The Chantic Bird

by David Ireland

  I can laugh about it now, and I did then in the cells, but my first smoking wasn’t all that funny. You’ve picked up bumpers and spilled them out into cigarette papers or a twist of tissue paper. Everyone has. But doesn’t it make your head spin? Specially when you take the bigger kids’ advice and suck all the smoke down into your stomach.

  The old fellow in the cell with me tried to stir the trouble-pot every time a constable brought us something to eat and every time one passed in the corridor. One of his favourite dodges was to talk about the desk-sergeant who got some tranquiliser made up and put in the morning coffee. The whole station was nice and quiet and the constables, even the detectives, walked about in a daze. When the supers and the brass called in, they liked the quiet, and you could see they thought the station was sort of holding its breath in awe. Coffee control, the old man called it. It was such a neat idea that I began to have a bit of respect for him. I won’t say I liked him. When you hear of anyone liking anyone, you’ve got to suspect sex.

  I got to thinking of how almost the whole world was against me and people like me. Or I was against the whole world. But where I beat them, they were so liberal minded they couldn’t hurt me as much as I hurt them. The punishment was always easier on me than the crime was on them.

  I can see me now, on their comfortable cop-shop bunk, looking at the black rust on the bars, thinking of when I was a kid; my first fight behind the water tank at Drummoyne, and waking up on the back verandah at my granma’s place at Abbotsford looking up at my cousin’s technical drawing of a thirty-eight engine and tender, looking out over the bay watching my aunt’s ship coming in. Not that it came in, but she told me those masts I saw were it.

  It’s no wonder a fellow has no respect for people older than himself. They have too much, too much more than you have. They have time and money and words and a bagful of ideas to put over, more than a kid can cope with. And no one’s on to them all the time, like they’re on to us. We get too much publicity. People want to hear about us; we’ve driven the good boys out of the news.

  The noise of the old fellow’s sleeve against the brick wall woke me up. He was leaning over me, in another few seconds he would have ratted my clothes. He must have been able to smell the money I had hidden on me. Having someone bending over me like that reminded me of the old man bending over me and saying, ‘I know you don’t tell lies, do you?’ I was too sleepy to hit the old bloke, just like I was too little to hit the old man, years ago. I just pushed him back a bit. He hit the other wall pretty hard.

  Who got away with Ma’s photos? I still don’t know. And the others acted as if I took them, but I didn’t. I wasn’t lying, like I did to the old man. My face did it then, and having clear eyes. The old bloke told me they’d charge me with loitering. The old folks in charge of this world don’t like you to be hanging about unless you’re paid to do it, but the old crim was still trying to find out if I really had cash on me. His telling me that reminded me I might have to use a different style of speaking on Monday in front of the beak. They like you quiet, so they have to growl at you, or even have a good yell, to make you speak up. And you should be a bit slow, so they can follow what you’re saying and pretend to be waiting for you.

  They shifted the old fellow on Sunday and put two other kids in with me. They wanted me to go with them after I got out, and do a few jobs. But they had a leader and that ruled me out. Why do they always want leaders? They must like punishment, and being kept in line. I can’t stand people in charge and I don’t like to be in charge.

  Let them do what they like, without me.

  I wiped them, like a dirty nose.

  When I got before the beak, I was first up on Monday, they wiped me just as quick when I fished out my roll of notes. If they knew where I got that money I’d have gone up for a million years, I bet. They even looked as if I could get a lawyer and take them to court. But I didn’t mind, it was an experience. One thing, though. When I didn’t take much notice of what the beak was saying, he said, ‘Your brain is crippled.’ What a thing to say! Anyway, I got out of there. My brain limped out after me.

  Back at the house I found no Bee and no kids. I got up in the ceiling to have a secret sleep, but I was no sooner settled than one of Bee’s neighbours came in. I thought it was Bee coming back and I made a noise getting down. It turned out to be one of Bee’s friends. She came under the manhole I used, I could see her looking up. I didn’t want her to see my face, so when she called out I only grunted and got back up in the ceiling.

  ‘Are you the electrician?’ she called.

  ‘The wiring,’ I grunted, and didn’t say any more.

  ‘You won’t be coming down for a while, will you?’

  ‘No.’ It was an old house and the manhole was right above the bath. This woman, she must have been some sort of nympho, started to peel off and have a bath. I know it was only because I was there.

  ‘Hey,’ I yelled down. ‘Did Bee say you could do that?’

  ‘She won’t be back for an hour. She won’t mind,’ she said. ‘You won’t tell her I stole some hot water, will you?’ She could tell I didn’t want to meet her face to face; I suppose if she hadn’t been sure of that, it would have been impossible to get near her with her pants off.

  This woman went at last. She must have known where Bee was, because she only took half an hour over that bath, with me up there perving like mad. I heard the kids coming up the path ahead of Bee, who had to carry Allie. Chris must have seen some kid in a new dress, for she was complaining about her own.

  ‘When can I have another dress?’

  ‘That one’s new enough,’ said Bee.

  ‘This is a filthy dress.’ Filthy meant old. They were both like that, new meant clean and filthy meant old. Stevo was busy rousing on Robyn, a fat girl round the corner; so that’s where they must have been.

  Stevo said, ‘You—you wrong number!’ It was getting late; there’d only be a scratch tea. Bee locked no doors, anyone could have come in. Stevo made for the TV and turned it on. Bee clattered around in the sink, getting plates ready, opening drawers, throwing knives and forks around.

  ‘Mummy! Stop doing that noise!’ yelled Stevo. ‘I’m reading the television.’ Only he made it sound like terrorvision.

  ‘Chris!’ called Bee. ‘Help me get Allie ready for bed.’

  ‘She’s not sleepy. Let her look at TV,’ said Chris.

  Stevo said, ‘Bubby does want to go to sleep. She’s got sleep all over her.’ It may have been true, but he wanted to get rid of her and have the set to himself. That was clear enough to his sister, she made noises and the tears appeared right away.

  ‘Don’t get upcited, Chris,’ Stevo said. ‘Don’t get upcited.’ I got down quietly, remembering the noise I made before, and crept up behind the kids in the lounge room. I thought I was going to scare them, but they were used to me. They expected me to jump out of dark corners. The way they said hullo made me feel good, though.

  When we’d had tea, Stevo cornered me again and told me the Chantic Bird from the beginning again and got a bit further than before. The littlies curled up like commas on the floor. First there was the King with his china palace and his garden big as a country. Then he said how travellers came from a long way off to look at the palace and gardens, but they all ended up liking the Chantic Bird, which was way down by the sea and used to sing to the fishermen. Great writers and poets, the wisest men in their countries, even came and saw and wrote about the Chantic Bird, and their books went round the world. The last to read about the bird was the King, and what he read was that the best thing in his country, better than the china palace and the garden of a thousand miles, was the Chantic Bird.

  ‘Why didn’t I know this?’ asked the King. ‘Get me this bird.’

  I laughed at that, because the very first day I brought home from school my card from the Gould league of bird-lovers, I took out the old BB gun and got my first bird, a sparrow on the clothes-line. But no one in the palace knew about the
bird, even though it was famous in every other country in the world. And no amount of punishment or promises could make anyone produce it. They would soon have to look for their information among the poorer classes because when they did they would come across the pretty little kitchen-maid who knew all about the bird.

  I could see Stevo was pleased to be telling me so much of his story, so I decided to let him leave some pleasure for next time. Lucky I brought two bags of chips with me; I gave him one and one to Bee for Chris, then off. Actually I went first and changed the metho for my great-grandfather’s eye.

  Did I tell you about the eye? He got it torn out in a fight—yes, that’s the one—and shoved it back in and went after the other bloke. Well, the eye is still in the family. The old man didn’t like the idea of keeping it, but he kept it anyway when we begged him to. People, even fathers, always like you to beg. You had to keep changing the metho every few months, otherwise it got all brown and cloudy. I’m glad it didn’t end up in some hospital incinerator with the amputations and tonsils and things.

  I didn’t keep it where Bee might get it.

  Next day a brown bomber—a parking cop—gave me a fright. I came round a corner slap bang into him, then later on one was following me. Being in jail hadn’t done me any good. I was getting nervous. The first time I ducked into a doorway, the second time I stepped off the footpath between two cars without thinking, and only the sound of a hellicking great rusty bulldozer saved me from going under it.

  I hate uniforms very much, and walked along by myself as usual, hating them all day. And thinking. Actually the only way I could stop suffocating was to keep away from people. With too many around too much of the time it was as if there couldn’t be enough air for me to breathe.

  Did those two people, who might have been strangers to me if I hadn’t been their son, did they enjoy it when they had me, or rather when they started me? Or did they slog away for hours, hating it? Trying again each month when they missed, getting nastier…

  7

  TENT

  A tiny bit of light came through the bush at me and a huge bellow started a sort of echo, a tingling echo, in my chest. The light was the tiny shout of a match flaming, the shout was the huge flaming of a very red man in a check shirt and open chest. There’d been a racket coming from this other camp, they must have been drinking dozens of bottles of grog and now they were singing. The red man had an open chest, since not only was his check shirt open, but a round red opening had appeared on the skin of his chest. What it was, they shot him in mid-song. Dead silence contradicted his cheerful racket.

  Maybe someone only let off the rifle to get rid of a shell. Since it was night and the man had been shot by matchlight and there was little or no campfirelight, I got closer, and while they were still shocked at what they’d done and scrabbling at their things to get away, I pinched their tent. The whole tent. Pegs and all. Pulled it out of the ground and off. The man with the rifle was busy stuffing dirt and gravel down it, ready to loose another shot and put different markings on the inside of the barrel. I suppose he’d burn off the stock on the fire.

  I felt suddenly pink and gold. And found myself running again. I knew that track and folded the tent in my arms while I was running. I decided to turn the feeling off, but I couldn’t; I hoped it wouldn’t make me spend my energy before I was safely camped, but there was nothing I could do. I felt so good, I knew I would have to wait until I calmed down.

  Miles away I got the tent up. I was feeling pretty gold, but I’d lost my pink a bit, so I lay right down to go to sleep. I knew like that I’d never feel cold no matter what blew up from the south.

  On a night like that you could hear the tree bark growing, and light airs would come over the dry hills and hum very quiet in the tree leaves, and far down in the valley you could hear the little creek that came and went from nothing to waterfalls, making its talk over the rocks and cold stones. Even though I felt good I couldn’t help thinking that even the winking little stars have rough edges, that look so smooth a few light years away.

  My funny warm feelings must have coloured in my dreams that night. I even dreamed I was in the bush. While I can still dream, I am me. Down where three valleys met and the cool sound of water and the quiet bark of the trees made it my private theatre, a singer stood on a rock surrounded by the green and amber of young, moist leaves. He sang a slow song, very sweet, it made a funny feeling on top of my head and suddenly I felt cold, and shivered. I still seem to hear what he sang. In my dream I knew that was the sort of song that made a bit of wet come into my eyes, the next thing I had some tears gathering up to make their own private waterfall down from my eyelids.

  When I woke up cold just before dawn for my usual reason, I thought that no matter what was outside my tent, all I had to do was go inside and I could imagine myself alone on a desert with nothing but rocks and bones and prickly ants for company. Or like one of those explorers that get time off from their bosses, I could imagine myself on top of a mountain with the wind slashing through and round and under, with nothing but snow and age-old granite for company.

  When that thought hit me, I picked up a lump of rock and I looked at it hard, trying to pretend I could see it, looking close at the grains stuck together that made them all together a rock, and thinking how blasted old it must be. And the rest of it, that this bit broke off from, and so on. How simply old; stinking, stupid, unreasonable old…Thinking like that made me throw the rock as far as I could, and when it landed the last shadow of my dreams and thoughts vanished.

  On the way back to the house to have a game with the kids, I made a few of my special traps in the paddocks I crossed. You dig round holes and cover them with cowcakes. People tread in them and twist their ankles or just fall over. It’s great fun doing it and laughing about what might happen. I carried a few cakes in my shirt and when I’d dug some holes in footpaths I lidded them with cowcakes. Nice, dry, thin ones. I couldn’t wait to see them in action, though I thought I’d like to spend a few hours at the house with Bee and the kids.

  First I thought I’d get them a lot of vegetables cheap, because there was a glut at the markets, but no go. I suppose they were dumping their potatoes at sea as usual, and the farmers that couldn’t get their things to market were ploughing them in. You hope that some things might have changed, but they don’t change.

  When I got there next door’s cat was on the verandah sunning his claws, and Stevo was in the middle of telling Bee how a dog had followed him to school. He wasn’t too happy with strange dogs.

  ‘Were you scared?’ asked Bee.

  ‘I shaked a bit,’ said old Stevo. ‘He stopped and did wee-wee a lot.’

  I played cricket with him in the backyard. Chris and Allie got in the way a bit and pretty soon there was yelling and shrieking. It never bothered me, but Bee got sharp. She abused Chris and Allie and Stevo as well as me. I knew she didn’t mean it, she was just yelling because we were out there and she wasn’t.

  ‘Come and get on the end of this bat!’ I yelled, and out she came. She was all right, too. Her brothers were all cricketers.

  ‘When I grow up, I just want a good wife who won’t yell at the kids,’ said Stevo. That flummoxed Bee. She went over and put his head against her stomach—actually it went a little way into her stomach; she had a very soft one—and patted him. That flummoxed Stevo. Funny thing, when you looked close at it, his skin had much the same patterns mine had. Mine had more brown, that’s all. The game stopped. Bee went inside and made some jelly for the kids. I showed the kids how to tie Allie up without hurting her.

  ‘You can’t tie up Bubba. Her my best friend.’ Stevo was firm. Another game gone west. Bee started stirring the jelly, you could hear it easily. Stevo raced in to help.

  ‘Ha, red jelly and green jelly. I like jelly.’

  ‘That’s not green, that’s yellow,’ said Bee,

  ‘Yellow, is it? All right, that’ll do,’ said Stevo. The colour of the red jelly was just the colour of th
e thumb I saw a butcher cut off one afternoon at Parramatta while I watched in his window.

  So while I had nothing to do I told him about living. You know what I mean, you had to explain to kids, the way my parents didn’t, that there’s a time before each of us lived, a time while we live and a time after we live. A lot of miserable people think a lot too much about the hellishing big time after we live, but it’s just as long a time before we lived, so what’s the difference?

  ‘Where was I before I was in Mummy’s tummy!’ Stevo buttonholed me.

  ‘Wouldn’t have a clue, Stevo,’ I admitted. ‘But the point is, once upon a time there was no Stevo, now there is a Stevo, and one time later there won’t be any Stevo.’

  ‘Will you be gone too?’ he observed.

  ‘I’ll be gone long before you, matey,’ I emphasised. ‘Like the trees. Dogs up the street. The mossies. This house. There’s a time before everything was, then a time for it to live, then it ups and dies.’

  ‘Does everything have a turn?’

  ‘Everything that gets here has a turn. A turn to be born, and when it’s time to die, it dies. A house falls to bits.’

  ‘And dogs leave their chin-bones down the bush,’ he added. We’d come across part of a dog skull on a rubbish heap near the scouts’ camp.

  ‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘Trees fall down. Mossies get slapped. Houses get bulldozed or you put a match to them.’

  Bee didn’t mind me talking to him. I could tell she wanted me to take more notice of the kids. I suppose there will come a time when they roll her down with the Rookwood clay, or some other clay, and what was once a person will become a nothing. But Stevo was thinking, too.

  ‘Daddy, a lot of things trouble me.’

  ‘Don’t think about it,’ I advised. ‘Come and have a shot with your gun.’