Shallow Breath

by Sara Foster

  ‘She hasn’t had an easy ride lately, what with her mother going off the rails.’ Desi smiles weakly, but Pete doesn’t, so she adds, ‘I think we should let her be for a while.’

  ‘I’m not trying to pressure her, Des. But she’s aimless, and it bothers me.’

  ‘So was I. So was Jackson.’

  ‘No, you weren’t. You were different, that was all. You bucked the trends and went off and did your own thing. But you were both motivated. Maya lacks direction. She always used to talk about what she would do after school, all the places she would go. Now she just seems to hang around the caravan park or the beach.’

  ‘Pete,’ Desi sighs. ‘Don’t you see how hard it is for me to come home and immediately get on her case? Why should she think that I know what I’m talking about when I have obviously made some big mistakes in my life …’

  ‘I’m not saying you should do anything,’ he snaps. ‘I’m simply passing on my concerns.’

  He rarely loses his cool, and she is surprised. ‘Are you sure you’re okay, Pete?’

  This time he takes the cue. He goes and leans against the kitchen top, pressing his hands flat onto the cool surface. ‘Not really,’ he says. ‘Things have changed a bit since you’ve been gone. I don’t work at the zoo any more, for a start.’

  She comes up behind him, and he feels the pressure of her touch on his back. ‘Pete, the zoo is your whole life. What happened?’

  Not quite my whole life, he thinks, not looking at her. ‘I quit.’

  ‘Why on earth would you do that?’

  He flicks a glance at the ceiling, then turns to face her. ‘Because I needed a break,’ he says.

  She drops her hand but holds his gaze. ‘Because you needed to be here. For Maya. And for me,’ she says quietly.

  They are caught in one another’s eyes. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he murmurs. And maybe she takes it to mean his resignation, but he means everything.

  ‘So,’ she says after a protracted beat. ‘What are you going to do with yourself?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve been having some time out. Thinking about it …’ But he can hear how weak it sounds, particularly after what he’s just said about Maya.

  ‘Pete!’ Her tone is incredulous. ‘I know you. You can’t –’

  They are interrupted by a knock at the door.

  ‘That will be Maya.’ Desi looks nervously at Pete.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he smiles. ‘She won’t bite.’

  ‘We haven’t finished this conversation,’ she warns before she leaves. He follows her as far as the lounge, and she returns a moment later with Maya trailing behind her. Maya slouches over to a seat and throws herself in it, then gives Pete a disingenuous smile. ‘Hello.’

  He doesn’t like how pale and disinterested she appears. ‘You okay?’

  Desi hovers. ‘Would you like something to drink?’

  Maya sighs as though the question is a personal affront. ‘No, thanks. I just need to go to the bathroom.’ She jumps up and disappears.

  Desi lets her leave, then sits on the sofa with a thump. ‘This is horrible.’

  ‘It’ll pass,’ Pete says, trying for confidence, but Desi raises her eyebrows.

  ‘I’ll go and talk to her.’ Wearily, Pete wanders down the corridor, planning to intercept Maya and ask her to take it easy on her mother. But he can see the bathroom door ajar from some distance away, and the room is dark.

  ‘Maya?’ he begins, as he passes by Desi’s bedroom. He hears a noise and looks in to see Maya quickly pushing a drawer closed. She jumps up to stare at him guiltily. He can see her momentarily debating which way to play it, and is sad when she plumps for anger. She marches over and pushes past him. ‘I can’t do this tonight. I’m sorry,’ she says. She hurries to the lounge and collects her bag.

  ‘Look’ – Maya stops briefly in front of Desi – ‘this isn’t a good time for me, okay? I’ll come again in a couple of days …’

  And she is away through the front door, jogging to her car.

  They watch her leave. ‘What the hell was that about?’ Desi asks.

  Pete has no idea. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have come,’ he says. ‘It might have been better if it was just you two.’

  ‘On the contrary, I don’t think she’d have even turned up if I was here on my own. It’s hard to know what to say to each other at the moment. I’m terrified of mentioning the wrong thing. I’m afraid she’s angry with me.’

  ‘Maybe …’ Pete is trying to decide whether he should tell her what he has just witnessed when Desi interrupts.

  ‘I can’t even get my head around the fact she can drive herself over here.’ She pauses, thinking. ‘Okay, you may have a point. Tell me about her, Pete. I know you’ve been doing that for ages, but tell me again. What have I missed?’

  11

  Maya

  ‘I need your help.’

  It had been the first thing Luke said to her a few weeks ago, when he had knocked on her caravan door in the middle of the night. She had been scared, but not so much that she would leave him standing out in the dark, particularly after she had seen the desperation on his face. And the small bundle in his arms.

  She had beckoned him inside, rubbing her eyes to wake herself up, and he had sat on her bed. Once she was next to him, he’d pulled back the edges of the blanket he carried, revealing a tiny pink face, ears pinned to its head, eyes closed.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A joey.’

  ‘Is it… alive?’

  ‘Not any more. It died on the way here.’

  She felt sick. She turned away, and when she looked back he had covered it again.

  Okay, so he was a freak. He had brought a dead animal to her in the middle of the night. She jumped up and moved as far from him as she could get, which wasn’t far in the cramped caravan.

  ‘Where the hell did you get that?’ she hissed, her arms folded. Then, aware her voice was too loud in the campsite in the middle of the night, she whispered, ‘I don’t understand. What do you want me to do?’

  His eyes were wide and fearful. ‘If I tell you, can you swear you won’t tell anyone?’

  Maya hated these kinds of promises, made on the back foot for someone else’s benefit. ‘I can’t promise anything until you tell me what’s going on.’

  Luke glanced down at the bundle in his arms. ‘It’s Hayden,’ he said. ‘He’s got in with a bad lot.’

  Hayden was Luke’s stepbrother. Maya knew of him in the same way she knew of most people her age in the town, but she had nothing to do with him. You could tell at a glance that Luke and Hayden didn’t have much in common. Hayden travelled in a pack, and they hung around on shop corners, stubbies in hand, usually jeering at someone or picking fights among themselves. Luke was a loner, who generally kept his distance. Maya couldn’t imagine the two of them together at home.

  ‘It’s not his usual gang,’ Luke said, as though reading her thoughts. ‘This lot are older. They don’t live round here. I only know one of them – his name’s Jarrad, and he calls round for Hayden sometimes. But I heard Hayden talking about a video – showing one of his friends. I stole his phone and watched it.’ Luke paused for a moment, as though debating whether to go on. ‘They’d taken it at night – the place was bright ’cause of the spotlights from their utes. They were playing football – with one of these.’ He nodded towards the dead joey. ‘It was a bit older. It had hair. At the beginning, when they dropped it, it would try to hop away. By the end it was just a bag of bones.’

  Maya’s voice broke in a cry, and her hand flew to her mouth to stifle it. ‘That’s … that’s disgusting. You have to tell the police.’

  ‘I didn’t think quick enough.’ Luke shook his head miserably. ‘When I next took his phone, the footage was gone.’

  Maya tried not to let her imagination get away from her, but failed to stop herself from picturing things she could not bear. Her legs had weakened. She sat down next to Luke again, put her head in her hands,
said nothing.

  ‘Since then,’ Luke continued, ‘I’ve been following them. They’ve done nothing but drink. I was beginning to think it was a one-off. They used to go all the way over to the old lion park, but now they stay closer to home, near that old wildlife place. Jarrad has a shotgun, and if they’re in the mood they turn the spotlights on and take pot shots.’ He nodded down at the still bundle in his arms. ‘This one’s mother was caught. I found this little fella when they’d gone, but I had to wait for an hour. I hid in the bushes, heard them talking about doing it again. They were joking, saying they’d make money from selling the meat and hides, but they need a licence for that and I can’t see it happening.’

  Maya was still groggy. ‘So why have you come here?’

  ‘When there are kangaroos around, there are nearly always joeys. If I find any, I need somewhere to bring them. I can’t take them home, not with Hayden and Sean there.’ He had checked the bundle briefly, as though the joey might have shown signs of life, but then covered it over again. ‘I remembered that presentation you did at school. I know she’s not here at the minute, but I thought you might know what to do.’

  Maya had to think hard, but then she got it. In Year 10 the teacher had asked them to talk about someone in their family who inspired them, and Maya had chosen her mother. She had forgotten all about it, and recalled it with a pang. Her mother had been working all the hours she could in a petrol-station kiosk to be able to pay their bills, but Maya hadn’t mentioned that. She had told the class about the baby birds her mother hand-reared in their bathroom. About Dorothy, the blind kangaroo, who had lived in the garden for a few years and eaten roses. And about the whale on the beach that her mother had helped cover in wet blankets while they dug a trench around it and tried to help it back to sea. She’d held the whole class spellbound, and she had been thrilled, trying to imagine what Desi would have felt if she could have seen this as she scanned people’s fuel vouchers and packets of lollies. She knew they all admired her mother afterwards – until Desi went and ruined it all.

  Her thoughts turned to Luke’s stepfather, who worked paving roads and was solid muscle. ‘What about Sean, or your mum? Couldn’t you tell them? Surely they would stop Hayden doing it?’

  ‘Sean doesn’t give a shit,’ Luke said. ‘When he’s not working, he’s too busy with the grog. He just doesn’t flaunt it like Mum. And Mum … well… Hayden doesn’t listen much to her.’

  By this point the anger was burning through Maya’s veins.

  ‘Then you’ve got to phone the police.’

  ‘Look, I told you, I can’t do that.’ Luke’s frustration was clearly growing. ‘It might be against the law, but I doubt that the police are gonna spend all their time racing into the bush after a bunch of blokes that may or may not shoot a roo – especially when I’m the one telling them.’

  ‘So how can we stop them?’

  ‘We can’t.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ll follow them, and if I find any joeys left alive I’ll bring them to you,’ he said miserably. ‘I know it sucks, but it’s all we can do.’

  ‘There’s got to be a way. I’ll think of a way.’ She paused. ‘I’ll help you on one condition,’ she said. ‘You let me come with you. Because if I’m there and I film anything, I can go straight to the police.’

  He weighed her up. ‘Okay,’ he answered. ‘And let’s keep trying to save some joeys. We can at least do that.’

  Every time they have gone out together, Maya has been keyed up and on edge – always ready for something to happen. So far they have spent a lot of time doing nothing, hiding a short distance from Hayden and Jarrad and the rest, listening to the dull murmurs of their rough voices, the crass comments and loud guffaws as bottles are sculled and thrown.

  Tonight seems different, and they both seem to sense it. Luke has come early for Maya. ‘They’ve gone already.’ He is tense on the return drive, his foot hard on the accelerator.

  When they get there, he pulls up at the side of the road, hiding the car behind a cluster of trees. They consider the track that leads off into the bush. ‘I think we’ll have to walk from here.’

  Maya grabs her torch and blankets, but as soon as she gets out she hears what sounds like firecrackers in the distance. She creeps forward behind Luke, but then lights come into view and he whispers, ‘Down, down!’ They crouch behind a bush as a car bounces along the track at full speed, wheels struggling to keep traction, leaving clouds of dust in the air. Voices sail through the open windows, lairy tones competing for dominance, and the car fishtails onto the tarmac and speeds off down the road.

  Luke straightens slowly. ‘Well, I reckon we can drive down there now.’

  They go back to the car, and set off along the track. The headlights penetrate a short distance ahead, but beyond that the night has stained all the spaces it can find. They don’t go far before the first kangaroo is spotted at the side of the road, standing alert on its hind legs, paws held in front of it, transfixed by the glare. Alive.

  The track peters out to nothing, lost within a grassy clearing. Luke stops but keeps the headlights on. ‘They would have been here. I’ll see if I can find anything.’

  Maya hangs back, waiting, picking out Luke’s tall figure in glimpses of torchlight as he walks the circumference of the open space. He has made it little more than halfway when he stops, kneels, and the torch seems to fix on one spot.

  She gets out and hurries forward across the thick grass, her heart pounding. She can see a kangaroo lying down, its legs up at an unnatural angle. There is no movement except for the torch beam, but as it shifts she spots a small pair of eyes glinting in the night, watching them.

  ‘Back off,’ Luke whispers.

  As they do, a little joey hops close to the dead kangaroo, stands next to its mother’s body, and waits.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Maya asks.

  ‘Get the blanket, and we’ll try to grab it.’

  She hurries to the car, trying not to notice that her hands are shaking. When she returns, Luke passes her the torch and takes the blanket. ‘Keep it pointed at me,’ he says, and edges forward. But as soon as he gets close, the joey panics, and hares off into the bush.

  ‘Shit!’ Luke straightens. He walks to the kangaroo again and bends down, before beckoning Maya over.

  ‘She’s still warm,’ he says, shining the torch at the pouch. ‘And look.’

  Maya’s eyes go to where Luke’s finger is pointing. She sees a tiny pink hairless blob attached to a teat. As they watch, its little mouth moves, sucking for all it’s worth. ‘There are often two,’ he says. ‘One in the pouch, and one at foot. Both dependent.’

  ‘What do we do? Shall I get the knife?’ It’s why they’ve brought it. Tiny joeys won’t let go of the teat – so the teat has to be cut off and taken with them.

  ‘We can’t do anything this time,’ he says sadly. ‘It’s way too small, Maya.’

  He gets up, and the torchlight wavers over the rest of the kangaroo’s body. Unexpectedly, Maya finds herself staring at its face. It is worse than she could have imagined. Not because of the blood pooling under it, but because of the gaping mouth and the enormous white eye that bulges in the socket like some nightmare cartoon, wide open and hideous in death.

  ‘Here,’ she says suddenly, throws the torch to him and runs to the car. She hides behind it and dry-retches.

  She hears a dull thud, and then Luke is there a moment later. ‘You all right?’

  They go back and spend another hour trying to catch the youngster. But it is too quick for them. Eventually it hops off into the bush and doesn’t return.

  As they drive to Two Rocks, Luke says, ‘You don’t have to come again if you don’t want to.’

  ‘I’ll come. We need to get some footage of them as fast as we can. So we can end it.’ She keeps her eyes on the road, wishing she could forget what she had seen.

  ‘I wish we could end it. It happens everywhere. Four million ka
ngaroos shot a year, and the joeys killed as worthless by-products. That’s just the legal ones. Have you ever seen a dead one like that before?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘It’s pretty grim. But we did what we could,’ Luke says, keeping his eyes on the road as he drives. ‘Next time we’ll do better. If you still want to come, that is. I’m kinda sorry I dragged you into this whole fucked-up mess.’

  Maya shrugs. ‘My whole life feels like that sometimes. Do you know what happened to my dad?’

  ‘Nah, I thought he’d probably run off.’

  ‘He was killed before I was even born, while he was back in America. Someone jumped out in the dark and mugged him, stabbed him to death.’

  ‘Jeez, I’m sorry, Maya.’

  They fall silent. Maya can’t stop picturing the tiny joey, returning to stand in vigil next to his dead mother. Waiting in the still, quiet dark, for salvation that will never arrive.

  Tears run down her face. When they go past the turning to the shack, she almost – almost – asks Luke to take it.

  12

  Jackson

  As they approach the dive site, Jackson is ready. He watches the waves pounding a small island, dangerously close to the place they are about to jump in.

  ‘Now! Now!’

  He rolls backward off the small inflatable and hits the thrashing, foaming water. His instructions are to get to the bottom as quickly as possible – too long at the surface and the waves will sweep him off to batter him against the rocks. So he swiftly lets the air out of his BCD and begins the twenty-metre descent.

  This is not an easy dive – as soon as he’s under the water, the current snatches him and he is swept helplessly back and forth. When he reaches the bottom, he grabs hold of a sharp rock, glad of his thick neoprene gloves. Then he searches for Sebastian. His dive buddy is already down and holding on against the fierce pull, about five metres away, legs flying out behind him. The visibility is so bad that Jackson can barely see him. The swirling current has swept millions of particles into the water, which surround them as a hazy white soup.