling, pulling them upstream by arduous inches until even Holly had to admit that they were making progress. Finally Todd could turn his paddle, canting it sideways to steer them in.
And suddenly they were flying, sailing, bursting out of the current across a sheet of calm, shallow water and onto the sandy beach just downstream from the log. The coarse sand screeched so loudly against the bottom of the canoe that Conor covered his ears with his hands, then had to throw his arms around Holly’s waist, bracing himself as Powell jumped out and rocked the canoe heavily before they’d quite landed. The bird man stopped only to pull them further in before hurrying off into the forest. In the moment’s peace that followed, Holly looked behind her and saw that Todd, although sweating and painfully red, badly wanted to join him.
“I don’t suppose it makes any difference, but I’d prefer that you stayed here.”
“I’ll just go get him,” Todd said. “Two minutes, no more. We’ll have a look, then I’ll send him back with Seu José.”
Without waiting for an answer, Todd jogged into the forest. Holly was beyond fury. The children watched her quietly, impressed by her serious face without understanding what was going on.
And after all, what was going on? They were safely stowed in a canoe while two foolish men thrashed off in search of a bird. Regaining her voice, Holly had no trouble answering the boys’ questions without making Powell seem adventurous or appealing.
“Once they get a closer look, I’m sure they’ll know what it is.”
“But it might be a new species. It might,” Conor said. “And I saw it first.”
“That’s right, love. See the swallow over there? Isn’t that a silly name?”
They made swallowing noises and played I-Spy, although it seemed a witless game so far off in the forest. I spy with my little eye something that is green. How many times could you pick “tree?” Black, “river.” Red, “canoe.” Any other colour was a bird passing, and the boys could always trump her.
“Toucan,” she guessed, when Evan spied yellow.
“Channel-billed toucan,” his father’s son replied.
Hurry up, Holly thought. She wasn’t wearing a watch, but it seemed to her that Todd and Powell had been gone at least ten or fifteen minutes. They’d forgotten her, of course. And the boys. They might be in for a long wait, although Holly soon spotted a bit of help, at least in terms of distracting the boys. Powell had left his bird guide under the seat.
Powell seldom forgot his bird guide. Not long after Clovis had cut them loose, she’d seen him scribble a few words on some paper stapled at the back, presumably about a bird Todd had pointed out to the children. Sunbittern. It had been standing on a log with its wings thrown open, a golden bull’s-eye sunburst blazing under each wing. Holly wondered if she could find a picture of the bird, and reached for the book as the boys b
egan squabbling.
“I saw it first, ha, ha.”
“So what? Who cares about a stupid little bird? I just saw a river otter right over there.”
“Did not. Mommy, he did not.”
“Look at the pictures,” Holly said.
Parrots, green and red macaws. The boys pointed out the most colourful birds, while Holly scanned the text for stories. Powell had added some notes, an uninteresting scrawl detailing the times and places he’d seen the birds. Although the handwriting! Powell wrote in a childish hand, his letters round, uneven, slanting back. A boy of twelve might write like that. A homely, nasty boy of twelve, who bullied younger children.
Any evidence he’d stopped?
“How many birds have we seen up here? My goodness, Mr. Powell’s seen a lot of birds. Look at the pages here at the back.”
Holly flipped to the paper stapled to the back cover, a computer print-out of scientific names trimmed to fit inside the book. Under each name was a space left for notes, which Powell had often filled not just with a place and time, but with a brief description of what the bird was doing when he saw it. Licking her lips, Holly remembered hearing that many pedophiles kept lists and detailed notes. Didn’t pilots have to run through checklists when they powered up a plane? Was there a pattern here? Holly could see nothing else, and the boys demanded that she turn back to the coloured pictures, whining again, and increasingly bored.
“Here’s the sunbittern!” she cried brightly, pointing to that day’s date beside the name Eurypyga helias. “In Greek, helios means sun.”
Why had she remembered that? She was a child again in their West Coast rockery, following her father on his at-home rounds. “Sunflower,” he said, checking the stake. “Genus, Helianthus. From helios, sun; anthos, flower.” The plants’ bland faces were turned to the sun, Holly’s tilted up at her father. She adored him, although he was seldom home. Because he was so seldom home? So much like Todd and the boys.
Conor James Austen.
Evan William Austen.
Why had Powell had written their names on his print-out?
Holly went clammy. On a buried, central page of his print-out, Powell had written the boys’ full names and dates he must have copied from their passports. How had he got their passports? Last name, given names, place of birth, date of birth, passport number, where it was issued, all transcribed in Powell’s nasty slanted terrifying script.
“Todd!” she screamed. “Todd! Come back!”
Holly stood up, rocking the canoe, which the boys took to be a new game. They jumped up and rocked it harder, shrieking piercingly.
“Daddy! Daddy! Da-deeee!””
No one answered, and for the first time Holly wondered if something had gone wrong. The boys continued shrieking, enjoying the noise until they finally seemed to realize their father wasn’t coming. Their shouts trailed off, and they turned to Holly, looking puzzled.
“He isn’t lost, is he?” Conor asked.
“Of course not, sweetie. Daddy knows his way around forests.”
As did Powell. Why hadn’t he answered, either? Forcing herself to calm down, to think things through, Holly realized that even if one had been injured, it was unlikely that something had happened to both. They were just ignoring her.
“Todd! Would you get back here! For God’s sake, it’s time to go!”
Silence. Holly felt increasingly uneasy; half worried, half convinced they were playing an ill-considered joke. In any case, she was trapped here, unable to take the boys back to camp to fetch help. It had taken every bit of the men’s strength to bring the canoe into shore. How could she hope to dock it herself? At the same time, she couldn’t leave the boys alone to make a search herself. What if Powell came back before she did? Holly cupped her hands to yell again when it occurred to her the roar of the river carried away their cries. It would be best to walk the boys a short distance into the forest and call from there. Make such a satisfying heartfelt racket that Todd could no longer ignore her.
“You know what?” she told the boys. “We’re going to surprise Daddy. Let’s go look for Daddy.”
She’d take the bird book, she decided, helping the boys out of the canoe. Powell wasn’t getting it back. She’d show it to Todd, back at the camp, proving once and for all that she was right. Yet Holly couldn’t go any further without fishing a pen out of her backpack and writing furiously across the page, You keep away from my children!
Macumba. Warding off evil spirits. Cida periodically walked a stick of lighted incense through their house to purge it. Holly remembered the bark-like smoke, a deep-throated smell that suddenly seemed like the forest itself.
The forest would help her, Holly thought, as she led the boys up the low bank towards some scrubby trees.
10
She found broken eggshell in a small, sandy clearing at the top of the bank. Turtle eggs, judging from the size of the fragments. Heading away from the river, Holly found the sand to be a shallow overlay on damp, springy soil. The bank they’d climbed was the highest point in the area, and the land sloped quickly down again into the forest. Reaching the line of scrubby trees, Holly slapped a mosquito, then took off her backpack again to slather the boys and herself with more repellent. She’d seen Todd go off to the left, upriver. Heading in that direction, thankfully entering the shade of the forest, she quickly found his footprints on the pliable ground. He seemed to be following another pair of prints. Smaller, obviously Powell’s. They were skirting a swamp lying to their right, making their way between the river and the swamp not far inland. She broke the top of a plant to mark their trail, and ants poured out of the hollow stem.
“Gross,” Evan said happily.
“We’re not getting ticks, are we?” Conor asked.
“We’re playing follow the leader,” Holly said. “See Daddy’s footprints? Up, now, over the log.”
Holly lifted the boys over the fallen log, and saw Todd’s footprints veer inland, along what seemed to be an animal trail. Soon they were close to the edge of the swamp, where the ground was wet enough to dampen their sneakers. In places, Todd’s big wide footprints had already filled with water. Were there really such things as sinkholes? Holly picked up a fallen branch and used it to prod the ground in front of her, keeping the boys close but slightly behind her. The air seemed almost as moist as the ground. It was heavy as felt, unpleasant to breathe, and somehow strangely lifeless. If the men were on the other side of the swamp, they wouldn’t have heard her calling through the thick, dead air.
“Da-deeee!” both boys yelled. But even their high-pitched cries couldn’t cut through. They hit the solid air like butterflies with weakened wings; dropping, dying, sucked into the rotting mess below. It smelled dirty here. Nature wasn’t supposed to be so putrid, so corrupt, and Holly half thought of going back. Then the path turned into away from the swamp and into a circular clearing under the branches of the first big brazil nut tree they had seen.
Holly left the boys in the clearing and did some scouting. She was relieved to discover the huge old tree guarded the entrance to real forest. Behind it, the land sloped up and away from the swamp. The air promised to be cleaner there, and she was happy not to find any footprints emerging from the clearing on the lower, swampy side of the tree. Holly didn’t see any footprints on the forest side either, but the ground was dry there and she wasn’t leaving prints herself. There was a trail, though; another narrow animal path leading up the gentle slope to the left of the tree. She thought they must have taken that, and used her stick to scrape a blaze onto the side of the brazil nut tree before leading the children into the forest. They would get to the top of the rise, she decided, and call Todd from there.
It was humid and gloomy beyond the big tree, but the forest didn’t smell as rank as the swamp. The trees were tall and draped with vines, though it was hard to see their full elegance of line with the underg
rowth so much thicker than it was at the camp. Clovis must have cleared it out there so they could find the wildlife more easily. Here, they could hear the birds without seeing them; whistling cries, or quick, loud squawks. What was the name of the bird with the piercing, unearthly cry?
Screaming piha, Todd had said. The boys imitated the call and made monkey noises, then started in on tramping songs. Holly sang along happily. Discovering the swamp’s odd acoustics had convinced her that Todd hadn’t heard her yell. He hadn’t been ignoring her, but was just being Todd, off on yet another futile adventure. She looked forward to reaching the crest of the incline and yelling for him as loudly as she’d always wanted — yelling at him — then taking the boys back down to the river, where she hoped he was already waiting for them, worried half to death.
Holly’s only worry was the time of day. She hadn’t worn her watch since they’d arrived at the camp, and now found she was unable to estimate how long they’d been in the forest. Surely not long, although it was so humid here she was quickly drenched in sweat; as sopping as her shoes. The incline was insidious, gentle but unending. She’d worked up the sweat quickly. Had they been gone ten minutes? Fifteen? Surely no more than twenty minutes, though maybe not much less.
Yet Holly also knew it had been late afternoon when they’d entered the forest, and that darkness would fall promptly at six. She looked ahead for the crest of the incline, but still found nothing. Tramping forward another few steps, it finally occurred to her that this could just be a long, slow rise of land sloping away from the river. They weren’t going to reach a crest, and if they went on much longer, they’d be trapped by nightfall.
“Okay,” she said, turning to the boys. “Go ahead and yell!”
Drink the Sky Page 11