The Memory Tree

by Jennifer Scoullar

  ‘It keeps the moths out of the carpet,’ he said, apologetically.

  Penny opened the window, took his knobbly hands in hers and waited for Ray to speak.

  ‘They laid me off this morning,’ he said at last. ‘For a whole month. That new conveyer belt at Kemp Cove? Never worked properly from the start, it didn’t. Five ships are held up at the wharf and their woodchip pile’s full. So they put off half the drivers, just like that. I suppose it’s worse for them with families …’

  ‘And what exactly am I?’ asked Penny.

  Ray squeezed her hands and gave her a grateful smile. ‘I shouldn’t be bothering you with this, love. You’ve got enough on your plate.’ But his words found their own momentum. ‘Log carting’s a mug’s game these days. Four in the morning until six at night. They gave us these new logbooks to keep track of our hours, to make sure we don’t drive for too long, but we’ve thrown them out the window. Paying the fines is cheaper than not hauling enough loads. Dog-tired, I’ve been, I don’t mind admitting it, and how do they thank you? With a kick in the teeth.’

  Penny knew the drill. She’d grown up with the big trucks, knew the strain of forty-five tonnes of logs in the back, of mountain roads with centimetres to spare between you and the guard rail. One wrong move and you’re over the edge. A car veers in front, you hit the brakes … but the big trucks take time to stop. And you can’t afford breakdowns either, or flat tyres, nothing like that. Two, sometimes three jobs a day. Each load a six-hour return trip to the bush. She’d seen her uncle worn out after just one run. But tonight was different. Tonight, his weariness was of despair. Penny made them a cup of tea.

  ‘If it’s all the same, love, I’ll have a beer.’ He fetched one from the fridge and sat back down. ‘Some people hate us now, especially in the towns. This woman had a go at me last week, said I shouldn’t be driving log trucks. I told her I don’t know nothing else. Forty years in the game. But, for once, I knew what she meant.’ Penny kissed his cheek. ‘There are days I hate to see those trees come down myself. I’m thinking … how in heck do they manage it? Clearing a whole hill in six hours? One feller knocked down a stag tree when he found an eagle nest in it, just so he didn’t have to go through the bloody paperwork. I couldn’t come at that.’ Ray sat up straighter. ‘A lot of truckies think like me. Some don’t. Some don’t think twice. But others do, especially us oldies.’

  ‘You’re not old—’

  ‘No, love. Let me finish.’ Ray rose to his feet and paced the faded floral carpet in his work boots. ‘Blokes like me, we remember. We know what it used to look like, but if you’re young, driving them big trucks, it’s just a job. Don’t get me wrong. Young and old, every one of us feels like a robot, ’cause you have no say anymore. And it’s not just us, it’s all the contractors. Pete bought a Timberpro harvester last year. Beautiful machine, but there’s no change from four hundred thousand quid, and that’s second-hand. Now the Tuggerah’s on hold, he has to go farther afield for work. If they put him off, he still pays the loan. A bundle of nerves, he is, ever since that bunch in Opposition said they’d cut down on logging if they get in. Reckons if the Greens get their way, they’ll stop it altogether, along with the new pulp mill. On top of all that, his Mary’s having twins.’

  ‘Twins?’ Penny reached for her belly. Images of twin prams and twin jumpsuits hijacked her thoughts, and she almost blurted out her news.

  Ray went on. ‘There’s fool talk of a strike, talk of every driver and logger stopping work.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ said Penny.

  Ray shook his head and lit a cigarette. ‘Us poor buggers couldn’t run a chook raffle, and we haven’t got the balls besides, pardon my French.’ He slumped in his chair, as if the burst of dissent had winded him. Penny had never heard this sort of talk from her uncle before.

  ‘What about the union?’

  Ray snorted like a wounded bull. ‘The union? Bloody useless. That mob’s not for the workers. They’re in Burns’s pocket. Everything’s upside down these days.’ He sculled his beer, hurled his empty can at the overflowing kitchen tidy, then went and helped himself to another. ‘Want one, love?’

  ‘No thanks, Unkie. Might turn in.’

  ‘Righto.’ Ray settled back into his armchair. A current affairs show was coming on the television. Good, he seemed calmer.

  Penny retreated to her bed, exhausted, but that wasn’t the same as sleepy. She got up, slipped out the front door and padded barefoot in the cold to the jeep. A quick rummage in the back turned up Matt’s jacket. Penny hurried back to bed and buried her face in it. His smell was in the weave.

  * * *

  Ray tried to concentrate on the telly. ‘Tonight, the Premier predicts savage job losses in the timber industry should her party lose power.’ He felt the throb of blood in his ears, the ropes of veins rising on his throat. Ray turned off the television and went to the kitchen. He poked around behind the coffee tin until he found the little bottle of pills Pete had given him. Helped you sleep, that’s what Pete said. Ray swallowed three with his beer, turned off the light and sat at the dark window, staring into the void.

  Chapter 24

  ‘Here comes another one,’ said Jake, as he helped Matt load Woorawa onto the jeep beside Aquila. The vibration finished almost as soon as it began, a brief wobbly sensation in Matt’s legs. It would have been different inside, where shivering shelves and creaking walls revealed the most minor of tremors. It was always the rigid, the manmade, that bore the brunt of damage when the earth moved. Pity those poor blokes down the mine.

  Matt took a deep breath of pure morning. The powder-blue sky was streaked with sunrise streamers of coral cloud. They unfurled southwards, betraying a high wind. Perfect. The hooded eagles, quiet in their carriers, would sail the summer breezes by noon.

  ‘Good luck,’ said Jake, and waved goodbye.

  Matt pulled out onto Binburra Road just as Penny pulled in. The vehicles paused, as if their drivers considered stopping, winding down windows, having a chat. But on some invisible signal, both continued on their way. Penny was staying at Ray’s until Matt made a decision about Theo. They’d decided Matt would have the final say. Well, Penny had decided, like it was some kind of test. ‘You need thinking space,’ she’d said. Neither of them knew he’d need so much.

  Matt searched one-handed in the glove box. Darn it, no gum. Chewing gum stopped him from grinding his teeth. The adolescent habit had returned recently. He mouth-breathed in shallow pants, jaws ajar until he forgot about fighting it. His molars clenched together and began their inexorable grind.

  Matt tried to focus on the day ahead, but his thoughts inevitably returned to Theo. There were more thylacines. Where? Did he even have the right to wonder? After releasing Aquila and Woorawa, he would revisit the place where Theo died. Re-examine it in the light of the little bit of emotional distance he’d achieved. Maybe his course would become clearer.

  ‘You’ll make the right decision,’ Penny had said on the phone yesterday. How would it feel to be Penny? Everything so cut and dried, so black and white. Never in doubt, whether wrong or right. Weren’t women supposed to be the ones who crippled themselves with guilt? Not in this marriage. Penny had somehow absolved herself of blame, overlooked her own culpability with Fraser. Overlooked her deceit. Instead, she’d loaded both barrels with righteous resentment and blasted him at point-blank range. The hypocrisy of it.

  From the back, Aquila chirruped and ruffled her wings. She liked him to take it slow. Matt lightened his foot on the throttle.

  ‘Not long now,’ he told her. Aquila settled at the sound of his voice. Not so Woorawa. He uttered a rasping kark, the call he made when threatened. Woorawa had maintained a healthy hatred of humans throughout his rehabilitation. This wild instinct would serve as the best possible protection for him and his over-friendly mate. But still, such a hard-earned release was nerve-racking as well as elating. Binburra’s budget didn’t stretch to radio trackers for eagles, only devils. He imagine
d Aquila with a mobile phone tucked under her wing, wished he could ring and say, ‘How’re you going, darling? Have you had a good feed?’ But all he’d be able to do was wonder and hope.

  Woorawa had demonstrated in the last few weeks that he was ready to return to the sky. Freshly moulted, new feathers gleaming, black as sable. Five or six times a day he completed a dozen laps of the aviaries’ hundred-metre flight path, his playful mate chasing after him. The birds, with their two-metre wingspans, negotiated the twists and turns with extraordinary precision. Matt never tired of the display. Some captive raptors were lazy, but not Woorawa. He revelled in his increasing strength and pinion power, maintaining a self-imposed training regime worthy of the finest athlete.

  Matt had planned to release Aquila at Tiger Pass ever since she arrived as a yearling three years ago. It was ideal eagle territory. Remote, unoccupied by other pairs. He glanced at the time. Nine o’clock. Halfway. By eleven they’d be there.

  As they climbed higher and higher, Matt forgot his worries. There was only him and the eagles and the wilderness. Last year Penny had accused him of taming Aquila, and to be honest, it had been a challenge not to. The bird had a crush on him. Not his fault. Aquila had been raised by humans. It could take years to dehumanise an animal, particularly a carnivore. To make it aware of its own species, and ensure it could hunt without human support. To make it frightened of strangers. The job demanded a style of animal husbandry designed to preserve the sanctity of wild behaviour, a style specific to wildlife rehabilitation. It was wrong to care too much, or at least to show it. Successful release required animals to span the gap between two radically different worlds. Sometimes they failed. Matt had done his best.

  The sun sailed high in a neon blue sky when Matt parked the jeep. Pet carriers in hand, he followed a rough track to the head of the rocky pass. Sheer walls of stone enclosed the way, tops fringed with jagged sandstone battlements. How good to feel the weight of the birds in his hands this one last time.

  What would it be like to be an eagle? To be Woorawa? Fierce and faithful. Ever-vigilant. To possess vision of unimaginable clarity. Humans may have invented Google Earth, but their vision was fuzzy rabbit-eared antennae reception compared to the eagles’ glorious high-definition colour. What would it be like, to bear unblinking the full force of noonday summer sunshine and still be able to read a newspaper headline a kilometre away? To see without doubt?

  He’d like to fly. Just glide away and leave the old world behind, as the eagles were about to do. The odd stillness of the pass moved him as it always did. No breeze stirred the sassafras that clung to the sides of the cracked stone cliffs. Yet high winds swirled the myrtle beech forest canopy above the escarpment. Matt followed a barely rippling stream, a dark chain of rocky pools. Half-an-hour’s walk brought them to the falls, and he swung the cages onto the broad stone ledge jutting over the water. Liberation point.

  Release was always bittersweet. Aquila would go first. Matt had free-flown her at this place many times before, watched her spiral and dive and soar close to the sun. Always she’d returned to him. Not this time. He was just a man now, no longer her keeper.

  ‘Okay, darling, let’s get this hood off you.’ Matt kissed her head. Aquila whistled with excitement, ready for what would come. Gathering her in his arms, wings tucked in tight, Matt tossed her to the sky. Up and up she flew, higher and higher, until Matt could barely see her. Then she banked and wheeled in a tight circle, the wedge of her tail in sharp silhouette against the bright sky. Matt breathed a big sigh and turned his attention to her mate. He was something else altogether. Matt peered into the carrier. Woorawa was quiet within an eagle sleeve – a homemade canvas and velcro restraint. Penny herself designed and sewed the unique sleeves, which were attracting interest from mainland zoos.

  Penny. He missed her, wished she was there to share this special moment. Matt’s phone rang, making him smile. How had she known he was thinking about her? But it wasn’t Penny. It was Sarah.

  He answered the call. ‘I’m kind of busy.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Releasing the eagles.’

  ‘What, right this minute?’

  ‘Aquila’s already circling and Woorawa’s just about ready to fly. I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Let me stay on the line,’ said Sarah. ‘It will be like I’m there.’

  ‘Righto. I’ll switch my phone to speaker.’

  Matt extracted Woorawa from the carrier. The bird felt heavy, muscular, tense with anticipation as a wild bird should. Matt removed the hood. The eagle gazed at him with cold agate eyes. Slowly, carefully, Matt opened the sleeve, grasping Woorawa’s legs and body tight. The bird held him for a minute in a magnetic stare, beak agape. I fear nothing in the earth or sky, he seemed to say. Then he turned to face the blue.

  ‘What’s happening,’ asked Sarah.

  ‘I’m about to let him go.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I’m holding his legs and letting him flap for a minute to stretch his wings. Now I’m lifting him over my head. Here’s your second chance, mate. Good luck, and don’t blow it. One, two, three – and there he goes.’

  This was where Matt’s well-laid plans could come unstuck. Aquila had to follow her wild mate. If she returned to Matt, it wouldn’t be the end of the world; secretly, he might even be pleased. But if she headed off alone, her chances of survival were bleak.

  ‘What’s happening now?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘I wish you could see it. Woorawa’s a few metres above Aquila, and he’s circling too. They’re in unison. This is brilliant. You’d think they’d done this all their lives. It almost looks like they’re hunting.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Sarah. ‘You must be proud. You worked so hard for this.’

  He was proud, and exhilarated, and terrified watching the soaring eagles. Perfect mates. They didn’t compare notes, didn’t plan ahead. Their bond was intuitive, their strategy instinctive. There were no lies or misunderstandings.

  Woorawa suddenly dived. A split second later, Aquila plunged after him. Matt almost fell from his perch high above the falls.

  ‘They are hunting,’ said Matt. ‘I don’t believe this.’

  ‘What can you see?’

  ‘Not a thing. They’ve dropped out of sight.’

  Matt ended the call. He craned his neck towards the faraway valley floor, but saw nothing. Clouds of spray from the waterfall obscured his view. What was happening down there? Matt kicked at a rock. It made a graceful arc over the cascade, then plummeted, just like the eagles. He swore. Even a lifeless stone could reach the valley, but not him. For a long time he watched the sky, but the birds didn’t reappear.

  After an hour Matt collected his gear and walked back along the track, his mind working overtime. Then he rang Penny, crossing his fingers for reception. If anybody could understand what he was going through, it was his wife. Yes. Penny’s soothing voice was echoing in his ear. ‘I’d love to get down there and see what’s happening,’ he said. ‘You don’t have a helicopter on standby by any chance?’

  Penny hung silent on the phone.

  ‘Pen? Are you still there?’

  ‘I’m here,’ she said after a while, ‘and I have an idea. Promise you won’t get mad, though.’

  ‘Why would I get mad?’

  ‘It has to do with your father. Everything to do with your father makes you mad.’

  He’d left himself wide open for that one. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘Don’t go, just listen.’

  Matt stayed, too wound up to speak, too curious to bail.

  ‘Fraser says there was once a way down to the valley.’

  ‘We already knew that.’

  ‘Yes, but he knows where it was – through the back of Last Stand Cave. Fraser could never find a way through, but you’re an expert caver. It might be worth a try.’

  ‘He told you this?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Penny.

  ‘When?’

  A long
pause. ‘Two months ago, maybe?’

  ‘He never told me.’ The satellite phone crackled.

  ‘I know. He should have.’

  And so should have you, he thought. Matt felt like screaming. How many times had the two of them searched for a way down to the valley?

  Matt switched off the phone, looked across to the ancient Huon pine tree, guardian of Last Stand Cave. He dropped the cages, pulled a flashlight from his pocket and hurried over, too impatient to head back to the jeep for ropes. He’d been in that cave dozens of times. There was nothing at the back except a ceiling-high pile of rocks and thousands of tickling cave crickets. The walls seethed with them.

  He ventured in, further and further again, his small torch struggling to light the recesses. Hadn’t he normally hit rocks by now? The floor abruptly gave way, plunging him down a muddy hole. Only a braced forearm saved his head from striking stone. The narrow beam of the torch illuminated a steep rockslide in front of him that had not been there before. It looked like the entire rear wall of the cave had collapsed into the earth.

  Matt took a leap of faith and started down the incline, skidding and sliding with the torch between his teeth. One minute. Two minutes. Ten minutes. It grew brighter and Matt propped on a ledge just in time. Fifty metres below him, the shaly slope yawned into space – a heart-stalling ski jump to nowhere. The arm he’d used to save himself had received a painful twist. Why hadn’t he gone back for the ropes? With deliberate, measured lungfuls of breath, he calmed his nerves. To his left gaped a vertical fissure in the cliff, as wide and tall as a man.

  Matt scrambled across to the narrow passage and squeezed inside. Flutters in the dark – a cloud of bats swarming around his head. He knew about bats, how harmless they were, but still a primal fear gripped him. The fear of the dark, of the unknown. The fear of creatures crawling in his mouth, of wings beating about his face. As quickly as he’d felt them, the horde vanished into the void and Matt reclaimed his breath. Water was dripping on his head. He stepped forward, slipped and hit his face on the rock, tasting blood.