The Chantic Bird

by David Ireland

  I picked up a small pile of catty-looking rags the teacher must have used for wiping things and rubbed out my chalk words, then hung the rags like a tattered garland round the shoulders of the picture that I’d equalised. That’s what I call it, equalising. Like death, lopping the lot to one size.

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught a movement in a house about two hundred yards away. There was a bluish light in one window where the TV was, but the movement came near one of the dark windows. I gave up wrecking the school and climbed out of the window, keeping my eyes on the movement.

  It was a kid. He’d got out of the window and closed it very slowly, with no noise. I got there, along the grass part of the footpath, just as he finished closing the window. I had to nip over a low fence to hide when he came towards me. He walked on the grass, too, pretty satisfied with himself and in no hurry. He had no coat on, so when I got to the house I took mine off. I knew there was a girl in bed in that room, maybe without a coat she’d mistake me for him. I did what he did, in reverse, but when I got in, she was fast asleep, so I got in the bed beside her and in her sleep she got used to the warmth of me. Probably she forgot he’d gone, or thought he’d come back, because for the next forty-five minutes my name was Greg. She was too lazy with sleep to do anything spectacular, but I got what I came for.

  You had to laugh. The parents were inside watching a television programme while their daughter was being raped in her bed. I had one bad moment. Her wrist clicked and made a sound when there should have been no sound. Bear in mind, too, that I was taking a risk; they could have had any old disease for all I knew. You have to give me credit for that. Why, I could have been alive with crabs that same night. She hadn’t bothered to have a shower before she let Greg in, but the chances are she’d be clean. The house looked neat enough, although you can’t always tell from that.

  Whoever set up this circus must be laughing. Whoever made a joker like me must have had funny moods. Here I am, wanting no one to be above anybody else, and yet I want to have nothing to do with the mob. Any mob.

  I picked out a big pile of wheat sacks to camp in that night, in the yards of a flour mill. I thought I had a battle on my hands for one moment there. What might have been a watchman came through the yard at me, I thought he had a uniform, but he was only cutting through the yard to go to the car park, and it was only a pen pusher’s uniform. Something flaps inside me when I’m about to clobber somebody. A wide, loose, flapping feeling in the bottom of my stomach, but only when I get angry.

  The top of the pile was where I slept. I took out some of the middle sacks, built some walls round me down where it was warm, and pulled one over the top for a roof.

  You know, I wouldn’t like to get caught. They might cure me of doing what I like. If I could just live long enough to give myself a chance to get tired of living. I wedged myself in amongst the bags and took a sight through my roof at the stars.

  I was standing on something that didn’t push back up with any pressure on my feet; I guess I was floating, standing up. The place was wide and dark, like a big lawn at night. There were fountains arching up and curving down, neon lights all colours shining in the water and in the mist floating away from the edge of the fountain jets and floating away up and over from the part of the stream where it loses height and breaks up, floating very cool down over the black skin of water shining with the colour you can’t make out, smearing and running down the sides of tall glass buildings that caught with their edges and curves the full play of the lights of green and gold and blue and white and purple and amber. Nothing happened, not while I watched. There was no one there; I don’t even think I was there. And it was cold. I came to a big monument with a statue of a man looking up at the sky and a plaque underneath. The plaque said, ‘I hope only that with the short time available to us before this planet perishes, we shall be able to penetrate the surrounding darkness and make it possible for a precious few of our descendants to escape to another home for the human race, there to perpetuate a faint memory of those of us who rose from the slime and stood erect, in time to see the decay of our planetary system and our own imminent danger.’

  It was just another of my coloured dreams. I can see it now, all I have to do is stop what I’m doing and I can see the cold luxuriance of colour and the brilliant severity of all that shining.

  I hope you can get that part right. I don’t want it to sound stupid. Better check your notes and see it makes sense.

  The next day I listened in to a union meeting the workers held right underneath the stack in the shade. Boy, did they roast the boss. I bet anything you like they didn’t talk like that in front of him, they probably said Mister and please and made their voices go nice and soft, trying to be educated. I don’t know why but they always imagine a man in a collar and tie is educated, whatever that means. The head man was a fellow I knew from a big radio and electronics factory. He made a fortune out of FM equipment. I used to carry some of it for him round to a junkyard and he’d pick it up later that day and give me a few dollars for helping. He had to get the big end, he said, because it was his idea.

  Back at the house they were all in bed. Actually, they were all in the same one, for the kids had all crowded in Bee’s bed. I sat on the edge and I was surprised that Bee wasn’t embarrassed, but then I remembered that she wouldn’t know about that other girl the night before. She probably wouldn’t have cared anyway, what was it to her? If she was determined to look after the kids, she’d do it no matter what I did.

  One thing led to another and pretty soon all the rest of them were tickling each other and somehow I got mixed up in it and Bee ended up leaning against me while Stevo tickled her ribs with his cold little hands. He cocked his head to one side and said, ‘What are you two doing wid lub?’ He was only pretending, though, pretending we had leaned together on purpose. Actually I was a bit wary of putting my arm round her. I couldn’t see her face, but suddenly I felt hot; there was a great cloud of gold hair all in my face. I sat still for too long, she must have wondered what was the matter, for she turned to look at me. We were pretty close, but it was still just fun. The kids were still there.

  ‘Uh huh,’ said Stevo. ‘Lub and marriage.’

  Bee was looking straight at my face, I didn’t feel too comfortable; she usually got by without looking at me at all. I felt a bit like the time I visited Ma. I didn’t have time to go and see her while she was in the other hospitals, not until she was in this little old private hospital at Balmoral; all she could talk about was the other women picking on her. They feel very persecuted when they’re on the way out, they know life has turned against them. I tried to tell her not to take any notice, but it was no use, it was me she wouldn’t take any notice of. And all the time she was looking straight at me.

  Now that I’ve said it, it wasn’t like that at all. I wanted to get away when Ma stared at me, but when it was Bee I wished I could shrink to nothing, almost, and walk safely along the beam of light from her eyes, right into her head. That would have suited me for a long, long time.

  Bee wasn’t a bit embarrassed, looking at me like that; she didn’t say anything. Stevo rescued me, and boy, was I glad. I think I was a bit out of my depth then.

  ‘I got a pain, Mum.’

  ‘What sort of pain, darling?’ You should have heard her voice when she said that word.

  ‘A lovely soft kind of pain.’

  She took off his pants and sent him to the toilet. I made her some instant coffee while she was dressing; I like coffee. I always feel very generous when I do anything for anybody; it doesn’t happen often.

  When Stevo came back Chris was giving Bee a cuddle, so Stevo put his arm round Chris to cuddle her, pushing Bee away with his free hand.

  ‘Bubba and I are getting married; you’ve got Daddy.’ I thought this was a pretty cunning move, separating Bee and Chris; maybe he’d be a politician. And later, when he saw Allie making for his dinkie, he directed her to Chris’s toy pram.

  He came a
nd told us about it, though. ‘I were bery sneaky,’ he said. He knew we thought he was clever.

  ‘Mummy,’ said Chris. ‘I going to kill Barry.’ That was a kid next door. ‘He hits me on the head, and kicks. I think I kill the whole family.’

  ‘Perhaps we’d better not kill them,’ advised Bee.

  ‘You better not do them dead or they do you dead.’ That was Stevo. Then he cornered me and started in on his story of the Chantic Bird.

  ‘Once a king had a palace made of china so you had to be very careful if you touched it, and a garden so big it went right down to the sea. Even the gardener hadn’t seen all of it.’

  ‘What did a bird have to do with it?’

  I knew he wouldn’t tell me, he’d wait till he got to it in the story. Into my head then came the sound of an owl’s birdwing flap, and the funny sensation you get when you disturb fruit-bats and they fly in sharp angles, always missing you just when you think you’re going to have a mess of leathery wing wrapped round your face.

  You can’t say I didn’t listen to Stevo. But a little bit was enough, then I was off.

  When I got back to the wheat stack, I only had a short sleep and when I woke up there was a man with lists, counting or pretending to count the different things in the yard. I knew it could easily be someone after me, trying to get close enough to grab me. If I had room to move, I’d run rings round them and they knew it, I’ll bet.

  I found something to do; I arranged the middle sacks so I could take them out, built them up high and leaned the outside sacks in towards the centre, so that the whole thing rested on one sack staying where it was, and there was only one corner of it supporting the ones above. When the man with the lists was counting some drums stacked near the fence, I pulled out the key sack and down she went. Nothing fell far, but the middle of the stack was a mess. It didn’t make enough noise. When I looked back the man with lists was still there, counting.

  6

  POLICE STATION

  I’m not much of a liar except when I believe it’s the right thing to do, and I’d never been in jail before, anyway. This young copper found me asleep in a doorway and my pockets didn’t jingle when he shook me, so he took me along. In the charge room they gave me a feel all over but found no folding money. Why should I own up? At least there was a roof on the place.

  Old-time coppers would have given you a reef up the tail and told you to beat it, but promotion and their quota of convictions make them more savage nowadays. The old plastic pens were clicking away while they took down all the particulars I gave them.

  Once you could have a bit of a stoush in the street and no one to worry, but now everyone’s a private eye. First I thought they were picking me up because I did have a little fight earlier that night, and later a little target practice with the blue fluoro lights—you have to hit between the wires with little rocks to get a result—but it was just like them to lumber me when I was horizontal.

  It was a pretty big station, and they had one of the crime cars there. Did you know there were only five in Sydney? For as far north as the Hawkesbury, south to Cronulla and west to Katoomba, five cars. That was good news. I was in a cell when they brought in two detectives that shot themselves in the leg. You get promotion when you’re wounded—the police do—and these two came in with a story of how they both got shot in the leg chasing a crim in the fertile fields from Parra through to Blacktown. Both of them. Sometimes I could hardly hear what they said, I was listening through the wall, and the reason I couldn’t hear was the old man in the cell with me. I could hear the noise he made with his lips on his teeth, a clucking noise, and when he moved the joints in his ankles, hips, back, shoulders, elbows, they all seemed to creak when he moved. And did he fidget! Boy, did he twist and shift; he bent down and straightened up, moved his head and his neck clicked; when he opened his mouth, for air, his tongue clicked from sticking to his teeth…I couldn’t help hating crims, then. The caught ones. And when he sucked on a cigarette, the air sort of slipped past the paper and whistled into his mouth, like the bullets Ritcho used to fire at us little kids, whipping up the dust and splatting off the asphalt round our legs. But don’t worry, I got Ritcho later. He liked garages and corner shops, so I hung round a garage a lot as if I was going to knock it off so he would see me, and sure enough, he tried to rob it. He had no idea of security, he got there on a pushbike! They took him away in a little blue van with wire over the back door.

  The plainclothes brought in some weird stories. A barber shop burglary gave one of the detectives a bonus; the barber did something to one of the detectives and they had him up right away on a morals charge. Funny thing was, I knew that barber; he used to breathe right down your neck and make nice remarks about how you played football last Saturday. At least he sucked lollies for his breath. I really thought he was one. Poor cow must have been mad to lay a finger on a cop.

  Then there was a shocker about a woman at Hargrave Park and her son. He was thirteen and tired as hell every day at school. His mate finally told his father and the father told the school and the school told the police; the mother used to put the boy on the kitchen table every morning. They’d brought her in the day before, and the detectives were telling the ones who hadn’t heard and trying to make the newest young detective sick.

  It made some of my little games seem like kids’ stuff. I was proud of the one I did when I was younger, about fifteen. You rode along on your pushbike, downhill, until you saw a dopey sort of bloke in a car with enough other people in it to tell a different story for each person. You rode alongside the car, then you got close and fell down. It’s easy when you do it a few times. The dopes stop and help. You either have someone waiting to jump them or you settle with them on the spot and threaten them there’ll be cops if they don’t. I didn’t work with other kids, so I did the second one. I made fifteen quid off that, one Sunday. You never try that one on people that live near, only on strangers and sightseers.

  They had me in over the weekend, so I had to wait till Monday to see the beak. It wasn’t a bad place to sleep, once you were tired enough so the old men’s noises didn’t bother you. It was in jail I remembered being a kid in the bush and roasting eels and potatoes and snakes and millipedes over a fire. I didn’t eat the millipedes, just watched them sizzle. They used to gather together in a cluster, all close together; I didn’t like the way their bodies got so close together, all crawling over each other head to tail. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind that sort of thing now, but I was younger then. Just to show you how different I’ve got, I was in a 69 club for a few weeks; I don’t join clubs or anything as a rule, but I joined this one just to see if the stories about it were true, and they were.

  Anyway, the millipedes were all black and twisted together, you should have seen them untwist when the fire hit them. Even a match under them and they let go each other as if the next one was the cause of the heat. I got a lot of satisfaction watching that. It goes to show they didn’t cling tighter together when their D-day came; they dropped each other quick smart, just like people.

  I must have been young then. Do you know I went to a special opportunity class the last two years of primary school? It used to be called special classes, then opportunity classes, but just to make sure, people used both words and made it special opportunity classes. There I was, sixteen and three-quarter years of age, dozing off in clink at Parramatta station, thinking about Artarmon school and millipedes. It doesn’t make you think—I won’t say that—but it’s a funny thought to have and it could give you a bit of a laugh, if you felt like laughing. We had a teacher and one day when we were singing scales this teacher came round listening to us, jabbering that he could hear one voice clear as a bell. Clear as a bell, he kept saying it. You guessed it. Me. No bull, either. Old Mister Hocking certainly embarrassed me that day. I could have stopped, I suppose, but so what? Why shouldn’t I feel what it’s like to have someone get excited over me? After all, I was the only one that had the teacher help him buy bo
oks. My old man was doing pick and shovel then and there were plenty of us and we all ate like dogs. And I was the only one had to wear sandshoes in the winter, without socks. Socks wear out, and sandshoes were cheap. I had to give the books back, of course, but it was pretty decent of him. Them, I mean. We had another teacher, too. Pryce with a y and a long nose. He must have thought we were a lot of louses. We wouldn’t have made jokes about the nose, or anything. Everyone has something stupid about them. I nearly said about him, but women are in this as well as those finished off with spouts.

  These are the sort of things I used to turn over in my head at odd times, like the old blokes you used to see hanging around when you went to have a game of football. They’d always want to predict which of us could run, or play a good game, but they were never right. They picked the ones with thick legs as the runners, when they were second-rowers, and the tough looking ones as the tough ones, when they were just beat up. The kids with the flattest noses are the ones that dodge the fewest punches.