Rain Birds Read online

Earl adjusted his feet, dusted his hands against his pants. ‘You should be a bit more careful about how you say things. Some people aren’t as friendly as me.’

  She felt the trees rattle.

  ‘Where the hell does Brandt come from?’ he asked. ‘Your family name.’

  ‘It’s German.’

  ‘You German, then?’

  ‘No, I’m Australian.’

  He laughed loudly. ‘Howard is a strong family around here. Real big mob. But my mother’s father was from Sweden. That’s where Erland comes from. It’s got a dual meaning: to the Norse it’s leader, to the Swiss it’s foreigner.’

  ‘Do you feel like a leader or a foreigner?’

  He was quiet for a few moments. ‘Both,’ he said, eventually. ‘At different times I’m both.’

  The crackle of human voices carried back to them on the wind.

  ‘Anyway,’ Earl said, ‘I didn’t come just to have a chat. Maureen wants to talk to you.’

  One of the birdwatchers was waiting for Arianna back by the vehicles. She had a puffy face and was thick around the middle.

  ‘It was over there, about twenty yards away,’ she said, brandishing her finger in a south-easterly direction. ‘A female, I think.’

  She was dressed all in khaki and canvas. Even her scrunchy was camouflage. ‘I’m Maureen,’ she added.

  Arianna recognised her from the petrol station in town.

  ‘Did you collect the band number?’ she asked, getting out a notebook and pen to jot down the information. ‘Did you get the pattern of the coloured bands?’

  ‘I can’t see that far, dear,’ Maureen said, though the word was far from an endearment in her mouth. ‘And my hands don’t stay still enough for me to get a good look through the binos.’

  ‘How do you know it was a female, then?’.

  Maureen sighed exaggeratedly. ‘I’ve lived here all my life. I know a bloody black cockatoo. And this one was acting pretty strange – do you want to hear why or not?’

  She pursed her lips together. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it was screaming for a start, not a usual cockatoo screech but real long and high-pitched.’

  ‘Were there any other birds around?’ she asked. ‘The mate or the rest of the flock?’

  ‘I didn’t see any other birds the whole day.’

  ‘Where was it exactly? High up in the tree?’

  ‘In one of the lower branches, about halfway up the trunk. And you want to hear something else? It was flapping its wings a lot.’

  ‘Vertically to the ground or diagonally like it was trying to take off?’

  ‘Vertically. Just flapping them gently, feathers all ruffled. It didn’t want to go anywhere. And do you know the oddest thing?’

  She glanced up from writing her notes; noticed that Maureen was imperceptibly bouncing up and down on the spot.

  ‘It was whacking itself against the branch. It was whacking its head against the wood.’

  20

  THEY’D SEARCHED AND searched for the cockatoo but never found it: Maureen adamant she’d taken them to the right place; Arianna almost running through the trees, the swell of urgency in her throat. The signal bearing on the flock was faint – their location shifting and changing like the wind.

  Arianna left the birdwatching group behind and headed further into the twisted trees and ferns. She wandered in circles; the wild began to shed its shape and identifiable markings. At one point, a tree trunk lay across her path; its middle, weakened by fire, had snapped. The blackened bark was scaly – as though it were some kind of reptile – and slightly shiny. She placed her hand against the sooty trunk to catch her breath. It collapsed a little beneath her weight and, when she drew back her hand, her palm was dusted with a grainy ash.

  In front of her, the foliage thinned, and a dirt road ran just beyond the scrubby ferns. Somehow she’d circled back around to the service track. As she walked towards it, a horn beeped to her right. The Land Cruiser pulled up alongside her.

  ‘Get in the car,’ Tim said. ‘I told Earl to send everyone home. We can cover ground more quickly with the truck.’

  She climbed in and picked up the receiver antenna. As she held it out the window, Tim hunched over the steering wheel, navigating the bottomed-out road.

  ‘Are you watching the map?’ he asked as they hit an exposed root with enough force to lift her from her seat.

  ‘I’ve got the antenna.’

  ‘Can’t you do both?’

  They drove up towards Black Mountain. The road split off into smaller tracks; Tim took the wrong one first and had to double back. The track grew even rougher, and she had to hold the edge of the window with her free hand.

  ‘Stop. Pull over,’ she said urgently. ‘I think there might be a signal from that way.’

  It was only weak: she wasn’t sure if she’d heard it or wished it and, by the time Tim had steered the wide-nosed four-wheel drive in between a couple of trees and they’d walked six hundred metres into the bush, it was gone.

  ‘Jesus, Arianna. There’s nothing here.’

  She rounded on him. ‘Well, that’s not my fault.’

  He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Alright, sorry. I’m just really fucking tired.’

  The thud of machinery was louder there, like a heart pounding in her ears.

  We’re all tired, you arsehole, she thought. Maybe it would help if you didn’t stay up all night.

  ‘You wait here,’ she said. ‘I’ll go that way and triangulate our position.’

  She strode off into the bush, moving uphill now. Black Mountain. She went so far that the scrub changed. It was different here from down at their camp, with cool temperate rainforest and thick tree and ground ferns. The trees were smaller than the towering eucalypts lower down the valley, maybe forty metres high at maximum. Moss and lichen sprouted from almost every surface.

  Voices floated on the wind. She clambered over a pile of fallen logs and thought she saw something from the corner of her eye.

  ‘Tim,’ she called out.

  But the bush was nothing but shuddering leaves. She breathed in the damp, pungent leaf litter and walked until she reached another road. It was rougher than the service road close to their camp, more like a proper four-wheel-drive track with wide potholes and steep, shale-covered sections. Its loose gravel was disturbed.

  She felt unsteady on her feet, heard music and voices floating through the trees. As she rounded a corner, there were vans and other vehicles parked on the side of the road, right up into the bush. Some were painted with murals; most had belongings piled high in the back windows.

  She went past them, and the bush opened up into a clearing where she saw a small collection of tents. Young people lounged around on mattresses and towels, half in and half out of tent flaps, washing hanging from tent-ropes. There were fire bins, smoking. Haven’t they heard about the fire ban?

  A large, long banner was tied between the upper branches of two gums: Dirty Oil for Dirty Profits.

  A couple of people noticed her and raised their hands in greeting, but she continued walking. The smell of dust grew stronger as she moved past the fires and, up ahead, she could see a silver gate blocking the path.

  There was another group camped up near the gate, separate from the young people with their busy, patterned clothes and bin fires. Several adults and kids were sitting in the dirt of the small clearing outside Sol Petroleum’s perimeter fence; others were leaning against their cars. A few dusty tents were set up, and she was close enough to see bed linen also piled into the back seats of the cars. She recognised Harley amongst them. A couple of teenagers had their phones out, filming the scene beyond the gates.

  The Sol Petroleum worksite was a bare patch of ground several football fields wide. Just seconds ago she’d been tangled up in the thick undergrowth of the forest, and the sudden nakedness of the earth seemed impossible. Clouds of dust tunnelled skyward, shrouding machinery.

  A woman with silver streaks in
her brown hair was muttering as she watched the pylons slam the earth. She wore a t-shirt from Tina Arena’s 1995 tour. One of the men had his shirt off, and Arianna saw a large tattoo of the Aboriginal flag across his bicep.

  A phone rang – the clunky piano of Still Dre as its ringtone – and she saw Harley pick up.

  ‘Yo,’ he said. ‘Nah. Yeah, we’re here. Fucking criminal, man.’

  One of the older women hissed at him as he hung up. ‘Language.’

  Harley shrugged his t-shirt higher on his shoulders and bounced on his toes. ‘Still takin’ my time to perfect the beat, and I still got love for the streets, it’s the D.R.E.’

  ‘Shut it, homie idiot,’ said the woman in the Tina Arena shirt.

  An anguished currawong screamed high above. A few people in the group were watching Arianna now, talking softly to each other as they stared. The machinery was thunderous; the jarring every time the pylon hit the earth sent a sharp pain up her legs.

  Then Harley spotted her; she saw the recognition in his face. He began to walk towards her.

  How does this kid have so much confidence? she wondered. It had never been like that for her as an adolescent, even as an adult. His self-assuredness stung something in her.

  ‘Hey, cockatoo lady,’ he shouted.

  ‘What does she want?’ she heard the woman in the Tina Arena shirt call to him.

  Harley was still approaching.

  ‘You police or something?’ the woman shouted to her.

  Arianna turned around sharply and headed back in the direction she’d come, glancing once over her shoulder. Harley stood still, watching her leave. She sensed something desperate in the centre of her chest. Got to get out of here.

  The long sides of the sign tied to the treetops were flapping slowly. The material making a snap with each wave of air.

  This is what the people they were involved with were doing; this was where their money was coming from. She felt the turmoil growing: how could they justify it?

  On her way back past the other tents, she noticed a young woman standing on the side of the narrow track, her hair matted – somewhere between untended and dreadlocked – but in a manner that appeared deliberate rather than neglectful. She wore leggings, a cotton dress with crude, ethnic patterns, and sturdy hiking boots – brand-new. Something shimmered around the edges of her. Grass flies. Often, they choked Arianna’s path and filled her nostrils, but now they hovered about the woman like an aura in the midmorning sun.

  Arianna kept her head down, tried to avoid eye contact but there was no escaping her.

  ‘Welcome. I’m Jade.’ Everything about the woman was watery: her skin, her hair, her eyes.

  ‘I’m just cutting through,’ she told her, not wanting to engage.

  ‘There’s always room for more,’ Jade said, smiling at her so widely that her eyes crinkled almost shut.

  The trees seemed too close; she could feel the abrasive scratch of the stones beneath her boots. Jade stepped out into the centre of the track – she would have to push past her now.

  ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ Jade said. ‘Have you heard the story? An American girl was murdered up on Ninety Mile Beach in the seventies. Two men did it. They raped her first. She’d only been here for a week.’

  From all sides, she could hear the rustle of the bush. Got to get out of here.

  ‘Here in Australia,’ Jade continued, ‘not here here. But they say her soul travels up and down the coast in the summer time.’

  Above their heads, the trees were creaking, dehydrated. The air was beginning to charge; rumbles around the horizon were becoming audible. She felt the electric prickle against her skin, the weight of the sky above them.

  Jade turned her face towards the clouds. ‘There’s a lot of spirits here – the Indigenous ladies up there were telling me about them. You can feel them, can’t you?’

  ‘I don’t believe in ghosts or spirits,’ she replied. ‘Any rational evaluation of the world will tell you they don’t exist.’

  The young woman smiled, closed her eyes and breathed deeply through her nose until her shoulders raised to her ears. ‘Can you smell the storm coming?’ she asked. ‘Can you smell the change?’

  21

  WHEN PINA GOT up that morning, the flock of black cockatoos that had appeared the week before had doubled in size. She squinted out of the kitchen window to see there were about ten of them now, trilling and screeching in the she-oak forest. She remembered Tracey’s words. A sign. Black-coloured birds were considered omens. The cockatoos clung to the flimsy branches of the casuarina, turning the pods in their beaks. The trees bent under the weight of the birds, graceful like a dancer’s motion.

  She recalled that morning – a couple of months ago now – when she’d taken Alan into Murrungowar to watch the release of those glossy black cockatoos. The ones on the threatened species list. It had been one of the last social situations she’d put him in. There were a few people he knew there, and he hadn’t recognised any of them.

  She left the kitchen and went into the bedroom to help him out of bed. He pinched her as she tried to manoeuvre his arms into the sleeves of his shirt. Once she was done, she led him first to the bathroom. Then, afterwards, she followed him as he stomped down the hallway towards the kitchen.

  ‘You’re up to something,’ he snarled at her from across the room as she reached for a plate. ‘You’re plotting something.’

  At the table, he pushed away the breakfast she’d prepared and screamed, ‘You’re trying to poison me, you bitch.’

  You bitch, you bitch, youbitchyoubitch.

  Waves breaking across her back. She wanted to let them knock her to the floor, flood over her until she was miles below the surface. She was already losing her breath. Tears slipped from beneath her closed lids as the back door slapped shut.

  She looked out the window to see Alan storming around the garden. His arms were wild; he was talking to the clouds.

  Occasionally, in the early days of their courtship, he had tried to woo her with poetry.

  ‘What about this one?’ he’d asked as they lay in bed one morning. ‘A rapid bolt will rend the clouds apart, and every single white be seared by wounds. I tell you this. I want it all to hurt.’

  She’d shrugged, uncertain how to respond, focused instead on the fine, blond hairs across his chest like golden threads. He was so beautiful.

  ‘Come on, you must like it,’ he said, ‘It’s Dante. He was major.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She laughed and reached out to pull him closer.

  ‘And’ – Alan batted her hands away – ‘he was Italian, il sommo Poeta.’

  She’d laughed even more at his mock outrage and burrowed her face into the side of his body. His was a presence that had always made her feel safe.

  Harley’s aunty dropped him at their house around lunchtime. It was time for him to mow their lawn again. Pina went out to unlock the gate when she saw them arrive. Harley walked up the path and handed her a packet of Scotch Finger biscuits.

  ‘She’ll pick me up in about an hour,’ he said.

  She led him around the back, left the biscuits on the verandah steps and helped him drag the old stroke mower out of the shed, even though he protested that he didn’t need the help. The ride-on from Alan’s mowing business was still sitting beneath its tarp, but she felt uncomfortable letting a seventeen-year-old who hadn’t even gone for his L-plates use it.

  ‘You got cockatoos in your trees,’ Harley said, pointing to the casuarinas.

  ‘There’s more every day.’

  He looked at them. ‘They’re big fellas.’

  ‘Alan’s nurse reckons black birds deliver messages. Do they, you know, mean something?’

  ‘How should I know? They’re birds.’

  She stopped herself asking anything further, watched him lean against the stiff mower. She’d never been a superstitious person before. Never needed signs or reassurance from the great unknown. Harley was right: they were
just birds.

  ‘I hope you’re not spending too much time out at that protest,’ she said. ‘You need to be careful.’

  ‘I got this now,’ he said, ignoring her and shooing her towards the house.

  She climbed up the verandah steps, taking the Scotch Fingers with her, and headed inside. She paid Harley to mow the grass, but not really what the job was worth. Mostly just pocket money. Lately, he’d been bringing some food with him – sweet, sticky pull-apart buns from the bakery; packets of biscuits – and he’d usually spend a few minutes at the end sitting on the verandah with Alan, doing all the talking, until he was collected.

  ‘Bring us some of those biscuits,’ he’d call to her.

  She knew that he was spending some of the money she paid him on the things he brought. A good boy.

  As the mower spluttered into life, she phoned Doctor Nash’s office and listened to the hold music while her call was transferred.

  ‘Alan’s trying to escape more and more,’ she told the doctor when she was finally connected.

  ‘That’s common,’ Doctor Nash said.

  ‘He’s still sleeping badly.’

  ‘What do you think will help with that?’

  She could hear a telephone ringing in the background. ‘Do you need to get that?’ she asked.

  ‘No. What are you imagining the next step might be, Pina?’

  She let the question float past her. She was thinking about how Alan had walked right up to her a few afternoons ago as she’d sat on the verandah.

  ‘I love you,’ he’d said.

  She’d gaped up at him. He’s saying it, she’d thought, but he has no concept of love anymore. It had meant nothing, when she wanted it to mean everything.

  ‘There is a facility not too far away in Paynesville called Happy Waters. If you ignore the ridiculous name, it’s quite good,’ Doctor Nash said.

  A facility? She could hear a phone ringing again. ‘Are you sure you don’t need to get that?’

  ‘Pina,’ the doctor said with a sigh. ‘That’s what receptionists are for.’

  ‘I’m not sure we’re at the stage of looking into homes and those sorts of things yet.’