clambers up and towards the brick of light at the door, the heavy light of midday in the mountains. There’s a car park outside, gravel, a few lengths of pipe, but no taxi. In the distance a church with a blue and white belltower. It’s San Juan, the village that hubs the spokes of the surrounding villages, forty-six kilometres from town, eighteen uphill kilometres from home. He is alone. He begins to walk.
thanks the driver of the colectivo, a young cousin of his wife’s, and promises to pay him next time. Your taxi broken? the kid asks, his genuine concern redoubling shame. It’s in the garage, he mutters. Left my wallet. There is no explaining it. From the roadside he turns to walk the dirt track down to his place. Almost surprised to see the house is still there at the end of it. It is very quiet, though it’s not siesta yet. The wife fills the space of the door, folded arms amid the dark of hearth. The corn crackles meekly in the lesser air. Her mouth is thin, her hard-worn forearms bellied as two hams. She could almost have hoofs, he thinks, for her stance is like an unmilked cow’s, then he sees the reason. The yard is silent of chickens. The yard is covered in feathers, and there is blood.
Lobo, she says. Ádonde fuiste?
Moth
I slept in the dark although I was afraid of it. The lamp would attract moths. If I leaned to one side of my bed I could watch the moths flash around the streetlight. I tried to count them, the flickering of their white bellies beneath the wings. I got quite good at this, and listening. Counting helps me hear better, helps things to clear.
After they thought I was asleep my mother would talk about wanting a baby. Something in her had broken when I was born and she couldn’t have any more kids. I’m not saying that I broke it, just that I was the end of the line for them. Not a good end, either. These talks would finish with my mother whimpering. She would cry and my father would say, We’ll work something out, or, We’ll figure it out, as if it was a maths problem. I am the best at maths in this family but no one asked for my opinion. They didn’t know that I was listening. They didn’t know that the moths were listening too.
Another thing I liked about sleeping with the lights out was that it made the shadows walk around the room. I was an only child and I liked the company, liked to count them while they danced. Sometimes I would take a torch and read under the covers from the Child’s Book of Poems. When I looked out from under the covers I would see them, the little people. I had outgrown the book and didn’t believe in them, but it was familiar and I liked reading the rhymes out loud under my breath:
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
If anyone had invited me, I would have gone, even though I was past believing. But no one asked.
I was an only child until I was almost ten, until the discussions between my mother and father grew louder, and then quieter, and one day at dinner they gave me a Talk about wouldn’t it be exciting to have a little baby brother or sister, and I said, no, I didn’t think it would, and they said there were poor children starving to death all around the world, and we had plenty of room to spare in our family, and I thought to myself, Let them starve, but I didn’t say it aloud. I said, No we don’t, but even that I whispered. I scraped the gravy with my fork and my dad didn’t even ask me to stop, so I knew they were serious.
It turned out it was a maths problem. There were more talks and a visit from a man with glasses who didn’t want tea, and the problem was worked out on pieces of paper. A few weeks later, Mothling arrived. He didn’t arrive in the normal way, like you or me, tugged from our mothers’ bellies. He came out of an office and Mum and Dad had to pick him up. Before that, he was from a poor country with a lot of extra children. Mary has nine apples, and Johnny only has one.
When they brought him inside I peeked into the baby carrier and saw that Mothling was a silky grey-brown colour. His eyes were closed and his forehead was as wrinkled as a witchetty grub. I prodded him but he didn’t stir. He didn’t look right to me, all still and folded, but what did I know? It was late and I was soon sent to bed to listen to them coo over him. Before I turned out the light I counted the small dead moths in the bottom of the glass fitting. There were twenty-six. When I switched it off, the streetlight came shining into the room like a cold electric moon, and I could see the moths dance spells around it.
The moths are called bogongs. I looked them up on the internet. They are migrants, fat and hungry. They come in huge numbers every spring, on their way to aestivate in cool dark caves in the mountains. Aestivate means summer like hibernate means winter. They ‘aestivate in a prolonged torpor’. They are pressed up against each other in a pattern like roof tiles, still and close and folded.
Mothling was a very quiet baby. He hardly ever cried. When he opened his eyes they were solemn, like the boy in the poem. At first my uncle Keith thought he was soft in the head. He told me so with beer-breath at the showing-off barbecue. I asked my dad if the baby was soft in the head. They are all soft-headed when they first arrive, he told me. You’re not to squash or hug too hard or press down on his head. Mothling’s eyes always looked where the light was. I practised turning the light on and off in the hallway and watched his slow fat head turn towards it like a bug.
In some of these caves there are fifteen thousand moths per square metre. That is a lot of moths. If you spread out your hand and pushed it into the cave wall you would squash an average minimum of a hundred and fifty moths. When you lifted your hand again it would be covered in brown dust and the moths would fall in a soft heap. They leave their dead on the ground. In some of these caves the bodies of moths are over a metre deep.
The head of Mothling hardened but his body stayed larval, so soft you could poke through to the guts with a matchstick. I sometimes did this if I caught a moth in my room: I’d press into the long furred abdomen, and a wet white goo would come out and the moth would crawl along with its guts leaking, stuck to the ground. Then I’d have to crush it altogether.
Are there mountains where he’s from? I asked my father. Yes, he said. And caves in the mountains? Yes, he said, and then he looked doubtful. I think so. It’s very dry there. It’s mostly desert.
Mothling hated water. The first time we tried to bath him he was very still, very quiet, until Mum got him near the tepid water, Johnson’s at the ready, and he began to scream. The scream came from his body like a flapping blanket, like wings. Mum couldn’t bear it.
I thought I’d get more tolerant of a baby crying, not less, she said. But I can’t stand it. Not just this baby. Any baby. It was true: she’d hover over prams in the street, gurgle at strangers, give other mothers looks when their children kept on weeping. It was embarrassing. And if it was worse now, like she said, that meant it was better before. She wasn’t like this when I was a baby. She just let me cry.
When Mothling cried he meant it and everyone heard. The neighbourhood shook 5.6 on the Richter scale. Mothling, stop crying, I said once from his doorway. Shut up.
My father stood beside me and placed one heavy hand on my head. Call him Matthew, he said. That’s his name.
Mothhew, I said.
Properly, he said, but he went in to lift the crying baby and left me in the hall.
That year there was a plague of them. They liked the school hall. The teachers said they got in the old air vents and headed for the light. On Diversity Day we had to watch international dancing in the hall, which meant assembly went until recess. There were moths crawling on the ground and packed into the corners. Other girls squealed in the aisles. I sat in the back of assembly next to the Year Six boys. They didn’t talk to me but they let me sit there because I’d punched Leah Nolan in the mouth the previous term and made her lip bleed.
We crushed moths with our shoes until we got bored. Then we gathered them up into piles. Th
e boys began to stuff them down the shirts of kids in the row in front. I pocketed mine and felt the shimmering dust creep over my hand as they burrowed for safety.
Why are refugees like sperm? whispered Jaydn West beside me. Heaps of em get in but only one of em works. The other boys laughed. I wriggled into my chair and wiped the moth dust on my uniform.
Then Jaydn West leaned over and spoke to me: Hey, isn’t your baby brother a reffo?
No, I said. He’s adopted.
Why don’t you throw him off a boat? he said, and laughed.
He’s not even my brother, I said. He’s not even anything.
At the end of the day I ran to the road before the bell went so that I could see my mother arrive. I got in the car before anyone saw Mothling curled in his chrysalis in the back. He wasn’t my brother. He wasn’t even human. Was I the only one who could see it?
As the days grew hotter and the bogongs began to thin out, I wondered when Mothling would disappear with the mass migration to the mountains. But he just slept a lot. Summer was tip-toes, lots of Milo sitting on cold milk and the morning sun like a light on in the kitchen.
Dad and I had breakfast together and I ran out into the heat when the bus came. It stopped right at the top of our cul-de-sac. I looked down the clean street at our house of mottled brick and red tiles, thinking of the roof tiles of moths that were gathering in the mountain caves. Maybe today he would go with them, I thought. The bus heaved me off to school, brought me home again. Soon it would be holidays.
The heat got to all of us, we were all tired. When I slept in on Saturdays Dad said I was growing. But Mothling slept the most of all. Slowly he got fatter and paler and mothier. His eyes were too wide apart for a baby. His hair grew dark brown, silken, and tufted out like feelers. His skin had a brown shine like glittery powder, which came off on my hand. I tried not to hurt him but it was impossible to touch him without rubbing the dust off. I always had to wash my hand afterwards.
Mum called it down. His down would grow back the next day. The dust shine was like a fine fur. Up close in certain lights the brown was rainbow colours like the glaze on the teacups I wasn’t allowed to touch at my grandmother’s house. It was pretty and gross at the same time.
The longer the days grew the more Mothling slept, until he only woke at night to feed. Mum dragged a camp bed into Mothling’s room. She became pale and fat and nocturnal. My father and I hung around the house all day with these soft fat lumps breathing at the end of the hall. He was frightened of that baby, I knew it. I sat at the pine table and did my homework. I heard the fluttering of mothy breaths.
At night my mother prowled around the house. She carried Mothling wrapped in a blanket on her chest. Sometimes in the night he would look out over her shoulders with his big sorrow-dark eyes. Sometimes I got up and followed them. They never noticed me, they were under some kind of spell. Mum had her whole body curled around Mothling, and his eyes were fixed on the windows. He peered towards the streetlights outside, waiting for something. Waiting for his real family to come.
Sometimes I walked home from school past the shop. Once I ran into the Year Six boys. It was almost holidays, they were almost at high school. I almost ignored them but then Jaydn waved and I paused, took half a step towards him.
Hey, he said. Tell your little brother something for me?
Yeah, I said.
Tell him fuck off we’re full.
I ran home without going into the shop. I ran into Mothling’s room and stared at him for a while. Then I opened his window. I swear that was all I did. Opened a window. I stood in the room with Mothling and I wanted him to leave, but I didn’t do anything. I counted the posts on his crib and the rings on the curtain rail and then I started on the lines in the carpet. Finally I wiped the dust from my hands and went to my room.
I turned off the light and waited. The streetlight outside flickered on and I could see the last of the moths flying around it, not wanting to leave the bright circle. But it was the end of the season for them. It was time for them to go.
In the morning I woke early to the sound of crying. It was a peaceful sound. There were no moths left anywhere in the world.
It’s almost a year since Mothling disappeared and now I’m almost eleven. An only child. Mothling took half of my mother with him and half of my father too. I didn’t know he would do that. Now another winter is over and the moths will soon return. I wonder if there will be a plague this year. I wait for them at my window. I wait for them alone.
There is only one at first. One enormous moth on the glass. I peer at it. The white belly, sticky feet, the perfect feather stripes underneath. She is a queen. I put one finger to the glass where the moth is sitting, wonder if she can feel my warmth. Bring him back, I say. The wings shift, but the creature stays closed and folded.
She stays on my window all night. All night she doesn’t move. Now I sleep with the lights on.
Prospect
When the storms look like they’re over, Poppa sends me down to the wash with an old frypan and a paintbrush, a couple of glass jars and a packet of his cigarettes. I fumble them all in my hands before I settle on pockets for everything except the frypan, which I swing alongside me like a mechanical arm. The clouds and the earth broke with each other hours ago but I can still hear them yammering on the horizon beyond the low cragged hills that mark our fence line. You be careful, son, Poppa said. You get back here first sign of rain.
I pick my way through drowned flower heads that cling to the mud like a skin. I look for loot. The wash flushes everything downstream and we are thrifty through long breeding like the cattle who survive here. Poppa sends me down after every flood and this is a big one. I know I’ll find something. I hurry to the water.
I like going down to the wash. I like to watch the desert fill its belly overfull like a hobo at his first dinner in weeks. I like the grey-brown water sliding hard and fast over the pebbles, the way I’m suddenly surrounded by noise. The water sounds like it’s alive and the birds always go crazy for it. When the rain comes it changes the world for weeks after: first the flood pushes everything around and then the growing comes. Everything overdone and wild for a while before it all starts to die over.
The best thing I found last year was a suitcase: a small cardboard case with a few photos and baby clothes inside. It wasn’t damaged too bad but Poppa made me burn it in case it had diseases. The photos were all of Mexicans. I kept one of an old Mexican lady. She looks serious and round like a hot air balloon weighted down by all her clothes. Miguel down Pallets Road found a cooler full of beer once, floating along like a little blue boat, and got it before it tipped. That was after the last big rain like this, three years ago, when we were still neighbours. Before he went off to college somewhere and forgot about Prospect.
Miguel went to study law because he said there wasn’t enough good lawyers. I said how do you know they didn’t all start good, and he threw a bottle top at my head. Poppa says there’s no law here but finders keepers and if you can defend your land it’s yours to keep. Miguel should know that. His mama brought him over that border in the eighties. He was just a little kid back then and he says he don’t remember anything about it.
It’s funny to think of Miguel as a Mexican – I mean, he is, but as one of those Mexicans that pour over here every day. They say there are hundreds of them in the desert at any one time. They move by night and in groups, lead by guys who know the trails. They call those guys coyotes. I hear them sometimes but I’ve never seen them. One time last winter I thought I heard voices right in our back field speaking Spanish and laughing. I looked out my window but there was no moon and I couldn’t see any lights out there. I guess they don’t use flashlights if they’re hiding from the law. They say those coyotes can just about see in the dark.
I get down to the edge of the river and I squat on my heels to pan for minerals, filling the
frypan and brushing it out the way I was taught. I call the wash a river now because it’s flowing fast, wide and brown, but a few days ago it was just a dry gravel bed. I can see from here where they put that fancy new radio tower that’s supposed to be looking for Mexicans, but Poppa says it doesn’t work. The government put that there last year and everyone says it’s just for show. Even if it did work I don’t know how they can use that thing to tell the difference between the illegals and us. Half the folks round here are from Mexico anyway, even if they’re not Mexicans any more. The rest of us are American, I guess. Miguel said it’s the Californians that don’t want all those Mexicans coming in, because they take the jobs. Down here we don’t care so much if they cross into our land – there’s no jobs to take. There’s too many come through for us to bother about them any more. And they’re all headed somewhere better anyway.
I can see a patch of bright purple fabric dancing in the water upstream from me. I watch it for a minute as it turns and makes its way towards me. At first I think it’s just a rag or something, but I soon see it’s bigger than that. I grab a long stick off the ground and I reach across for it. The fabric is heavier than it looks and I can’t get a hold on it. The water drags it away.
I take a cigarette out of the packet and hunt around in my pockets for the matches, but it turns out I forgot them. I stand up and stretch my legs, enjoying the brief chill that hangs in the air above the river and cools the backs of my knees. In a couple of days this air will be thick as sweat again and the clean smell of the wash will be replaced by the stink of its retreat. The stink of the cattle bones and rotten weed and who knows what else it leaves behind. But for now the air is crisp and clear, like the world’s fresh-born.
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