Skyglow Page 7
‘Hmm?’ It was a begrudging invitation, but he took it anyway.
He placed the mug on her book-strewn desk and stood beside her, saying nothing. She looked up, finally. He cupped his two hands to a heart. I love you. She hesitated, broke eye contact, her dark wing of hair shadowing her expression. Then, she looked up, her eyes bright, a small scrunched-up smile on her face. She repeated his action then held up two fingers in a victory sign. I love you too.
It was enough. It was more than enough. For now, it was everything.
He closed the door softly, made his way back to the empty kitchen and his hot drink. Turned on the lamp in the lounge and sat down to read. When he got to the bottom of the page, he was still smiling.
Where I Can See You
Ellie had discovered, not long after they arrived in the hollow of the hills, that standing still and silent for a long time on the very edge of the garden made a magical thing happen. Amid the various tweets and twitterings of the bush birds, she would hear a voice calling to her.
Ellie, Ellie, Ellieee.
Whenever Ellie went out into the garden, she listened for that voice among all the other sounds, but it wasn’t always there. She longed to discover who was calling to her from so deep in the whispering forest—it wasn’t often that her name was called with such gentleness.
She had never known her mother sober and never known her father at all. Her six small years of life had consisted of constant rounds of shuffling behind her chaotic mother as she careened from place to place, house to house, always with the promise that this would be the place where life would finally settle to an even, predictable tide.
Ellie liked this new place though. She liked the way it was tucked away tight between the two rounded hills and had a bright yellow front door. She liked the way the wind blew high through the trees with a roaring whoosh, loud enough on some nights to drown out the sound of her mother’s mumbling as she lay on the sprung couch, the bottle slipping to the carpet with a muffled thud.
In the still cold mornings, when the wind had blown itself away, Ellie would walk out into the rambling garden, right to the edge where the bracken began to thicken and the flowers changed from those she knew from storybooks to smaller, less showy ones which seemed to manage all by themselves. Sometimes, Ellie would linger on the edge between the garden and forest, peering through the rough-barked trees and then back towards the house, with one grubby foot in the bracken and the other steady on the grass. She would stand there as long as she could, before the edges of the wild place pulled too hard, quickly putting both her feet back in the garden.
Her mother rarely ventured out there other than to call out hoarsely from the splintery old porch. Don’t go out past where I can see you, or you’ll know all about it. Ellie longed to go there, out past where her mother could see, so she could know all about it. She wanted to know who lived in the tall forest and cut scars into the side of the great trees. She wanted to ask if they were the ones who’d left the strange stones she’d found, smooth and warm in her small hands. Ellie especially wanted to know where her father had gone and what had happened to the baby brother her mother had brought home some small time ago. The tiny wrinkled thing who cried on the floor of the kitchen for what seemed ages and then, one morning when she climbed out of bed, simply vanished. She learnt a long time ago not to ask too many questions.
One night, Ellie woke to the empty silence of an absent wind.
Wah wah waaah.
Ellie threw back the covers and looked out the window. A great orange moon hung low in the sky, lighting the tangle of garden with sharp silver edges.
Wah wah waaah.
She couldn’t bear it. She wanted nothing more than to find that baby and hold it tight to her skinny chest, as she had when her own baby brother had woken her during the night, rocking him backwards and forwards until he slept again. She liked the look of a baby asleep.
Ellie climbed through the window and crunched her way through the stiff night-time grass towards the bracken. She put one foot in the forest and kept the other safe in the garden.
Wah wah waaah.
Silence. And then, Ellie, Ellie, Ellieee.
She looked back towards the house. The porch light was on, shining like a soft beacon out into the dark. Her mother would be asleep by now on the couch.
Wah wah waaah. Ellie, Ellie, Ellieee.
Ellie put her other foot firmly into the forest and walked determinedly towards the voices.
She climbed carefully over mossy logs and between the sturdy trees. A breeze hummed high in the branches, the forest alive with the strange snapping clicks of the night-time. In the few schools she’d been to, Ellie’s favourite place had always been the library. She liked the quiet there and the way no-one bothered her with awkward questions she couldn’t answer. She read lots of storybooks, poring over the colourful pictures of children who shared many of her troubles, and knew that she could not get lost so long as she could see the light shining out from home. Mindful of the tales she’d memorised, she turned every so often as she went deeper into the forest to make sure the light was still behind her.
After clambering under and over branches and boulders for what seemed like hours, she turned once more to check on the light that led back home. Her heart started thumping in her chest like a small fist against a shut door. It hadn’t been the porch light she had been trusting at all, but the hard bright moon all along.
Wah wah waaah. Ellie, Ellie, Ellieee.
Deep in the trees, everything looked the same. She shivered in the cold, wishing she had thought to pull on a jumper over her thin nightgown. How would she keep the baby warm without one? She started to run, tripped and fell with a sob, scrambling up again on bleeding knees.
Wah wah waaah. Ellie, Ellie, Ellieee.
Ellie didn’t know anymore how to begin to find her way home, instead she went forward, ever faster, towards the voices up ahead, towards the great hope of her baby brother and the safety of the father she never knew.
The small sound she made as her tired little body tumbled down into the mine shaft startled a curlew with a great flapping of aggrieved wings and a mournful call.
Wah wah waaah.
Further away, a shining bronze, searching for a mate, called into the empty darkness.
Ellie, Ellie, Ellieee! Ellie, Ellie, Ellieee!
*
Late the next morning, through the edges of a stinking hangover, Valerie realised her daughter was nowhere to be found. The house was empty. The back door, off the latch, bumped itself against the jamb, regular as a heartbeat. Pushing back tangled hair, she swore under her breath and stepped outside. The morning light flooding the yard made her wince as she looked from one unkempt garden patch to another.
‘Ellie! I can’t see ya.’ Then louder, ‘Where are ya?’
High in a karri, clinging to his branch as it blew back and forth in the rising breeze, a kookaburra threw sharp beak to the sky and laughed in her face.
The Bough Shed
The choppers took off at first light, the road trains pulling in just after. A season’s work mustering loaded on the trucks. The cattle were in good nick, prices decent for a change. After the frantic pace and noise of pushing sleepy cattle up the race, the morning air rang with sudden quiet. Sarah and Tom were put to the task of walking through the empty yards, picking up scattered bailing twine, while the dust settled back on the roadway behind the departing trucks.
Sarah was tired and hungry. She always made sure she was there to wave Ian and Trev off, wondered now if Ian had remembered his tucker box. He’d be cranky if he hadn’t.
‘Smoko.’ Her mum walked towards the bough shed, a tray in her hands.
Sarah only needed telling once. Tom raced past her, angling for first go at the cake, yelping as he stubbed his toe on the way. He crashed into the blue-striped deckchair nearest the radio, bloodied toe held aloft. Served him right.
‘You’ll probably get tetanus and die from that,’ she said
.
‘Nuh. Had me needle. Bad luck, ugly.’
She poked out her tongue as she went past.
Her father, back from sorting the waybills, took off his hat as he came in.
‘Dad, did you hear him? He called me ugly!’
‘Don’t call your sister ugly, Tom.’
Jimmy and May, the twins, tired of waiting, started a smoko of their own. The laminate table, a relic from the schoolroom, was covered in a paste of red dust and water. Garish smears of it on Jimmy’s chin proved he’d been persuaded to try it for taste.
Sarah rolled her eyes. ‘You two are so gross.’
‘We’re gross, we’re gross, we’re gross,’ the twins sang, their teeth red with pindan.
Sarah sighed and went to the centre table to get tea and cake. They all drank tea, gallons of it. Black and sweet or stirred through with Sunshine milk and always from the big enamel pot. Out bush it was billy tea, a different brew altogether and hardly civilised. She made a cup for her dad in his big chipped pannikin and one for her mum in the teacup. On a tin tray, she put two small pannikins for the twins and added more powdered milk than they deserved.
Her father looked at his watch. ‘News’ll be on soon, Tommy.’
The news was boring, all about such faraway things. Nothing remotely interesting. Mum and Dad would start shaking their heads as though they could change things. It was silly. It seemed best to let the outside world clean up its own mess. Here in the bough shed, none of those things mattered anyway.
Of all the places on the station, the bough shed was her favourite. Galvanised poles held up a patched corrie roof, and the walls were chook wire, double layered, with tea tree branches packed in between. Over to one side, a huge frangipani leant, making shade patterns on the gritty floor. The waxy flowers had a smell like growing up. There were hanging baskets and some giant clam shells they’d found down at the beach. Old pearling floats, all bubbled green and blue glass, hung in jute nets on the walls on big rusty hooks. The pipes running around the top edge had holes bored in them, and on hot days Dad could hook up the hose and water would trickle down, creating an oasis. It wasn’t so hot today, still dry season cool.
Sarah liked it when they were here all together. Even when her brothers and sister annoyed her, it was a good whole sort of feeling. If Ian were here, it would be complete. She loved her older brother, not least because he always stood up for her against Tom. She liked having a brother who was a young man. Ian had muscles at the top of his arms that flexed when he drove the ute or pulled the calf cradle down when they were branding. Sometimes he did the dishes with her, just the two of them talking. Sarah knew things about Ian that nobody else did. She was good at keeping secrets.
She knew he was in love with the trainee vet in town who came up from the city last year. They’d had the vet out preg testing cows a couple of times already this year. Ian spent ages in the shower before breakfast. When she asked Ian if he was in love, he waggled his eyebrows at her, so she knew he was.
Sarah knew Ian didn’t want to take over the station, even though Mum and Dad thought he would. He wanted to travel the world. He wanted to do things with his life. When he talked like that, he would stop whatever he was doing and stare out the kitchen window at something she couldn’t see.
‘Don’t say anything about this, will you, Sar? I need to have a proper plan first, put it to them the right way.’
She promised she wouldn’t say a word.
Even Ian’s mates were fun. The past few weeks, Trevor had been here with them, all the way from England. He was thin and freckled with bright red hair that shone out among all their dark heads at dinner. Mum said Trev had the best manners she’d ever seen. She looked at Tom when she said that. Tom’s manners weren’t that great. Trev told them, in his funny accent, about where he lived in England, how the cows were really fat and the grass was super green all the time. It sounded lovely, but then he said it always rained and he liked the weather better here. In the mornings, he would sit out on the front steps with his cup of tea in the patch of sunshine that grew there. Most of the time, she tried to stay out of the sun, but Trev said he loved it and had to soak in as much as he could before he went home.
He talked a lot about his sister, Colleen, who was the exact same age as Sarah. He said she had the same fiery hair as his, but was much prettier. When Trev called home, he’d begun to put Sarah on to talk to Colleen before he said goodbye. Even though it was awkward at first, she had come to look forward to sitting at her mum’s desk and talking across the ocean. The clunky phone, pressed against her ear, still holding the warmth of Trev himself.
Sometimes Sarah daydreamed about marrying Trev and living in the green bowl of England. She imagined herself waving him off in the mornings as he went to work, and, though the very thought gave her tingles, perhaps Ian would marry Colleen and they could all live there together like a big family.
Trev was working up flying hours towards his commercial licence. He wanted to work ferrying for the oil rigs, and Sarah knew Ian wanted to do the same. She hadn’t had to keep that secret.
She’d heard the argument one night when she was in bed with a big moon shining in on her. Mum and Dad hadn’t been happy about it. They’d been keen for Ian to take on mustering work in the area, till things were ready for him to take over at the station. Ian told them he might want to do other things. There had been a long silence after that.
She woke later that night, the moon higher in the window, and heard Mum and Dad talking quietly in their room. At breakfast the next morning, though nothing was said, Ian seemed happier. After that, her parents no longer talked about his future on the station the way they had before.
When Trev had arrived at the beginning of mustering season, it was taken for granted the two of them would leave to try for jobs on the rigs once they’d got their hours up. Sarah didn’t think she could stand seeing them both go at once.
This morning, they had pushed the choppers out of the hangar behind the workshop. The rotors sliced through the air with a great thumping whoop whoop. Sarah stood as close as she could and let the sand sting her face. As the choppers lifted off the ground, they looked down at her and waved. She waved back and shouted, ‘See you at teatime!’ They couldn’t hear her, would only see her as a smudge chained to the ground as they flew away.
Now, Sarah rubbed her bare feet through the sand in time to the music coming tinny from the radio and thought about what she might do with the rest of her day if the twins and Tom would leave her in peace long enough.
Bah-bah-ba-ba-bah! The familiar theme from the ABC broke into her thoughts. More boring old news. Reports just in of a fatality in the East Kimberley where a helicopter has crashed while mustering in the remote Garrison Gorge. Rescue crews are currently making their way to the site…called in by another pilot working in the same area…
Her mother put her teacup down slowly.
Her father turned towards her. ‘They would have rung, love. If it was anything to do with Ian, someone would have rung.’
The twins, sensing something amiss, paused with pannikins mid-air and eyes wide.
‘They would have rung,’ her father repeated, getting to his feet and placing his hand on her mother’s shoulder.
Sarah closed her eyes and thought of Colleen with her fiery head of hair, all those miles away. The two of them held together by the invisible thread of their brothers.
It can’t be Ian. Sarah held herself still, even while her mind whirled. I hope it’s Trevor. I hope it’s Trev gone down.
She pressed her knees together against her cold hands, and convinced herself the ringing coming from across the lawn, over the noise of the generator, was all in her head.
No Trouble
Johnny arrived around noon, dust rising in the wake of his sliding rear wheels. Snow had rung him early that morning feeling superior, glad to have something over his neighbour for a change. ‘One of your steers here, mate. Appreciate if you could come get him t
oday.’ The phone clicked and burred in his ear. Johnny’d hung up on him.
While Snow waited, he had spent the time twitching rails and clearing muck from the trough. He had better things to do. All the things he would tell his errant neighbour ran through his mind. Their boundary fence was a mess, he was tired of being the one out there in the heat fixing holes and trying to keep the firebreaks clear. This time, he would lay it on the line. When he heard a vehicle rumbling through the dust, he lay his pliers on the tray of his ute, rubbed the dog’s ears.
Johnny wore no shoes, and a rifle barrel poked from the rear window. Slamming the door of his Land Rover, he reached into the back tray and pulled out a tar-coated steel picket. He balanced it a moment, gauging the weight in his gnarled hands. ‘Where is it?’
No greeting. That was typical. Johnny was famous for it.
Snow pointed to the far yard where a rangy steer stood, staring wild-eyed through the rails, ribby coat sticky with old sweat and dust. ‘Over there, mate. He’s come a long way. Wouldn’t mind a chat when you’re sorted.’ He tried to sound friendly, but his heart wasn’t in it. ‘Thought you’d be bringing the truck. He’s gotta have walked fifty miles ’tween your place and mine.’
Johnny transferred the picket from one hand to the other. ‘Third time the bastard’s walked. Not payin’ out good fuel on the mongrel anymore.’ He spat sideways in the dirt and walked towards the yard, bouncing the picket off the hard ground.
Snow’s thumb twitched involuntarily with each thud. He wished he’d brought someone with him. ‘You don’t have to shoot him, Johnny. If you don’t want to take him home, he can just stay on here. Just called ’cos I thought you’d want him back. I’ve given ’im a drink and a feed. No trouble.’
‘Not wastin’ a bullet on him either.’ Johnny reached the yard and climbed the timber rails, stood balanced at the top with a calloused foot on either side of the next rail down, picket held high. He looked menacing, like something from another time.